The twentieth century

HANDBOUND
AT THE

UNIVERSITY OF

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTUBY

/l/VD AFTER

XIX-

.4 MONTHLY REVIEW

EDITED BY JAMES KNOWLES

VOL. LVI
JULY-DECEMBER 1904

NEW YOEK
LEONARD SCOTT PUBLICATION CO.

LONDON: SPOTTISWOODE & CO. LTD., PRINTERS

AP

A

T9

CONTENTS OF VOL. LVI

PACK

OUB PITIABLE MILITARY SITUATION. By Colonel Lonsdale Hale. . 1

COMPULSOBY EDUCATION AND COMPULSORY MILITARY TRAINING. By

Henry Birchenougli ....... 20

How JAPAN REFORMED HERSELF. By 0. Eltzbacher . . .28

THE WOMEN OF KOREA. By Lieut. -Colonel G. J. B. Gliinicke . . 42

THE POPE AND THE NOVELIST : A REPLY TO MR. RICHARD BAGOT. By

the Bev. Ethelred L. Taunton . . . . .46

TRAMPS AND WANDERERS. By Mrs. Hlggs . • . .55

EDUCATIONAL CONCILIATION: AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY. By D. C.

Latlibury ...... .67

A PRACTICAL VIEW OF THE ATHAN ASIAN CREED. By the Bight Rev.

Bishop Welldon ....... 75

THE VIRGIN-BIRTH. By Blade Butler . . . . .84

INVISIBLE RADIATIONS. By Antonia Zimmern . . . .88

MEDICATED AIR : A SUGGESTION. By Dr. William Eivart . . 97

THE POLITICAL WOMAN IN AUSTRALIA. By Vida Goldstein . . 105

THE CAPTURE OF LHASA IN 1710. By Demetrius C. Boulger . . 113

ISCHIA IN JUNE. By Adeline Paulina Irby .... 119

CONCEBNING SOME OF THE ' ENFANTS TROUVES ' OF LITERATURE. By the

Lady Currie . . . . . . . * . 126

INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND THE PRESENT WAR. By Sir John

Macdonell 142

LAST MONTH :

(1) By Sir Wemyss Beid . , . 152, 319, 499, 686, 855, 1033

(2) By Edward Dicey ..... 163, 330, 510

(3) By Walter Frewen Lord . . . . 867, 1044
JAPAN AND THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE WAR WITH RUSSIA. By Baron

Satyematsu ........ 173

OUR BI-CENTENARY ON THE ROCK. By Bonald McNeill . . . 181

BRITISH SHIPPING AND FISCAL REFORM. By the Marquis of Graham . 189

THE LIBERAL PRESS AND THE LIBERAL PARTY. By W. J. Fisher . 199

THE ETHICAL NEED OF THE PRESENT DAY. By Prince KropotJcin . 207

THE HARVEST OF THE HEDGEROWS. By Walter Baymond . . 227

THE UNIONIST FREE TRADERS. By J. St. Loe Strachey . . . 236

THE POPE AND CHURCH Music — A REJOINDER. By Bichard Bagot . 247

To EXPLORE ARABIA BY BALLOON. By the Bev. John M. Bacon . . 251
SOME MAXIMS OF THE LATE LORD CALLING AND BULWER. By the Bight

Hon. Sir Henry Drummond-Wolff . .... 262

PEPYS AND MERCER. By Norman Pearson .... 269

SOME INDIAN PORTRAITS. By the late Sir William Battigan . . 286
WHAT is THE USE OF GOLD DISCOVERIES ? By the Bight Hon. Leonard

Courtney ........ 299

PHYSICAL CONDITION OF WORKING-CLASS CHILDREN. By Dr. T. J.

Macnamara ........ 307

GIFTS. By C. E. WJieeler ....... 312

How RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR — A COMPLETE HISTORY. By Baron

Suyematsu ....... 341, 521

THE COMING REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA. By Carl Joubert . . . 364

iv CONTENTS OF VOL. LVI

PAGB

THE EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATE AS A EUROPEAN COLONY. By Sir

Charles Eliot ....... 370

FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. By W. H. Mattock . 386
THE DIFFICULTY OF PREACHING SERMONS. By the Right Rev. Bishop

Welldon 402

SHALL WE EESTORE THE NAVIGATION LAWS ? By Benjamin Taylor . 418

THE AMERICAN WOMAN — AN ANALYSIS. By H. B. Marriott-Watson . 433

MY FRIEND THE FELLAH. By Sir Walter Mieville . . . 443

COLLEY GIBBER'S ' APOLOGY.' By H. B. Irving .... 451
THE PINNACLE OF PROSPERITY — A NOTE OF INTERROGATION. By J. W.

Cross ......... 469

THE POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL SITUATION IN AUSTRALIA. By Tom

Mann ......... 475

A CHAPTER ON OPALS. By H. Kershaw Walker .... 492

ROME OR THE EEFORMATioN. By the Lady Wimborne . . . 543

THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS. By J. Keir Hardie . . 559
MR. HARRISON'S HISTORICAL ROMANCE. By the Bight Hon. John

Morley ........ 571

OUR NAVAL STRENGTH AND THE NAVY ESTIMATES. By the Bight Hon.

Lord Brassey .......

THE GERMAN ARMY SYSTEM AND How IT WORKS. By J. L. Bashford .
ARE REMARKABLE PEOPLE* REMARKABLE -LOOKING ? — AN EXTRAVAGANZA.

By the Lady Currie . . . . . . . .022

THE BY-LAW TYRANNY AND RURAL DEPOPULATION — A PERSONAL

EXPERIENCE. By Wilfrid Scawen Blunt . . . . 643

THE LAND OF JARGON. By Helena Frank ..... 652

A REMINISCENCE OF COVENTRY PATMORE. By Dr. Paul Chapman . 668

THE NEXT LIBERAL MINISTRY. By Henry W. Lucy . . . 675
THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF NEUTRALS: PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S

PROPOSED CONFERENCE. By Sir John Macdonell . . . 697

ENGLAND, GERMANY, AND AUSTRIA. By Sir Rotuland Blennerhassett . 707

MOTOR TRAFFIC AND THE PUBLIC ROADS. By Sir Walter Gilbey . 723
FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. By the Rev. Prebendary

Whitworth ....... \ 737

MR. MALLOCK AND THE BISHOP OF . WORCESTER. By the Rev. H.

Maynard Smith ....... 746

THE EXHIBITION OF EARLY ART IN SIENA. By Langion Douglas . 756

THE LITERATURE OF FINLAND. By Hermione Ramsden . . . 772

TABLE-TALK. By Mrs. Frederic Harrison .... 790

SIR ROBERT WILSON : A FORGOTTEN ADVENTURER. By the Right Hon.

Sir Herbert Maxioell . . . . . . 796

JAPANESE EMIGRANTS. By Wilson Crewdson .... 813

WOMAN IN CHINESE LITERATURE. By Herbert A. Giles . . . 820
THE CHECK TO WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN THE UNITED STATES. By Frank

Foxcroft ........ 833

THE RUSSIAN SOLDIER. By Carl Joubert ..... 842

GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY: A CONVERSATION WITH COUNT VON

BULOW, GERMAN CHANCELLOR. By J. L. Bashford . . _J373

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S OPPORTUNITIES. By Sidney Loio . . /~*882

WHAT THE FRENCH DOCTORS SAW. By Lady Priestley . . . 892
FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND: A REJOINDER. By TT.

Mallock . . . . . . . 905

HYMNS — ' ANCIENT ' AND ' MODERN.' By the Countess of Jersey . . 925

THE CENSUS OF INDIA. By J. D. Rees . . . . . 938

THE DECLINE OF THE SALON. By Miss Rose M. Bradley . . 950

HARA-KIRI : ITS REAL SIGNIFICANCE. By Baron Suyematsu . . 960

THE CORELESS APPLE. By Sampson Morgan .... 966

THE RHODES BEQUEST AND UNIVERSITY FEDERATION. By J. Churton

Collins ...... . 970

PALMISTRY IN CHINA. By Herbert A. Giles .... 985

QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PICTURES. By His Excellency the Stvedish Minister 989

ONE LESSON FROM THE BECK CASE. By Sir Robert Anderson . . 1004

THE GERMAN NAVY LEAGUE. By Dr. Louis Elkind . . 1012

THE RE -FLOW FROM TOWN TO COUNTRY. By Sir Robert Hunter . 323

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTURY

AND AFTER

XX

No. CCCXXIX— JULY 1904

OUR PITIABLE MILITARY SITUATION

THE eight signatories of the Majority Report of the Royal Commis-
sion on the Militia and Volunteers have no reason to be dissatisfied
with the reception of their Report by the public, presuming, of course,
that the utterances of the Press may be taken as indicative thereof.
The record of their work is in four Blue-books. The first gives, in
seventy-eight pages, the two Royal Warrants creating the Com-
mission, the Majority Report (with two schedules), a short memo-
randum by Lord Grenfell, a long memorandum of twenty-six pages
by Colonel O'Callaghan-Westropp, two minority reports contributed
by three of the Commissioners, and two short appendices. The
second and third books give the minutes of evidence, which com-
prise no fewer than 24,150 questions and answers ; the fourth gives
275 pages of close reading in the form -of appendices. In these appen-
dices are not only returns showing numbers, cost, &c., but among
them is a huge amount of evidence given in writing by societies
existing among the Auxiliary Forces ; by witnesses who had appeared
befo^ Jommission, and who desired to amplify their verbal

evidence ; and, finally, a summary of answers to a circular of questions
VOL. LVI— No. 329 B

2 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY July

sent to the commanding officer of each Militia and Volunteer unit.
It is practically a third volume of evidence. And within forty-eight
hours the verdict is pronounced, and it is almost, but not quite,
unanimously one of condemnation.

But the jury were only human beings ; and, therefore, real judicial
consideration of the evidence on which the Report is based was
obviously out of the question in this short time ; so it necessarily
follows that the adverse judgment must have been arrived at on some
grounds quite different from the evidence on which the Commissioners
formed their opinions. And with the condemnation came an amount
of ' drubbing ' the Commissioners that reminds me of the old advice :
* If you have a bad case, don't reply to your opponent's arguments,
but abuse him.'

A few specimens, taken from some of the London daily papers,
and all written, be it remembered, almost immediately after the
four volumes came into the hands of the respective writers, and
before there was time to do more than give the very hastiest .glance
over this enormous mass of evidence, are illustrative of the spirit of
this condemnation. ' A more inadequate document of its kind has
rarely been published.' ' Its [the Commission's] head was turned
from the beginning by the spectacle of a Cabinet bowing before
Lord Esher's triumvirate.' * The Report reads like the crudest
production of the most sensational journalist of the Jingo school.'
The Report is an ' impudent document,' and the Commissioners
were guilty of a ' sublime piece of audacity.' The Commissioners
' did not know very clearly what they were about.' The Com-
mission was not ' very strongly constituted,' and when, a week
later, Mr. Arnold-Forster stated in the House of Commons that the
Government did not intend to endorse the recommendation of the
Commission so far as adopting conscription, we read of the ' absurd
conscription scheme ' — a Commission of ' military officers and theo-
risers.' ' To say that it [the Report] has fallen flat would be to put
the case very mildly. As a matter of fact, it has met with con-
temptuous and almost unqualified condemnation.' Evidently it is on
some very tender toe that the Commission has trodden ; and to the
injured toe a clue is found in the allegation that the Commission has
acted ultra vires, and has inquired into and reported on matters not
included in the terms of reference. And we run the quarry to ground
in the first paragraph of the leading article of the Times, which paper,
with one or two others, has kept aloof from the shouting crowd.
' The Report of the Royal Commission on the Militia and Volunteers,
whatever may be thought of its specific proposals, is bound to derive
an historical importance from the fact that it is the first official docu-
ment of the kind to enunciate and endorse the principle of compulsory
military service.'

Yes, it is the recommendation of the adoption of the principle

1904 OUE PITIABLE MILITARY SITUATION 3

that it is the bounden duty of every able-bodied male adult to
take part efficiently, if called on to do so, in the defence of hearths
and homes, that has aroused this outburst of anger and abuse ; and
the wrath exhibited is sure to be intensified by the cool, merciless,
unemotional, and logical process adopted by the Commission in
layirg bare and open to the public gaze the actual and pitiable situa-
tion in which we stand as regards the defence of our homes at the
present time.

And even if this charge, ultra vires, were maintainable, as I hold
it is not, surely the Commission deserves gratitude, not condem-
nation, for telling us what it believes to be the plain truth, and
for endeavouring to awaken the country to the fact that we are,
as regards defence of our homes, living in a fools' paradise. If the
Commissioners are wrong, and our paradise is one not for fools only,
surely it will not be a very difficult task for some of their opponents
to explain to us the errors and fallacies underlying the assertions of
the Commissioners. But, before doing this, there is some work for
them ; they will have to go carefully through the evidence on which
the conclusions that irritate them are based, and they will have to
produce in support of their case evidence as worthy of respect as
that given by the competent witnesses called before the Commis-
sion. The opinions formed by the Commissioners are not mere
theoretical fancies of their own ; they are derived from the evidence
brought before them, and which they have considered judicially. It
is regrettable that a very high-class London paper should write of the
Commissioners : ' Unfortunately, they were too much enamoured of
their hobby to make any serious contributions towards the solution
of the problem presented to them .... the Government have lost
no time in declaring that they will have nothing to do with the scheme.
It would have been unfortunate if the fantastic notion had been
treated with any sort of indulgence.' Why it should be supposed that
with the Dukes of Norfolk and Richmond, the Earl of Derby, Lord
Grrenfell, and their colleagues, compulsory service for home defence is
a ' hobby ' is incomprehensible ; characterising universal service for
home defence, which not one of the dissentient members regards
as totally out of the question, as a ' fantastic notion,' indicates,
on the part of the writer, the possession of an amount of confidence
in his own opinion that few soldiers or sailors who have studied the
subject possess. Had the Report been of a milk-and-water, colourless
character, it would soon have been consigned to the limbo of ephemeral
Blue-books, and no one would have troubled himself to read the
evidence ; but when the eight signatories, known not to be fools, are
held up to sneers and ridicule on the one hand, and the Times, on the
other hand, affirms that the Report is of ' historical importance,' these
eight men are bound to receive their reward, in the certainty that

B 2

4 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

such a peculiar reception is certain to draw to the Report and the
evidence the attention of all thinking men.

The Commissioners were directed to ' inquire into the organisa-
tion, numbers, and terms of service of our Militia and Volunteer
Forces ; and to report whether any, and, if any, what, changes are
required in order to secure that these forces shall be maintained in a
condition of military efficiency and at an adequate strength.' The
Commissioners commenced their inquiry, it may be presumed, with
impartial minds ; but as they were directed to report how to secure
the maintenance of these forces in an efficient condition and in
adequate strength, it was only after ascertaining the functions those
forces would have to fulfil that the inquiry could be further extended.
The Garde Nationale in France was thoroughly efficient in 1870-71 if
it knew enough to be able to defend its own localities ; for the Garde
Mobile, intended to form part of the mobile army, a much higher
standard of efficiency was necessary. A very small staff and but
little equipment were needed for the one ; a highly trained and com-
plete staff and much impedimenta were the necessary requirements
for the other. Similarly as regards the officers and non-commis-
sioned officers ; whilst the Garde Mobile must be complete in these, and
it was only good, well-trained soldiers that could be leaders, their
local influence and position might go very far to counterbalance
professional deficiencies in the Garde Nationale in local defence. Had
I had the honour of being one of the Commissioners, I should have
joined most firmly with my colleagues in demanding this preliminary
information respecting the functions, for there would have recurred
to my mind a lecture delivered at the Royal United Service Institu-
tion by Lieut.-Colonel Eustace Balfour on the 28th of November,
1895, when he spoke as follows :

' Volunteering is, in two respects, similar to the labours of the
Israelites in their efforts to make bricks without straw. The clay we
have of good quality and in sufficient abundance ; but we lack time to
harden it, and money to spend on the more modern appliances for its
manufacture. With the financial side of the question I am not to-day
concerned, I therefore put that aside ; but for the rest we all know
what would be the result if a bricklayer's apprentice were to set him-
self to erect a structure of half-burnt bricks. Not only would that
structure present all the failures of ignorance, but the bricks would be
twisted out of shape, and would have to be remoulded before they
could again advance in the process of manufacture.'

In the course of the discussion that followed, I protested, as a
retired soldier- civilian, as I did later on in an article in this Review,
against the walls for the defence of my own locality being constructed
of bricks of this kind. But Lord Wolseley, who presided at the
lecture and had just become Commander-in-Chief, made, in his
summing-up, a remarkable statement. ' We must remember what

1904 OUR PITIABLE MILITARY SITUATION 5

that force is composed of. We must remember that a very large pro-
portion of the officers in it cannot devote themselves day by day, or
even for some hours during specified weeks in the winter, to learn
what we would like to teach them. We have to take them as they are.
As practical men, if we cannot have a whole loaf we must be contented
to take half. If a man has a gap in his fence and cannot afford to have
an iron gate, he must be prepared to put up with a wooden one. That
is the way in which we must look at the Volunteer force.'

The italics are my own, as elsewhere in this article. We poor
civilians are to be content with walls of half -burnt bricks and gates of
wood. Against this exasperating theory I protested strongly in the
article referred to, and I do so now again. About the same time
Lord Lansdowne, the then Secretary of State for War, stated that
' he was informed on the best authority that there never was a time
when the Volunteer force, in point of discipline and efficiency, stood
higher than at present.' But this is beside the mark, for mere better
than badjs not necessarily good. The Commissioners were appointed
to inquire into efficiency and numbers ; it might be possible that the
other forms of defence in this country are so strong and trustworthy
that walls of ' half-burnt bricks ' and ' gates of wood ' would do very
well, as being ornamental rather than for actual use ; it might be, on
the other hand, that owing to the progress of modern warfare, the
altered conditions of sea warfare, and the huge expansion of the
Empire in the last five years, ' half -burnt bricks ' and ' gates of wood,'
even in the places assigned them, would be about of as little value to
us inhabitants of the British Isles as the Noah's ark in the children's
nursery would have been to Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japhet in the
days of the Flood. So the Commissioners were bound to ascertain at
the very outset the functions of the forces. If an owner hands over
a racing colt for training, the trainer is not likely to bring him out a
winner if he is left in doubt as to whether the owner intends to run
the colt for a six-furlong race, or the Derby, or the Grand National.

Naturally, therefore, the Commissioners commenced with an
inquiry at the War Office as to the views held there on the subject.
In response they received a document, a memorandum headed : ' The
Organisation of the Auxiliary Forces considered in relation to the
Military Defence of the Empire.' Lieut. -General Sir W. Nicholson,
the then Director-General of Military Intelligence and Mobilisation,
was careful, however, to explain that it was an authoritative expres-
sion of the present views (19th of May, 1903) of the Commander-in-Chief
and the Secretary of State only — i.e., Earl Roberts and Mr. Brodrick.
They then tried to ascertain the views held at the Admiralty on the
subject of invasion, inasmuch as in the War Office memorandum the
Auxiliary Forces were reckoned on in the defence. This information
the Admiralty declined to give, but suggested application to the
Committee of Imperial Defence. So in a dignified letter of the 26th

6 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

of May, signed by the Duke of Norfolk, the Commission asked the
Committee of Defence, of which the Duke of Devonshire was chairman,
two questions :

1. To arrive at a conclusion as to what should be the strength of the Auxiliary
Forces, it is necessary to have an approximate idea of the strength of the in-
vading force which the land forces may be called on to meet. What do the
Committee of Defence consider to be the maximum and minimum limits
between which the strength of the invading force would probably be fixed ?

2. Is it contemplated that the duty of meeting the invading force should fall
mainly on the Auxiliary Forces ? In other words, is the Koyal Commission
justified in believing that the contingency may arise in which the number of
fighting units of the Eegular Army left in the country will be very small ?

These are questions of a kind which would enter into many an
operation of war, and which would need to be answered before arriving
at a decision not only on the conduct of the operations, but also on
the number and kind of the forces to be employed. At the time of
sending in the questions two or three witnesses only besides Sir W.
Nicholson had been under examination ; but nearly a month elapsed
before any reply was received from the Duke of Devonshire, who
then, in a memorandum, calmly informed the Duke of Norfolk that
' the reference to the Royal Commission was not intended to cover an
inquiry into the numbers of either Regular or Auxiliary Forces which
should be maintained for Home Defence or for other services ' ; and
yet the terms of reference distinctly state that the Commission is to
ascertain what changes may be necessary to maintain these forces, not
merely in a condition of military efficiency, but also at an adequate
strength, Mr. Akers-Douglas, the Minister who signed the Royal
Warrant, specifies ' adequate strength ' as one of the two necessary
conditions of the Forces, one of the two objects to be aimed at.
Just two months later, the Duke of Devonshire, another Minister,
says that the consideration of adequacy does not enter into their
work. But by this time the Commission, which had been working
hard, had been collecting most valuable opinions on this same question
of adequacy.

The Duke of Devonshire recommended, however, that the numbers
given in the present mobilisation scheme of the War Office should be
accepted, and, he added, ' it may be assumed that if these forces
should be required to resist an invasion, it might be after a consider-
able portion of the Regular Troops might have left the country.' When
this communication was received, the Commission had entered on the
investigation of other branches of the inquiry, so, apparently, the
numbers given in the mobilisation scheme were not at once asked
for ; but shortly before the autumnal adjournment there came from
the Secretary of the Imperial Defence Committee a letter and a
memorandum, dated the 22nd of July, both of a most remarkable
character. It must be borne in mind that the scope of the inquiry

by the Commission was laid down in a Royal Warrant, in which the
King himself speaks, first gives greeting to each individual member,
and then specifies the task they have to carry out, and in one clause
says : ' Our further will and pleasure is that you do, with as little
delay as possible, report to Us under your hands and seals, or under
the hands and seals of any three or more of you, your opinion upon
the matters herein submitted for your consideration.' The warrant
is signed ' By his Majesty's command. A. Akers-Douglas.' The letter
of the 22nd of July gives as the object in sending the memorandum
the ' defining more clearly the scope of the inquiries to be undertaken,
by the Commission and the Committee respectively. The memoran-
dum warns the Commission that the War Office memorandum origin-
ally furnished to it is ' not to be taken by it as authoritative ' ; and
then follow passages which must be given in extenso :

It appears to the Committee of Imperial Defence that it would be most
unfortunate if the Eoyal Commission should, with necessarily imperfect oppor-
tunities of examining the question, incorporate into its Report an expression of
opinion as to the liability to invasion or as to the strength of the force which
should be maintained for the defence of the United Kingdom or for the other
purposes referred to, which may afterwards be found to be at variance with the
deliberate and authoritative decision of the Committee of Imperial Defence,
whose special function it has been to examine these questions with a full com-
mand of all the sources of information at the disposal both of the Admiralty and
of the War Office.

It appears to the Committee of Imperial Defence that the main object for
which the Royal Commission was appointed was to advise his Majesty's
Government and Parliament, not as to the strength at which the Militia and
Yolunteers should be maintained in the country, but how the establishment of
Militia and Volunteers could be maintained at full efficiency, and at the strength
which may be eventually decided by his Majesty's Government and Parliament,
on the advice of the Committee of Imperial Defence, to be necessary. It is
therefore suggested that the present Mobilisation Scheme should be taken as
the basis on which the Royal Commission should consider this question, as the
principles which they lay down must necessarily be applicable equally to an
establishment which may vary within reasonable limits on either side of
the existing one.

The Commission at once asked the Committee for a copy of the
scheme, and in reply were refused the copy, but were told it would
be sufficient if the figures were taken at 100,000 Militia and 200,000
Volunteers.

What a strange state of affairs is here revealed ! The chairman
of the Defence Committee, in his individual capacity, undertakes to
tell the chairman of a Royal Commission what its duties were, or,
rather, were not, although the King himself has defined them. Then
the Committee further lectures the Commission as to the scope of
their respective inquiries, proceeds to make recommendations for
omissions from the Report, and finally puts to it the conundrum
how to maintain the establishment of the Forces at full efficiency
and at the unknown quantity, x — namely, the strength which at some

8 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

future time is to be determined by the Government and Parliament.
Surely the proper course for the Defence Committee to have taken
was, instead of lecturing the Commission on its duties, to have
obtained from the King a modification of the duties his Majesty had
thought fit to impose on it.

The Commission held on its own way in accordance with the
instructions of his Majesty as conveyed to it in the Royal Warrant,
and has produced in the Report and in the evidence published with
it matter of the highest national value, matter worthy of close and!
very grave consideration.

The first section of the Report should be printed simply as a
broadsheet and be distributed all over the country, in slums and
in palatial residences alike, in the smallest agricultural hamlet and
the busiest mercantile city. The Commission does not argue ; it gives
only plain facts.

' Each of the five great Powers of Europe has abandoned the once
prevalent idea that war is the exclusive business of a limited class,
and has subjected its male population to a thorough training, either
naval or military. Accordingly, each of these nations is to-day
ready to employ in war the greater part of its able-bodied male popu-
lation between certain ages, under the guidance of a specially trained
body of officers and non-commissioned officers. . . . Each of the
great States has also, with a view to war, so organised its material
resources, and in particular its means of communication, that they
may be fully utilised for naval and military purposes from the very
beginning of hostilities .... In a war against any of them Great
Britain would be in one respect at a grave disadvantage. For while
her antagonist by previous organisation would be enabled to devote
to the struggle the greater part of its resources both in men and in
material, Great Britain would not at the beginning have at her dis-
posal more than a fraction of her population, and her material re-
sources could be very imperfectly applied.'

And now as to invasion.

' The perfection of the means of communication, and in foreign
countries, of the control of the State over them, is such that the
concentration of a large force at any port or ports is practicable
within a very short time ; what was formerly a matter of weeks is now
an affair of days, possibly even of hours?

, And then, after speaking of the corresponding development and
changed conditions of naval warfare, the Report continues :

' Naval warfare is always more concentrated and decisive than
land warfare, and the effect of the developments just described is to
intensify these characteristics, while, at the same time, the want of
experience with the new instruments renders it difficult to predict
the issue of a naval conflict. More is staked on a sea fight than ever,

1904 OUR PITIABLE MILITARY SITUATION 9

yet it is harder than ever to foresee the results which the destructive
force of modern weapons may produce.' . . . l It is impossible for us
to shut our eyes to the fact that the next naval war in which this country
may be engaged will be on both sides a great experiment.'

In the next section, the ' scope of the inquiry,' the Commission,
quoting the figures furnished on the one hand by the War Office as
required for home defence 330,000 (including 150,000 mobile troops),
and, on the other, the 300,000 given by the Imperial Defence Com-
mittee, points out, with pitiless logic, that these numbers are irre-
concilable either with reliance solely on the Navy for protection
against invasion, or against a small raid. ' An effective force — in other
words, an army — of the strength proposed to us, can be required only
to meet an invasion. Either invasion is possible or it is not. If not,
no military force is required for home defence, and our inquiry could
hardly serve any practical purpose. But if invasion is possible, it
can be undertaken only by one of the great European Powers, which
possess forces highly trained and ready to move in large numbers at
the shortest notice.'

And then they proceed to give their interpretation of the meaning
of the words in the King's command, ' the condition of military
efficiency ' in the Auxiliary Forces.

' The Militia exist chiefly, and the Volunteers solely, for the pur-
pose of resisting a possible invasion of the United Kingdom, which
would be attempted only by a first-rate army. This purpose will not
be fulfilled merely by a brave or creditable, but unsuccessful, resist-
ance ; it requires the defeat of the enemy. The standard of efficiency
to be aimed at it is therefore not a matter of opinion ; the conditions of
war and of the battlefield must be met, and no lower standard can be laid
down?

The Commission had, in the absence of more authoritative infor-
mation, to construct for itself the foundation on which to base its
inquiry as to the standard of efficiency, and as to the numbers of the
Auxiliary Forces required to carry out their functions ; and on the
expert evidence laid before them they came to the conclusion that
under certain circumstances it was quite possible that the function
that these forces would have to fulfil would be the meeting and crushing
an invading hostile force of 150,000 picked men, fully and admirably
staffed, trained to the highest point of efficiency for acting in close
country, led by officers and non-commissioned officers of high individual
capacity in all ranks, and, I may add on my own account, possessing
from highest to lowest a thorough knowledge of the country, obtained
by previous close study of our own Ordnance maps, of which, we may
be sure, the invaders would bring with them an ample supply, and on
which doubtless they had previously carried out an infinite variety
of war games.

It seems to be generally overlooked that no Continental Power

10 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY July

would strike a blow on land in this country without having first pre-
pared a weapon absolutely reliable for the purpose, and that the special
preparation of the force, as regards individual efficiency, can be carried
on quietly and without observation, in the normal training which each
officer, non-commissioned officer, and private undergoes in foreign
armies. The same rule holds good with regard to the preparation of
any naval and sea transport that might be required for an invasion.
Under the well-thought-out and perfect systems that prevail on the
Continent, the only order required for changing from complete passivity
to action, immediate and at full power, is ' Go ahead ' ; everyone at
once takes his allotted place in the huge human machine, and the
whole machine at once starts working, smoothly, rapidly, and without
any special effort. When I hear of time available to make prepara-
tions to meet a threatened invasion, the bit of information I once
picked up from a subaltern in the German army recurs to my mind.
' I have received and returned,' he said, ' the Red-Book specifying my
work on the order to mobilise ; I go to Metz to bring up the Reservists,
and in the book I have been informed of the railway stations at which
we shall stop during the journey, and the number of cups of coffee
that will be ready for us at certain places.' And that implies a good
deal more — namely, that some one or other, possibly a civilian at some
small station, knows now that he also must be ready, on the word
* Mobilise,' to supply the definitively prescribed number of cups of
coffee.

The Commissioners then set to work to ascertain the present con-
dition of the Auxiliary Forces, the distance they are below this necessary
standard of efficiency, and the possibility of their ever reaching it ; and
after a searching inquiry, eight out of the twelve found themselves
compelled eventually to arrive at the conclusion embodied in the final
paragraph of the Report, and which has aroused such a tempest of
unreasoning condemnation : the conclusion that ' Your Majesty's
Militia and Volunteer forces have not at present either the strength
or the military efficiency required to enable them to fulfil the functions
for which they exist ; that their military efficiency would be much
increased by the adoption of the measures set forth in the fourth
section of this report, which would make them valuable auxiliaries
to the regular Army ; but that a home defence army capable, in the
absence of the whole or the greater portion of the regular forces, of
protecting this country against invasion can be raised and maintained
only on the principle that it is the duty of every citizen of military age
and sound physique to be trained for the national defence, and to take
part in it should emergency arise."1

And although three of the Commissioners furnish other reports,
all three recommend compulsory service of some kind or other. Sir
Ralph Knox would fix the quota for both Militia and Volunteers, and
if this were not furnished for the year, the whole quota next year

1904 OUR PITIABLE MILITARY SITUATION 11

should be furnished as Militia from all men in their twenty-first year,
and thenceforward for Militia only, the schemes of Volunteer Service
ceasing to exist.

Colonels Satterthwaite and Dalmahoy, both Volunteer officers,
recommend the principle of compulsion, but not universal service.
They say :

The principle of compulsion having been accepted, we think that every effort
should be made to raise the necessary troops by voluntary means, but that the
man who neglects his opportunity of learning the work necessary to enable him
to take his part in the defence of the country in his earlier years, should be liable
to compulsion at the age of twenty.

I presume that, by an oversight, the words ' in his earlier years '
are misplaced, and are intended to follow the word ' learning.' Then
comes :

To attain this [what ?] every male inhabitant who is not a member of one of
the Forces of the Crown, should, on a certain date in the year following his
twentieth birthday, be required to attend and register his name and address. If
exempted from any of the causes allowed by law, he would then lodge his
exemption certificate. If not, he would either :

1. Be allotted to the Militia or Volunteers, according to any deficiency there
might be in the units comprised in the Command of the General Officer Com-
manding-in- Chief ; or

2. Be warned to attend for training and service on proclamation of great
emergency ; or

3. Be discharged as physically unfit.

Voluntary enlistment should not commence in either Force before the age of
eighteen, and the medical inspection of the Volunteers should be much stricter
than at present.

It seems, therefore, that the only difference between the majority
and the minority of the Commission is that, whereas the former
desire to make us secure at once, the latter wish to postpone the pro-
cess until the efficacy of less strong measures has been tried.

I defer for the present the consideration of the views put forward
to the Commission by the witnesses with great experience of high com-
mand in modern war ; and the first impression I receive from the
views expressed by many other of the witnesses is that there is a general
belief that, like as the sun was stayed in the heavens for the benefit of
the chosen people, so the world is for an indefinite period to stop
rotating until the measures recommended in the minority reports for
the improvement of the Auxiliary Forces for the defence of the British
Isles have had time, not, be it noted, to bring about the desired result,
but until we shall be able to ascertain whether they would do so at
all. The idea seems prevalent that we are in a sort of millennium,
with any amount of time for sluggish snail-pace improvement. The
minority reports, and the recommendations for which the majority
of the Commissioners, much against their will and their sound
appreciation of the facts of the matter, find place in their report,

12 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

are suitable for an imaginary world, but not for the tempestuous
actual world in which our lot is cast.

In this our world, great nations stand permanently armed to the
teeth, and ready to ' let slip the dogs of war.' As Major Ross, in his
Representative Government and War, points out, a nation that deter-
mines to hold or gain the upper hand lies in wait till the favourable
moment comes, the moment when it possesses some marked superiority
or advantage over its rival, and then it either converts some little
insult or fancied grievance into a casus belli, or in the absence of these
it creates a casus belli, and plunges forthwith into the struggle. Just
now ' 1'entente cordiale,' whilst of comfort and benefit to the present,
has a blinding effect on us as to the future, and has an obliterating
effect on the remembrance of the history of the past. And yet how
rapidly change the feelings of nations to each other ! The memories
of that dark year 1900 seem quite blotted out. Engaged in a stu-
pendous struggle oversea, we were absolutely defenceless at home.
I went about among the camps of the Regular and Auxiliary Forces,
and found an almost hopeless absence of knowledge of soldiering.
A recently promoted general officer whom I congratulated on his
advancement, replied, ' I am very glad, but I want to be taught
general's work.' I reported to the civil and military authorities
that, in my opinion, 50,000 highly trained regular troops of any
hostile foreign Power could walk from one end of England to the
other, as I still believe they could have done. A syndicate of
journalists invited me to write a series of articles on the invasion
of England : in my reply I told them that for me to do so would
be the act of a ' traitor ' ; and to emphasise this I informed them of
the fact, of which they till then, like all not behind the scenes,
were in complete ignorance, that we had only between thirty and
forty field guns with which to enter on a defensive campaign. We
were simply on the brink of a hopeless catastrophe at the end of 1900.
In the course of three years the political weathercock has gone clean
round. He would be a bold prophet, however, who would guarantee
for the next three years its remaining in this position. Our safety
now depends on there arising no misunderstanding with any great
foreign Power, no increase of present requirements for holding our
now vastly expanded empire, and on our being generously allowed by
our possible foes time to find out whether our would-be defenders,
who have other ' avocations in life,' can kindly spare enough
time to acquire sufficient efficiency to afford us real protection in
the defence of our homes by the trial of the many nostrums and
alleged specifics, including quack remedies, with which the evidence
teems. And how much stronger, for both possible Imperial oversea
needs and for home defence, are we now than we were at the
commencement of the South African war ? A little, but not much.
No wonder that the German officers who have read the Report

1904 OUR PITIABLE MILITARY SITUATION 13

regard the matter, as the Berlin correspondent of the Times tells
us, with an interest only ' languid and perfunctory.' Had universal
service been the unanimous and sole recommendation of the
Commission, a very different sort of interest would have been
aroused. The point at issue between the majority of the Commis-
sioners and their opponents, whether within the Commission itself or
in the country generally, is simply whether by a certain amount of
individual self-sacrifice as patriotic citizens, we shall render ourselves
practically secure against invasion, or whether, as citizens patriotic
only nominally, we shall grudge the small amount of convenience
and ease we are asked to give up for the general good, and shall
prefer to continue for an indefinite period in a sort of fancied happy-
go-lucky security, which, in plain words, is absolute insecurity.

Bearing in mind the hopelessness of accepting, under the altered
conditions of sea transport, any fixed time whatever for preparation
against invasion, to my mind it does not matter what strength is
assumed as that of the invading force.

I remember in the course of conversation at Brussels in 1874,
at the Conference on the Usages of War, Colonel von Voigts-Rhetz
telling my general, the late Sir Alfred Horsford, that if he could land
in England with three army corps, in those days 90,000 men, he could
do a good deal. Von Voigts-Rhetz did not seem to think much of
small raids, but we must remember on the one hand the disastrous
effect that a landing of say 20,000 men at two or three points on the
coast would produce, and the enormous damage they might effect ;
and, on the other hand, that numbers like these are a mere trifle in
the total of Continental armies nowadays, and that so disastrous
would be the effect produced on this country by a raid of any kind,
that preserving the communication of the raiding forces across sea,
or even their eventual destruction or loss, would not enter into the
hostile calculations as a deterrent to the expedition. Colonel von
Voigts-Rhetz spoke with all the experience derived from fighting
against hastily organised auxiliary forces in that part of France which
resembles in its physical aspects close English country — namely, the
country on the Loire.

It is obviously impossible to incorporate in an article such as this
even an analysis of the huge masses of oral and written evidence favour-
ing respectively the conclusions of the majority and those of the
minority of the Commissioners ; the one in support of the adoption of a
scheme certain and sure to obtain the object desired — namely, security
against any invasion attempted, save, of course, one carried out
under some combination of misfortunes on our side that would render
resistance hopeless ; the other teeming with a multitude of recom-
mendations, of all kinds and sorts, but all alike tentative in character
as to their ultimate success, and dependent for their practical value
on the effect of sentiment, ' patriotism under encouragement ' ; and,

14 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY July

moreover, admitted only to produce a satisfactory result if the invader
is sufficiently magnanimous, benevolent, high-minded, and idiotic,
to give us a period of from one to two months' duration for hurry-skurry
preparation. If, thus favoured by fortune, we should be allowed to
' start fair,' we should then have the satisfaction of knowing that we
were protected by some 300,000 noble patriots, quite competent,
when behind entrenchments and hedgerows in ' prepared positions,'
to hold those positions against assault, if the enemy were foolish enough
to attack these positions direct ; but that the patriots would be com-
petent to give a good account of him if, demonstrating against them
so as to hold them in these positions, his highly-trained and well-led
troops took to manoeuvring in the concealed and difficult country
against our defenders, or even what would be the result of our de-
fenders issuing out of the positions and trying to force him back to
his ships or into the sea, the boldest believer in the power of
' patriotism under encouragement ' does not dare to prophesy. Per-
haps these, however, are minor details.

But it is impossible to let pass without comment the evidence
given by Major-General Sir Alfred Turner, K.C.B., who until quite
lately was the Inspector-General of the Auxiliary Forces. From his
high official position, his knowledge of war, and his admitted personal
ability, the General must be regarded as the champion of the adver-
saries of the Report, and as the ablest exponent of the views and
opinions of the anti-compulsory-service party ; and it must be owned
that if the cause he championed was weak, he did all he could to
make the best of it. The General was four times before the
Commission, and, whereas the average number of answers of the
other 133 witnesses was 173, the answers recorded to the General's
account are 1,113, besides fifteen memoranda of sorts. It was on
the 8th of June last year that the General first gave evidence, and
it is fortunate that, when we have to commence the perusal of
those 1,113 answers and fifteen memoranda just a year later, he
contributed to the Daily Express, almost simultaneously with their
being given to the public, an article giving a final summary of his
views ; so both article and evidence may be taken together, and the
work of examining the latter is much eased thereby. I take from the
article his estimate of the maximum amount of training that it is
possible for the Auxiliary Forces to give consistently with their ' other
avocations in life.' He regards six months' training of the Militia
in the first year as possible :

But I do not think that more than one month's training for the battalion or
other unit could be obtained, because officers who are business and professional
men cannot possibly leave their work for six months. This must be obvious to
anybody who knows anything about professions or business. The Volunteers
cannot do more training than they now do, and though some battalions — or at
least a portion of them — manage to go into camp for fourteen days, the majority

1904 OUR PITIABLE MILITARY SITUATION 15

of large employers of labour, and especially in the North of England, many of
whom have a great number of Volunteers in their employ, cannot possibly give
their men more than a week's leave at a time to go into camp.

And later on he says :

My firm conviction is that shooting is by far the most important factor in
the defence of the country, and, as I stated in my evidence to the Commission,
'Teach the men to shoot, and let the Government support not only the Volun-
teers, but also the rifle clubs throughout the country." If this is done, and the
youth of the country are trained at school as recommended, having regard to
our geographical position we have all that is necessary for home defence. This
is the opinion of experts in Germany and France, whose people, owing to
the presence of their powerful neighbours close to their frontiers, are obliged
to bear the burden of conscription, which is being felt more every year.

I have had the pleasure of the personal friendship of Sir Alfred for
many years, and often have we worked together in Volunteer instruc-
tional exercises at the war game, but it has been reserved for this
article and the evidence to reveal to me the astounding views held by
him not only as to the qualifications and training necessary for our Home
Defence Army, but also on war. At the outset I would remark that the
quoting of the opinions expressed to him by foreign officers, especially
when those were German staff officers, reveals to me an absence of
guile in the General's character for which I had not given him credit.
Is it likely that the German or the French staff officers would endeavour
to impress on the mind of the Inspector-General of the Auxiliary
Forces of Great Britain their belief in the inefficiency of those forces ?

The perusal of the General's evidence leads me to the conclusion that
he is so firm a believer in the Navy as our one and only line of defence
that the possession of a land second line of defence is not, in his opinion,
of importance, and that this second line is of little more use than
for show. Should the Navy fail us, almost an impossibility in his
opinion, we must at once throw up the sponge, for he thinks there is
only starvation before us. A few words seem desirable here with
regard to the ' starvation bogie ' trotted out by the General. The
weak point in accepting the starvation bogie as an ally either in
theory or practice is that it is so unreliable and so apt to mislead.
After Sedan it was the starvation theory applied to practice that
was the foundation of the strategy adopted by Von Moltke for the
next series of operations. Paris, it was believed, could hold out only
for eight days ; the Parisians would surrender as soon as, according to
Von Moltke's own recorded words, they had no ' fresh milk.' But
when the eight days' deprivation of fresh milk did not lead to sur-
render, the calculation of resistance was extended to six weeks ; yet
these calculations were proved to be false, for it was not until more
than four months of very short commons had elapsed that starvation,
combined with the knowledge that there was no hope of relief from
the provinces, compelled the Parisians to surrender ; and with better

16 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

leading on the French side, it is indubitable that during that period the
investment would have been raised for a time at all events. Dividing
an estimated existing food supply by the number of mouths to eat
it, and accepting the dividend as the limit of human endurance, is
an arithmetical process that all history shows to be useless for the
practical purposes of war.

But the General desires also, for some reason not very clear,
to keep the Auxiliary Forces in existence ; it is better, he says,
to have them than nobody at all. So the General appears to
be on the horns of a dilemma, and it was in his endeavour to
reconcile the two incompatible ideas, an invincible fleet and the
maintenance of an auxiliary force for land home defence (a useless,
great, and wanton waste of money if the fleet is invincible, or if the
moment it is defeated we are starved), that the General had such a
bad time under the searching cross-examination by the Royal Com-
missioners, and, being driven from pillar to post, gave occasionally
answers of the most remarkable character, to my mind totally irre-
concilable with his mental and professional ability. For instance,
he fully admitted the imperious necessity for making good the great
deficiency in our supply of officers and good non-commissioned officers,
a deficiency which might altogether disappear under the conditions of
universal liability to service, and the formation of a corps of well-
educated men analogous to the ' unteroffizier ' of Germany. But
later on (Question 21871-3) his provision of officers to make up the
deficiency in the Auxiliary Forces is to bring back to them all the officers
who have retired from the Regular and Auxiliary Forces. ' Lists of
retired officers are kept everywhere ; I should think that patriotism
would bring them all back into the ranks, and I do not think it would
be necessary to have any organisation in time of peace to ask whether
they were or were not coming back ' ! This is a reversal of the axiom,
' if you desire peace, prepare for war,' with a vengeance. Q. 21884 :
' We must be contented with the best non-commissioned officers and
officers we can get ' ; and then comes the height of credulity. Q. 21885 :
' I doubt very much if the foreigners know these details — that we are
short of officers ; I do not think they know much about it. Of course
their Intelligence Departments are remarkably good, but I doubt if
they go into details of that kind.' The thought inevitably arises :
does the General, notwithstanding his many occasions of intercourse
with the German staff, know much about the contents of the pigeon-
holes in their offices ? And we come across a strange answer to Q. 21892 :
' Is not the advance in enclosed country easier than an advance over
open ground ? — A. Not for trained troops, I should think.' Q. 2005
ran : ' I should tell you that we have it in evidence before us that the
difficult nature of the country would tell in favour of the higher-
trained troops, but you do not agree with that ? — A. Not in the
least.' Again Q. 2001. Leading and manoeuvring of troops in an en-

1904 OUR PITIABLE MILITARY SITUATION 17

closed country and a wooded country, and a country where you cannot
see very far, is almost ' impossible for the attack.' And yet surely all
history shows that in country like this it is individual intelligence
combined with high discipline and with efficiency among the very
lowest as well as the highest leaders that tells in the struggle.

The General, in support of his views, several times refers to the second
period of the Franco-German War, the period when Gambetta was in con-
trol of the provinces ; and I can only say that, from my own very close
study of that period, the conclusions at which I arrive as to the value
of hastily raised auxiliary troops differ very much from his. The
remnant of the regular army in France at that time he gives as 30,000 ;
whilst Hoenig estimates that there were 180,000 either fully or partially
trained. On the Loire, the proportion of auxiliaries to regulars was
four to five, and the 20th Corps, in which the Garde Mobile outnumbered
the regulars in the proportion of twenty-two to nine, was so utterly
demoralised by its failure on the only occasion when it took the offen-
sive that its general reported it to be useless for several days ; and in
this corps, as in the whole of the French forces, the acknowledged
weak point was the deficiency of good officers and good non-commis-
sioned officers. Yet the general (Q. 21871) ' looks with confidence '
to our filling our cadres of officers in ' exactly the same way as
these were filled in Gambetta' s levies.' In close country, the
Garde Mobile and Garde Nationale did, it is true, find some counter-
balancing to their inherent weakness, but where these ' absolutely
untrained men, put out in six weeks, made a very stout fight against
the victorious and perfectly trained German army in compara-
tively open country,' except to be utterly defeated, I must leave the
General to tell me ; I do not know.

Mere extracts from evidence are never satisfactory, but one more
must yet be given. Q. 21894 (Lord Grenfell) : ' We are assuming
that there is an invasion — that an invasion has taken place, as the
Duke said, and that we have, say, 150,000 of the invader : Do you think
this force [i.e., our auxiliary forces] officered with the old officers and
with the present non-commissioned officers, would be sufficient ? —
A. Yes.' Q. 21895 : ' Do you mean the present forces, the Militia and
the Volunteers which are largely under-officered ? — A. Yes.' And
these answers in absolute opposition to those given by Earl Roberts,
Sir T. Kelly-Kenny, Sir John French, and Lord Methuen, who have
had personal experience of the most modern war, and whose views
are shared by Viscount Wolseley, Sir Evelyn Wood, and Sir W.
Butler.

I again say that it is only by a careful examination of the
evidence and memoranda that anyone can form a sound opinion
on the verdict given by the Royal Commission, and I recommend to
those who are willing to undertake the task the perusal of Sir Alfred
Turner's evidence, especially that portion given on the 20th of January

VOL. LVI— No. 329 C

18 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

this year, for it is the most damnatory evidence against the acceptance
of his counsel that from our Auxiliary Forces we should be content to
accept as much as we can ' expect from them ' consistently with
their 'other avocations in life.' In .his 7answer to Q. 21812, .the
General said that he had been accused of being a sort of advocatus
diaboli of the Auxiliary Forces, and that he was perfectly willing to
be an advocatus diaboli or anybody else if he could do good. It
would seem that he has laid himself open to the charge of assuming
that character during the late inquiry. Here I must leave my friend.
It is much to be regretted that in the margins of the Majority
Report there are no references indicating those passages in the evi-
dence on which the Commissioners based the conclusions at which
they arrived ; for, buried deep down iu the fourth volume, are two
passages, each all-important and of the weightiest character. The
first is to be found at p. 216. where, in the summary of remarks
sent in by 124 Commanding Officers of Militia Infantry units, we read
as follows :

It is considered that the threat of enforcing the Ballot Act would render any
vital change unnecessary : — ' No doubt if the Ballot were hanging over the
employers' heads (with no exemption) they would encourage men to join for
fear of themselves or their sons having to serve. This would also keep the
officers' ranks filled ; and with full Militia ranks, well treated, there would be no
lack of troops for the Regular Army.'

1 If the Militia in this country is to be maintained on its present establishment,
it will be necessary to introduce either further money inducements to serve or
some form of compulsory service.'

These paragraphs seem to clear the way towards the solution of
the Militia question ; but the solution of the problem how to render
the Volunteer Force efficient seems almost hopeless when we turn to the
summary of answers received from 218 commanding officers of Infantry
battalions of the Volunteer Force, and on p. 263 read as follows :

Throughout the reports there is much to show that matters have come to a
deadlock. The necessity for stringent regulations is fully acknowledged, but the
' remarks ' are, in the majority of cases, directed to showing how badly the shoe
pinches. ' There is a limit beyond which civilians cannot be expected to give
their services and time to the State. . . . This limit has been reached, if not
exceeded, by the present regulations.'

Here, again, are the ' gates of wood,' the ' bricks without straw '
of 1895, and again I protest against the contribution paid by myself
or others to the public treasury being any longer misappropriated to
keep them going in their present condition.

But what, to my mind, is worse still, must also be brought to
notice. Not only are the Volunteers, as are the Regulars and Militia,
short of officers, but as a body these officers are lamentably inefficient.
In paragraph 48 of the Report is written :

' We have to look to the officers of the Volunteer Force as the

1904 OUR PITIABLE MILITARY SITUATION 19

framework of our army. They are of very unequal quality. Many
of them have given themselves an excellent military education, and
would be a valuable element in any army ; the majority, however, have
neither the theoretical knowledge nor the practical skill in the handling of
troops which would make them competent instructors in peace or leaders
in war?

No, the Volunteer Force as it now stands is but a reed of the most
fragile and weak character on which to depend as the main factor in
home defence, and the officer is the weakest element in it ; and the
weakness seems irremediable even with the strongest encouragement
to remedy it. As Colonel F. W. Tannett- Walker, a representative of
the Institute of Commanding Officers of Volunteers, said in his answer
to Q. 7695 : ' With regard to the difficulty of getting officers, it really
seems to all of us to be almost an unsolvable question.'

By all means let us enrol in our Land Line of Defence that small
minority, the very pick of the Volunteer Force, but to trust to the
Force as a main body in that Line would be absolutely suicidal.

The signatories of the minority reports decidedly deserve our thanks
for suggesting the feeble and doubtful remedies they put forward,
and which are almost counsels of despair. But those Commissioners
who signed the majority report are deserving of all honour and praise ;
for in this ' historic ' document they have boldly, courageously, and
patriotically told to their countrymen the real and full truth as to our
present pitiable military situation. It is for the educated classes of
this country — those who have a material stake in the existence of
Great Britain as a great nation, the possessors of property, the bankers,
the merchants, the manufacturers — to study the evidence most care-
fully, and then to influence the other classes to accept with themselves
the obligation common to them one and all, to render our island
impregnable to assault, no matter how disabled or distant from us
for a time may be the deservedly trusted first line of defence, our
Koyal Navy.

LONSDALE HALE.

c 2

20 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

COMPULSORY EDUCATION AND
COMPULSORY MILITARY TRAINING

UNDOUBTEDLY the most striking point in the Report of the Royal
Commission on the Militia and Volunteers, the point which has roused
most public interest and excited most controversy, is its practically
unanimous finding that the time has arrived for the adoption in this
country of the principle of ' training to arms the whole able-bodied
male population.' Whatever may be the value of the detailed sugges-
tions made in the Report, it must be admitted that this single pro-
nouncement marks an important epoch in the history of our military
system, not because it is likely to receive immediate application, but
because this is the first time an official body, after a long and searching
inquiry, entered upon and conducted without any suspicion of bias or
prejudice, has reported definitely in favour of the principle of com-
pulsion.

The Report has been attacked from many sides, and among others
upon the ground that the Commissioners have gone outside their
reference. The complaint is made that they were instructed merely
to report upon the measures necessary to render the existing system
more efficient, and not to propose revolutionary changes which would
entirely subvert it. In the long run the country is more likely to
approve of the courage than to blame the temerity of the Duke of
Norfolk and his colleagues for following the evidence brought before
them down to the root principles and fundamental conditions which
underlie any and every adequate system of national defence.

It is not proposed in this article to deal with the purely military
criticisms which have been levelled against the adoption of universal
military training as suggested in the Report. Many such criticisms
are marked by a curious insularity of view and by a very inadequate
appreciation of the wider aspects of our imperial responsibilities. It
will be time enough, however, to consider them when the Committee
of Defence has made up its mind as to what are the naval and military
requirements of the United Kingdom and of the Empire, and Mr.
Arnold-Forster has produced his scheme of Army reorganisation.
One may say in general terms that it seems unlikely that we can, under

1804 COMPULSORY MILITARY TRAINING 21

any circumstances, much longer resist the influences which have forced
every other European country to substitute a mainly national for a
wholly professional army. It is, of course, admitted that our circum-
stances differ from theirs, and that our needs and dangers are other
than theirs.

While their military systems are based upon the assumption that
they will have to defend compact territories, we are called upon to
defend widely scattered oversea possessions ; while the vast majority
of their land force must always serve at home, a very large proportion
of ours, even in times of peace, must serve abroad. In our case
naval forces, in theirs land forces, form the predominant element in
schemes of home defence. No one imagines that we need the same
sort of military organisation or so large a war establishment for home
defence as is necessary in Continental countries, while it is universally
acknowledged that our army for foreign service must always be a
voluntarily recruited army. But all these differences are really
arguments, not against deepening and widening the sources from
which our actual military requirements must ultimately be supplied, but
solely against any wholesale imitation of Continental methods. There
is, it is true, no similarity between their circumstances and ours, but
there is the closest possible likeness between the magnitude of our
respective responsibilities and dangers. They have been driven, by
menace to their national existence, to base their military systems
upon the training to arms of their whole male population. The details
they have worked out according to their individual requirements.
We are being impelled in exactly the same direction by the rapid
growth of our imperial responsibilities, and the acknowledged difficulty
of meeting sudden dangers abroad and at home with an army recruited
solely by voluntary enlistment. The practice of voluntary enlistment
answered its purpose when only a small army was needed. Its diffi-
culties began when larger claims were made upon it ; at the present
time we see it strained to its utmost limit. With the inexorable fact
before us that, owing to political changes in the world about us
which we are powerless to control, steadily increasing demands will
be made upon it in the future, the probability of its breakdown becomes
a practical certainty. When that breakdown is officially acknow-
ledged, and we resort to some form of compulsion, we shall have
exactly the same liberty to adapt and mould the compulsory system
to our special national requirements as was enjoyed by our neigh-
bours.

I have said we are being driven in this direction by the growth of
our imperial responsibilities. I wonder whether we realise how much
we are also being influenced by the pressure of European public
opinion. When all European armies were professional or mercenary
armies, we were all on the same footing, but since the epoch of national
armies on the Continent the obligation of personal service in defence

22 THE NINETEENTH CENTUET July

of the fatherland has become an obligation every man feels it his duty
to fulfil, and no man desires to avoid. In our own time a great change
has come over public feeling with regard to this question in Conti-
nental countries. There was a time when young men sought to evade
the duty of military service, when they preferred to cross the sea to
England and America, even if such flight involved perpetual banish-
ment ; but gradually such evasions have become rarer and rarer.
To-day they are condemned by public opinion, and are of compara-
tively infrequent occurrence. A couple of generations have sufficed
to remove the grievance and to accustom the minds of young citizens
to look upon military service as one of the duties of life, which is per-
formed quietly, naturally, and without heroics. One of the conse-
quences of the change is that our neighbours are beginning to look
down upon us for our avoidance of what appears to them a natural
obligation to the State. We hardly understand how deep this
sentiment is in their minds. We are generally inclined to think any
ill-feeling they may entertain towards us is compounded of ignorance
and envy. I fear there is in it more than a spice of contempt. And
the greater our prosperity, the more splendid our Empire, the stronger
is the conviction on their part that our power abroad is maintained
and our security at home is guaranteed, not by the personal service
and personal sacrifice of every individual citizen, but by a system
which permits and encourages the majority to cast its burden and
delegate its duties to a very small minority.

To many of us this question of compulsory military training is
much larger than a purely military question, and should be discussed
upon broader and more general lines, upon the basis of national well-
being as well as of national safety. The army of a modern State has
ceased to be a mere fighting machine, created and maintained for
defence or aggression. It performs two distinct functions which it is
important to keep clear and separate in our minds. It is primarily a
great instrument of national defence, but it is also the nation's chief
school of physical training and moral discipline. Discipline and
physical fitness lie at the very root of national efficiency, and it is
because we see in universal compulsory military training one of the
main routes which lead to national efficiency that we should continue
to advocate it, even if our military requirements were less pressing than
they are.

The object of the present writer is to examine briefly a few of the
objections which are urged against it, not from the military, but from
the industrial and social side, and to endeavour to show that they do
not possess anything like the weight which is commonly attributed to-
them.

What are these objections ?

It is asserted that compulsory military training involves ' deplorable
economic waste,' inasmuch as it withdraws young men for a time

1904 COMPULSORY MILITARY TRAINING 28

from the pursuit of industries ; that it dislocates industrial life, and
would never be accepted by employers ; and further, the fear is ex-
pressed that, if it were adopted, it would bring with it all the admitted
evils of Continental conscription and the barrack system.

Taking these assertions in their order, it may first of all be asked
whether, in the long run, any economic waste is incurred by interrupting
for a time the industrial occupations of young men and submitting
them to a careful course of physical and military training. We have
an idea in this country that there is some superior cleverness or wisdom
on our part in keeping the whole youthful male population uninter-
ruptedly engaged in the production of wealth, while our neighbours
have to take a year or two out of the lives of their able-bodied sons.
There is a suspicious reminder in this view of a state of public opinion
now gone by, which in the name of industry drove children of tender
years into the factory, and which till quite lately, in the same cause,
permitted and almost encouraged them to leave school at an earlier
age than the children of any other enlightened people. The truism
that the strength of a nation does not lie in the amount of wealth it
produces, but in the physical vigour and trained intelligence of its
people, can never cease to be one of the most vital of truths. As a
matter of fact, the European country in which military service is
most strictly enforced is the very country which has increased most
rapidly in wealth, and has become our most formidable industrial
rival.

German writers and public men, while admitting certain incidental
drawbacks, not only refuse to allow that military service is an economic
burden to their country, but declare that its educational and dis-
ciplinary value are among the principal causes of Germany's progress
and success. I think this view is shared by the majority of those in
this country who have an intimate knowledge of international labour
conditions. My own experience as an employer of labour in England,
and as a director of British undertakings, which have in their service
thousands of skilled and unskilled workmen on the Continent of
Europe, in Austria, Bohemia, Germany, Belgium, France, and Italy,
enables me to say, without any hesitation, that military training in
the countries where it is practised has not only a high physical and
moral, but an appreciable and calculable financial value, which varies
in direct proportion to the thoroughness and strictness with which it
is carried out.

The loss of time involved in submitting every able-bodied male
to, say, a year's military training is more than counterbalanced by the
extraordinary improvement in national physique, and by the acquisi-
tion of habits of ready obedience, attention, and combined action,
which have so high an importance in industrial life. Even if some
economic sacrifice were called for, it would surely be worth any country's
while to make it, in order to arrest that physical deterioration which

24 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

follows the flocking of population into towns. No country is more
exposed to the danger of physical deterioration than our own, both
absolutely and relatively, for here, more rapidly than elsewhere, the
urban districts are growing at the expense of the rural. All the
nations of Europe are giving systematic physical training to their
whole male population (for every conscript has to pass through the
gymnasium), with the best possible results. In England physical
education among the masses stands very much where education in
general stood before the Act of 1870 : that is to say, it can be obtained
by those who have money to pay for it, but, in spite of considerable
recent improvements, it does not form an integral and obligatory part
of our national educational system. It is useless to delude ourselves
with the idea that the national love of games is so strong that it is
not necessary to give physical exercise a serious place in the curri-
culum of our elementary schools. We do not act upon this view in
the case of the only class of whom it might possibly be true, for the
boys and young men of the richer classes are taught games with at
least as much care as they are taught languages and mathematics.
Experience shows that among the population of our large industrial
towns, owing, no doubt, mainly to the absence of opportunity, the
slightest desire for active physical exercise is rather the exception
than the rule. For every youth who plays football, a hundred prefer
to look on, with their hands in their pockets, at a match between pro-
fessional players. In any case, spasmodic efforts to popularise games
among the working classes can no more supply the need for national
physical training than the night schools and Sunday schools which
preceded the Act of 1870 could supply the place of compulsory ele-
mentary education. If we persist in pitting our haphazard methods
against the carefully reasoned and elaborately organised systems of
OUT neighbours, we must relatively decline in physical fitness. It is
only a question of time. When none were trained, our racial gifts,
our climate, even our national food, gave us a certain physical pre-
eminence ; but natural gifts, however great, natural predispositions,
however strong, cannot in the long run take the place of careful pro-
fessional training.

It is easy to level the accusation of ' economic waste ' against the
military systems of the Continent, but surely the most deplorable of
all waste is to be found in the condition of the ' slum ' population of
our large cities. Any system which helped to restore these physic-
ally degraded people to a more vigorous state of mind and body would,
to say the least of it, have a high economic value. By the adoption
of any form of compulsory military training, whether it be that of
the Commission's Report or other more simple plans, we should be
able to pass every individual under review, exercise control over him
at a critical period of his life, with the result that many depressing
social problems, which at present we are afraid to tackle, would find

1904 COMPULSORY MILITARY TRAINING 25

a comparatively easy solution. Some such change would seem to be
called for in the interests of public health and national efficiency,
even if it were not necessary for purposes of national defence.

So far as the employers of this country are concerned, all the
evidence goes to prove that the larger and more intelligent of them
would welcome a rational system of military training. No class is
in a better position to appreciate the importance of physical vigour
and an alert habit of mind on the part of all classes engaged in industry.
Forty years ago Sir Joseph Whit worth, with unrivalled experience,
wrote : ' The labour of a man who has gone through a course of military
drill is worth eighteen pence a week more than that of one untrained,
as through the training received in military drill men learn ready
obedience, attention, and combined action, all of which are so necessary
in work where men have to act promptly and together.' The informa-
tion supplied by the Inspector-General of Recruiting with regard to
the physical fitness of those who present themselves for admission
into the Army is quite as interesting to the employer of labour as it
is to the soldier. Each has to deal with the same material, though for a
different purpose — the one for the defence of our national trade, the
other for the defence of our imperial territories. The very high per-
centage of those willing to enlist in our large cities, who are rejected
on account of their lack of stamina and other physical defects, is as
disquieting and painful a subject for reflection to the patriotic employer
as to the soldier.

All classes of employers would very properly insist that any system
adopted should be entirely democratic in its character and should be
of universal application. What they would resent and resist is a law
which exposed them to the unfairness and caprice of the ballot, which
might by pure chance deprive one employer of a large proportion of
the younger members of his staff, while it left a neighbour — and
perhaps rival — practically untouched.

With regard to the dislocation of industrial life which many people
fear, it must be remembered that it is only at the outset that its effects
would, if ever, be severely felt. Any plan likely to be adopted in this
country would only come gradually into effect. The practice of
carrying out national measures upon a local basis would, no doubt,
be followed in military training exactly as it is in education. Our
industries would speedily adapt themselves to the new conditions,
just as they have adapted themselves to the successive shortening of
the hours of labour and the increasing stringency of the Factory Acts.
We see no decrease of industrial efficiency in France or Germany, and
no serious annual dislocation of business through the action of a military
system far more penetrating and disturbing than anyone would dream
of suggesting for this country. Employers and employed have
accepted it as a condition of life like any other, and have moulded
their business arrangements to meet its requirements. And so it

26 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

would be here. It is impossible to suppose that our industrial organisa-
tion is so delicately poised that it could not stand readjustments
which have been found entirely innocuous in other countries.

Much of the prejudice which exists amongst us against compulsory
military training is due to misconceptions and to well-worn traditions
with regard to the evil consequences of conscription and barrack life.
The use of the word ' conscription ' has really confused and prejudged
the question. It is indeed a curious instance of the tyranny of a word.
As a matter of fact, there need be no question of conscription in these
islands. It is a system which foreign countries have found themselves
compelled to adopt, but there is no reason why any plan of ours should
conform to the prevalent Continental type. There is, on the contrary,
every reason why it should not.

The problem which at present confronts us differs fundamentally
from that with which our neighbours have had to deal. To them
the problem is entirely military. They require a nation trained to
arms to resist foreign invasion. Military training and military service
are one and the same thing, and every trained man belongs to the
national army. Conscription and life in barracks are essential parts
of the system. With us the problem is partly educational, partly
military.

We need to train our young men in order to raise the level of physical
fitness of the nation for the ordinary avocations of life, as well as to
prepare them to take part in the defence of their country, if occasion
should arise ; but though all would receive a measure of military
training, all would not serve.

With our army voluntarily enlisted for oversea service and for
foreign expeditions, and with our fleet as the first line of home defence,
we have no use for the vast number of men which conscription would
bring to the colours. We do, however, need behind our permanent
forces a nation so far trained to arms and accustomed to discipline
as to constitute a great reserve, which can be largely relied upon for
home defence, and to which we can confidently appeal in times of
crisis for any number of volunteers for foreign service.

I see no reason why this preliminary military training of the
nation should not be effected without any serious disturbance of our
existing industrial system, and without incurring any of the objections
which can be brought against conscription.

The problem can probably be approached most safely and with
the best chance of success from the educational side. The principle
of compulsion has been accepted with regard to education, and the
public mind has become accustomed to it. We should, I think, follow
the line of least resistance by grafting military training upon our
existing educational system, instead of starting from a new point of
departure.

My proposal is briefly as follows : — Military or naval training

1904 COMPULSORY MILITARY TRAINING 27

should be made compulsory for every able-bodied youth between the
ages of, say, fifteen and nineteen, as a branch of or as a continuation
of ordinary education. In working out the details existing educa-
tional machinery should be closely followed. Military training would
rank as an additional branch beside elementary, secondary, and
technical education, being most nearly allied, by its compulsory
character, to elementary education. The duty of carrying out the
law should be imposed upon the local authority — the county or borough
council — acting through a special committee appointed ad hoc, whose
duty it would be to furnish, out of funds provided from imperial
sources, all the necessary expenses for instructors, drill-grounds, and
possibly accoutrements and ranges. The committee would see to
the enforcement of the law, and for that purpose would have in its
service drill attendance officers, just as the present authorities employ
school attendance officers. The War Office would either act alone or
would co-operate with the Board of Education in drawing up, and
from time to time revising, the scheme of military training and in pro-
viding— probably from the district headquarters — the necessary staff of
drill instructors and inspectors. The whole system would rest upon a
purely local basis, like any other branch of education. All lads, until
they attained the age of nineteen and reached a fixed standard of
efficiency, would have to submit to the prescribed course of training
in the locality where they for the time being happened to be. This
would not cause any serious disturbance to industrial life, and could
probably be carried out in the case of the vast mass of the population
during the abundant leisure which is now at the disposal of all classes.
If any difficulty should arise, in order to meet it, there would be little
objection to a further slight shortening of the legal hours during which
' young persons ' may be employed.

It is not contended that this plan would solve any of our purely
military problems ; but if rigorously carried out it would contribute
decisively to the physical regeneration of our people, and would
speedily provide an abundance of raw material from which military
experts should be able to build up adequately the defences of the
Empire. Moreover, by accustoming boys to martial exercises and
military discipline it would make the Army a more popular career
for the many adventurous spirits our race will always produce, and
would thereby set a limit to the chronic difficulty of recruiting for
the Regular Forces.

HENRY BIRCHENOUGH.

28 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

HOW JAPAN REFORMED HERSELF

' IT is a well-known characteristic of mankind to despise what they
do not know. For this reason the Japanese, until quite recently,
looked down upon foreigners as barbarians. But the foreigners dis-
play the same mental attitude which formerly distinguished the
Japanese. They do not know what to them is a foreign country —
Japan.'

It is a good many years ago since Fukuzawa Yukichi, perhaps
the foremost Japanese educationalist of modern times, wrote these
words, and since then the world has learned to respect and to admire
Japan for her splendid achievements in every province of human
activity. But the world still believes that the reform of Japan is a
thing of yesterday, a mushroom growth which has sprung up over-
night, and which, as we are told, may disappear as suddenly as it
came when ' the Asiatic ' reasserts himself, tears up his European
clothes, like the monkey in the fable, and returns to his native ways.

In reality, the foundation on which the magnificent edifice of
modern Japan has been erected with marvellous skill and unparalleled
rapidity was laid at a time when Europe was still in swaddling clothes,
and successive generations have added stone by stone to the building,
which, with the adaptation of European civilisation, received its
natural completion. The rise of modern Japan may seem like a fairy
tale to the superficial observer in Europe or America, but to the
Japanese themselves the reform of their country appears natural in
view of its history, character, and traditions.

If we wish to understand how and why Japan succeeded in carrying
out perhaps the most marvellous reformation which any empire has
ever effected, in order to gauge what are her aims and what her future
will be, we must study her progress and her reformation from Japanese
sources. Such study will reveal the fact that Europe and America
can now learn quite as much from Japan as she has learned from
them in the past.

Twenty years ago, when Japan seemed, in European eyes, no
greater than Siam or Liberia, Fukuzawa Yukichi said :

Though we learned the art of navigation during the last twenty years, it is
neither within the last twenty years, nor within the last 200 years, that we
cultivated and trained our intellect so as to enable us to learn that art. That

1904 HOW JAPAN REFORMED HERSELF 29

continued training is characteristic of Japanese civilisation, and can be traced
back hundreds and thousands of years, and for that continuity of effort we ought
to be thankful to our ancestors.

We have never been backward or lacking in civilisation and progress. What
we wanted was only to adapt the outward manifestations of our civilisation to
the requirements of the time. Therefore, let us study not only navigation, but
every other branch of European knowledge and civilisation, however trifling it
may be, and adopt what is useful, leaving alone what is useless. Thus shall we
fortify our national power and well-being.

On the great stage of the world, where all men can see, we mean to show
what we can do, and vie with other nations in all arts and sciences. Thus
shall we make our country great and independent. This is my passionate desire.

Fukuzawa Yukicbi and the other great reformers of his time have
now succeeded in carrying out their ardent ambition, and have raised
their country to the eminent position in the world which is its due.
Now let us take a rapid glance at old Japan, and then watch its trans-
formation and modernisation.

The early history of Japan is wrapped in obscurity, but from the
fact that the present Emperor comes from a dynasty which, in un-
broken succession, has governed the country for more than 2,500 years,
we may assume that the Japanese were a politically highly organised,
well-ordered, and, therefore, a highly cultured people centuries before
the time of Alexander the Great. Seven centuries before Christ
Japan was already a seafaring nation, for Japanese ships went over
to Corea. In the year 86 B.C. the Emperor Sujin had the first census
of the population taken, and in 645 the Emperor Kotoku ordered
that regular census registers should be compiled every six years. In
Great Britain we find that only in 1801, and after much obstruction
and opposition, was the first census taken. Japan's first regular
postal service was established in the year 202, and was perfected in
later centuries.

The great renaissance of Japan took place in the seventh and
eighth centuries, or several hundred years before William the Con-
queror. Prince Shotoku initiated that period of splendid and universal
progress. He organised the administrative system of the country,
and he created that spirit of Japan which combines absolute fear-
lessness, patriotism, and the keenest sense of personal honour with
unselfishness, unfailing courtesy, gentleness, and obedience to autho-
rity. The following rules of political conduct laid down by the Prince
during a time of disorder have been, and still are, the Ten Com-
mandments of the Japanese, and were spoken of as The Constitution :

. . . Concord and harmony are priceless ; obedience to established principles
is the first duty of man. But in our country each section of people has its own
views, and few possess the light. Disloyalty to Sovereign and parents, disputes
among neighbours, are the results. That the upper classes should be in unity
among themselves, and intimate with the lower, and that all matters in dispute
should be submitted to arbitration — that is the way to place Society on a basis
of strict justice.

30 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

Imperial edicts must be respected. The Sovereign is to be regarded as the
heaven, his subjects as the earth .... so the Sovereign shows the way, the
subject follows it. Indifference to the Imperial edicts signifies national ruin.

Courtesy must be the rule of conduct for all ministers and officials of the
Government. Social order and due distinctions between the classes can only
be preserved by strict conformity with etiquette.

To punish the evil and reward the good is humanity's best law. A good deed
should never be left unrewarded or an evil unrebuked. Sycophancy and dis-
honesty are the most potent factors for subverting the State and destroying the
people.

To be just, one must have faith. Every affair demands a certain measure of
faith on the part of those who deal with it. Every question, whatever its nature
or tendency, requires for its settlement an exercise of faith and authority.
Mutual confidence among officials renders all things possible of accomplishment ;
want of confidence between sovereign and subject makes failure inevitable.

Anger should be curbed and wrath cast away. The faults of another should
not cause our resentment.

To chide a fault does not prevent its repetition, nor can the censor himself
be secure from error. The sure road to success is that trodden by the people in
unison.

Those in authority should never harbour hatred or jealousy of one another.
Hate begets hate and jealousy is blind.

The imperative duty of man in his capacity of a subject is to sacrifice his
private interest to the public good. Egoism forbids co-operation, and without
co-operation there cannot be any great achievement.

These lines, which were written about 600 A.D. , or thirteen hundred
years ago, and which have the sublime ring of inspiration about them,
explain the mystery of the Japanese character better than a lengthy
account of Japan's history, philosophy, and customs. When we re-
member that these principles have continuously been taught in Japan
during more than forty generations, we can understand the character
and spirit of the country, to which it owes its magnificent successes.
When we read these lines we can realise that Fukuzawa Yukichi's
claim to an old civilisation was not a hollow boast, and we can com-
prehend why the passionate ambition to elevate their country animates
every thinking Japanese from the prince to the peasant. These
guiding principles show us the moral and mental foundation of Japan,
and enable us to understand why the Japanese officials are the flower
of the nation, why class jealousy is absent in Japan, and why Japan
is the only country in the world where, regardless of birth, wealth,
and connections, all careers and the very highest offices in the land
are open to all comers.

These principles of political conduct, which might have been
drawn up by a Lycurgus or a Solon, explain the wonderful unity of
purpose, courage, self-reliance, self-discipline, homogeneity, and pat-
riotism of the Japanese nation which at present astonish the world ;
and it seems that Japan owes her greatness and success less to the
superior will-power and to the inborn genius of the individual Japanese
than to the traditional education of the character of the nation, in

1904 HOW JAPAN REFORMED HERSELF 81

which the educational ideas of Athens and Sparta are harmoniously
blended. British education rightly attaches great weight to the
formation of character, but it would seem that British educationalists,
in the highest sense of the word, can learn more from Japan than
from the United States and Germany, where education is principally
directed towards the advancement of learning and the somewhat
indiscriminate distribution of knowledge.

In olden times, when communications were exceedingly bad, the
various centres of original culture existing in the world were separated
from one another by such vast distances that each highly cultured
country naturally thought itself the foremost country of the universe,
considered the inhabitants of other nations as barbarians, refused to
learn from them, became self-concentrated, rigidly conservative, and
at last retrogressive. We find this narrow-minded, though explicable,
attitude of haughty contempt for all foreign culture, which finally
results in the inability to adopt a superior civilisation and organisa-
tion, in Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Palestine, Greece, China, and many
other ancient countries.

To the ever-victorious men of old Japan, also, their country was
naturally the centre of the universe ; it was created by the gods them-
selves, and their Emperor was the Son of Heaven, being a direct
descendant of the great Sun-goddess. But national self-consciousness
and self-admiration never became so overwhelmingly strong as to
obscure Japan's open mind. On the contrary, the Japanese were
always ready to learn from other countries, and to graft foreign
culture on to their own. From conquered Corea Japan introduced
Buddhism, and from the Chinese she learned much in literature,
philosophy, and art. In the year 195 the Chinese species of silkworm
was brought into the country, and later on silk- weavers from various
districts of China were introduced and distributed all over Japan to
teach the inhabitants the art of silk-weaving. In 805 Denkyo Daishi
introduced tea plants in a similar manner. Evidently Japan was
ever ready and anxious to learn from the foreigner all that could be
learned, and to adapt, but not to slavishly copy, all that could benefit
and elevate the nation.

Up to a few hundred years ago European civilisation was un-
known in Eastern Asia. Largely owing to the influence of Buddhism,
Japan had been permeated with Chinese literature and Chinese ideas,
and had come to consider Chinese culture in many respects superior
to her own. Therefore it was not unnatural that, in the sixteenth
century, when Portuguese missionaries caused a widespread revolt,
Japan resolved to close, more sinico, the country against all foreign
intercourse. From 1638 to 1853, or for more than two hundred years,
Japan led a self-centred existence far away from the outer world, like
the sleeping beauty of the fairy tale ; but in the latter year she was
waked out of her self-chosen seclusion by the arrival of Commodore

82 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

Perry and his squadron, who. to the amazement of Japan, had come
to wring a commercial treaty from the country, and to open it, if
necessary by force, to the hated foreigners.

Japan had considered herself safe from the contact of foreigners,
and inviolable. The intrusion of Commodore Perry was, in the eyes
of all Japan, a crime and almost a sacrilege. The sanctity of the
country had been denied, its laws had been set at defiance, and the
Government had no power to resist the Commodore, who used veiled
threats of employing force. The feeling of national honour, which is
stronger in Japan than in any other country, was deeply outraged,
and the passionately patriotic nation was shaken to its base with
violent indignation.

Nothing can give a better idea of the indescribable excitement and
turmoil which was caused by Commodore Perry's intrusion than the
vivid account of Genjo Yume Monogatari, a contemporaneous writer.
He says :

It was in the summer of 1853 that an individual named Perry, who called
himself the envoy of the United States of America, suddenly arrived at Uraga,
in the province of Sagami, with four ships of war, declaring that he brought a
letter from his country to Japan, and that he wished to deliver it to the Sove-
reign. The Governor of the place, Toda Idzu No Kami, much alarmed by this
extraordinary event, hastened to the spot to inform himself of its meaning. The
envoy stated, in reply to questions, that he desired to see a chief minister in
order to explain the object of his visit, and to hand over to him the letter with
which he was charged. The Governor then despatched a messenger on horse-
back with all haste to carry this information to the Castle of Yedo, where a
great scene of confusion ensued on his arrival. Fresh messengers followed, and
the Shogun lyeyoshi, on receiving them, was exceeding troubled, and summoned
all the officials to a council.

At first the fear seemed so sudden and so formidable that they were too
alarmed to open their mouths, but in the end orders were issued to the great
clans to keep strict watch at various points on the shore, as it was possible that
the ' barbarian ' vessels might proceed to commit acts of violence.

Presently a learned Chinese scholar was sent to Uraga, had an interview
with the American envoy, and returned with the letter, which expressed the
desire of the United States to establish friendship and intercourse with Japan,
and said, according to this account, that if they met with a refusal they should
commence hostilities.

Thereupon the Shogun was greatly distressed, and again summoned a
council. He also asked the opinion of the Daimios. The assembled officials
were exceedingly disturbed, and nearly broke their hearts over consultations
which lasted all day and all night.

The nobles and retired nobles in Yedo were informed that they were at
liberty to state any ideas they might have on the subject, and, although they all
gave their opinions, the diversity of propositions was so great that no decision
was arrived at.

The military class had, during a long peace, neglected military arts ; they
had given themselves up to pleasure and luxury, and there were very few who
had put on armour for many years, so that they were greatly alarmed at the
prospect that war might break out at a moment's notice, and began to run
hither and thither in search of arms. The city of Yedo and the surrounding
villages were in a great tumult. And there was such a state of confusion among

1904 HOW JAPAN REFORMED HERSELF 33

all classes that the Governors of the city were compelled to issue a notification
to the people, and this in the end had the effect of quieting the general anxiety.
But in the Castle never was a decision further from being arrived at, and,
whilst time was being thus idly wasted, the envoy was constantly demanding
an answer.

Commodore Perry happened to arrive at a most critical period in
the history of Japan. Since 1192 the formerly subordinate military
class had seized the reins of government, and the Shogun, who was
supposed to be only the generalissimo of Japan, and who was
appointed by the Mikado, had possessed himself of all political power.
The Mikado was the nominal ruler of the country, but, though he was
treated with the greatest respect, was in reality a prisoner in his
palace at Kyoto. The country was divided into numerous principali-
ties, which were more or less independent. Japan was an empire
in name, but no longer an empire in fact. Thus the land was ruled
by a number of great feudal chiefs, who were supported by their
armed retainers, the samurai, the soldier caste of Japan. The
autonomous territories of the great nobles were ruled on different
principles — they possessed their own laws, finances, and regulations.
There was consequently, perhaps, less unity in Japan then than there
is at present in China.

In the absence of a powerful centralising influence, the country
had become divided against itself : the formerly unquestioned authority
of the Shogun had been shaken and gravely compromised, the nobles
were intriguing for power, the people were arbitrarily and harshly
treated, feudalism felt the ground heave and give way under its feet.

The numerous Daimios, the great feudal lords of old Japan, were
generous patrons of literature and art, and strove to make their
residences not only seats of power, but also centres of learning. From
these learned circles the ultimate revolt against the Shogun' s usurpa-
tion took its beginning. In 1715 the Prince of Mito finished,
with the assistance of a host of scholars, his great work, Dai Nihon
Shi, or history of Japan. This classical work was copied by hand by
industrious students and eager patriots, and was circulated throughout
the Empire, being printed only in 1851. It is characteristic for the
spirit of intense and reflective patriotism of Japan that this celebrated
compilation, which gave an account of the decay of the Mikado's
power and of the usurpation by the Shoguns, became the strongest
factor in the eventual overthrow of the Shogunate, in the re-esta-
blishment of the Mikado's power, and in the unification of the Empire.

The history by the Prince of Mito was followed by a history of
the usurpation period by the celebrated scholar, poet, and historian,
Rai Sanyo, who attacked with historic proof, unanswerable logic, and
patriotic fervour the Shogun's usurpation of the Imperial power. He
traced the history of Japan and the Imperial House, and mourned
the disappearance of the true Imperial power. The influence of his

VOL. LVI— Kb. 329 D

34 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

writings was enormous, and not a few of his disciples became men of
action, who carried out their master's ideas. Thus the Mikado's
party found a strong and growing support among the intellectual

The body of malcontent idealists and students was reinforced by
the large body of devout Shintoists, who see in the Mikado their god,
and the fountain of all virtue, honour, and authority. Shintoism,
which had been lying dormant for a long time, experienced a wonderful
revival, and became again a living faith. Consequently it was only
natural that the adherents to Japan's native religion were outraged
when they were told that the Mikado had been ousted from power
and was practically a prisoner.

Thus disorder within the country was added to the danger
threatening from without. While the conscience of the people was
awaking to the ancient wrong done to the Mikado and clamouring
for its redress by reinstating him in power, Japanese patriotism in-
stinctively felt the need of uniting the nation against the insolent
foreigner, and added force to the growing movement towards national
unity and towards the reinstallation of the legitimate ruler.

Under these circumstances it was only natural that the ferment of
the nation was greatly increased by the behaviour of the insolent
foreigners, and by their — to Japanese minds — outrageous demands,
and the national feeling rose to fever heat when it was discovered that
the Shogun had, in spite of the remonstrance of the Mikado, con-
cluded the treaty of 1854, whereby the country was opened to foreign
trade, merely in order to get rid of the troublesome and dreaded
foreigners at any price.

From 1854 onward the problem whether the foreigners should be
exterminated or tolerated was uppermost in men's minds, and, as the
majority of the nation was in favour of expelling the barbarians, the
position of the unfortunate Shogun, who had concluded the treaty
without the Mikado's consent, became one of very great difficulty.
During this period of national agitation and perturbation the Mikado
issued a rescript, in which he said : 'L Amity and commerce with
foreigners brought disgrace on the country in the past. It is desir-
able that Kyoto and Yedo should join their strengths and plan the
welfare of the Empire.' This idea rapidly became universal, and led
to the rallying cry of the people, which rang from one end of the
Empire to the other : ' Destroy the Shogunate and raise the Mikado
to his proper throne.'

The hatred towards the foreign intruders became more and more
accentuated as time passed on. Europeans were murdered without
provocation, and the guns on the coast opened fire on foreign ships,
regardless of their nationality, when they passed by. These attacks
led to the bombardment of Kagoshima on the llth August, 1863,
and to that of Shimonoseki on the 5th September, 1864. Though the

1904 HOW JAPAN REFORMED HERSELF 35

Japanese on land bravely tried to defend themselves, they found
their weapons unavailing against the superior armaments of the
foreign ships.

The effect of the two bombardments on the mind of Japan may best
be gathered from the following memorandum of a native chronicler :

The eyes of the Prince were opened through the fight of Kagoshima, and
affairs appeared to him in a new light ; he changed in favour of foreigners, and
thought now of making his country powerful and of completing his armaments.

The Emperor also wrote in a rather pathetic tone to the Shogun :

I held a council the other day with my military nobility, but, unfortunately,
inured to the habits of peace which for more than 200 years has existed in our
country, we are unable to exclude and subdue our foreign enemies by the for-
cible means of war. ... If we compare our Japanese ships of war and cannon
with those of the barbarians, we feel certain that they are not sufficient to in-
flict terror upon the foreign barbarians and are also insufficient to make the
splendour of Japan shine in foreign countries. I should think that we only
would make ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of the barbarians.

The damage done by the bombardments was, after all, insigni-
ficant, and if Japan had possessed the spirit of China, the officials might
easily have explained away these attacks as being unimportant and
purely local affairs. However, the proud mind of Japan required no
further humiliation to drive home the lesson, but immediately realised
that the time of seclusion, conservatism, and feudalism was past, and
that the nation's salvation could only henceforward be found in pro-
gress and unity. As Professor Toyokichi lyenaga put it :

Those bombardments showed the necessity of national union. Whether she
would repel or receive the foreigner, Japan must present a united front. To
this end a great change in the internal constitution of the Empire was needed.
The internal resources of the nation had to be gathered into a common treasure,
the police and the taxes had to be recognised as national, not as belonging to
petty local chieftains, the power of the feudal lords had to be broken, in order to
reconstitute Japan as a single strong State under a single head. These are the
ideas which led the way to the Restoration of 1868. Thus the bombardments
of Kagoshima and Shimonoseki may be said to have helped indirectly in the
Restoration. . . .

When a country is threatened with foreign invasion, when the corporate
action of its citizens against the enemy is needed, it becomes an imperative
necessity to consult public opinion. In such a time centralisation is needed.
Hence the first move of Japan after the advent of foreigners was to bring the
scattered parts of the country together and unite them under one head. Japan
had hitherto no formidable foreign enemy on her shores, so her governmental
system, the regulating system of the social organism, received no impetus for
self -development ; but as soon as a formidable people, either as allies or foes,
appeared on the scene in 1858, we immediately see the remarkable change in the
State system in Japan. It became necessary to consult public opinion. Councils
of Kuges (nobles belonging to the Court of the Mikado) and Daimios (indepen-
dent nobles) and meetings of Samurai sprang forth spontaneously.

Recognising that the reconstitution of the country, its reunion,
and the re-establishment of the rule of the Mikado were absolute

36 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

necessities for the continued independent existence of Japan, the
Shogun, the virtual ruler of the country, whose predecessors had
governed Japan for hundreds of years, took a step which is almost
unprecedented in history. Placing the welfare of his country high
above the glorious traditions of his House, and waiving the historical
claims to his exalted position which he possessed, the Shogun resigned
his office on the 19th November, 1867, in a document which should
for ever and to all nations be a monument of sublime patriotism. In
this document he said :

A retrospect of the various changes through which the Empire has passed
shows us that after the decadence of the monarchical authority power passed
into the hands of the Minister of State; that by the wars of 1156 to 1159 the
governmental power came into the hands of the military class.

My ancestor received greater marks of confidence than any before him, and
his descendants have succeeded him for more than 200 years. Though I
performed the same duties, the objects of government have not been attained
and the penal laws have not been carried out ; and it is with a feeling of the
greatest humiliation that I find myself obliged to acknowledge my own want of
virtue as the cause of the present state of things. Moreover, our intercourse
with foreign Powers becomes daily more extensive, and our foreign policy cannot
be pursued unless directed by the whole power of the country.

If, therefore, the old regime be changed and the governmental authority be
restored to the Imperial Court ; if the councils of the whole Empire be collected
and their wise decisions received, and if we are united with all our heart and
all our strength to protect and maintain the Empire, it will be able to range
itself with the nations of the earth. This comprises our whole duty towards our
country.

This simple declaration is as manly, straightforward, and wholly
admirable as the following verbal explanation of his step which the
Shogun gave to Sir Harry Parkes and the French Minister. He said :

I became convinced last autumn that the country would no longer be
successfully governed while the power was divided between the Emperor and
myself. ... I therefore, for the good of my country, informed the Emperor that
I resigned the governing power with the understanding that an assembly of
Daimios shall be convened for the purpose of deciding in what manner and by
whom the government should be carried on in the future.

In acting thus I sank my own interests and abandoned the power handed
down to me by my ancestors in the more important interests of the country. . . .
In pursuance of this object I have retired from the scene of dispute instead of
opposing force by force. ... As to who is the Sovereign of Japan, this is a
question on which no one in Japan can entertain a doubt. The Emperor is the
Sovereign.

My object has been from the first to obey the will of the nation as to the
future government. If the nation should decide that I ought to resign my
powers, I am prepared to resign them for the good of the country. ... I had
no other motive than the following : With an honest love for my country and
people, I resigned the governing power which I inherited from my ancestors
with the understanding that I should assemble all the nobles of the Empire to
discuss the question disinterestedly, and, adopting the opinion of the majority,
which decided upon the reformation of the national constitution, I left the
matter in the hands of the Imperial Court.

1904 HOW JAPAN REFORMED HERSELF 87

Thus the 'question whether the Mikado or the Shogun should be
supreme was not decided by civil war, as might have been expected,
but by the self-sacrifice of patriotism.

The Mikado accepted the resignation of the Shogun, and with
the disappearance of the latter from power the chief obstacle to
Japan's unification and modernisation was removed. A government
was formed by the Mikado, and its first active step was a memorial
to the Throne, which is so remarkable for its enlightenment and which
is so important for the whole development of Japan that it seems
necessary to quote a part of it. That interesting manifesto, which
most clearly illustrates the mind of Japan and which brings the
fundamental differences between that country and China into the
strongest relief, says :

.... It causes us some anxiety to feel that we may perhaps be following the
bad example of the Chinese, who, fancying themselves alone great and worthy
of respect and despising foreigners as little better than beasts, have come to suffer
defeats at their hands and to have it lorded over themselves by those foreigners.

It appears to us, therefore, after mature reflection, that the most important
duty we have at present to perform is for high and low to unite harmoniously
in understanding the conditions of the age, in effecting a national reformation,
and commencing a great work; and that for this reason it is of the greatest ne-
cessity that we determine upon the attitude to be observed towards this question.

Hitherto the Empire has held itself aloof from other countries and is
ignorant of the force of the world; the only object set has been to give ourselves
the least trouble, and by daily retrogression we are in danger of falling under a
foreign rule.

By travelling to foreign countries and observing what good there is in them,
by comparing their daily progress, the universality of intelligent government,
of a sufficiency of military defences and of abundant food for the people among
them, with our present condition, the causes of prosperity and degeneracy may
plainly be traced. . . .

In order to restore the fallen fortunes of the Emperor and to make the
Imperial dignity respected abroad, it is necessary to make a firm resolution and
to get rid of the narrow-minded notions which have prevailed hitherto.

We pray that the important personages of the Court will open their eyes
and unite with those below them in establishing relations of amity in a single-
minded manner, and that, our deficiencies being supplied with what foreigners
are superior in, an enduring government be established for future ages. Assist
the Emperor in forming his decision wisely and in understanding the condition
of the Empire; let the foolish argument which has hitherto styled foreigners
dogs and goats and barbarians be abandoned ; let the Court ceremonies, hitherto
imitated from the Chinese, be reformed, and the foreign representatives be
bidden to Court in the manner prescribed in the rules current amongst all
nations ; and let this be publicly notified throughout the country, so that the
ignorant people may be taught in what light they are to regard this subject.
This is our most earnest prayer, presented with all reverence and humility.

Happily, the Mikado himself saw the necessity for reform and
progress. Had he been a man of ordinary ability, had he not been
aided by a group of enlightened and far-seeing statesmen, he might have
rested satisfied with regaining, by the force of circumstances, the

38 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

power which his ancestors had lost centuries ago. He would have
continued a rule of absolutism, and he would merely have tried to
raise the defensive power of the country sufficiently to allow Japan
to return to the seclusion to which the people had become accustomed.
But happily, Mutsu Hito was thoroughly in sympathy with the
reformers, and on the 17th April, 1869, he took before the Court and
the Assembly of Daimios the charter oath of five articles, which in
substance were as follows :

(1) A deliberative assembly shall be formed, and all measures shall be
decided by public opinion.

(2) The principles of social and political science shall be constantly studied
by both the higher and lower classes of the people.

(3) Everyone in the community shall be assisted in obtaining liberty of
action for all good and lawful purposes.

(4) All the old, absurd usages of former times shall be abolished and the
impartiality and justice which are displayed in the working of Nature shall be
adopted as the fundamental basis of the State.

(5) Wisdom and knowledge shall be sought after in all quarters of the
civilised world, for the purpose of firmly establishing the foundations of Empire.

Thus the Mikado identified himself with the cause of reform,
pledged the nation to progress, and made the success of the move-
ment towards the modernisation of Japan a certainty. Henceforth
the whole of the nation strove for progress and enlightenment with
that passionate will-power and singleness of purpose which is not
found outside Japan.

By the voluntary surrender of power on the part of the Shogun,
the Mikado had been installed, and he had pledged himself to pro-
gress; but the formidable difficulties remained how to unify and
modernise a nation which for centuries had been governed by a large
number of independent princes whose power rested on an immense
army of Samurai. The problem of abolishing feudalism and mili-
tarism, which, so far, had formed the groundwork of all government,
was one of enormous difficulty, for the feudal lords and their Samurai
considered themselves, naturally, as ' the government ' by tradition
as well as by right. This apparently formidable question was, how-
ever, easily settled by the marvellous patriotism of those who held
power in the land.

Daimio Akidzuki, President of the Kogisho (the deliberating council
representing the clans), addressed the following memorial to the Throne :

. . . The various Princes'have used their lands and their people for their own
purposes; different laws have obtained in different places ; the civil and criminal
codes have been different in the various provinces.

The clans have been called the screen of the country, but in reality they
have caused its division. Internal relations having been confused, the strength
of the country has been disunited and diminished. How can our small country
of Japan enter into fellowship with the countries beyond the sea ? How can
she hold up an example of a nourishing country ?

1904 HOW JAPAN REFORMED HERSELF 39

Let those who wish to show their faith and loyalty act in the following manner,
that they may firmly establish the foundations of Imperial government : )

(1) Let them restore the territories which they have received from the
Emperor and return to a constitutional and undivided country.

(2) Let them abandon their titles, and under the name of Kuazoko (persons
of honour) receive such small properties as may suffice for their wants.

(3) Let officers of the clans abandon that title, call themselves officers of the
Emperor, receiving the property equal to that which they have held hitherto.

Let these three important measures be adopted forthwith, that the Empire
may be raised on a basis imperishable for ages. . . <

This declaration, which was inspired by the great statesmen of the
three leading clans, and which breathes a spirit of unselfish patriotism
that seems almost incredible to the more stolid and the more selfish
nations of the West, met with universal approval, and the great
Daimios emulated one another in offering up to the Mikado their
titles, their position, their lands, and their wealth. The Daimios of
the West, for instance, said in their memorial :

Now, when men are seeking for a new government, the great body and the
great strength must neither be lent nor borrowed. . . . We therefore reverently
offer up the list of our possessions and men. . . . Let Imperial orders be issued
for altering and remodelling the territories of the various clans. Let all affairs
of State, great and small, be directed by the Emperor.

On the 14th of April, 1869, 118 Daimios, having1 a revenue of
12,000,000 kokus of rice, or about 24,000,00$., had agreed to the
proposed radical restoration. A few months later 241 out of 258 of
these nobles had resigned their power, and the remaining seventeen,
who were the only dissentients, soon followed suit. Thus feudalism,
which had existed in Japan for over eight centuries, voluntarily
extinguished itself, and patriotism triumphed over selfish interests
and the love of power.

The fall of feudalism was marked by the laconic Imperial decree
of the 29th August, 1871, which simply announced : ' The clans are
abolished and prefectures are established in their place.' As great an
event in history has probably never been proclaimed by as short a
decree.

The new era of Japan, which is truly called the ' Meji Era,' the
era of enlightenment, thus began with acts of noble self-sacrifice by
the greatest in the land, and the patriotic example of the nobility
stirred up the country from shore to shore. A feverish desire to sacri-
fice themselves for their country, a desire which is deeply implanted
in all Japanese, took hold of the whole population, and when it was
recognised that the enormous caste of Samurai, the warriors, who
cost the country about 2,000,000?. per annum, had no room in the
modern State, patriotism found again the remedy. The army of pro-
fessional soldiers, who had been taught that the sword was their sole
and their only means of earning a living, and who disdained ^to earn
their bread by industry or trade, quietly effaced themselves, sur-

40 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

rendered the larger part of their income, and, without a murmur,
accepted inglorious poverty in the shape of pensions which amounted
to but a few pence per day, and which barely kept the men from
starvation.

The compensation paid to the nobles for surrendering their lands
and, with the lands, their incomes to the State, the pensioning of the
Samurai, and the rearrangement of finances from their local basis to
an Imperial basis, was an enormous financial transaction of stupendous
difficulty. The loans raised in connection with this vast national
reorganisation amounted to no less than 225,514,800 yen, or to the
truly enormous sum of about 40,000,OOOZ. It speaks volumes for the
financial strength of the country and for the consummate ability of
the Japanese financiers that this enormous operation was satisfac-
torily carried out, and that by 1903 all but the trifling amount of
23,800,111 yen had been redeemed.

Many enlightened Japanese shared the opinion of the great educa-
tionalist, Fukuzawa Yukichi, who fearlessly declared : ' The Govern-
ment exists for the people, and not the people for the Government ;
the Government officials are the servants of the people, and the
people are their employers.' Hence the desire for representative
government arose in Japan soon after the reformation, though the
Japanese had hitherto only known government by despotism. Though
the Japanese people had had no experience whatever of popular
government, the Mikado and his advisers had so much confidence in
the good. sense and the patriotism of the nation that they decided
upon giving the people a share in the government of the country.
On the 12th October, 1881, the Mikado issued the famous declaration,
in which he said :

We have long intended to establish gradually a constitutional form of govern-
ment. ... It was with this object in view that we established the Senate in
1875, and authorised the formation of local assemblies in 1878. . . . We there-
fore hereby declare that we shall establish a Parliament in 1890, in order to
carry into full effect the determination which we have announced; and we
charge our faithful subjects bearing our commissions to make in the meantime
all necessary preparations to that end.

With the deliberate cautiousness and foresight which is character-
istic of all Japanese action, the people were, step by step, introduced
and accustomed to self-government. When the Senate had settled
down, the local assemblies were created, and when the local assemblies
had proved their worth, it was announced that ten years hence a
Parliament should be elected. Thus the leaders of public opinion had
ample time to prepare the nation for the coming change, and were
enabled to educate the electorate for their coming duties.

In consequence of this careful preparation and this wise delay the
Japanese Parliament has proved a great success. The elections
cause no excitement, the people record their votes with the full know-

1904 HOW JAPAN REFORMED HERSELF 41

ledge of their responsibility, and Parliament works with ability and
decorum. Lengthy speeches are unknown in that assembly, and the
House gets through an immense amount of work in an incredibly short
time. Parliamentary peroration and obstruction are practically un-
known in Japan, though there have been not a few political struggles
and dissolutions. However, party struggles are confined to domestic
politics.

The reconstitution of the body politic of Japan was crowned on
the 1st of April, 1890, when the Mikado solemnly promulgated a Con-
stitution for Japan. Whilst in all other monarchical countries the
Constitution had to be wrested from an unwilling Sovereign by the
force, and not infrequently by the violence, of the people, Japan is
the only country in the world which can boast of a monarch who
has voluntarily divested himself of a part of his rights, and who has
by his own free will granted a participation in the government to his
subjects.

This short sketch of one of the most remarkable chapters in the
history of the world clearly proves that Japan's marvellous progress
and her astonishing change from mediaeval Orientalism to modern
Western culture is in no way a fact that can cause surprise.

Though the Japanese are an extremely gifted people, they are,
individually, probably no more talented than are the inhabitants of
many other countries. Japan's progress has no doubt been meteoric,
and her complete adoption of Western culture has certainly been
startling. But her progress and her transformation appear only
natural if we remember that Japan is a nation in which everybody,
from the highest to the lowest, in all circumstances, unflinchingly obeys
the rule : ' The imperative duty of man in his capacity of a subject
is to sacrifice his private interests to the public good. Egoism forbids
co-operation, and without co-operation there cannot be any great
achievement.'

The individualistic nations of the West in which the interests of
the nation are only too often sacrificed to the selfish interests of the
individual, where party loyalty is apt to take precedence over
patriotism, where ministers, generals, and admirals are rarely ap-
pointed by merit only, where jobbery occurs even in time of war,
and where everything is considered permitted that is not actually
punished by law, will do well to learn from Japan's example, for it
cannot be doubted that the cause of Japan's greatness and of Japan's
success can be summed up in the one word — patriotism.

0. ELTZBACHEB.

42 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

THE WOMEN OF KOREA

THERE is, perhaps, no country about the womankind of which so
little is known as of Korea. And one cannot be astonished at
this fact, as the women themselves have been kept as much shut off
from contact with the outer world as the peninsula itself has been
shut off. Not even a medical man is allowed to have access to their
rooms. The Japanese staff surgeon, Dr. Massano Kaike, tried every-
thing possible to break down this rigid isolation, but all his endeavours
proved fruitless. Then he sent for his own wife, and as she found
less difficulty in obtaining access to the secluded women's apartments,
he instructed her to find out what was going on within those dwellings.
The result of this step was that he published the gist of the observa-
tions made in the International Archive of Ethnography.

According to what can be read there, it is not at all correct to
assert, as is often done, that the woman (wife) obtains no considera-
tion on the part of the man (husband). The fact that he fully knows
how to value her as the mother of the coming generation shows itself
clearly in the special care which he bestows on her when he expects
the birth of a child.

A rope stretched across the entrance to the house indicates the
birth of a child. If it is a boy, a piece of coal and a leaf are fastened
to it ; if it is a girl, nothing is attached to the rope. The Koreans
have the curious habit of not counting their daughters as members of
the family — at least, not in public. If a father is asked how many
children he has got, he always gives as answer the number of his sons.
One can only learn of the existence of a daughter by very particular
close inquiries. They have special names only up to the age of seven,
after which they only bear the father's surname, and are henceforth
known only as daughter, sister, or wife of some man.

When a child has become able to walk a dog is obtained, even in
the poorest families, which is carefully trained to follow the child
everywhere in its little rambles to protect it. Of course, it is not a
rare occurrence that just the opposite takes place. According to the
Korean idea, the mental development of the child is helped on by the

1904 THE WOMEN OF KOREA 43

influence of light, and on that account the lamp in the children's
room is never put out.

In education the separation between boys and girls takes place in
the eighth year. The boys then are taught all branches of knowledge
considered necessary for their future calling, but the education of
girls in a good family is limited to the study of maxims of morality
and to the knowledge of the ceremonies in connection with the religious
cultus of ancestors ; in the huts of the poor people the girls are taught
only dressmaking and all sorts of needlework. As a matter of fact,
the women of the lower class are particularly clever in the use of
the needle. This is easily proved by the garments exhibited in the
Museum of Ethnography in Berlin, and in the Brussels Museum. The
embroideries on the silk undergarments are executed with extra-
ordinary skill. In Berlin there is, among other articles, also one
of the famous white garments which the Koreans are particularly
fond of wearing, and which owe their existence to the uncommonly
long period of mourning for their dead. As the Koreans are obliged
to dress in white for three years for every case of death, and as once
three kings died within ten years, by which deaths mourning was
imposed on the whole nation, the majority of people chose rather to
dress continually in white in order to avoid the great expenses in-
volved by a repeated change of clothing.

The women make these garments, and every time they have to be
washed they are entirely taken to pieces, and these are beaten for
hours with a wooden bat in order to obtain the metallic gloss which
is considered particularly beautiful. In the Berlin Museum there is
one of these bats, which is made of cedar wood, and in shape is like
a moderately large wine bottle flattened on one side.

The Koreans are one of the few races in which the girl is developed
later than the boy. In consequence the wives are nearly always a
few years older than the husbands.

The customs connected with a Korean marriage are as follows :
The man sends by a friend a written formal request for the hand of
the girl whom he has chosen, and her family send a written reply.
If the offer is accepted, there follows an exchange of papers of identity,
in which particular attention is given to the exact date and hour of
birth, as they have to fix the day of the calendar which is specially
favourable and propitious for the intended marriage. On that day
the place for the ceremony is prepared at the house of the bride under-
neath the outside entrance staircase. The bridegroom, dressed in the
proper garments, comes driving or riding, accompanied by his father,
dismounts outside the gate, and walks, with his face turned to the
north, to the spot prepared for the ceremony. There the bridegroom,
in kneeling position, puts down his present for the bride, which con-
sists of a wild goose, in default of which a carved one can be substi-
tuted ; he bows twice, retires a short distance, and then stops, with

44 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY .July

his face turned to the west. The reason of the existence of this
curious present is to be found in a legend which tells how a hunter
had once shot the male of a wild goose, and had always seen the
poor goose come back to visit the spot where her mate had been
killed. This present, therefore, means to intimate the hope and
expectation that the wife shall show equal faithfulness to her husband,
and after it has been given the two parties give each other the promise
of eternal faith by using the following words : ' Now our hair is as
black as the feathers of the wild goose, but even if it should turn
white as the fibre of the bulbous root we will still hold together as
faithfully as we do this day.'

The bride that day puts on, for the first time in her life, the com-
plete Korean woman's dress. Her face is powdered, the eyebrows
are painted black, the lips coloured with safflower. Three hairpins
with gold birds of paradise adorn the head, covered with a light hat.
An upper garment of variegated pattern, with purple shoulder-bands,
and a nether garment of scarlet are held round the waist by a white
girdle five inches wide. White cuffs covering the hands, white
stockings, and silk shoes of red, purple, green, or blue, complete the
costume.

With slow steps, supported by three festively dressed waiting-
women, the bride descends the staircase, steps on to the place pre-
pared for the ceremony, and stops, with her face covered with the
fan and turned to the east. She then bows twice to the bridegroom,
who returns the same compliment. After that, two vessels, one
adorned with red, the other with blue ribbons, are filled with wine by
two maidservants and handed by them to the bride and bridegroom.
They both take a sip at the same time, and this act concludes the
ceremonial of the wedding. Then they are separately conducted into
the house. The bridegroom and his father are invited to the banquet,
at which all the relations of the bride take part. After its conclusion
the bridegroom drives home to his house, but the bride does not follow
him till the next propitious calendar day.

And now begins a life of complete seclusion for the Korean
wife. She may not show herself to any married man but her own
husband — nay, not even to the other male members of her own
family.

In former times, as soon as the gates were closed at night, all men,
especially in Seoul, used to go into their houses, and no man showed
himself in the darkness of the street, because the ladies of the rich
classes had the privilege of going out at that time. Deeply veiled,
with their tiny paper lanterns in their hand, they would glide along
from house to house to visit their lady friends. But recently this
custom, which was formerly affirmed by law, has come into disuse.
Thieves had profited by these nocturnal visits of ladies, and had
often robbed them of their jewels, and as the police were not able to

1904 THE WOMEN OF KOREA 45

stop the ever-increasing number of such cases, the old custom was
discontinued altogether.

Now ladies of the best families, in very rare cases, go out at night
deeply veiled and accompanied by their husbands. The women of
the lower classes are sometimes seen in the streets in daytime, but
also deeply veiled and dressed in green garments with red sleeves,
which latter are only used to cover the face of the woman.

G. J. R. GLUNICKE.

46 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

THE POPE AND THE NOVELIST

A REPLY TO MR. RICHARD BAGOT

* POUR vivre tranquille il faut vivre loin des gens d'eglise,' says a
witty Frenchman. There is a certain amount of truth in this for
a particular class of minds. The Church's office is to teach and, in
her own province, to rule her children ; she does the work of conver-
sion. But suppose a man enters into that relation with the Church
which is understood by the term ' becoming a convert,' and then sets
to work to convert her, it is pretty sure that his life will not be very
peaceful. There will be friction at every point ; nothing will please
him ; nothing will be done rightly. From Pope down to curate there
will be surely something amiss which he will want to set right. So
the convert finds himself always at loggerheads with his bishops and
pastors, who object to being thrown out of their office and submitting
to him as a magistrate and master. ' Suum cuique,' which, being
interpreted, means, ' Let the cobbler stick to his last.' I have heard
of a convert who was anxious to know what was his exact position in
the Church which he felt he had honoured by joining. ' Your exact
position in the Church ? ' quoth the padre. ' That's easy enough to
decide. Kneeling before the altar and sitting before the pulpit.
Some do not realise the lesson that they get more from the Church
than she does from them. The favour, I hold, is all on her side when
she receives them into communion and gives them what they cannot
find elsewhere. Hence it happens that such persons who have failed
to grasp the first principles of submission to a teacher and ruler, when
they find that they are not accepted at their own valuation, do one
of two things. After a period of restiveness they either lapse or
become that peculiar specimen of humanity a ' bored ' convert.
Mr. Richard Bagot himself remarks : ' It is not easy to feel religious
when you are feeling bored.' For such the only remedy ' pour vivre
tranquille ' is to live far from us ' gens d'eglise.' But when did the
moth ever forsake the candle when once it had felt the fascination ?
I will not for a moment say that the laity, hereditary Catholics or
neophytes, have not got their rights, nor will I say that these rights
have been, or always are, respected. But this is a very different
position from that of adopting an attitude of perpetual girding against

1904 THE POPE AND THE NOVELIST 47

authority. While I have sympathy with any movement which
seeks by legitimate methods to obtain that recognition of the rights
of the laity which the Church has always acknowledged, I will have
nothing to do with the ' bored ' convert except to wish that he would
take his boredom elsewhere.

Mr. Richard Bagot has given us his views on the Pope and church
music, and dignifies them as a ' Roman Catholic protest.' It may be
as well, before considering these views, to understand Mr. Bagot's
position. He is the author of several brilliant novels, and from these
and other writings I gather that a prolonged stay in Rome has had
its usual effect. A man becomes there, or at least used to become, a
partisan. He is either white or black and can see no good, nor tolerate
the idea of there being any good, in the opposite faction. I think
the position, as a matter of fact, is changing ; and, with the excep-
tion of extremists on either side, most sensible people are becoming
grey or piebald. But not so Mr. Bagot. He has evidently thrown
himself, heart and soul, into the Quirinal party. Therefore we must
expect to find that his presentments of life among the Vaticanists are
tinged with the effects of party spirit. Does he want a villain ? The
blacks supply any number. A hero ? Where should one be found
but among the whites ? I am not going to say that in either ranks
heroes or villains might not be found ; but I am of opinion that, as a
novelist, Mr. Bagot belongs to the school of the late Mrs. Henry Wood,
who drew an unnatural line of demarcation between good and bad.
However it appears that Mr. Bagot is a bored convert, so nothing
the Pope does pleases him. There we must leave it. It is unfor-
tunate for Pius X., perhaps ; or for Mr. Bagot. I have every wish to
do my spiriting gently, and I hope that I have not in any way mis-
represented his position ; but I think it is necessary to make that
clear before I approach his criticisms.

We differ fundamentally, I find, on the philosophy of sacred music.
This is but natural. Mr. Bagot admits that he does not examine the
matter from the point of view of a musical expert ; he makes the
wholly unnecessary admission that technical knowledge is wanting in
his case. And yet, as it is a question which touches upon the pro-
founder side of the artistic and psychological nature of sacred music,
why does he so airily write about the ' insult offered to music ' by ' this
unfortunate and illogical decree ' ? I fear that I shall find abundant
evidence that the imaginative gift, so valuable to a writer of fiction,
has stood in the way when he approaches a subject which deals with
a matter of fact. He has entirely missed the true nature of the ques-
tion altogether. The spiritual, even the artistic point of view has
not troubled him at all. He has not taken into consideration the
elementary fact that music was made for men, not men for music,
and that the art, if it be a means to a certain end, must logically be
regulated by that end, and not vice versa.

48 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

Pius X., who is a true artist and, moreover, a practical musician,
has issued an Instruction on Sacred Music, which he, as head of the
Church, puts forth as a ' juridical code ' on the subject. After all, he
is only enforcing, as a strong and sensible ruler will do, existing legis-
lation. From the days of Gregory I. (604), if not earlier, the Popes
have issued decrees on the subject and Councils have legislated. In
the pontificate of Leo XIII. decrees were issued several times on the
subject ; and this very Instruction is identical with a memorandum
which Cardinal Sarto sent from Venice to his predecessor. It is also
to be found in substance in a long circular addressed by the Patriarch
of Venice to his clergy. The copy before me bears the date of the 1st
of May, 1895. To hint, as Mr. Bagot does, with a half -veiled sneer at the
Pope's antecedents, that the Instruction is largely due to the influ-
ence of Don Perosi is too extravagant an idea for those who know
the independent and strong character of Pius X. It is rather he who
discovered and influenced Perosi, and uses him, with other instru-
ments, for carrying out his will. In determining to enforce the
Church's legislation the Pope has been so unlucky as to displease
the novelist, who promptly publishes ' A Roman Catholic Protest.'
Didn't some sartorial artists, three in number, from over the water,
Southwark-way, once make a memorable protest or declaration ?
Mr. Bagot should not emulate these ' representatives of the people of
England.'

I do claim in this matter to write somewhat as a musical expert
and with technical knowledge, if the facts count for anything
that more than thirty years ago I began life as a professional musi-
cian, and in my time have been choirmaster of one of the leading
churches in London. What are called ' the Masses ' I have sung,
taught, and conducted times out of number, and there is little of the
best modern music with which I am not familiar. But, much as I
love Mozart — I take him here only as a type — I came to the conclu-
sion, years ago, that music of this school represents only a distortion
of the true artistic idea of Church music. Mind, I am speaking only
of it as the music for worship. If the ideal of the times and places
where Mozart wrote was a false one, I see no reason why we should
be obliged to accept it to-day simply because the master composed
under the adverse influences that surrounded him.

Let me put it in this way: We must have either the music of
worship or the worship of music. You must choose one horn of the
dilemma, and you will be led in your choice by the way you answer
the question : Is music made for men or men for music ? Surely
there can be no doubt as to the reply. Music must either be a mere
melodious vehicle for soul-moving words, or these count for nothing
and are to be overpowered by the sounds. In this case the com-
poser, the singer, and the accompaniment will represent the chief
power in the music of worship. But is not this to make the frame

1904 THE POPE AND THE NOVELIST 49

more important than the picture, the setting than the jewel ? Or,
in a more homely phrase, is not this putting the cart before the horse ?

In the music of worship the true artistic sense demands truth,
for nothing can be beautiful except it be true ; and truth demands
that, in this style of music, the words should be paramount and music
the handmaiden ; for it is in the text that we find life and truth, not
bound, but quick and powerful.

Music by itself is vague unless it has associations. Its very vague-
ness makes it the least material of arts, and, therefore, when properly
directed, such a valuable help in worship. But this quality is also
its danger. It may so soon escape control and become a veritable
hindrance.

Now, I take it that worship is not vague but definite. I cannot
understand people who hoot and croon at the moon as an act of
worship to the Unknowable, like Mr. Mallock's Paul and Virginia on
one memorable night in the Chasuble Islands. No ; for reasonable
beings a definite idea is required in the act of worship. Hence
words, uttered or thought, are necessary ; and if there be used that
subtle influence of a well ordered succession of musical intervals
which we call melody, either alone or in combination with other
melodies, it can only rightly be employed to draw out of the soul the
hidden force and life within the words. How is it that, in so many
cases, words spoken have less effect than words sung ? What is the
marvellous power of music to ' raise a mortal to the skies ' ? Read
a hymn and sing a hymn, and note the psychological difference. The
simpler the strain the more marked is the increase in pathos, spirit,
warmth, and love ; the more complex the music the more the mind
is distracted from the thoughts. In this the senses take the upper
hand and the definite yields to the vague ; in that reason controls all.

Regarding, then, the music of worship as a help to prayer, and as
a means of attaining union with God, we get to the fundamental
difference which exists between sacred music and all other kinds of
music. In the act of worship I want a help, not a distraction. The
true artist will recognise this and will supply the need ; he will not
thrust upon me something else, beautiful as it may be in its own line,
which does not suit the end for which it is to be used. If I want
bread what is the use of giving me a stone ? It is, therefore, from
the standpoint of worship that the question of sacred music must be
judged and the dispute between the Sovereign Pontiff and the novelist
settled.

In the Instruction on Sacred Music the Pope lays down certain
principles for our guidance ; and I can safely leave it to my readers
to decide who has the real artistic instinct, Pius X. or Mr. Bagot.
The Pope says :

Sacred music should possess, in the highest degree, the qualities proper to
the liturgy, or, in particular, holiness, goodness of form, from which its other
VOL. LVI — No. 329 E

50 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

quality of universality spontaneously springs. (1) It must be ho'y; and
therefore must exclude all profanity, not only in itself, but in the manner in
which it is presented by those who execute it. (2) It must be true art ; for
otherwise it will be impossible for it to exercise on the minds of those who
listen to it that efficacy which the Church aims at obtaining when admitting
into her liturgy the art of musical sounds. (3) It must, at the same time,
be universal, in the sense that while every nation is allowed to admit into
its ecclesiastical compositions those special forms which may be said to
constitute its native music, still these forms must be subordinated, in such a
manner, to the general characteristics of sacred music that no person of any
nation may receive an impression other than good on hearing them.

So far for the Pope as an artist.

Now let me take some of Mr. Bagot's examples. For the moment
I put out of the question that they come under the Church's ban.
But, as he judges the matter from what he is pleased to call the
artistic side, I will take him on his own ground.

The drinking song from La Traviata was composed by Verdi for
quite another end than to be played at the most solemn moments of
Catholic worship. I need not recall the scene nor the subject of the
opera. To associate such music with the Mass is repulsive to every
feeling of decency, while to divorce it from its surroundings is, indeed,
an ' insult offered to music.' Verdi would be the first to protest
against such a caricature of his conception. Then, ' A Movement,'
from Bizet's L1 'Arlesienne, is turned into a Sanctus — a hymn which
recalls the solemn worship of angels round about the Throne. Might
not Bizet complain :

This does not represent my idea at all. That melody and those harmonies
were conceived as illustrating one particular train of thought : they are one
distinct conception. You have no right to misrepresent me or to vilify me as
an artist. Were I to undertake to set the angelic hymn to music I should
approach the task in a very different frame of mind to what I had when
I penned that part of my opera ?

Such adaptations are artistic outrages which no self-respecting
musician would attempt. Such things are done, more's the pity.
That there were also days when a Mass was patched together from
Le Nozze di Figaro and another from Don Juan is a curious contribu-
tion to a study on music and morals. That they do these things in
Italy is an indication of the degradation of art in that once artistic
country ; and I will make a present of them to Mr. Bagot, together
with the paper flowers, tinsel, sham marbles, stucco, and theatrical
scene-painting which also find favour in that country. For my part,
I am proud, as a musician, to take my stand by the side of the fear-
less Pius X., who recalls us to a better sense of true art. We need
reform here in England as well as elsewhere.

Mr. Bagot's blunders will perhaps better be recognised when I set
forth what the Pope really has done. He does not confine us, as one
would think from Mr. Bagot's article, to the plain song ; he allows

1904 THE POPE AND THE NOVELIST 51

the classical school, of which Palestrina and our English Byrde are
the supreme types, and also modern music, provided it contains nothing
profane. Pius X. is no dreamer of the past. He says :

The Church has always recognised and favoured the progress of the
Arts, admitting to the service of worship everything good and beautiful
discovered by genius in the course of ages — always, however, with due regard
to the liturgical laws. Consequently modern music is also admitted in the
Church, since it, too, furnishes compositions of such excellence, sobriety, and
gravity that they are in no way unworthy of the liturgical functions.

You wouldn't think it, but Pius X. has committed the grave
artistic error of saying that the music of the Church is one thing and
the music of the world is another. And he has done worse ; he has
acted up to his conviction.

Then, again, the use of an orchestra is not forbidden, but it is
regulated according to existing laws. For instance :

The employment of the piano is forbidden in church, as is also that of
noisy or frivolous instruments, such as drums, cymbals, bells, and the like.

A very fair orchestra can be got together without these. I would
that such a law, as to the piano, had been enforced in Spain when I was
asked to celebrate a Gild Mass. As soon as I began the service a
pianist struck up a very cascade of arpeggios, and then treated me
to a fantasia on Carmen, with other choice morceaux of a strictly non-
liturgical character. I did not find the Toreador's Song any help to
devotion ; neither do I fancy that Italians find it in La donna e mobile.
I must leave Mr. Bagot to enjoy whatever spiritual advantages he
can gain from listening to the drinking song in La Traviata, or from
a Mass faked up from U Arlesienne in a London sanctuary ' where a
shilling is charged for a front seat.' By-the-by, when hearing the
last-named composition (I use the word in its primitive sense) how,
from a front seat, could he judge ' by the faces of the members of
the congregation ' that it was a decided success, not merely artistic,
but also devotional ? I fear that, on this occasion at least, the ' most
brilliant style ' of the composition interfered somewhat with his own
private devotions. I may be wrong.

The plain song, which Mr. Bagot affirms ' has never been and
never can be a form of music which evokes answering chords in the
heart of the vast majority of the laity,' has, however, not only evoked
the hearty admiration of great musicians (I do not say all parts of
it), but has also been the staple music in the Church for more than a
thousand years ; and I don't think, if we take, say, France, or England
before the Reformation, that it can be said that ' answering chords '
were not evoked, nor that men did not find, when before the altar,
through the plain song, a means of forgetting the cares of the world.
Go over, for instance, to Normandy or Brittany and listen to-day,

E 2

52 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

and then judge how far Mr. Bagot is correct in his statements. There
is nothing like facts to correct fancies. The truth is, as Shakespeare

QO TTQ *

The plain song is most just : for humours do abound.

I can well understand that those who go to our churches ' for the
gratification of the eyes, the ears, and possibly the nose,' as Mr. Bagot
puts it, don't care for the plain song.

Candidly, it is not meant for them nor for bored converts. It is
meant for those who come to pray.

Let us have no more vapourings about ' the superficial treatment
to which the most divine of the arts has been subjected by the authori-
ties of the Church,' or about a practical ' divorce of religion from its
highest earthly coadjutor,' or ' of the total want of artistic discrimina-
tion shown by Pius X. and his advisers.' I find the superficiality,
the divorce, and the total want of artistic discrimination in Rome,
indeed, but not at the Vatican ; but — at Mr. Bagot's address.

Again, I read in the article on ' The Pope and Church Music
some words with which I agree. But let us see how we get on.

The love of melody is strong in all nationalities and in all classes ; and, in
the lower classes especially, mere harmony will scarcely supply its place. We
venture to say that a simple melody, however insufficiently rendered, will
appeal to the sense of the majority of laymen with greater directness than any
harmony will ; and that we have yet to learn that the senses are not very
important factors in any form of religious worship.

Mr. Bagot has yet to learn a few things. Meanwhile I ask : What,
is Saul also among the prophets ? No ; for a few lines on I read that
the plain song is monotonous and lacks melody. To speak of it in
this way is a curious exhibition. One of my objections against the
Gallican chant, as restored by the French monks of Solesmes, is its
over-elaboration. Plain song is anything but monotonous. As for
lacking melody, why, it is essentially melody and nothing else. It
is grave, diatonic, pure and simple melody, with rhythm free and
swinging. It is full of a haunting beauty of an unworldly kind. On
the other hand, harmony of any sort is alien to it, and even the
accompaniment of the organ is contrary to its purely vocal and simple
melodic nature. I grant that to one who seems to accept Verdi's
drinking song in La Traviata as fitting music to accompany a solemn
act of worship plain song may not appeal, for it is unworldly in con-
ception, its ideal is spiritual, and its object is to take men away from
the busy hum of the world and leave them free and undistracted
before the altar. Does not liturgy seem to demand a staid and
solemn diction ? Archaicism, I hold, is one of its most potent charms
and a great factor. Who would think of mingling slang expressions
of the day with the matchless music of the Authorised Version of the
Bible ? If this holds good of the words how much more of the music

1904 THE POPE AND THE NOVELIST 53

which is intended to invest them with a greater soul-searching and
heart-lifting power ?

As plain song is perfect melody and has nothing properly to do
with harmony, while I accept Mr. Bagot's words I must entirely reject
his conclusion as being based on a complete misunderstanding of the
very nature of the plain song itself.

The final error which in his opinion stamps the Papal edict as
ill-advised is to the effect that Protestants will be no longer attracted
to our churches, and that converts will be fewer, and, in fact, that the
Ritualists will get them all. Well, if that be so, my Anglican friends
are welcome to all such, for I am old-fashioned enough to prefer
quality rather than quantity. Some kind of converts, I think,
would lead a more tranquil life outside the Church altogether. They
do us no good ; and it is difficult to see where they find happiness or
how they can ' feel religious when they feel bored.'

If the effect of the new regulations be, as Mr. Bagot prophesies, to
lessen the number of visitors who ' are there for the gratification of
the eyes, the ears, and, possibly, the nose,' I, for one, shall be un-
feignedly glad, for I have no desire to see our houses of prayer turned
into concert halls, or the sacred mysteries of our worship made a
raree show for the stranger within our gates.

Does the Catholic Church organise her worship for Protestant
' ears, eyes, and, possibly, noses ' ? Does she even take them into
consideration ?

Of course there are those who come to listen and remain to
pray ; but when we have so much to do to make our own people
solid Christians we cannot spare the time to go out fishing for whales
with sprats. And how often does it happen that the fish, when
caught, turns out to be but a pitiful red herring !

If the decree be carried out loyally in this country we shall
approach more closely to the old Catholic type of musical service
which has been so largely kept in our national cathedrals — a type
devotional, melodious, sacred, and national withal.

I cannot imagine the organist of St. Paul's or the Abbey playing
the drinking song from La Tramata as a voluntary, or arranging an
anthem out of Bizet's opera. And why should we have a lower
standard ?

If at St. Paul's no singer is allowed who is not a communicant,
why should we, of all folk in the world, be laxer, and evade the
law ? Why should we admit non-Catholics, who disbelieve in the
words they sing, to form part of our choirs and exercise what the Pope
calls ' a real liturgical office ' ? These are anomalies of our present
situation, and show how necessary is some reform.

Why, too, I may ask, should costly choirs be kept up for ' the
e yes, the ears, and possibly the noses ' of the non-Catholics who,
Mr. Bagot says, form the very large proportion of the congregations,

54 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

when our churches are in debt, our schools in danger of being
starved, and our clergy, many of them, living in poverty and want ?

No ; I feel strongly that, thanks to the clear and determined action
of the Pope, it is now possible for us to get rid of what has been a
source of real weakness and undoubted disedification. I don't want
to play to the gallery of the British public, which, after all, will be
more favourably impressed if we follow a higher ideal than we do
at present.

According to Mr. Bagot our people have felt the difficulty, and
some have solved it in the practical way of leaving the High Mass
to the stranger. To take away the cause, and, in the words of the
Pope, to make special efforts —

to restore the use of the Gregorian chant by the people, so that the faithful
may again take a more active part in the ecclesiastical offices, as was the case
in ancient times,

will result in solid good all round. I would much rather see our
people standing up and joining in a simple melodious plain song Mass
than have them sitting down to listen to the soprano roulading up
the scale or to the basso slowly getting down to his deepest notes.

These things being so, what are we to think of Mr. Bagot' s con-
tention that ' the educated portion of the community, whether Roman
Catholic or Protestant, will openly resent the insult offered to music
by those responsible for this unfortunate and illogical decree ' ? Those
who know the nature and object of sacred music will be grateful to
the Pontiff who has recalled us to the true artistic ideal of the music
of worship as opposed to the worship of music.

ETHELRED L. TAUNTON.

1904

TRAMPS AND WANDERERS

IN a preface dealing with the causes of the French Revolution (Life
of Dantori) Belloc refers to the process of remoulding, which is a part
of living, and which the State as well as the individual must undergo
as a condition of health. ' What test,' he says, ' can be applied by
which we may know whether a reform is working towards rectification
or not ? None except the general conviction of a whole generation
that this or that survival obstructs the way of right living, the mere
sense of justice expressed in particular terms on a concrete point. It
is by this that the just man of any period feels himself bound. . . . This
much is certain, that where there exists in a State a body of men who
are determined to be guided by this vague sense of justice, and who
are in sufficient power to let it frame their reforms, then these men
save a State and keep it whole. When, on the contrary, those who
make or administer the laws are determined to abide by a phrase or
a form, then the necessities accumulate, the burden and the strain
become intolerable.' That such a ' phrase and form ' is embodied
in the ' tramp ward,' as it at present exists, it is the object of this
article to prove, and the reasons why, and directions in which change
is necessary.

Let us first take an illustration from change of function within
the human body. It is well known that we possess within us sur-
vivals of ancient modes of life. Public attention has recently been
directed to one such by the peril of the State. ' Appendicitis ' was a
scarcely noticed disease, among all that flesh is heir to, until it became
a rather proud distinction to suffer ' like the King.' Since then it is
surprising how many cases are heard of. Everyone now knows that
a small tube which represents what in lower animals has a useful
function, is in the human body a death-trap. It is an illustration of
the way in which slow change may make the useful positively harmful.

Let us review swiftly changes in the body politic during the last
few hundred years, and see whether the tramp ward can possibly
fulfil the function for which it was originally intended. Time was
when every Englishman was rooted to the soil. He belonged of right
to some locality as villein, serf, or lord. The community to which
he belonged demanded service of him as protector or as toiler. The
whole of life was framed on the idea of mutual service, combined with

55

56 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

relationship to the soil. This status still remains in our laws of settle-
ment. We pay thousands of pounds annually to remove ' Mary
Browns ' to their parish, in exchange for ' Samuel Smiths ' from
others, the whole apparatus of removal being a subtraction sum as
regards the national pocket. ' Survivals ' are always costly.

Long ago there swept over the feudally organised community the
wind of change, rearranging the social units. The Black Death
decimated the population and made labour scarce, and then arose the
phenomenon of the ' free labourer,' the landless man, who travelled,
offering his labour for hire, eagerly accepted. At first the chief com-
plaint was that he required higher pay, and legislation was directed
to keeping down his wages and re-settling him on the land. He was a
tramp, but one so useful he could not be dispensed with.

But by degrees came other movements, due to the introduction of
manufactures. The art of weaving required wool, and a great diver-
sion of land from agriculture to sheep-farming took place, and other
changes set in. The result was a decreased demand for labour. ' The
landless man ' became a social danger. Unable to support himself,
he took to beggary or violence, and became ' the waster who will not
work but wanders about,' the vagabond, the vagrant. Ejected by
society into freedom, he perversely acquired a taste for it, and bred
children ' on the road.' Probably most of our vagrants proper are
his descendants. He was penalised to an extent far beyond what
modern sentiment would allow, he was pilloried and mutilated, and
even put to death, but still he increased, to the despair of legislators.
Why ? Because social conditions were making him faster than he
was removed.

We are all familiar with the phenomenon of a boil, abscess, or gather-
ing. Matter accumulates and increases, having the power of repro-
duction. As a continual supply is created, it must in some way be
drawn off before healing can take place ; healthy cells replacing the
unhealthy ones. Just so in the body politic, unless some effectual
means are taken to heal a running source of social evil, it festers and
increases.

Fortunately for England she possessed youthful vigour of con-
stitution. She possessed a government not afraid to attack large
problems on a large scale, and to create institutions that could effec-
tually heal. The Poor-law of Elizabeth was a successful attempt to
deal with social evil. It provided ' work-houses ' for the destitute
poor. The principle embodied in it was that no man was to be idle.
The young who were found to be without trade were to be apprenticed
and instructed by ' masters of handicraft.' The old and feeble were
to be cared for, vice was to be suppressed, national well-being — the
common-wealth — was the end in view. Each man was to be anchored
to a parish, where under the observation of his fellows he could live
with every incentive to honest toil. As a matter of fact, distress did

1904 TRAMPS AND WANDERERS 57

disappear : the great majority' of the population settled on the land,
or in thriving industrial communities. There remained only the
decreasing problem of the vagrant, a heritage from the past. It was
necessary to deal with the survivors of the class who had acquired a
taste for vagabondage. All united in regarding them as meriting a
different and severely repressive treatment. Laws were enacted to
prevent private persons from giving doles, except ' broken meats.'
The tramp might receive shelter and a meagre allowance of food in
return for labour. So much it was impossible to refuse him, because
the old virtue of hospitality had to a large extent disappeared, and
monasteries, which used to act as poor men's hostels, had been sup-
pressed. National sentiment then, as now, could not tolerate a starving
man. But he must work for what he ate, and for two hundred years,
until the new era, the old law availed, mainly because there was
during all this time the slow and steady growth of England's indus-
trial supremacy.

It is not my purpose to dwell on the decay of the Poor-law due to
maladministration. To afford relief gratuitously was easier than
to provide work. The effective superintendence of labour was
not understood as well as it is now. Self-interest led men to throw
on the parish part of the wages of labour, social science as yet being
not even in its infancy. The Board of Trade inquiry into the unem-
ployed question gives these three reasons for the failure of the Poor-
law. They lie at the door of its administrators.

It would form a most interesting study to correlate the increase
or decrease of vagrancy to phases of national life, as a sign of diseased
conditions. The main thing to be noted is that during the last hundred
years a further change in national arrangements, characterised by
Arnold Toynbee as ' the Industrial Revolution,' has involved such
differences in the whole structure of our national life that it would
be as absurd to expect the old system to meet the need as to expect
the vermiform appendix to digest for the human body.

Let us consider on what national well-being depends in the new
era. It depends on the Fluidity of Labour. We are no longer an
agricultural and settled people. Modern conditions demand labour
readily accessible, highly differentiated, and very fluid. That is to
say, if there is in any place a scarcity of labour, it is desirable that it
should flow there as speedily as possible. If there is ' demand ' in
one place and ' supply ' in another, it means often workless, starving
men, who, if in another locality, could earn their living readily ; con-
sequently conditions are exactly reversed. What is needed is greater
fluidity. Anything that by opposing ready transit creates or prolongs
distress works harmfully. It is said, for instance, that shipbuilding
is deserting the Thames for the Tyne. Evidently, therefore, the
solution of London's ' unemployed problem ' lies partially in the
direction of the transfer of labour to places whither its industries are

58 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

going. Destitute men who have held on to waning employment as
long as possible must needs migrate to where it is to be found. It
is most desirable that the migration should be as speedy as possible.
Thus in place of a national system to prevent migration we need one
to assist it. Therefore, our present arrangement and regulation of
the tramp ward is obsolete and harmful.

This is a sweeping statement, and the conviction has only been
born of suffering. It has only been reached after encountering the
full measure of the Government regulations for tramps. An account
of this experience appeared (May 1004) in the Contemporary Review.
The system is fitted to produce disablement from ordinary toil. After
two nights it took me nearly a month to recover my normal vigour.
lam now convinced that no mere amelioration of conditions is necessary,
but an entire alteration of our national methods of dealing with
wanderers.

\ -' --s The word ' wanderers ' is used advisedly. There is a vagrant
class, the tramp proper. It is above all things desirable that this
class should not be recruited, either by birth or by the drawing into
it of the members of other classes. The tramp proper is parasitic
and preys on the community. But what is there in our present social
arrangements to prevent his breeding, or the slipping down into
trampdom of individuals from other ranks ? Our tramp wards give
us no control over the tramp. Formerly when population was mainly
stationary he was known as a ' tramp,' now he is indistinguishable
from the ' out-of-works.' He mixes with the genuine working-man
' down in his luck,' to the latter's great detriment, and crowds into
our slums in winter. The tramp proper in our days may fare uncom-
monly well, it is the genuine working man who suffers. It is easy to
gain a living in numerous ways if you tell lies and prey on the public,
or earn a precarious livelihood by hawking. That ' diffused justice,'
of which Belloc speaks, sees something is wrong and will not refuse
doles or charity. The supplementing of State provision for destitu-
tion on every hand by an unorganised system of charity is a state of
things not to be desired. Yet as a phase in national progress it is
eminently useful, for it is our English way of developing new organs,
and testing their use. We put out feelers in different directions, and
by and by we find they have prepared the way for national institu-
tions. But the burden of these supplementary institutions is increas-
ingly felt, and amounts to a second Poor-rate, resting mainly on
members of society humanitarian in sentiment. Yet even this does
not avail. Distress accumulates.

Is it not evident that we face once more the Elizabethan problem
of a national adaptation of institutions to meet a national need ?

What helps have we to the right solution of our problem ? Let
us first examine the direction in which the tramp ward is unfit. We
may^state that it acts as an incentive to the wrong sort of migration.

1904 TRAMPS AND WANDERERS 59

It is altogether misleading to regard it as a provision for destitution.
The man or woman who sleeps in a tramp ward, who is honestly seek-
ing employment, needs above everything to be allowed to stay in one
place sufficiently long to search for work. It is stated by observers-
in different parts of England, and by the wanderers themselves, that
the character of the inmates of our tramp wards is changing. It is
no longer to the same extent the genuine tramp who frequents the
workhouse. He, unless he is very ' hard up,' can beg or obtain 4rf.
for a common lodging-house. He hates and avoids the workhouse.
But the poor incapable, inefficient, or displaced worker (and this class
increases) gets pressed down ; he parts with all he possesses ; he
becomes shabby and cannot get work ; by and by he enters a
tramp ward. What can he do but go on to another ? Therefore,
he becomes a tramp, but not a voluntary one at first. This tramping,
however, brings him inevitably into contact with the outcast class, and
acts as a speedy education. If he has any brains he becomes a tramp
proper and learns to prey on the community. Therefore, we may
style our present system our ' National Tramp Manufactory.'

There are six items in the indictment of the tramp ward which
work together to make it almost impossible for those who drift down
into it to earn an honest living if they wish to. Each item may have
altered seriously for the worse since the tramp ward was instituted.

First the diet, which amounts to semi-starvation. It must not be
forgotten that a relative change may make what is eatable in one
generation utterly distasteful to another ; our working classes usually
eat some sort of butter with bread. White bread is less sustaining
than the older forms of brown bread. Probably the old bread and
' skilly ' was much more palatable and nutritious than the present
white bread and thick gruel, and much nearer the ordinary diet of
the very poor labourer. The absence of drink amounts to torture.
Probably the old thin ' skilly,' approaching to ' oatmeal drink,' served
both as food and drink, was not distasteful. By making the ' skilly *
better, Guardians have really deprived the diet of sufficient moisture.
Water may be, but is not always, attainable ; it is not now our cus-
tomary drink. Half the food allotted is not, and cannot be, eaten
for want of moisture. Wise tramps take in tea and sugar, but are
dependent on kindness for hot water. They often cannot obtain
it. No one who has not tried can imagine the longing for the ' cup
of tea ' which is now our national custom for two meals in the day.
I believe workhouse inmates also suffer from similar deprivation, and
that this is one of the reasons for frequent intoxication on ' liberty
days.' The first impulse on release is to seek a drink.

Secondly, there is an alteration in the standard of cleanliness. The
bath and stoving were certainly not Elizabethan characteristics. The
bath as a sanitary precaution is good enough, and often valued, but
it is given under conditions that are not health -producing, often

60 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

the reverse. Exemption may be claimed for positive illness, but
short of this everyone knows that care should be exercised in
bathing. To the weary traveller, cold with waiting for admission,
a hurried bath is administered ; in some cases food is given before
the bath, which is most prejudicial. There is no convenience for
drying the hair or wrapping up the head. Chilly rooms and insuffi-
cient bed-covering may produce a violent cold. Stoving clothes may
be necessary, but they are often so changed in appearance as to be
almost unwearable, and in their creased condition form a certificate
of the wrong sort for the wearer. It is found possible in shelters to
use other precautions, and those of the tramp ward are neither com-
fortable nor sufficient. It is not the object of the writer to speak
absolutely against the bath and stoving, which may be very desirable,
but only to point out that a heavy cold and crumpled clothing will
not help a person to obtain employment.

There is next the task set. Probably this also has grown in severity
under the mistaken idea that it would put down tramping. At any
rate there now exist weary acres of tramp wards to be faithfully and
immaculately scrubbed ! The older workhouses are much more com-
fortable and acceptable from a tramp's point of view than the newer
ones. Just where the pressure of destitution is greatest, in the large
towns, Guardians often pride themselves on being strict. It saves
the rates, but it does not solve the problem. In the end the rates
suffer in other directions.

I consider that the ordinary female tramp would as a charwoman
earn about 2s. and her food by her day's work. Of course, some
feeble, aged, or ineffective tramps may not be so hard pressed, and
there is a great difference between workhouses. Still, a good day's
work is, as a rule, exacted from both men and women, which would
earn far more than they obtain. A woman issues spent and dirty,
half starved, and incapable of immediate work, she cannot wash or
change her clothes.

There is, fourth, the sleeping accommodation ; a couple of restless
nights is a bad preparation for labour. The plank bed is the punish-
ment of a prisoner, the chain mattress abominably cold. Straw beds
are valued — and no wonder ! Can the public realise that the mere
absence of rest due to an uneasy couch and constant interruptions
to sleep is almost maddening ? Try it, and find out how you will
feel after two nights !

Fifthly, there are the hours. If work is not obtained (and it rarely
can be obtained after the early morning) there is the long weary food-
less day, the walking about for slow hours till six or seven o'clock.
Release on the second day may be early enough to seek work, but it
is not always so. One night's shelter and early release is greatly
desired by the wanderer in search of employment.

Sixth, there is^the entire absence of any attempt to help the helpless.

1904 TRAMPS AND WANDERERS 61

Bare food and shelter are given in exchange for more than their value
in work. But the stranded unfortunate is left just as helpless, more
hungry, more thirsty, with clothes in worse condition. Is this worthy
of a Christian country ? Nations are to be judged by their treatment
of the destitute.

It may be replied that the tramp ward is not intended for this
class. But we have no other provision for the man seeking work
without means. It was publicly stated recently in a prominent
northern paper that it had been ' demonstrated ' that there was no
need for men to sleep elsewhere.

But facts overturn fiction. The number of shelters and chari-
table institutions goes on increasing, and the cry of the homeless is
still in our ears. Everything points to the necessity for an entire
revision of our Poor-law, its correlation with municipal effort, and the
wise and united administration of our scattered charities. Julie
Sutter sketched, in the Commonwealth for April, a scheme for a ' British
National League of Help,' with the main lines of which I am in accord.
But it is not on the clergy of any denomination, or on the Church or
churches as a whole, that the evolution of a new order lies, but on
the nation as a whole, and on those who have undertaken to be ' Guar-
dians ' of national interests as regards the destitute poor lies at the
present moment a tremendous responsibility. They may by rigidly
holding to existing forms block the path of progress so effectually
that no true reform is possible. They may take pride in machinery
perfected and polished which is yet a mill that crushes life and hope
out of thousands of their fellow-countrymen. It is astonishing how
an established institution can outlive use and enslave thought. We
are bound to the customary.

Let us consider the subject from another point of view. In an
illuminating sentence at the close of the one already quoted, Belloc
shows how, if the rigidity of the social organisation exceeds a certain
point, man reverts to his natural state. It is the same in the body :
if diseased conditions in any part become acute, ' matter ' forms.
The drilled and disciplined unitary cells of the body break loose into
primitive fecundity, and multiply as a lower form of life. Inflamma-
tion sets in.

The unitary tramp proper is usually, as is well known, a centre
of contagion and infection, physical and moral, and tends to breed
lawlessly. This is the excuse of society for endeavouring to suppress
him. But what is a tramp ? Can we not get near enough to him
as a human brother to understand him and the reason of his being ?
Any form of energy is useful if directed into right channels. It requires
ingenuity, capability, and energy to be a tramp. The distinguishing
feature of the real tramp is that he prefers to be one. He will not
settle into a quiet place in the social economy, he prides himself on
being ' on the road.' ' You will soon get to like it, it is a healthy

62 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

life,' they say to a new comer. All rescue workers know it is almost
impossible to settle down a genuine tramp without compulsion.

Why ? Because tramp life is after all a return to primitive free-
dom, or, as Belloc says, ' a reversion to the natural.' What do we of
the ' classes ' do if we are free to please ourselves ? If our bodily
wants are provided for, we travel, we seek society, the foe we most
dread is ' ennui.' The tramp is a man who has discovered that sub-
sistence is possible combined with freedom.

In him the primitive instincts of our race assert themselves. The
Saxon and the Viking swarmed to England in search of adventure as
well as of nutrition. The Norman followed. We are a nomadic race
at bottom. Does not the breath of spring make us long for green
fields and blue skies and freedom from social trammels ?

In the time of Elizabeth one result of social pressure was that we
swarmed over seas, and the same result has occurred to-day. Kipling
has expressed in a fine poem the feelings of a soldier who has tramped
the veldt and is trying to settle down in England.

Me that 'ave been what I've been,

Me that 'ave gone where I've gone,
Me that 'ave seen what I've seen . . .

Me that 'ave watched 'arf a world
'Eave up all shiny with dew,

Kopje on kop, to the sun
As soon as the mist let 'em through . . .

And I'm rolling his lawns for the Squire
Me!

Me that 'ave rode through the dark

Forty mile often on end
With only the stars for my mark,

An' only the night for my friend . . .
An' the silence, the shine, and the size

Of the 'igh inexpressible skies . . .
Me!

The same spirit breathes in the letter from a tramp, published
in the Daily News of April 18 :

SIR, — I am a tramp, a man without a habitat. No outcry uprose in winter
while the East End sheltered the tramp. When he trudges west after waste
food and a grassy couch, the Press rise up in arms. Each one of these ' bundles
of rags ' on the grass has a history, some an interesting one. I have been
despoiled of the fruitage of my labours ; have acted the roll of errand lad, shop
assistant, clerk, traveller, market-man, barber, canvasser, entertainer, mummer,
song-writer, and playwright. I have dwelt within workhouse, asylum, and
prison walls ; have scrubbed the filthy, tonsured the imbecile, tended the aged,
and soothed the dying. A pedlar of toys, many a time I have enjoyed a night
on a turfy bed, the stars my coverlet, the hedge fruit my morning meal, my
bath the shallow stream. Nature suns the nomad as well as the traveller.
Derelicts, wastrels, paupers, pests, vagrants, bundles of rags !— dub us what men
will— we are human. There are tramps and loafing tramps ; ill-clad and well-
tailored loafers. Make all work— West and East— loafing is infectious.

KOWTON HOUSE. O. Quiz.

1904 TRAMPS AND WANDERERS 63

There is often contempt in the mind of a tramp towards his station-
ary brother, and after all is it undeserved ? Is the passion for freedom
to count for nothing, willingness to endure discomfort rather than
sacrifice contact with nature, the rough sympathy with all sorts and
conditions of men, and the education that comes of a wider human
fellowship ? Are we not all tramps at bottom ? Have not our
Gordons and our Stanleys much of the tramp about them ? Suppose
we are suppressing valuable social units whose energy from childhood
would have expanded if diverted to useful channels ? Has not every
age needed its outlet into this kind of existence ; the Crusades, coloni-
sation, exploration ? May we not say with reverence that the Highest
Life ever lived was that of a tramp ; have not some of the closest
approximations to it, notably that of Francis d' Assisi, involved tramping
also, because wide contact with men of low estate breeds not contempt
but fellowship ? Let us recognise that minds which have an affinity
for this kind of life have their function in our national economy.
Suppose our population was to settle down wholly, and that the ancient
spirit which longs for ' new worlds to conquer ' were to die out. Should
we not be ' like dumb driven cattle,' and perish of deadly dulness ? Is
the life of a slum-dweller to be preferred to that of a tramp ? Are his
chances for life greater ? To breed infectives is as bad as to breed
tramps. It is said that wanderers are increasing 100 per cent. It is
the sign of need for social vent. Each individual who escapes to the
tramp life is not likely to return to normal conditions unless his return
is greatly facilitated, or he is given some outlet to freedom. They
breed freely, and we support their children. But is this tendency
to wander wholly to be repressed ? Can we repress it under modern
conditions ? Germany has recognised the right of every young man
to go wandering as part of his education. Practically our young men
leave the countryside for ' chances ' in a town. Families are scattered,
thousands of men have to wander. Does it not greatly matter to the
nation under what conditions they live ? If we are to turn this feature
of our times to good account we must no longer aim at repression.
We need a definite circulation, channels by which travel can pass and
yet be reabsorbed into healthy existence — is not this the sign of higher
organism ? We need to give play to the educative influence of travel
and of free contact under right and healthy conditions. We need to
catch our tramps young, and hold out hope to them, to pass them
on to the life of soldier, sailor, colonist, after a period of compulsory
training to make the ineffective effective. We need to part with our
repugnance to the wanderer (let us drop the name ' tramp ') and
utilise him, recognising that he may be, if we treat him rightly, our
best and not our worst, and that deadly stagnation is a national evil
to be dreaded ; that the modern stagnation of a dependent popula-
tion, divorced from nature, without education and without resource,
festering in slums, may be far worse than the ancient evil of the

64 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

tramp. We must drain our slums, we must encourage a quick and
easy transit from one place and one occupation to another. If we
suppress tramping, we encourage stagnation, unless we create also
well-defined and natural channels for the original and primitive
instinct, which is the heritage of our English race, to develop health
fully and function safely. It is astonishing how a system has power
to enslave the thought even of the educated, and outlive use. The
vague sense of justice of thousands may be on the side of change,
yet the power of a cast-iron system holds back reform. This spells
revolution in the end.

How shall we steer our country into quiet waters ? In what
direction lies true reform ? I believe we have before us the example
of other countries which we may usefully follow. Germany has
covered herself with a network of relief stations and workmen's home s
to facilitate migration of labour, supplemented by labour colonies for
the destitute. Belgium and Holland have their national treatment
of the vagrant problem.

I will put the solution in the form of a series of propositions :—

(1) In every town there should exist sufficient accommodation
on any night for the restful sleep of every person for the time resident
there. Every person who sleeps in the open or under insanitary con-
ditions is during the next day a centre of contagion, a menace to public
health.

(2) It is impossible to expect private enterprise to provide suffi-
cient and sanitary accommodation. Ebbs and flows in the tide need
to be calculated for, therefore in addition to all private shelters or
lodging-houses being efficiently supervised, there should be municipal
accommodation up to the extremest point of need. The ancient duty
of entertaining a stranger rests now on the municipality.

(3) It is not desirable that this accommodation should be chari-
table. It should be graded, but earned by work, except in cases of
incapacity from old age, incurable disability, or sickness. These
should be received into the workhouse for special treatment without
delay.

(4) It is desirable to have the shelters or municipal lodgings as
such, independent of the provision of work for the destitute. This
might remain a part of the workhouse system. A certain task rightly
performed might earn sufficient to pay for bed and board. This
combination of relief stations with the right to enter workmen's homes
is the German system. If there was a national arrangement by which
the bare necessaries of life could be obtained by honest toil all excuse
for beggary would vanish.

(5) There should be organised charity in connection with every
relief station. The object of this should be to watch the stream of
humanity, and pick out cases of suffering for individual treatment.

Watching the stream as it flows through our national sieves, the

1904 TRAMPS AND WANDERERS 65

relief stations, we shall find four main classes requiring separate
treatment.

There is, first, the degraded vagrant proper, identified by his
abhorrence of work, by his turning up at relief station after relief
station, or shirking them and preying on the public. We will give
him a waybill for identification, as sketched in Julie Sutter's plan,
and land him in a colony, detaining him for an education, more or
less penal, in honest toil ; we will prevent him from breeding ; and
refuse to allow the children he has to be dragged about the country.
We advocate detention for the loafer vagrant, and, if possible, re-
demption to honest toil.

There is, secondly, the incapable. The man or woman who cannot
work deserves pity ; the blind, the epileptic, and feeble-minded need
care, with a curtailment of liberty, if morally incapable, to prevent
the passing on of hereditary defects to a degenerating offspring ;
but they need the tenderest help we can give, and all possible compen-
sation for a hard lot. We advocate true charity to the disabled.

There is, thirdly, the ineffective, the man or woman, ill-trained or
ill-placed. We need wisely to guide each life to the right spot, to fit
each one in by national bureaux of industry, to provide effective
education for the new generation, to give increased mobility to meet
fluctuations of work, and to look after those who have no personal
initiative. We advocate the utilisation of the ineffective.

There is, fourth, the genuine skilled out-of-work man, ' worth his
salt.' We need for him some such regulation of municipal enterprise
as will provide a true labour market, to equalise employment in times
of scarcity, and tide over the periods when, as John Hobson points
out, there is a ' temporary simultaneous glut of land, labour, and
capital.' We advocate the equalisation of the labour market for the
true out-of-works. Part of this provision lies at the door of the muni-
cipality. May we hope for wise ' Councillors ' in our national time of
need ? Part lies at the door of the Poor-law authority. May we hope
there will be ' Guardians ' conservative, not of institutions, but of
those national instincts of justice which are ever on the side of the
redress of national wrongs ?

Such is our national need. But one word as regards my own
sex. Conditions which press heavily on men press cruelly on women.
It was the fact, constantly borne in upon me by observation, that
women were continually dropping out of the protection of homes, and
being forced by destitution into sin, that led me to investigate the
condition of the tramp. A recent census was taken of the sleeping-
out problem in London. Many men were found, and only few women.
Why ? Is not the number of women in England larger than that of
men ? I believe the answer is a tale of horror. Destitute women
are driven to prostitution. If our national provision for destitution
is harsh and insufficient, it amounts to the perpetual forcing of our

VOL. LVI— No. 329 E

66 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

destitute sisters into a life of vice, and so indirectly to the sapping
of the very foundations of society. The number of lodging-houses
which take women is decreasing. Does it not lie upon us as a nation
to see that no woman shall be forced by destitution into sin ? Every
week, sometimes every day, there drift into shelters and homes desti-
tute sisters ; girls, many of them very young ; willing and eager to
earn their living ; hungry, almost without clothing ; tempted,
sometimes fallen ; dropped out of homes, bewildered, friendless, but
willing to take a helping hand. Who but such as these need ' guar-
dians ' ? Shall we consider that the mere administration of a rigid
law is England's duty ? No ; it has rested too long on one sex only ;
perhaps to that it owes partly its rigidity and harshness. It needs
to be transmuted by woman's love and woman's devotion to the
trifling details of individual need, unto the ' charity that is twice
blessed, that blesses him that gives and him that takes.'

MARY HTGGS.

1904

EDUCATIONAL CONCILIATION

AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY

I HAVE more than once predicted in the pages of this Review that the
best of the Anglican clergy would in the end throw over the Educa-
tion Act. I am still of opinion that they will do this in the end, but
I am compelled to admit that the end is long in coming. A year and
a half ago they were irritated by the Kenyon-Slaney Clause and uneasy
at the possible effect on religious teaching of the introduction of repre-
sentative managers. Six months later they were alarmed at the
apparent strength of the Opposition and the possible advent of a Govern-
ment pledged to amend the Act in an undenominational sense. To-day
these causes of dissatisfaction seem to have lost much of their force.
The Education Act has come into operation, and in the majority of
cases no great change has followed. The Kenyon-Slaney Clause has
hardly ever been invoked. The county councils have for the most part
been careful to consult the wishes of the foundation managers. The
Act has proved more tolerable than the clergy expected, and the recent
recovery in the position of the Government has made them hopeful
that it will at least not be altered for the worse. Added to this, the
attitude of the Nonconformist majority and the general acceptance
of Dr. Clifford's leadership have made the dividing line between them
and Churchmen very much sharper. Even those who recognise the
unsatisfactory character of the present settlement, and the probability
that in the long run it will lower the standard of religious teaching
in Church schools, seem disposed to put aside the idea of an educa-
tional compromise as not at present within reach.

It is an unfortunate moment, no doubt, in which to preach con-
ciliation. And yet this is the object of the present article. Some
little time since a small conference of Churchmen and Nonconformists
met to consider whether they could discover some common ground,
the acceptance of which would involve no sacrifice of principle on
either side. A committee was appointed to draw up a scheme, and
the outcome of their labour is a draft Bill, the contents of which I am
allowed to use, though it has not yet been submitted to the conference.
This Bill seems to me to contain all the essential provisions of a reason-
able concordat. It gives the Nonconformists what they ask, and all

67 F2 "

68 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY July

that it claims in return is a frank recognition of the principle of religious
equality. I do not say that all its provisions are equally essential,
but there is not one of them that really comes into conflict with the
civil or religious conscience.

The object of the Bill, as explained by the introductory memo-
randum, is twofold. On the one hand it introduces public manage-
ment into all schools ; on the other it sets up absolute religious equality
between them, and aims at making adequate provision for the universal
teaching of religion. Supposing the Bill to become law, all schools
deriving support from the rates would become provided schools,
those now known as non-provided schools being handed over to the
local Education Authority on equitable terms. The managers of
these, as of other schools, would be appointed by this authority, and
all the teachers would be chosen without reference to their religious
belief. Religious equality is secured by the repeal of the Cowper-
Temple Clause and an enactment that all religious or ethical teaching
shall be provided and paid for by religious or other bodies, singly or
in combination — the parents of each child being left to say what kind
of religious teaching they wished it to receive. It is probable that
some schools will decline to come under public management. These,
of course, would not be affected by this Bill. But in the event of
their being allowed to receive public support on special terms, while
remaining outside the Act, whatever is given to one denomination
must be given to all. The facilities for religious teaching consist in
fixing a time in which it is to be given, and in allowing individual
teachers on the staff of the school to give the religious lesson provided
that they are paid by the religious or ethical body which employs
them.

This memorandum sets out the main contents of the Bill, but
to make sure that they will be understood I will give the chief pro-
posals in the actual words.

Notwithstanding (says Clause I.) anything to the contrary contained in the
Education Acts 1870 to 1903, or any of them, all public schools maintained but
not provided by the local Education Authority . . . shall be deemed to have
been so provided.

In this way all rate-aided schools will pass, so far as management
is concerned, out of the hands of their present owners into those of
the local education authority. This authority, however, may pay
the fair annual value of the schoolhouse by way of rent, and it may
also purchase it if the trustees consent, at a price to be settled, if
need be, by arbitration. By Clause II. the purchase-money is to be
applied

according to a scheme to be settled by the Charity Commissioners in confor-
mity with such of the trusts upon which the school-house was formerly held as
were not trusts for secular education.

1904 EDUCATIONAL CONCILIATION 69

Clause III. repeals the Cowper-Temple Clause and makes it

the duty of the local Education Authority (a) to afford facilities for the duly
accredited teacher of any religious body, or combination of religious bodies, to
give separate religious instruction in every public elementary school within its
district to such of the scholars as shall be required by their parents to receive
such instruction, and (b) to afford similar facilities to such body or bodies for
the holding of separate Sunday schools in the school so far as is practicable,
having regard to the accommodation of the school-house. Provided that no
part of the cost of such instruction shall be borne by the local Education
Authority. The time devoted to religious instruction shall be at least three-
quarters of an hour at the beginning or end of each school-day. Secular
instruction shall be provided contemporaneously with such religious instruction,
and any child whose parents shall not desire him to receive any religious in-
struction shall be required to attend such secular instruction instead.

I submit that this Bill suggests a settlement of the education
difficulty which ought to satisfy all parties except, it may be, fanatical
secularists. What are the objections raised by Nonconformists to
the Act of 1902 ? That it gives local money without adequate local
control; that, in appearance at all events, it appropriates local
money to the support of schools belonging to particular denomina-
tions ; that, in order to secure the teaching proper to such denomina-
tions, it permits them to impose a religious test upon the head teacher
in each school. Every one of these objections is met by this Bill.
The managers of every school will be appointed by the local Education
Authority. Not a fraction of the rates can be spent, even in appear-
ance, on the provision of religious instruction of any kind in any
school. And as the teachers will all be appointed, mediately or
immediately, by the local Education Authority, no question can be
asked as to their religious belief. What is there in this settlement
to which a Nonconformist can consistently take exception ? Church
schools disappear, and in their stead we have in every parish in the
kingdom a school wholly under public management and forbidden
to show any favour or give any advantage to any one religion over
another. Under the present law these principles are necessarily
disregarded in single-school districts. A majority of the managers
belong to a particular denomination ; no religion other than that
of this denomination can be taught in the school ; and yet the school
is maintained out of public funds. The truth is that the present
provisions for elementary education are only suited to towns, and to
a condition of things which, even in towns, has seldom really existed.
If we imagine the educational need supplied in the main by schools
built by the denominations, so that only the fringe of children whose
wants are not met in this way attend schools of the present provided
type, the co-existence of two distinct classes of schools might be
accepted as a working settlement. But it is altogether inapplicable
to country districts where, more often than not, there is only one
school for the children, whatever may be their denomination, and

70 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY July

Nonconformist parents have in consequence to choose between reli-
gious instruction which is not theirs and no religious instruction at all.
And even in towns it is only applicable in theory. The denomina-
tional system assumes that Church children will go to Church schools,
Roman Catholic children to Roman Catholic schools, Nonconformist
children to Nonconformist schools. In this way all the children in the
place would be taught the religion of their parents, and the provided
school would take only those whose parents had no preference for
any definite religion. Whether such a system as this ever presented
itself to the imagination of any of the authors of the Act of 1870 it is
impossible to say, but if it did it never took shape anywhere else.
The denominational need was never supplied except in part, and the
Board schools went on gathering in an increasing number of children
belonging to various religions. The dual system broke down from the
start.

The authors of the Act of 1902 had the choice of abolishing or
tinkering this system. Unfortunately they chose to tinker it. Pro-
vided schools were given a more important place in the system, but
in return for this the voluntary schools were bidden to look to the
rates for maintenance except as regards structural repairs or additions.
How this compromise has worked there is no need to say. The moral
may be studied in the records of the Welsh county councils and in
the incidents of Passive Resistance.

A proposal of compromise must come from someone, and hitherto
neither side has liked to take the first step. Nonconformists declare
that they have no evidence that Churchmen are willing to entertain
such an offer. Churchmen declare that it is useless to make sugges-
tions until there is some reason to suppose that they will receive fair
consideration. The framers of the Bill here described have come
forward under the pressure of a strong conviction that the prospect
of the settlement they desire is likely to grow fainter as time goes on.
They think that their proposals are reasonable and just, that they
remove the grievances of which Nonconformists complain, and give
Churchmen an opportunity of looking after children whom the growth,
actual and prospective, of provided schools is rapidly taking out of
their hands. If it can be shown that they are mistaken in any parti-
cular, they are willing to recast that part of their scheme. They put
forward their proposals in the hope that Churchmen may be induced
to make them their own, and that Nonconformists may be willing
to join in pressing them upon the Government. They are fully aware
that no settlement of this magnitude can possibly be brought to a
conclusion by any private action. All they ask is that a plan, the
general acceptance of which would end a most mischievous contro-
versy, shall not be put aside without full consideration.

If we were to judge by their published statements, we might well
despair of either side conceding anything. Churchmen point to the

1904 EDUCATIONAL CONCILIATION 71

successful working of the Act in this or that county ; Nonconformists
reckon up the occasions on which this or that champion has seen
his goods taken in execution rather than pay the Education Rate.
In such a case as this common sense teaches that the man who has
most to lose by holding out is the man to come lorward with pro-
posals of compromise. Let us see how this rule works out when
applied to the Education Act. The view that the clergy seem to
take is that their strength is to sit still. The excitement and opposi-
tion aroused by the Act will die away by degrees. Even Passive
Resisters will in time come to a wiser mind, and Mr. Lloyd-George
and the Bishop of St. Asaph will feed lamblike in the same statutory
pasture. Meanwhile the clergy retain their schools — in most cases
— and when the crisis is over all will go on as before. It is always
well to take note of what your adversary thinks of your position,
and it is evident that the Nonconformists are not of opinion that the
clergy have anything to gain by delay. If they were we should long
ago have seen them coming forward with proposals of their own.
That they have not done so shows that they at least have no fear
that time has anything good in store for the Church, and for that very
reason no desire to end the controversy quickly.

Three alternative possibilities may be suggested in regard to the
Education Act. The first is that a Liberal Cabinet comes into office
after the dissolution. Even Mr. Chamberlain thinks this a probable
contingency, though he couples with it the prediction that the Cabinet
thus formed will not hold office very long. But even if this prediction is
fulfilled to the letter, it contains very little comfort for the clergy. The
Liberals may have but a short term of office, but, at all events, it will be
long enough for the amendment of the Education Act. The most
sanguine Churchman can hardly expect that, if after this Mr.
Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister, he will care to restore the present
strife. If the next Government amends the Act, the next Government
but one may be trusted not to amend it back again. The second possi-
bility is that the dissolution makes no change in the position of parties,
and that, for some time longer at all events, the Act remains unaltered.
Is this a prospect to be regarded with satisfaction by Churchmen ?
It means, for one thing, the continuance of the present conflict between
the Welsh County Councils and the Government. If this conflict
were to be carried on in the manner in which the Carmarthenshire
County Council began it, the Government might easily have the best
of it. The very clever Bill which is now before Parliament would
make short work of opposition conducted on these lines. But the
Carmarthenshire County Council has already found out its mistake.
It has accepted the less violent but more effective policy favoured by
Mr. Lloyd-George, and the Principality is now busy in seeing how far
it can go towards starving Voluntary schools without losing the grants-
in-aid which the Government is compelled to make to the County

72 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

Councils so long as they do not openly break the law. It may be objected
that Wales is not England, and that its example is not likely to be
followed in England. That is true, no doubt, of many local councils,
but it is by no means true of all, and, even if it were, the resources
of Nonconformity would not be exhausted. Have we any reason, for
instance, to think that the case of the Isle of Wight will stand alone ?
There was no disobedience to the law here. The County Council
simply called upon the managers of certain Voluntary schools to
make necessary additions to their buildings. The managers tried in
vain to raise money for this purpose, and under the Act of 1902 their
schools would thereupon have become provided schools. It would
have been very much better if they had allowed the law to take its
course, since the incident would then have shown how injuriously the
Act is likely to affect Church schools. They preferred, however, to
capitulate on terms which are almost indistinguishable from sur-
render. In these professedly Church schools undenominationalism is
taught every day by the regular paid teachers, while on one day in the
week the parson comes in as a volunteer and teaches those children
whose parents desire his services. Education does not promise to
become less costly, nor will the official demands in the matter of cubic
space and sanitary requirements grow less stringent. Consequently,
cases like that in the Isle of Wight may be expected to multiply, and
each one of them will be another step towards the establishment and
endowment of undenominationalism in elementary schools.

The third possibility is the most formidable, though not the most
probable, of the three. It is that the Nonconformists will find out
the mistake they have made in resisting the Act, and apply themselves
to making full use of its provisions. The Church of England owes a
great debt to the Nonconformists for the line they have taken in
reference to the school rate. If they had welcomed the addition of a
representative element to the management of every Voluntary school,
and had made the most of the opportunity thus afforded them, un-
denominational religion would in a very short time have been established
and endowed in more than half the Church schools in the kingdom.
A clergyman must be a man of strong religious convictions or strong
fighting instincts if he prefers war to peace. Yet in thousands of
parishes this would have been the choice he would have had to make.
The two representative managers would have pleaded that religious
unity would be promoted by making the basis of the religious teaching
the same for all the children in the school. In that case, of course,
the teaching must be undenominational, but the clergyman would be
free to give further instruction to those children whose parents wished
them to receive it at any time which did not interfere with the routine
work of the school. By this plan controversy would be avoided, and
the whole teaching staff would be able to take part in the religious
lessons. This is what would have happened if Nonconformists had

1904 EDUCATIONAL CONCILIATION 73

helped to work the Act instead of resisting it. This is what would
happen if at any future time they determined to change their policy.
Even if they remain as hostile to the Act as they are now, the whole
drift of lay opinion is towards undenominationalism. The only people
who really dislike it are High Churchmen and Roman Catholics —
neither of them numerically formidable — and wherever an arrange-
ment is proposed between a Church school and a County Council,
the acceptance of rate-paid undenominational teaching for the whole
school, while leaving the clergy free to give voluntary instruction out
of school hours to those children whose parents expressly ask for it,
is pretty sure to form part of it. With such a system as this, what
estimate is a practical nation likely to form of the relative value of
denominational and undenominational teaching ? They see the one
paid for by the State and given, as part of the school curriculum and
by the regular staff, to all children not expressly withdrawn from it under
the Conscience Clause. They see the other given, outside the school
curriculum and by school teachers receiving no pay from the State, to
those children whose parents ask for something more in the way of
religion than is enough for the majority of children. What conclusion
can they possibly draw except that the State regards undenominational
teaching as something worth paying for, and denominational teaching
as a harmless fancy to be tolerated as long as there are people foolish
enough to cherish it ?

The position, therefore, which the clergy have to face is this :
Where the Church is strong, where the buildings are new and adequate,
where no addition is needed to the teaching staff, where the clergy-
man is a power in the parish and the parents for the most part wish
their children to be taught religion under his direction, all will go well —
as regards that particular school. But at what cost will this success
be purchased ? All around him the fortunate incumbent will hear of
schools being made over to the local Education Authority, and so
ceasing, in fact if not in name, to be Church schools ; nor will he have
any assurance that his own school will in the end escape the same
fate. Its religious character will depend upon the policy of a County
Council re-elected every three years, and of a Board of Education
which reflects the Government of the day ; upon the temper of the
Nonconformists in his parish, which may take its colour from some
distant leader ; upon legislative changes made by a House of Commons
which is the creation of an undenominational electorate. On which
of these shifting sandbanks does he found his hope of keeping alive a
school in which he will teach the full Christian faith as he holds it ?

For these reasons — as well as for the still stronger one that on the
present system they are denied access to schools containing a con-
stantly increasing number of children who have just as much claim
on them as the children of their own schools — this proposal is sub-
mitted to the clergy. If they will make it their own, in any appre-

74 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

ciable number, it has, I believe, a good chance of gaining public
acceptance. If they will have nothing to say to it, it will, at all events
for the present, make no way. It will find, indeed, more acceptance
among Nonconformists than is commonly supposed, since it has
what, in the eyes of some of them, is the supreme merit of securing
equality of treatment for all forms of religion. But, as it runs counter
to the present tendency of public opinion, it is not likely that they
will urge its adoption except as a means of putting an end to educa-
tional strife. Whether it will have this result depends, as I believe,
on the reception the clergy give it. Theirs is the decision, and theirs
will be the responsibility.

D. C. LATHBURY.

1904

A PRACTICAL VIEW OF THE
ATHANASIAN CREED

THE recent debates in the Convocations of Canterbury and York have
again raised the long- vexed question of the use of ' The Confession of
our Christian Faith, called the Creed of St. Athanasius,' in the public
services of the Church. It must, I think, be admitted that in respect
of this creed the clergy are rather hardly treated. Many of them,
perhaps most, disapprove its public use ; their congregations dis-
approve it still more. Diocesan Conferences have declared against
it, or at the best have half-heartedly defended it. And now at last
the Bishops have begun to make speeches or to publish letters and
addresses reflecting upon the creed or rearranging it, or attenuating
some of its phrases, or explaining them away. But, all the while,
the clergy are obliged by a definite rubric to recite the creed in public
services and to recite it on such festivals as Christmas Day, Easter
Day, and Whit-Sunday, when its damnatory clauses are strangely
out of tune with the wishes and thoughts congenial to Christian hearts.
There is, in fact, a strong case for some relief ; but the relief is not
given.

No doubt it is easy to argue that no man is compelled to take
Holy Orders, and that, if a man voluntarily takes them, he has no
claim to get rid of the obligations which they impose.1 But this
argument is hardly conclusive. For it is desirable that men, and
especially earnest and thoughtful men, should be ordained, and that
no unnecessary obstacle should be put in the way of their ordination.
That the Athanasian Creed is such an obstacle will hardly be disputed
by anyone who knows the state of theological feeling in the Universi-
ties ; but if it is, and so far as it is, an obstacle, it is an evil. Nor
are the clergy the only persons to be considered. For it is desirable,
too, that the laity should go to church. If then there are a good
many devout laymen who dislike and resent the public use of the
creed and avoid hearing it by staying away from church, so far again
it is on this account an evil.

It is possible, indeed, that the evil may be exaggerated. The

1 See Dr. Wickham Legg's letter in the Guardian, April 6, 1904.

75

76 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

consciences of some candidates for Holy Orders are almost morbidly
sensitive in the present day. For the doctrinal statements of the
creed are probably not repugnant to anybody who believes the orthodox
Christian faith, and, as believing it, is qualified and inclined to take
Holy Orders. The so-called damnatory clauses, too, have been
officially interpreted as ' to be understood no otherwise than the
like warnings in Holy Scripture.' If so, all that can be said of them
is that they are infelicitously expressed ; for there can be no doubt
that they appear at first sight, and are generally taken, to go beyond
the ' most certain warrants of Holy Scripture,' by which, according
to the 8th Article, the Athanasian Creed may be proved.

But the fact is that it is a mistake to look upon the same words
as bearing always and everywhere the same significance. It often
happens that technical phrases come to be used, not in a literal, but
in a secondary meaning. There have been times when it seemed
natural and necessary to visit theological errors with extreme male-
dictions. The most awful condemnations of heretics excited no
surprise or disgust. It is as certain as any fact of history can be
that the same language which is felt to be terrible and deplorable by
consciences trained in nineteen centuries of Christianity was not so
felt, or was not so felt in anything like the same degree, by the
Christians who first made use of it or first listened to it. The dam-
natory clauses, therefore, of the Athanasian Creed are a heavier
burden upon consciences to-day than they were many centuries ago,
and they will become a still heavier burden as the years and the
centuries pass. For humanity grows more humane ; that is one of
the few clear gains attaching to progress ; men are kinder than
they were, and their theology, too, becomes less rigid, less bitter
than it was.

The great objection, then, to the public use of the Athanasian
Creed is that its language in its natural interpretation is not what
Christians and Churchmen hold to be true. Archbishop Tait, in his
speech in Convocation, put the general feeling well : —

We are to take the clauses in their plain and literal sense. But we do not.
There is not a soul in the room who does. Nobody in the Church of England
takes them in their plain literal sense.

A reasonable person will not indeed deny that in any historical
Church, having a continuous unbroken life of many centuries, formu-
laries may, and often must, be interpreted with considerable latitude.
The language of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and a fortiori of
the ninth or the fifth century, cannot be altogether suited to the twen-
tieth. The candidate for Holy Orders, and scarcely less the lay member
of the Church, must ask himself, not whether he approves and accepts
every sentence of the Prayer Book in its literal meaning, but whether
he feels himself to be in general sympathy with its language and its

1904 THE ATHANASIAN CREED 77

spirit ; and lie will allow himself the greater liberty, as he reflects
upon the difficulty which the Church has experienced for a long time
in legislating for herself or in getting legislation passed for her through
Parliament. Still, when all is said, it remains an unhappy circum-
stance that Churchmen should be expected on solemn festivals to take
part in strong condemnatory phrases which they do not, and cannot
in their consciences, hold to be literally true.

It is now more than thirty years since the last attempt was made
to meet and solve the problem of the Athanasian Creed. The story
of that attempt is told at full length by the present Archbishop of
Canterbury in the twenty-second chapter of the Life of Archbishop
Tait. Archbishop Tait was himself in favour of rescinding the obliga-
tion to use the creed in the public services of the Church. He was
defeated by the strong opposition of the High Church party under
the leading of Dr. Pusey and Dr. Liddon. Dr. Pusey wrote to the
Bishop of Winchester on the 19th of October, 1871 : ' If the Athana-
sian Creed is touched I see nothing to be done but to give up my
canonry and abandon my fight for the Church of England.' Dr.
Liddon wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury on the 23rd of December,
1871:

It is not, I trust, obtrusive or other than right in me to state firmly to your
Grace that if this most precious creed is at all mutilated by the excision of the
so-termed damnatory clauses, or degraded — by an alteration of the rubric which
precedes it — from its present position in the Book of Common Prayer, I shall
feel bound in conscience to resign my preferments and retire from the ministry
of the Church of England.

Archbishop Tait, like the statesman that he was, chose in these
circumstances the less of two evils. He preferred sacrificing his own
views upon the use of the creed to breaking up the Church, whose
chief minister he was ; and the creed and the rubric prescribing its
public use have remained without alteration to the present time.

Thirty years have wrought a change of theological opinion. The
liberalising spirit which has passed upon theology has intensified the
antipathy of many devout Churchmen to the frequent public recitation
of the creed. High Churchmen, as they have adopted a new position
in regard to the inspiration of Holy Scripture, have apparently adopted,
or are adopting, a new position in regard to the public use of the
Athanasian Creed. The Bishop of Worcester, at his Diocesan Con-
ference, has spoken in favour of a resolution : ' that the present rubric
governing the use of the Athanasian Creed is the cause of more harm
than good, and should be fundamentally altered.' The Bishop of
Chester, at his Conference, has declared the creed to be in its present
form c an absolute stumbling-block in the way of the faith.'

There is an increasing desire also to bring the Church of England,
in her use of the Athanasian Creed, into greater harmony with the
other Churches of Christendom. At present she insists upon the

78 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

public recitation of the creed thirteen times in the course of the year.
But the creed is not so treated in any other Church of Christendom
(except, indeed, the Episcopal Church of Scotland), nor was it so
treated in the Church of England herself before the Reformation.
It is not similarly recited in the Church of Rome, or in the Churches
of the East, or in the reformed Lutheran or Calvinistic Churches of
the continent of Europe, or in the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland
or in the Nonconformist Churches of England. It is not similarly
recited in the Church of Ireland or in the Episcopal Church of the
United States of America.2 The rubric enforcing its use in the public
services of the Church of England on the festivals now enumerated
in the Prayer Book was the work of the Anglican Reformers. It first
appeared in the second Prayer Book of King Edward VI. It did
not in express terms order the creed to be used as a substitute for
the Apostles' Creed until the revision of the Prayer Book in 1662.
To revert to the more ancient Catholic usage of the creed would be
in accordance with the growing spirit of regard for the principles and
practices of the early Church.

In these circumstances it is matter for thankfulness that the Upper
Houses of both the Convocations of Canterbury and York should have
lately passed resolutions, the one for ' appointing a committee to
consider in what way the present use ' of the creed ' may be modified,
the document itself being retained in the formularies of the Church
as an authoritative statement of the Church's faith ' ; the other, for
' restoring ' the creed ' to its more ancient use as a document for
instruction of the faithful, in such manner as may most fully safe-
guard the reverent treatment of the doctrines of the faith.' 3 These
resolutions are striking in themselves. They indicate a remarkable
advance of episcopal opinion. But there is no reason to think that
the bishops have gone beyond the opinion of the Lower Houses of the
Convocation, or the Houses of Laymen, or the clergy and laity of the
Church everywhere. For still more striking than the resolutions have
been the debates which took place upon them. Almost everybody
who has spoken has expressed himself as sympathetic with the desire
to give some relief to anxious consciences, if only it could be given
without compromising the Catholic Faith ; and nobody has exhibited
anything like the bitterness or wilfulness or the arbitrary irrecon-
cilable spirit which marked the debates, or some of the speeches
delivered in them, thirty years ago. But when men who resist a
policy resist it not because it is wrong in itself, but because of con-
sequences which may possibly flow from it, it has already come half-
way to success. If it should happen that the several parties in

2 Stanley, The Athanasian Creed, pp. 36 sqq. His statements are not entirely
accurate, but even the use of the creed at Prime in the Church of Borne is not a
parallel to its use at Matins in the Church of England.

1 See the Guardian, May 11, 1904.

1904 THE ATHANASIAN CREED 79

the Church came to agree upon a change in the treatment of the
creed, it would still be difficult to determine what the treatment
should be.

Three main proposals of reform have been made : —

(1) It has been proposed to meet the difficulty felt about the creed
by retranslation. Not a few suggested retranslations have appeared.
It will be enough to mention that the Committee of Bishops appointed
more than thirty years ago to consider the use of the Athanasian
Creed put forward suggestions on the 12th of February, 1872, for
certain alterations both in the Latin text and in the English trans-
lation. They proposed in the translation, among other minor changes,

(a) To substitute the word ' infinite ' for ' incomprehensible ' and
the word ' eternal ' for ' everlasting ' throughout the creed.

(6) In verse 1 to read ' Whosoever willeth to be saved ' instead
of ' Whosoever will be saved.'

(c) In verse 25 to read ' There is nothing afore or after, nothing
greater or less.'

(d) In verse 28 to read ' willeth to ' for ' will ' and ' let him think '
for ' must think.'

(e) In verse 29 to read ' faithfully ' for ' rightly.'

(/) In verse 42 to leave out all the words after ' faith ' and to sub-
stitute for them ' which every man who desireth to attain to eternal
life ought to know wholly and to guard faithfully.'

But I am afraid it must be admitted that no retranslation can
solve the question of the creed. The Bishop of Worcester has said,
rightly enough, that ' the objections to the public use of the creed
would not be adequately met by a retranslation.' So, too, the Arch-
bishop of York : ' We can use the most perfect possible translation, but
we cannot touch the difficulties which surround the matter.' For,
in fact, the Latin original is frequently open to the same objection
as the English translation. To take the first two verses only, the
words : —

Quicunque vult salvus esse ; ante omnia opus est ut teneat Catholicam
fidem.

Quam nisi quisque integram inviolatamque servaverit ; absque dubio in
seternum peribit.

are fully as explicit as ' Whosoever will be saved, before all things it
is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith ; which Faith except every-
one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish ever-
astingly.'

It is, in fact, noticeable that the six professors of theology in the
University of Oxford, who were consulted by the Committee of Bishops,
Dr. Mozley, Dr. Pusey, Dr. Ogilvie, Dr. Heurtley, Dr. Bright, and
Dr. Liddon, in their reply, dated the 30th of November, 1871, avowed
themselves ' unable to make any suggestions as to either the text or

80 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

the translation which may be expected to obviate the objections
raised against the creed.' 4

(2) A second proposed remedy is expurgation.

It is possible, indeed, to draw a marked distinction between the
doctrinal statements of the creed and the damnatory clauses which
'precede and follow them. The doctrinal statements have been some-
times compared to a picture, the damnatory clauses to the frame in
which the picture is set.

Three professors of theology in the University of Cambridge, Dr.
Westcott, Dr. Swainson, and Dr. Lightfoot, in their reply to the Com-
mittee of Bishops, on the 3rd of February, 1872, argued that ' the
admonitory clauses may be treated as separate from the exposition
itself, and may be modified without in any way touching what is
declared therein to be the Catholic Faith ' ; and they ' ventured to
express an opinion that it is the office of the Church to make such
changes in the form of words by which the Faith is commended to
believers as may be required for their edification and for the right
understanding of her own meaning.'

Modern research, however, has tended to show that, whether the
damnatory clauses are or are not as a frame to a picture, the creed
was never issued without them. They are not confined to the begin-
ning .and the end of the creed. To leave out the clauses, and still
more to leave out any doctrinal portion of the creed itself, would be
to set an example of serious and even dangerous moment.

The practice in Westminster Abbey at the present time has been
misrepresented. It is not to recite a revised or amended Athanasian
Creed instead of the Apostles' Creed. It is to recite the Apostles'
Creed at the point where the rubric directs that the Athanasian Creed
should be sung or said in place of it, and to sing a revised version of
the Athanasian Creed called ' A Hymn of the Catholic Faith ' as an
anthem at a later point in the service. The revision of the creed
consists principally in omitting the first two and the last three verses :
i.e. the so-called damnatory clauses and the doctrine of the resurrection
of the body. It must depend, I think, for its justification upon the
assumption that the Ordinary, whether the Bishop, or in Westminster
Abbey the Dean, is legally entitled, upon his own responsibility, to
break the rubric prescribing the use of the creed and to alter the
creed itself. At all events it indicates the difficulty of touching the
creed without touching its doctrinal statements.

(3) The policy of saving the creed by appending to it an explanatory
note has found a great deal of support at different times.

The first Royal Commissioners appointed for the Revision of the
Liturgy in 1689 suggested this addition : — ' The condemning clauses
are to be understood as relating only to those who obstinately deny
the substance of the Christian Faith.' The Royal Commissioners

4 Swainson, Nicene and Apostks1 Creeds, p. 520.

1904 THE ATHANASIAN CREED 81

appointed in 1867 suggested this : — ' That the condemnations in this
Confession of Faith are to be no otherwise understood than as a
solemn warning of the peril of those who wilfully reject the Catholic
Faith.' Among other suggestions emanating from high ecclesias-
tical authorities it is right to mention that of the six professors of
theology in the University of Oxford, who submitted for consideration
in 1871 the following form of a note such as may tend to remove
some misconceptions : — ' That nothing in this creed is to be under-
stood as condemning those who by involuntary ignorance or invincible
prejudice are hindered from accepting the Faith therein declared.'
But this note Dr. Pusey felt afterwards to be unsatisfactory, and it
appears that towards the end of 1872 he advocated another.5 Finally,
the Convocation of Canterbury issued in 1873 a declaration for the
removal of doubts and to prevent disquietude in the use of the creed :

(1) That the creed ' doth not make any addition to the Faith as contained in
Holy Scripture, but warneth against the errors which from time to tune have
arisen in the Church of Christ.'

(2) That ' the warnings ' in the creed ' are to be understood no otherwise
than the like warnings in Holy Scripture, for we must receive God's threatenings,
even as His promises, in such wise as they are generally set forth in Holy "Writ.
Moreover, the Church doth not herein pronounce judgment on any particular
person or persons, God only being Judge of all.'

That declaration was endorsed in 1879. But, as the Archbishop of
Canterbury said in reply to the deputation which waited upon him
on the 31st of last May, it has remained ' a dead letter ever since.'

The Bishop of Chester, in the ' rearrangement of the Athanasian
Creed ' which he has lately ' put forward for consideration by both
the clergy and the laity of the diocese,' has been bold enough to com-
bine a series of explanatory notes with both retranslation and expur-
gation.

It is not possible to set out the case against an explanatory rubric
as interpreting the terms of the creed in clearer or juster language
than was used by Bishop (afterwards Archbishop) Magee in Convoca-
tion more than thirty years ago :

If you have words [he said] which are in themselves clear and simple,
making a particular statement or assertion, it is simply impossible in the nature
of things that you can by the mere exercise of your will put a gloss upon those
words to explain away their meaning. Words mean what logic and grammar
make them to mean. You may debate as much as you please before you issue
a document what the words composing it shall be, but when you have put it out
you have not any right to say ' These words shall mean this or that.' They pass
under the dominion of grammar and must mean what they say. No man has a
right to say that they mean anything more or less than their grammatical
construction implies and declares.

If, then, it is desirable to afford some relief both to clergy and to

5 Life of E. B. Pusey, vol. iv. p. 251 ; compare Life of Archbishop Tait, vol. ii.
p. 152.

VOL. LVI— No. 329 G

82 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

laity in the matter of the Athanasian Creed, and if the three suggested
policies are all more or less unsatisfactory, is there any course which
can be safely recommended ?

The creed is not, as it has been called in an angry pamphlet, ' the
curse of Christendom.' But it is unfitted for use in the public services
of the Church. It is as little suited for public recitation as the Articles
themselves. It is a scholar's creed ; it demands a learning, a thought-
fulness, an historical spirit which cannot be presumed in congregations
including a great variety of men and women, educated and uneducated,
and boys and girls and little children. The language employed in
public worship should always bear its meaning on its face. However
stately it may be, it should convey a clear and just impression to all
who use it. A document which requires to be explained or explained
away as often as it is used is sure to be a source of distress and irri-
tation rather than of spiritual benefit. Anything is better than an
unnatural interpretation of solemn words publicly used. But the
Athanasian Creed is so apt to be misunderstood that it ought not to
be used in public services. It should be a work, not for recitation,
but for reference.8

My own earnest hope is that the Bishops, as the natural leaders of
the Church, will try to meet the difficulty felt about the public use of
the creed. It may not be in their power at present to effect legislation
which would alter the rubric prescribing the recitation of the creed ;
but if they should resolve and declare that in their judgment it is
undesirable to make the public use of the creed any longer obligatory,
they would take such action as would greatly relieve the consciences
of the clergy, who now feel that, if they omit the creed, they are
acting against authority, and, if they use it, that they are doing
what is painful to many members of their congregations, and often
to themselves.

The argument for abandoning the use of the creed in public services
is not only or chiefly that the creed is harshly expressed, or that it
cannot by a forced interpretation be rendered harmless, but that it is
suited for the study, and not for the church. It creates a false impres-
sion, and an impression which grows falser year by year. It inculcates,
or seems to inculcate, a perverted view of the consequences attaching
to Christian faith and Christian duty. It differs widely in letter
and spirit from the simplicity of the Gospel. To quote the words
with which the late Dr. Swainson ends his treatise upon the Nicene
and Apostles' Creeds : ' The dogmas of the Athanasian Creed are
for the scientific theologian; the Bible revelation of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit for every Christian.' Or, to go yet further
back to the famous passage of Jeremy Taylor in his Liberty of
Prophesying : 7

• See the speeches of the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of Durham and
Chester in the Convocation of York, as reported in the Guardian, February 17, 1904.
7 Section ii. p. 74.

1904 THE ATHANASIAN CREED 83

If I should be questioned concerning the Symbol of Athanasius ... I confess
I cannot see that moderate sentence and gentleness of charity in his preface
as there was in the Nicene Creed. Nothing there but damnation and perishing
everlastingly, unless the article of the Trinity be believed, as it is there with
curi osity and minute particularities explained. . . . For the articles themselves,
I am most heartily persuaded of the truth of them, and yet I dare not say all
that are not so are inevitably damned, because citra hoc symbolum the faith of
the Apostles' Creed is entire, and he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved :
that is, he that believeth such a belief as is sufficient disposition to be baptized,
that faith with the sacrament is sufficient for heaven. . . . Besides, if it were
considered concerning Athanasius' Creed, how many people understand it not,
how contrary to natural reason it seems, how little the Scripture says of those
curiosities of explication, and how tradition was not clear on his side for the
article itself ... it had not been amiss if the final judgment had been left to
Jesus Christ, for He is appointed Judge of all the world, and He shall judge the
people righteously.

Perhaps no wiser words — none more Christian — could be spoken
than these.

J. E. C. WELLDON.

o 2

84 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

THE VIRGIN-BIRTH

IT has been said by a recent writer that ' the idea of miraculous birth
has fascinated the minds of men in all parts of the world from the
earliest times,' and if the question of such a birth be limited to an
idea, the statement may possibly be true ; but if belief in the virgin-
birth of Jesus Christ as an historical fact is to be insisted on, any
feeling of fascination is likely to give place to one of perplexity and
doubt. Thus, when lately it became known that the vicar of a parish
in England had been constrained to resign his cure of souls because he
was unable to give his assent to the doctrine of the virgin-birth, the
question was very generally asked whether in the present day there
exists any necessity for insisting on a belief in this doctrine, seeing
that to the minds of most men the story of Christ's life and teaching
affords more convincing evidence of his divine mission than the
narrative of any abnormal circumstances attending his birth can
produce. It is not, however, proposed now to discuss either the
possibility of or the necessity for a virgin-birth, nor to ask whether
a purely spiritual influence could cause the birth of a human body :
the question for inquiry here will be limited to the consideration of
the weight or force of the historical evidence on which the narrative
of the virgin-birth of Jesus Christ rests. Now, in attempting to
estimate the value of this evidence, one point is clear beyond
doubt, namely, that of all the writers in the New Testament two
alone make any mention of a miraculous birth, while the accounts of
it given by these two writers are widely divergent. Another point
equally clear is that the first and the last written of the four records
of Christ's life contain no statement of nor any allusion to a virgin-
birth. Thus, the writer of Mark's gospel, which is allowed to be the
most ancient of the four records — it may possibly have been written
within forty years after Christ's death — certainly never heard of the
virgin-birth. And with regard to the fourth and last written gospel,
if this book be the work of John the son of Zebedee, the truth of the
story of a miraculous birth must be altogether discarded ; for if John,
in whose home Mary lived as his own mother, never heard from her
of this wondrous birth, it is manifest that such an event never happened,
since, from the nature of the case, any account of it, to be worthy of

1904 THE VIRGIN-BIRTH 85

credit, must have been derived from Mary herself. But whether the
fourth gospel was written by John the son of Zebedee, or, as seems
more probable, by John the Elder or Presbyter of Ephesus, the fact
remains that, although this gospel was compiled for the express pur-
pose of setting forth and insisting upon the divine side or aspect of
Christ's nature, the writer of it had no knowledge of his miraculous or
divine birth. Now let us first turn to the account given in Luke's
gospel (i. 26-56) : here we have no dream, but the actual appearance
of a heavenly messenger who makes an announcement to Mary which
necessarily cannot long be kept secret ; in fact, Mary does not attempt
to keep it secret, but proceeds to sing what is plainly a paraphrase of
Hannah's song or prayer, recorded in 1 Samuel ii. 1-11, except that
in Mary's hymn there seems to be less exultation than appears in
Hannah's song, though Hannah was rejoicing only in the birth of a
human son. Next, look at the terms in which the communication is
made to Mary by Gabriel ; now, if the narrative intends us to under-
stand, as it clearly appears to do, that the prediction uttered in verse 35
did, in fact, come to pass, then it is plain that Jesus Christ never was
' the son of the man ' — never was the true typical man. and the title
which he chose before all others was therefore misleading and difficult
to understand. Moreover, it is certain that nowhere in the gospel
narratives is Christ ever represented as claiming for himself a miraculous
or virgin-birth (Luke iv. 22-24). Then, again, Gabriel says to Mary :
* The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David.'
Could any divine messenger have spoken thus of him who was to live
the life of a village carpenter, and to die the death of a malefactor ?
Such words would have been a stumbling-block in Mary's path all her
days. So with regard to the name ' Jesus.' Gabriel could never have
used this word, which is a Greek rendering of the Hebrew name
' Joshua ; ' — thus in the Septuagint or Greek version of the Old Testa-
ment the Book of Joshua is the Book of Jesus. Gabriel in addressing
the Hebrew maid Mary must have used the Hebrew name Joshua
(Yehoshua), not the Greek rendering of it, Jesus (lesous). If so,
Christ's name never was Jesus, but Joshua. Now, the meaning of
the word Jesus seems to be ' healer ; ' if, therefore, 'I^o-oOs (in
Latin 'Jesus') is derived from ia, the root in Idoftat, to heal or
cure, it is not impossible that, Christ being known as ' the healer ' of
Nazareth, his true name soon became lost, and thus to the earliest
Greek converts — Greek Jews of the Dispersion — he was known only
by the name of ' the healer,' ' the Jesus of Nazareth.' Or is it possible
that IHC was a mystic word used in the ancient Greek mysteries,
and was by the early converts from mysticism given to Christ as the
true fount of the ' healing ' water of life ? (John iv. 14). Certain it
is that immortality or life beyond the grave was the great object of
attainment held out in the Greek mysteries, and no one can read
Christ's discourses, as given in the fourth gospel, without noting the

86 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

insistence with which He urges His power to grant eternal life (John vi.
27-58) ; so much so is this the case that it would almost appear as though
some of these discourses were written with the object of supplanting
or superseding the Greek mysteries, that is to say, of drawing into the
Christian fold all those who had made trial of the mysteries and found
them wanting ; in fact, the mysticism is at times so pronounced, and
the invitation to come to Christ so persistent, that we seem to be
listening to one who had himself passed through the mysteries and
had experienced their emptiness and futility (xii. 24-27 ; ch. x.). How-
ever, the consideration of questions such as these relates to the subject
of the passing of Christianity from the Jew to the Greek, rather than
to the particular matter now under discussion. To return, then, to
Luke's account : even in the narrative itself we seem to find evidence
against the story of Gabriel and the miraculous birth. Thus, how
could the writer of verse 35 (ch. i.) repeatedly speak of Joseph as Christ's
father (ii. 27, 33, 41, 43,^48), and why should Joseph and Mary marvel
at the things which were spoken (v. 33), if Gabriel's prediction had
become true ? Or how could Mary, in speaking of Joseph (v. 48), say
to Christ : ' Thy father and I sought thee,' if the tremendous expe-
rience of a miraculous birth had been hers ? Now let us turn to the
account in Matthew, and the first question that will occur to any
reader of ch. i. is this : Why should the life of Christ commence with
the genealogy of Joseph (v. 16), if Joseph were not Christ's father ?
Another point is that the writer of this chapter, or of verses 18 to 25,
seems never to have heard of Gabriel's mission to Mary, for here in
Matthew the vision or dream happens to Joseph, and not to Mary,
and the name of Jesus is communicated to Joseph, and not to Mary,
and an explanation of the name is given to Joseph which was certainly
not given by Gabriel. But what can be said of the writer of verses 22
and 23 (Matt, i.) in citing a passage from Isaiah which cannot
support or bear the construction for which it is quoted ? For it is
clear that the woman (translated 'virgin') in Isaiah vii. 14 is
the same woman — the prophetess — who is spoken of in viii. 3 (Isaiah),
and equally clear is it that no virgin-birth in her case is even suggested,
but quite the contrary. The whole point of the prophecy in Isaiah is
that ' before the child shall know to refuse evil and choose the good,
the land, whose two kings thou abhorrest, shall be forsaken ' (vii. 16 ;
vui. 4), not, that the child is to have a miraculous birth. Moreover,
the writer in Matthew does not quote correctly the passage which he
professes to cite (i. 23), for the words in the Septuagint are ' and thou
shalt call [tcdXeasm— not they shall caU] his name Immanuel,' that
is to say, * you (Isaiah) shall name your son Immanuel ; ' this is clear
from viii. 3, KOI Trpocrff^Oov irpos ryv TrpotprJTiv. The fact seems
to be that this passage in Matthew (i. 18-25) is an interpola-
tion, though possibly an early one ; but whether this be so or not, it is
plain that the information on which the story of Joseph's dream is

1904 THE VIRGIN-BIRTH 87

based must have been derived from a source entirely unknown to
every other writer of the life of Christ — even to Luke, who, though
narrating in considerable detail the history of the apparition to Zacha-
rias, does not say a word about any vision or dream occurring to
Joseph. It seems, therefore, that the idea of a divine or miraculous
birth is of Greek rather than of Hebrew or Jewish origin ,' to the
Hebrew mind it seemed enough that their Messiah should be the son
of David ' according to the flesh,' but to the Greeks a divine birth for
their heroes or saviours was a necessity. It would appear as though
this notion of a miraculous or virgin-birth arose at the time of the
passing of Christianity from the ' world of Syrian peasants ' to the
' world of Greek philosophers,' and gained acceptance as filling a
want vaguely felt by the Greek converts. But that the first followers
of Christ knew nothing of the story of the virgin-birth seems plain
from the fact that there is not the smallest allusion to it in any of the
Epistles ; in fact, in some of them both the argument and the words
used are distinctly against any idea of a miraculous birth (Romans i.
3 ; viii. 3). If, then, the writers of the earliest treatises dealing with
the principles of the Christian faith never heard of the virgin-birth,
and felt no necessity for it, why should belief in such a doctrine, resting
as it does on scanty and unsatisfactory evidence, any longer be
insisted on ?

SLADE BUTLER.'

88 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

INVISIBLE RADIATIONS

THERE exist radiations which differ from the whole category to which
radiant heat and light belong, not so much in their effects as in their
nature ; indeed, they can only be called radiations at all by an exten-
sion of the meaning of that word, for they are really streams of particles
bearing an electric charge and moving in straight lines at various
rates of speed. The extended meaning of the word radiation to
include all ray-like projections, whether material or otherwise, has
now been universally adopted, the word emanation, which might
perhaps have served, being reserved to denote those outgoings from
a substance which >diff use away from it after the manner of a vapour
or scent. That there are such radiations was, in the first instance,
perceived by the phenomena which accompany the passage of an electric
current through a tube containing highly rarefied air. That radiations
similar to those which are thus artificially produced in the laboratory
also exist spontaneously in nature, is a discovery made within the last
few years, the theoretical importance of which can hardly be overrated.

It is now known that all the compounds of uranium, thorium, and
radium continuously emit such radiations, independently of any known
supply of energy from without, and unaffected by temperature or
pressure, or any physical conditions whatsoever. Nor is this radio-
activity, as it is called, the result of chemical action or combination.
The property, which is probably due to changes taking place within
the atom itself, is most clearly manifested in the case of radium, and
therefore it is easiest to study radio-activity by means of radium ; even
as it is easiest to study magnetism by means of iron, although nickel
and cobalt are magnetic substances too, and all substances show traces
of magnetism in an exceedingly slight degree. Very probably radio-
activity is also a property of matter as such, but the feeble manifesta-
tions upon which this surmise is founded were never discovered until
now because there was no reason until now to suspect their existence.

There are three kinds of rays which are produced together by an
electric current in a vacuum tube and found together in radium
radiation. They are : Rays bearing a positive charge, rays bearing a
negative charge, and uncharged rays, which apparently always ac-
company these electric rays, but which belong to a totally different

1904 INVISIBLE RADIATIONS 89

category. In any general survey of these radiations it is difficult to
know what to call them because of the many names they bear. The
negatively charged rays which issue from the cathode of the vacuum
tube are called cathode rays inside the tube, but outside the tube they
are called Lenard rays, because Lenard succeeded in causing them to
pass through a thin window of aluminium, and was thus enabled to
study them under conditions other than those in which they were
produced. Positively charged rays, which appear simultaneously
with the cathode rays, but are much more difficult to identify, are
called channel rays (Kanalstrahlen). because they were first observed
by using as cathode a piece of metal pierced with holes, so placed that
the positively charged particles passed through the holes. Being thus
sharply separated from the negative cathode rays which moved in the
opposite direction, the positive radiation could be rendered distinctly
manifest. The marvellously penetrating rays which arise where the
cathode rays strike glass or metal were called by their discoverer
X-rays. It is now more usual to speak of them as Rontgen rays.
Radiations which are spontaneously emitted are collectively called
Becquerel rays, in honour of the discoverer of radio-activity ; and,
individually, the positively charged rays are called a-rays, the nega-
tively charged rays /3-rays, and the uncharged rays, which resemble
the Rontgen rays, are called 7-rays — a notation suggested by Ruther-
ford. This multiplicity of names is of historic interest, and may be
convenient for the physicist, but it tends to obscure the essential
identity. The first two classes can be called positive and negative radia-
tion, but no generic name seems yet to be in use for the X-rays type.
These radiations are invisible, and were detected by their effects ;
in the first instance, many years ago, by the effect of fluorescence
during the passage of an electric current through a tube in which the
air was so highly rarefied that it could not absorb and check the
radiation proceeding from the cathode. Where the glass wall did
check that radiation the visible effect was brilliant fluorescence. As
all the radiations produce fluorescent effects if they are sufficiently
intense, it is possible to make their path evident by means of fluorescent
screens. The self-luminosity of the purer salts of radium is believed
to be due to phosphorescence caused by the radiations within the
substance itself, but what the connection between the radiations and
phosphorescence really is we cannot tell. Phosphorescence — which
differs from fluorescence only in that it continues for an appreciable
time after the cause which has produced it has ceased to act — is called
forth by the more refrangible rays of ordinary light. If the ultra-
violet part of the spectrum of sunlight, or preferably electric arc light,
be thrown upon a suitable phosphorescent screen, the invisible rays
become visible as violet, blue, or green, and sometimes even as yellow
or red. Stokes gave the explanation of this when he showed that in
every case the incident light is changed by the phosphorescent sub-

90 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

stance into light of longer wave-length. How that change is brought
about we do not know. Many substances only show phosphorescent
effects if they are not quite chemically pure, and this renders it
possible that the cause is some kind of chemical action. On the
other hand, there are facts, such as the luminous effects produced by
cleavage and friction, which seem to suggest a mechanical cause.
Moreover, phosphorescence is, to a certain degree, a function of the
temperature. Thus various materials — paper, for instance — can be
made brilliantly luminous if they are at the temperature of liquid air,
while certain crystals and various kinds of glass become phosphores-
cent without any other agency if they are heated. Again, if a sub-
stance which has been rendered phosphorescent by light be heated
while it is still luminous, the effect is, first, great increase of bright-
ness, and, next, far more rapid extinction. So sensitive is phosphores-
cence to the radiation of heat, that even some of the visible rays at
the red end of the solar spectrum, and still more the invisible heat
rays, suffice in certain cases to extinguish the light, after having first
caused a brief increase of activity. These and other curious inter-
actions between heat, light, and phosphorescence show that the
phenomena are, in any case, extremely complicated. Possibly there
is really a close link between phosphorescence and radio-activity, so
that knowledge concerning the one may throw light on the other.

A principle which has produced great results in modern research
is that it is worth while to seek elsewhere for what is known to exist
anywhere. It was this principle which inspired Becquerel when he
made experiments with fluorescent salts, in the hope of finding radia-
tions which should, like the Rontgen rays, act on the photographic
plate through substances opaque to light. He found far more than he
had sought, but it was some time before the evidently complex nature
of the spontaneously emitted uranium radiation he had detected was
thoroughly understood ; not, indeed, till after the discovery of that
superlatively radio-active element so aptly named radium. It was
then seen that part of the radiation can be bent out of its course by a
strong magnetic field in precisely the same manner as cathode rays
can be bent aside. This part forms the /3-rays. Later on it was found
possible in the case of radium, if the magnetic field was sufficiently
intense, to deflect slightly a considerable portion of the remaining
radiation in the opposite direction. This portion constitutes the
a-rays. The 7-rays are, like the Rontgen rays, unaffected by mag-
netism. Like the Rontgen rays also, they traverse a prism without
refraction. Very little is known about them because of their exceeding
penetrativeness ; on which account it is possible that a great proportion
of this radiation escapes detection altogether, for rays which traverse
substances without any check can produce no perceptible effects at all.

The photographs obtained by making the radiations permanently
record their own path furnish valuable data for the mathematician

1904 INVISIBLE RADIATIONS 91

and for the experimentalist. Thus it is clearly seen that, under the
influence of magnetism, the /3-rays describe circles of varying radius ;
whence it follows that they vary in velocity. It is also clearly seen
that the yS- and 7-rays are perfectly distinct, for there is marked dis-
continuity between the least deflected /9-rays and the totally unde-
flected 7-rays. Furthermore, the photographs show that it is the
7-rays and the least deflected yQ-rays which most easily penetrate
obstacles placed in their path ; but where /3- or 7-rays are checked by
the substances they traverse, they give rise to secondary rays
emanating from those substances — rays not due to reflection or
diffusion, but analogous rather to phosphorescence, for they have not
precisely the same properties as the rays which call them forth. The
a -rays cannot pass through obstacles, and are totally absorbed even
by air at a very short distance from their source.

The chief difference between positive and negative radiation,
wheresoever found, is this. Negative radiation is formed of those
inconceivably minute particles called electrons, which some physicists
believe may consist entirely of electricity ; while positive radiation is
formed of particles which seem to be of the order of atoms, and which,
hence, are, when compared with electrons, of enormous size and mass.
The velocity of the radiations varies greatly. In the cathode rays it
is one-fifth that of light ; in the /3-rays of radium the highest value
is about one-third that of light. ' Slow ' negative rays, such as some
of those which can be drawn out of metal by the agency of the light
of the electric arc, or other source rich in ultra-violet rays, have a
velocity which is about a hundredth that of light. It is interesting to
note that the feeble magnetism of the earth suffices to curve the slower
radiations. The apparent convergence of the rays of an aurora
borealis is an optical effect believed to be due to this cause. Positive
radiation is more difficult to study, and little is known about it yet.
The a-rays of radium have a velocity which is a twentieth that of light.
In uranium radiation there seem to be no a-rays ; but since wherever
electricity of one sign is made manifest an equal quantity of electricity
of the opposite sign is liberated somewhere, the probability is that in
this and in other cases where we perceive negative radiation alone, the
positive charge is left on atoms which remain in the substance itself.

The effect which is by far the most sensitive test of the existence
of these invisible radiations, and which is, moreover, the only effect
capable of quantitative measurement, is that of rendering air conduc-
tive to electricity. In the phraseology of that theory which is at
present held to be the best means of co-ordinating the facts, the radia-
tions ionise the air. According to this theory, the impact of the radia-
tions causes a certain atomic dislocation in some of the particles of
the air, so that these particles are separated into those positive and
negative parts which, in all matter, neutralise one another when united
— parts similar to those of which the charged radiations themselves are

92 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

composed. It is the movement of these parts under the influence of
electric forces which constitutes the current. Independently of any
theory, we know as experimentally proved facts that the change in
the air which makes it conductive is accompanied by the formation
of centres upon which water-vapour can condense, for air which was
dust free and perfectly clear may become cloudy after ionisation;
that these centres are positively and negatively charged, for they
can be drawn away by an electric field ; that their velocity is not high,
for they can be blown out of their course by even a feeble current of
air ; and that the removal of these ' ions ' destroys the conductibility
of the air. Hence it is a legitimate inference, and independent of any
hypothesis as to their nature, that the conductibility is due to the
ions. It is the more necessary to distinguish between proved facts,
which are an abiding possession, and the more or less ephemeral
theories based upon those facts, because physicists now look upon
theories of any kind as little else but convenient tools. ' The merit of
a theory,' it has been recently said, ' consists not in being true, for
no theories are true, but in being fertile ' — that is to say, in being
not only a satisfactory and self-consistent representation of the
totality of the facts, so far as we know them, but also in suggesting
by the images used in which direction to seek for further knowledge.
When, as is the case with the theory of ions, calculations made on
the suppositions involved in the pictorial representation lead to far-
reaching conclusions, which have been verified when put to the test of
experiment and observation, then the theory is certainly fertile ; and
a theory can only be fertile, one would imagine, in virtue of bearing,
in however remote a degree, some resemblance to the truth.

By the test of ionisation it would appear from the researches of
several physicists that radio-activity is, in a feeble degree, a property
of very many substances, and, indeed, perhaps of all.

An exceedingly interesting series of observations made by the
German physicists Elster and Geitel has proved the universality of
radio-activity from another point of view. About ten years ago,
while studying atmospheric electricity, they found that even in the
driest air, and in spite of all precautions, it was not possible to keep
an instrument charged for any length of time without some loss. As
it was necessary for their observations that they should be able to
have entire confidence in their tools, they tested their instruments by
leaving them charged for some time in vacua. There being then no
loss of charge, there was evidently no leakage through insufficient
insulation of the supports in the instruments themselves, and the loss
could only be due to a certain slight conductibility of atmospheric
air, for which they could not account. It was known that air can be
ionised by ultra-violet light, and they were inclined at first to attribute
the conductibility to ionisation of the atmosphere by ultra-violet sun-
light. But when, in order to test this supposition, they conducted

1904 INVISIBLE RADIATIONS 93

experiments in the air of caves and cellars, they found that the con-
ductibility, instead of being less than in air exposed to sunlight, was,
on the contrary, very much greater. While they were still searching
for the cause of the ionisation, which was evidently not due to sun-
light— and, indeed, the rays which cause ionisation are largely absorbed
in the upper regions of the atmosphere — progress was being made in
the study of radio-activity. Almost simultaneously, hi 1899, Ruther-
ford discovered with compounds of thorium, and Curie with com-
pounds of radium, that, in addition to the radiations, these elements
emit something else. This something else, to which Rutherford gave
the name emanation, cannot be weighed, gives no clearly distinctive
lines when examined spectroscopically, has none of the mechanical
properties of a gas, does not act chemically in any way we can detect,
and, indeed, yields, so to speak, no evidence whatever for its exist-
ence, save that where it passes or where it settles, there it gives rise
to radio-activity. Any substance whatever which is left for some
time in the vicinity of the radio-active salt becomes itself temporarily
radio-active. The emanation diffuses throughout an enclosed space
as a gas would diffuse, only, apparently, it passes through very narrow
openings with more ease ; it is checked by everything that checks a
gas ; it can, like a gas, be pumped or blown out of a vessel ; it dis-
appears at the temperature of liquid air, and reappears when the
temperature is raised ; its absence or presence being in every case
manifested by the absence or presence of the induced radio-activity.
This induced radio-activity can be measured in the usual way —
namely, by the extent to which it renders air conductive ; and it
has been found that when radium emanation is left in a closed vessel
without the radium salt which has given rise to it, this definite amount,
whatever it may be, diminishes by half in four days. If, however,
the vessel be open to the air, then the emanation diminishes by half
in twenty-eight minutes. With actinium, which is very active
thorium, the emanation diminishes by half in a closed vessel in three
seconds. Constants of time such as these may serve to determine
the nature of a radio-active substance, when it is found in quantities
too small for any chemical test to be of the slightest avail.

The connection between the emanation and the radiations is as
yet a matter for more or less plausible conjecture. The emanation
disappears — that is to say, it becomes lost to our means of detection —
and in disappearing it gives rise to radiations. Becquerel considers
it best to look upon the emanation as the primary phenomenon, and
to suppose that the radiations are always due to the break-up of
emanation, whether that emanation be entangled, so to speak, in the
pores of the substance itself, or whether it has diffused away from
the substance and settled elsewhere. There is, however, no evidence
for this explanation or for any other.

What we do know for certain is that the emanation is attracted by

94 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

negatively charged metal, and that it can thus be collected and con-
centrated. After this discovery, which was made as soon as the
emanation itself was detected, Elster and Geitel conducted experi-
ments to determine whether the ionisation of the atmosphere might
be due to radio-activity. They fixed a cylinder, formed of thirty
metres of wire, in the open air, and kept it negatively charged to a
high potential. They found that if they rubbed the wire every few
hours with a tiny bit of leather steeped in ammonia or in hydrochloric
acid, the leather became radio-active, and that when they burnt the
leather the ash was radio-active. By thus concentrating on a small
surface the emanation collected on the whole cylinder during many
hours, they were able to obtain, not only the ionisation effect, but
also the photographic effect, for which much stronger radio-activity
is required. It soon became evident that the atmosphere every-
where and always contains radio-active emanation, more or less, and
the next question was : Whence does that emanation arise ? Care-
fully conducted experiments proved that it is not due to any con-
stituent of the air itself ; it arises from the earth. Air taken from the
soil may contain so much emanation that, if properly concentrated, it
will even yield the phosphorescent effect. Water which has passed
through the earth contains emanation in solution. This is especially
the case with mineral waters, and it has been suggested that the
curative properties may, in certain cases, be partly due to the radio-
activity ; if so, that would explain the puzzling fact that some waters lose
their virtue when removed from their source, since, however carefully the
vessel was closed, the emanation would nevertheless disappear. Whence
this universally diffused emanation arises is not yet known ; researches
to determine the substances which produce it are being carried on now.
The amount of matter in question is so infinitesimal that experi-
menters have not yet been able to detect any loss of weight in their
radio-active salts to account for the unceasingly emitted emanation.
This is, however, not so strange as it may sound at first, for it is paral-
leled by facts with which we are perfectly familiar. Scent, which is on
good grounds believed to be a material emanation, is not necessarily
accompanied by loss of weight, not even when it is as strongly marked
as in the case of musk. The fact is that where our senses do give us
direct evidence they may be far more sensitive than any indirect
means we can devise. Thus we know of the existence of a
multitude of emanations by no other test than our sense of smell.
Where, on the other hand, our senses fail us, there we may remain
in total ignorance until we learn in some indirect way. The most
striking example of this self-evident, though too often forgotten, fact
is furnished by electricity. We are in the position as regards electricity
of a deaf man, who only knows that there is sound when he sees motion
or feels vibration ; for it is only indirectly that we can perceive it,
seeing that we lack an electric sense. Yet, step by step, by indirect

1904 INVISIBLE BADIATIONS 95

means, we have learnt that electricity is the most universal of agents,
and now we are learning, also by indirect means, of the existence in
nature of hitherto unsuspected subtle emanations, electrically charged
radiations, and radiations to which no substance is opaque.

The most plausible hypothesis respecting the radiations of the
X-rays type is probably that which was formulated by Stokes — namely,
that they are ethereal vibrations which differ from light as noise
differs from music ; that is to say, that they do not belong to that
series of rays produced by continuous rhythmic vibrations, which
includes light, radiant heat, and the electro-magnetic waves which
are utilised in wireless telegraphy, but that they are irregular pulses
in the ether. In the case of the Rontgen rays, the pulses would be
produced by the impact of the cathode rays upon the surfaces which
check them ; in the case of the 7-rays, by the ethereal commotion
caused by the emission of the charged radiations. In 1902, Blondlot
noticed that if Rontgen rays fell upon a small electric spark they
somewhat increased the brightness of that spark, and he thought to
utilise this effect in an elaborately devised experiment for obtaining
the velocity of the Rontgen rays. The velocity he found by this
means was equal to that of light, and this seemed an important step
towards knowledge of their nature. As he proceeded in his experi-
mental work, however, he noticed that the rays which affect the
spark were polarised, and that these polarised rays could be refracted
by passing them through crystals. But it is abundantly evident that
X-rays cannot be refracted, and therefore Blondlot perceived that
there must be some mistake in the conclusions at which he had arrived.
A simple test experiment made the matter perfectly clear. He inter-
posed a prism of aluminium between the source of the X-rays and the
spark, by the appearance of which he had thought to detect their
influence, choosing aluminium because it is a substance which is
transparent to X-rays and opaque to visible light. The X-rays
passed undeviated through the prism, and produced no effect what-
ever on the spark. When, however, the spark was shifted into a
position in which it was struck by rays which were deviated by the
prism, then the former effect was perceived. Thus Blondlot saw that
he had not succeeded in measuring the velocity of the Rontgen rays,
but that he had discovered, mixed with them, some extremely
penetrating rays which had the physical properties of ordinary light.

Further study has made him feel certain that these N-rays, as he
calls them, do belong to the same category as light. They produce
none of those photographic or phosphorescent effects which have
so greatly aided the study of the Becquerel rays, and the only charac-
teristic by which they can be recognised is that they cause a change
in the luminosity of pre-existent phosphorescence, or of any feeble
light or feebly illuminated surface — a change which it requires some
practice to be able to appreciate, and which is not visible to every
observer even then. On this account Blondlot's conclusions are not

96 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

yet universally accepted. One objective proof of the correctness of
his observations has, however, been furnished. If a small electric
spark is caused to produce a photograph of itself — all necessary pre-
cautions being taken to avoid error — the difference that it makes in
the photographic appearance of the spark, whether it is being acted
upon by N-rays or not, is marked and unmistakable.

Blondlot has measured the wave-length of the N-rays by methods
similar to those employed for ordinary light. As a source of the
rays he uses a Nernst lamp, enclosed in a dark lantern, with a window
of aluminium, thus effectually cutting off all luminous rays. In
front of the window there is a screen, formed of layers of aluminium
and black paper, to cut off all the heat rays which proceed from the
metal. This precaution is especially necessary in all these experi-
ments, seeing that phosphorescence is so extremely sensitive to heat.
Since N-rays do not pass through water, if it is pure — though they do
pass through salt water, as well as through aluminium, wood, and
many other substances — a screen of wet cardboard in which there is
a narrow slit permits of the isolation of a beam, which can be focussed
and dispersed by lenses and prisms of aluminium. Like the visible
rays, the N-rays are heterogeneous ; the wave-lengths that have been
measured vary, but they are all at least a hundred times smaller
than that of the furthest ultra-violet rays that had been hitherto
known — rays which do not reach us from the sun at all, since they are
entirely absorbed by the atmosphere, and which, when obtained from
the electric light, must be measured in vacuo, for a very little air
is as opaque to them as if the air were lead. Yet the N-rays, which
lie so very much further beyond the violet end of the spectrum, are
largely contained in sunlight, thus proving that they lie outside the
limit of the radiations which the air cuts off. N-rays are absorbed
by many substances, and then afterwards emitted ; whether changed
or not in character we cannot yet tell, but in any case there is here a
close and important analogy with phosphorescence.

The point, however, which is perhaps of the most general interest
with respect to these researches is this. There seems to be clear
evidence already that there are other radiations besides those the
wave-length of which has been determined, which are being discovered
by means of this new test. Some of these may belong to a totally
different part of the long series of ethereal vibrations which reach us
from the sun, while others may be of an entirely different order. For
the present all the radiations, which had not hitherto been detected,
and which produce the same effects as the rays which Blondlot noticed
at first, are grouped together as N-rays ; but there are physicists who
believe that further study will enable important distinctions to be
made, and that with respect to this whole subject of invisible
radiation, in the widest acceptation of that term, we are only on the
threshold of discovery.

ANTONIA ZIMMEBN.

1904

MEDICATED AIR

A SUGGESTION

WE cannot change our climate. Is it not possible to greatly ameliorate
the part it plays in two propositions of grave national importance ?
These are —

(1) That the climate of these islands is in the main favourable to
the development of certain diseases widely prevalent within its range,
and adding great numbers to our yearly death-roll.

(2) That the atmospheric conditions of the life of the poor in
London and other great cities are not, and probably never will be,
favourable to the healthy development of the race.

As air is the first of our vital needs, so what may be called
* atmospheric hygiene ' is the first force by which both these dangers
should be met. It has been the last to attract the attention of the
public or to engage the resources of science. It is true that public
faith, so long fastened on the medicine bottle, has been in some
measure diverted to Open Air as a curative formula ; and that
sanitary science, not confined to drains, to food, and to water, has
included in its purview questions of ventilation and cubic air space
per individual. It is with the first subject, which in many of its
aspects includes the second, that this article is mainly concerned.

The gospel of Open Air has been widely preached, and has made
many converts ; large funds have been generously provided for putting
the doctrine into practice, and an ample measure of success has
already been achieved. Do not these facts justify the hope that
when the real nature of the question at issue is understood, and
its vast potentialities are revealed by closer examination, neither
science nor philanthropy will be satisfied to stop at the threshold of
progress ?

Quantity has been the chief guide hitherto in the application of
air, whether to disease or to overcrowded habitations. But the
quality of the air, its condition, its properties, its intricate composition ;
the bearing of these on the special requirements of different com-
plaints ; the suggested possibility of assimilating the air of our climate
to that of other climates known to be beneficial to particular diseases, so
converting it into a curative agent before it is breathed by the patient —

VOL. LVI— No. 329 97 H

98 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

these offer a vast field of investigation, and perhaps a rich harvest of
relief to a multitude of sufferers. Few and shallow as yet are the
furrows which science and medicine, working hand in hand, have
driven in that great field. In another country a munificent endow-
ment has been given by a patriotic citizen for a systematic investiga-
tion of the nature and treatment of consumption.1 But consumption
is only one of the diseases which come within the scope of treated air.
Already, happily, the first experiment in this greater subject has
been tried, the first results achieved and demonstrated, in England —
in London. If we stand still, and the organised investigations of
American science and medicine should in the end point to this as the
true line of progress, what will then remain to be said of us here in
England ? That, shutting our eyes to the light, we were content to
lag behind, to follow only where others led the way, and to leave the
credit of a great achievement to a more enterprising and more generous
nation.

The necessity of the case arises from two causes, the one natural,
the other artificial but permanent ; for the conditions of our popula-
tion as to residence are not less fixed than those of our climate.

Our climate is not all bad. It is a question whether on the whole any
other could have been of greater advantage. We are still surprised at
times at its behaviour, as though not yet perfectly familiar with it. But
as a fact we are acclimatised, not perhaps in the sense of our trees and
vegetation, or of some extinct race of aborigines for whom the
climate was made and who were made for the climate. We are not
grown in it as a race ; but after some centuries of habitation we have
grown to it. The asperities of the British climate did not drive our
imperial conquerors from their cherished Ultima Thule ; and succes-
sive races of invaders have held it dear. Indeed, they have
thriven and prospered, enduring climatic hardship to a good purpose,
it would seem. Some enthusiasts hold that it is the best of
climates. It has promoted open-air life and sport; and it was in
England that the Open Air treatment was first preached by Bodington,
and in Ireland by MacCormac, long before the crusade against con-
sumption. Undeniably it has kept us a strong race. ' Physical
deterioration,' which is under investigation by a Royal Commission,
is really due not to the operation of climatic influences, but to
their partial suspension by artificial conditions of life. Nor is our
climate devoid of moral effect in the formation of the national quality
of patience. ' Temperate,' in a technical sense, its merciless varia-
bility is a mental as well as physical discipline. It is a ' universal
exerciser ' not only for the body but the mind, preparing us to sur-

1 The Henry Phipps Institute, at Philadelphia ; an admirable instance of the
endowment of a fully-equipped institute for the progressive study of the prevention
and cure of a single disease, until that disease shall be rendered preventable and
curable.

1904 MEDICATED AIR 99

mount obstacles and endure disappointments which we cannot foresee,
and stimulating us_like the rigid alternations of the hot and cold
water douche.

It is not, however, with the virtues but the shortcomings of our
climate that we are now concerned. Good as it is for health, it is also
good for the prevalence and development of some of our diseases — so
good, in fact, that we may classify them for the present purpose as
climatic diseases. We have got rid of ague ; not, it is significant to
note, by treating the complaint, but by treating its cause. Land
drainage would banish ague even from the swamps of Africa. But
consumption, with its insidious approach, its long delay, its fatal end ;
rheumatism, reading heart disease for so many ; kidney disease, in its
chronic form ; bronchial diseases, lightly termed ' affections ' ; gout,
with its evil connections — for all these the best cure is climate of
another kind.

Thousands of fortunate people pursue that cure, on the Riviera,
at Davos, in Colorado, Mexico, and many other places too numerous
to mention, where special virtues have been found in the climate.
Yet there remain hundreds of thousands, the vast majority of the
sufferers, whose means do not and never will enable them to leave
this country, who are thrown back ceaselessly on its climatic dis-
advantages, and compelled to carry on a long and often hopeless
struggle with a natural and native foe. Their helplessness appeals
to us, and should not appeal in vain if, as we believe, a great
measure of emancipation is consistent with economic conditions that
cannot be altered.

It is the story of Mahomet and the mountain. If the patient
cannot visit other climates, the air of other climates should be brought
to the patient. The elemental forces in the air of those climates
which make for cure exist in part in ours, but Nature has made them
subordinate to other and less favourable forces ; science may suppress
these and bring forward those. If they do not exist, science may
some day produce them. Then to some extent in any building,
however large, more completely in an enclosed cubic space, the patient
would be enabled to breathe air which by scientific treatment had
been assimilated in its essential properties to the air of health resorts
thousands of miles distant from England.

This proposition, startling as it may sound, is already passing out
of the stage of theory. At an institution 2 known for its successful
treatment of wounds, ulcers, and lupus by oxygen and ozone,
a significant example has been given by the erection of enclosed
cubicles, in which consumptive patients breathe treated air, and
are subjected to conditions analogous to those which cure consump-
tion at places like Davos or Tenerife. We learn that encouraging

2 The Oxygen Hospital, Fitzroy Square, under the patronage of H.E.H. Princess
Louise, Duohess of Argyll.

H 2

100 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY July

results have been observed, such as the reduction of temperature,
the disappearance of tubercle bacilli, the relief of cough, and the
increase of weight. This is mentioned as an illustration, and because
it is only fair not to overlook any credit attaching to a first experi-
ment. Its originator would probably be the last to claim that in its
present stage it contains more than the germ of a great movement.

Let us examine very briefly the possibilities that lie within the
range of a more complete and organised development of this great
reserve of our natural resources. The cure of consumption is among
the hardest of our tasks, and more than we could venture to hope for
as a result of any one system of treatment. But it is less difficult
to realise the protection that might be afforded against rheumatism,
heart disease, and kidney disease by mitigating certain properties in
the atmosphere that surrounds the patient. If treated air should
prove, with the co-operation of other hygienic factors, of great value in
these and other ailments, it would solve the economic or social difficulty
inseparable from a population like ours, of which only a small per-
centage of sufferers can visit other climates. It would meet another
difficulty which attends the Open Air treatment at home. It is
applicable to London and other great towns, where the great majority
of the sick cannot, for want of means, be sent to open air sanatoria in
the country. As a form of treatment it could find its domicile in
every town hospital. It would not remove the patient from the
centre of science and medicine, but would place the best resources
of these at his disposal, and enrich and develop them by the oppor-
tunities afforded for observation and study.

Mention has already been made of the variety of diseases, widely
prevalent in this country, which might be brought within the range
of a systematic investigation of the possibilities of treated air. When
we consider how numerous and diverse those possibilities are, we are
justified in saying that at present little is known and little has been
done in this direction, and in asking if we can calmly contemplate a
continuance of our inactivity and ignorance. We have purified
water ; distilled, aerated, and medicated it. We use it for purposes
of cure in every variety that nature can provide or science can
apply. What has been done for air, beyond mechanical ventilation,
modifying or increasing the abundance of its supply without any
improvement in its quality ? Compressed air and rarefied air have
been used. Establishments exist for the inhalation of steam and
medicinal vapours. Oxygen, too, has been summoned to the aid of
the sick. But these have been casual expedients of the nature of
' sittings.' Nowhere, save in the instance already mentioned, have
the means been provided of continuous application by enabling the
patient to live for a given time in treated air.

The main constituents and the main qualities of air are well known.
Its finer constituents and qualities are only now gaining recognition.

1904 MEDICATED A IB 101

The temperature, the moisture, and the pressure of the atmosphere have
already been submitted to control ; and it might even now be possible
to provide within a limited cubic space a succession of artificial atmo-
spheres differing in their value for purposes of treatment. But the
finer characters of natural climates — for instance, their tonic or their
relaxing quality — are not wholly to be explained on so simple a basis.
As the proportion of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid is known
to show hardly any local variations, these subtle climatic properties
possibly depend upon the more variable influence of light, of elec-
tricity, of magnetism, and of the latest of our additions to the attri-
butes of air, radio-activity. The recent observations made in Switzer-
land that the air at a moderate altitude is several times more radio-
active than in the valley favour the hope that a future elucidation of
the mysteries of climate may result from a study of the physical
agents already known to us, and of others yet to be discovered.

Is it not clear from this brief survey that the field of investiga-
tion before us is vast and varied, and that the treatment of air may
become at least as important as the Open Air treatment ? The two
subjects are closely connected, and it is a question whether
the Open Air treatment, in this country at least, can have the fair
trial its great possibilities demand, without being complemented by
an efficient control of the condition of the air itself. Extremes of cold
or heat, of damp or dryness, mists and fogs, constant changes of wind,
cannot be regarded as a helpful part of the treatment, and need to be
eliminated. The relative quality of local climates is another important
consideration. Above all, it must not be forgotten that the suitability
of the climate is an individual question. It is well known that even
Davos does not suit all cases of consumption, and the best of health
resorts would be the better for facilities for modifying its local atmo-
sphere to meet individual indications.

No inquiry into this matter can fail to open up an important
question affecting the construction both of our sanatoria and our
town hospitals. In the former provision for suitable air is not a care
of the future, but of the present. Sanatoria must live up to their
name. With cure as their object they must follow every advance,
if they cannot lead it, and provide for each condition the best air that
science can produce. Have they been planned with this progressive
end in view ?

The suitability of our older hospitals for the Open Air method,
including all the improvements in it which are within sight, is another
anxious matter. From this aspect alone, irrespective of any new
departure which further discoveries may at any time force upon us, there
is a certain responsibility in planning monumental hospitals of a dura-
bility ' worthy of the Romans ' instead of lighter buildings not intended
to survive so long their inevitable obsolescence. Within the near
future our ideas as to the internal distribution of space and of wards

102 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

may undergo modification in connection with the necessity for ex-
tending an improved application of the Open Air principle, and of
supplying not damaging but healing air. Have our hospitals been
designed to include this purpose ?

To elucidate all these problems and satisfy their requirements,
prolonged and systematic investigation and patient observations
are necessary. The result may bring us to the strange conclusion
that after all the best treatment for our climatic diseases is the only
one possible to the vast majority of those who suffer from them, to
stay at home ; and the best sanatorium one where every facility for
aerotherapy may in the future be obtainable.

If, by sufficient study, we could ultimately learn to treat the air
so as to fairly reproduce for practical purposes of treatment the
virtues of various climates, a great advance would have been made.
And, besides imitating climates artificially, we might in the future be
able to create climates to suit the individual requirement just as we
regulate the dose of medicine or of electricity, by varying the supply
of the normal constituents and qualities of air and by adding bene-
ficial agents. To analyse the factors in the air of a climate might
enable us to compound it as we compound a chemical body. That
this treatment of the atmosphere is a practical possibility is becoming
known to men of science ; that it is worth doing will be obvious to
physicians ; that it is being tried has already been shown. How soon
it shall be tried on an adequate scale is a question for the nation.
The range of investigation which in the future is open to us in this
direction is boundless.

It remains to suggest and, not without hesitation, to formulate a
scheme by which the conclusions arrived at might be embodied in a
great national enterprise.

It is strange that in an age illuminated by its discoveries pure
science has as yet done so little for health. Though we may not be
so enthusiastic as Metchnikofi about prolonging life, still we may
hope for some improvement if we know how to earn it. Hitherto
medicine has gleaned rather than reaped in the fields of science,
or has caught here and there a casual seed which was to fructify
under its own care. There is an illimitable harvest, if only men of
pure science are secured as practical associates in our work. They
are the explorers fully equipped. Agents of progress themselves,
their collaboration with its other agents should be a direct one.
A new organisation is needed, in which pure science should be given
the place it alone can fill. This should include scientific men in
working combination with the men who have practical experience in
the actual treatment of disease. To assist the cure of the sick and
suffering might then become a welcome function of the man of
science, as it is the professional duty of the medical man.

The practical requisites for such a scheme would be —

1904 MEDICATED AIR 103

1. A Hospital for the treatment of disease with the help of atmo-
spheric as well as other agents ; not necessarily a very large or costly
hospital, for special construction and equipment would be more
important than size. A hospital is the only place where clinical and
therapeutical methods can be applied with systematic thoroughness,
so that the results can be identified with the factors of treatment,
and the knowledge thus gained diffused far and wide with authority.

2. An Institute for the study of atmospheric hygiene in relation
to (a) the treatment of disease, (&) the improvement of the health and
strength of the healthy. The institute would be worked in connection
with the hospital, and would represent on a large scale the functions
of the clinical and pathological laboratories attached to an ordinary
hospital-. The staff of the institute might consist of (a) a consulta-
tive board, including, in addition to physicians and surgeons, men
eminent in each branch of science : physicists, chemists, physiolo-
gists, electricians, radiographers, architects, engineers, and others ;
(&) a smaller group of experts to collaborate with the medical staff.

Need we ask what would be gained by such a combination ? All
problems of treatment involving chemistry or physics would be
studied and worked out in their various aspects, including the practical
side of finance, by the highest authorities of the institute, and, if
judged practicable, their final elaboration carried out by the joint
scientific and medical staff of the hospital. In this way, for the first
time, pure science would be handling the practical work of healing.

A rSsume of these ideas, which are probably novel to most, may be
of service to the reader.

No new cure for consumption or for any other diseases is contained
in these pages. Their object is to reveal the extent to which our
knowledge and our use of curative agencies available in a promising
direction have been unnecessarily delayed.

Open Air, the greatest of all modern advances in the treatment of
consumption, can never be superseded ; it only needs to be improved
and, if necessary, supplemented. Its application extends far beyond
consumption. But our open air does not always suit our ehief
ailments so well as open air elsewhere at selected stations.

The advantage of climate as a protection or as a cure should not
remain the exclusive privilege of the few ; some equivalent at least
should be provided for the many.

This national duty is specially a London duty, for in London,
with its millions of breathers of used-up air and with its miles of
contaminated atmosphere, it is combined with another national duty
— that of stopping the deterioration of the race, and of providing for
the healthy development of the young. This necessarily involves
as a first essential a progressive study how to improve the air we
breathe in the sick-room, in the sleeping- room, in the school-room,
and in the workshop.

104 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY July

The difficult task of producing special atmospheres for the pre-
vention or relief of some of our climatic diseases, for which special
climates are distinctly beneficial, is beyond the unaided powers of
medical art. It could not be successfully attempted without a
systematic collaboration between the representatives of pure science
and practical engineering and those of medicine. This calls for an
institute for the experimental study of atmospheric hygiene in all its
aspects, combined with a hospital for practical observation and treat-
ment, not limited to any one system, but capable of readjustment to
every future advance. Under such a combination problems relating
to the construction and plant of hospitals and sanatoria, as well as
those of medical treatment, which have not hitherto been submitted
conjointly to comparative study, would be continuously worked at,
and the results made available for all charitable institutions through-
out the land.

Labour and delay are inseparable from the attainment of practical
results in the treatment of disease, and still more in connection with
atmospheric hygiene as relating to the ventilation of houses and towns.
This twofold necessity strengthens the claim for prompt action. For
solid clinical results, however, we may not have to wait so long. A
hospital duly equipped would from the first be fulfilling an urgent work of
relief, on those less complicated lines which have already been found
successful, and any other simple lines to come. To generous supporters
of the scheme this would be an immediate reward. It would encourage
and sustain those engaged in the weary work of research, and provide
the first fruits of that matured and systematic co-operation between
medicine and science for which this article is an earnest appeal.

WILLIAM EWART.

1904

THE POLITICAL WOMAN IN AUSTRALIA

UNDER the laws of most countries women possess no legal rights, no
political freedom ; they do enjoy certain privileges, but of these they
may be deprived at any moment by the same power that granted
them — the ballot is the only weapon with which to secure and retain
legal and political rights. * Advance Australia ' is our national motto,
and we Australian women have good reason to glory in the advance
of our country, which, in granting women absolute political equality
with men, has reached a position unique in the world's history. Philo-
sophers, poets, and statesmen have rhapsodised about the beauty
and the blessing of representative government, but few have pictured
women as co-partners in such a form of government. America was
the birthplace of modern democracy, but America has never dreamt
in its philosophy of applying the fundamental principles of the Declara-
tion of Independence to American women. No, it has been left to
the newest of nations to admit that as ' men are created equal . . .
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ... to secure
these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed,' so shall women be endowed with
the rights that are considered the just due of sane, law-abiding,
naturalised men.

The Australian constitution has no sex limitations whatever ;
women vote on equal terms with men, they are eligible for member-
ship in our National Parliament, they may even ascend to the dignity
of office. That the constitution establishes the principle of no sex in
politics is an unparalleled triumph for the woman suffrage party,
which does not forget to give honour where honour is due, to the men
of Australia, who have grown so far in democratic sentiment that they
can tolerate the idea of living with political equals, an idea up to
which John Stuart Mill said the men of his time were not educated.

It says a great deal for the educative value of the vote that the
prejudice against women entering Parliament is more pronounced
amongst women than it is amongst men. It took about twenty years
to educate the women of Australia up to the point of asking for the
franchise, and they are going to stick there for some time before they
go any further. Nothing dies so hard as prejudice, and it is prejudice

105

106 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

alone that blinds them to the fact that it is necessary and desirable
to have women in Parliament. The vote in itself is a powerful weapon
for good, but men, as the result of years of experience, have discovered
that direct parliamentary representation is essential if full effect is
to be given to the vote : they know that the entrance of women into
Parliament is the natural and logical outcome of the minor reform ;
therefore, they do not view with such horror, as do many women,
the prospect of seeing women within the sacred precincts of Parlia-
ment. Indeed, it is because the sacredness of Parliament is such a
myth that so many public-spirited men desire to see women there.
They well know the limitations of their own sex. It always has been
the ' privilege ' of woman to tidy up after man. Man seems to be
constitutionally unable to keep things tidy. Take the daily round,
the common task — he leaves the bathroom in a state of flood, his
dressing-room a howling wilderness of masculine paraphernalia, his
office a chaos of ink and papers ; the wonder is he ' gets there ' so well
as he does. Untidy at home, untidy in business, so is he untidy in
the nation ; he does his best, but as he does not understand the first
principles of household management, he gets the national household
into a terrible state of muddle. He is so busy looking after the big
things, that he forgets all about the little things that make the big
things a success, instead of a failure. And so the women have to
come along and help to evolve order out of chaos ; but they suffer no
illusions as to the magnitude of their task. The work of tidying
up public affairs is not the work of a day, nor of a generation ; it is
primarily a matter of slow education, which must begin in the home
and be founded on an ethical basis. Some think that, if women do
their duty in their homes, nothing further is required, no public duty
should be expected of them ; but women cannot train their sons and
daughters in the varied, complex, and sacred duties of citizenship
unless they possess a first-hand knowledge of what citizenship means.
Women are not made safe advisers of their children by being kept
ignorant of all that citizenship involves. Public spirit is a great
need of the age. We wonder why public affairs are so badly managed ;
it is partly because those who conduct them have been trained by
women who had no conception of public duty, who knew not the
meaning of public spirit, who, consequently, could not be expected
to equip their sons properly for the public arena. Give women the
vote and you prepare the way for a new order of things ; by giving
women political power you give them an incentive to study, or at
least to interest themselves in public questions, and the effect of their
enlarged interests will be beneficial both to home and State.

The political incentive is now the possession of the women of
Australia, and its influence was a potent factor in the recent Federal
elections. The women of South Australia and West Australia have
had the suffrage for some years, so that they are accustomed to voting,

1904 THE POLITICAL WOMAN IN AUSTRALIA 107

but to the women of the other States the whole business was new ;
nevertheless, they voted in as large numbers proportionally as the
men in a majority of the constituencies, while in some they cast a
heavier vote than the men. The total vote was only 52 per cent, of
the voting strength, the low percentage being due to the fact that the
people as a body have not yet grasped the Federal idea. Federation
has not completely scotched provincialism in politics, though it is
fast doing so, if for no other reason than the enormous cost of govern-
ment in this country. The people are beginning to realise that we
are paying the political piper heavily — fourteen Houses of Parliament
and seven viceroyalties for four millions of people ! It is too big an
order, and common sense, as well as the state of our finances, demands
that we should simplify our legislative machinery. It is right here,
as the Americans say, that the women's influence will tell. During
the election campaign, it was most evident that a very large section
of the women favoured those candidates who urged economy in public
expenditure. Individual women, with no idea of the value of money,
may be extravagant, but most women are compelled by circumstances
to be economical and have a horror of wasteful expenditure. There-
fore the growing demand for less expensive legislative machinery will
find devoted adherents amongst the women voters. As a candidate
at the recent elections, I attribute to a great degree the large measure
of support I received to my strong advocacy of economy in administra-
tion (by the abolition of the State Parliaments, dividing the work
now done by them between the Federal Parliament and the Municipal
councils), and the cessation of borrowing except for reproductive
works.

' Women will vote as their menfolk tell them,' was an argument of
the anti-suffrage party. The elections proved that, on the whole, the
women cast an independent vote. Of course they frequently voted
as their menfolk did, not because they allowed themselves to be
blindly led in that direction, but because their political judgment
decided it was the right way. We know that men often vote as they
are told to vote by their party, or by the particular daily paper they
make their guide, philosopher, and friend. Many did so in the Federal
elections, swallowing wholesale the selected ' ticket,' even bringing it
to the booth with them, so that they could not by any chance make
a mistake. Several returning officers, although opposed to woman
suffrage, have stated that the women were not guided by the ' ticket '
to anything like the same extent as the men were — at any rate, if they
were, they more effectively concealed the fact that they could not be
trusted to vote in the best interests of their country unless they were
told how to by an outside agent. The political parties and the daily
papers have of late years made an effort to introduce the ' ticket '
system of voting into Australian politics, in spite of the knowledge
that the system has had the most vicious results in the United States ;

108 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

but this time the ' tickets ' got fairly well broken up, an encouraging
sign to those genuinely patriotic Australians who desire to see the
people really self-governing, neither press-ridden nor party-ridden.
The ' ticket ' system is utterly repugnant to all true democratic
principles. Parliament should be elected by the people, not by one
man or any small coterie of men. The people's ' ticket ' should be
the candidates who head the poll.

If the people of Australia once clearly grasp the inevitable and
baneful results of the ' ticket ' system, if it be allowed to get the upper
hand, as it has done in the United States, then we shall have no fear
of the ultimate result. Bad as are its effects, when it is merely an
attempt at dictation, it is, if allowed to grow and become absolute,
a thousand times worse in its consequences on the national character
and the purity of public life. Australia will not be able to plead
ignorance, for there is the terrible example of what the ' ticket '
system leads to in the present condition of public life in America. No
one who has not visited America and studied the conditions on the
spot can have any idea of how corruption has eaten into every phase of
public life — a corruption which is to be clearly traced to the machine
politics and ' tickets ' of the two great parties there. The promoters
of great companies, the founders of ' trusts,' all who were anxious to
build up gigantic fortunes by the unscrupulous exploitation of their
fellow-countrymen, soon recognised the power that lay in the ' ticket '
system. They saw that, if they could capture the caucuses of the
parties, they would have the whole country in their toils, whenever
their own party was successful. They had no desire to enter the
State Legislature or Congress themselves, but they planned that the
men who were put on the ' tickets ' should be their delegates, their
creatures, who would do what they were told, and they planned
successfully. Millions of dollars are subscribed to the party funds,
newspapers are bought, bribes are scattered with lavish hands, for
these men know that they will get it all back, with compound interest,
when they can manipulate the Legislature at their will.

Thoughtful men in Australia are beginning to see the danger and
resent the tyranny of the ' ticket ' system, and an organised movement
against it will certainly be supported by the women. In fact, the
women of New South Wales and Victoria have, through the media
of their most influential political organisations, already officially
declared their hostility to the system, and at the next Federal elections
we may hope to see those who would foist ' machine ' politics upon
Australia even more decisively discomfited than they were in December.

' Women will lose the chivalrous attentions of men if they are
enfranchised ' was another argument of the distrustful anti-suffragist.
To the women who are influenced by such a prophecy of man falling
from his high estate when he finds woman his political equal, I would
say, ' My dear friends, your fears are groundless. You place a high

1904 THE POLITICAL WOMAN IN AUSTRALIA 109

value on the chivalrous attentions that men now show you. Why,
you have not the remotest idea of the vast stores of chivalry hidden
away in the inner recesses of man's nature. When you get a vote,
you will find that the chivalry of the middle ages was a poor thing
in comparison with that of the twentieth century. The chivalrous
attentions paid by candidates to women voters are most embarrassing
— Sir Walter Raleighs and De Lorges are thick as leaves in Vallom-
brosa at election time.' But, joking apart, there is positively nothing
in the argument, and those who use it have a poor opinion of men if
they really believe that as soon as women get the vote, men are going
to help themselves first at dinner, or refuse to pick up a lady's fan or
escort her to her carriage. Voting means responsibility, responsibility
means power, and power always commands respect. The Federal
election showed that those very candidates who had previously
maintained that women would lose the respect of men and be degraded
by going to the poll were the most assiduous in courting the women's
vote. They may have still the utmost contempt for the women who
would degrade themselves by mixing with men at the polling booths,
but they wrapped it up in flattery that was calculated to deceive
the very elect — and it did, in some cases.

The elections had an added interest in the appearance of four
women candidates in the field — Mrs. Martell, Mrs. Moore (New South
Wales), myself (Victoria), standing for the Senate ; and Miss Selina
Anderson (New South Wales) for the House of Representatives. All
were defeated, but the defeat was not unexpected, as we were well
aware that it would be altogether phenomenal if women were to succeed
in their first attempt to enter a National Parliament. I do not know
the salient features of the women candidates' campaign in New South
Wales, so I shall confine my observations to my own candidature.
I was nominated by the Women's Federal Political Association of
Victoria, of which I am the President, and I accepted the nomination
because I saw at once what a splendid educational value the campaign
would have. Although we possess the suffrage, there are still many
women who do not want it, do not see why they should be bothered
with it, but they only need to have the case for woman suffrage stated
to them to accept it. At present they take the views of the hostile
press and the comic papers as the truth about the political woman,
but when they hear the logic and the sweet reasonableness of woman
suffrage, when they see that those who voice it have nothing abnormal
about them, especially when they learn what their legal status is,
they soon become members of the true political faith. I knew that
I should attract very much larger audiences as a candidate than if I
were advertised to give a lecture on woman's part in the Federal
elections or some such subject. I believed that the people would
come out of curiosity, and not as single spies but in battalions, to see
the wild woman that sought to enter Parliament. They came, they

110 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

saw, I conquered : that is, my arguments did ; for no thinking, fair-
minded man or woman can hold out for five minutes against the
arguments for woman suffrage unless, indeed, they seek to deny the
right of self-government, and in these days of storm and stress one
has no time to waste in arguing with such people. The arguments
for woman suffrage are also the arguments for women entering Parlia-
ment, and thus I killed two birds with one stone — I broke down the
prejudice against woman suffrage and against women members of
Parliament. My audiences numbered from 500 to 1500 people,
according to the capacity of the hall. Two or three times the atmo-
sphere was perceptibly chilly as I took the platform, though there
was never any outward expression of hostility. However, before the
close of these meetings I can emphatically say that I had the majority
of the audiences with me on the question of a woman going into
Parliament. They may not have agreed with my political views ;
they did agree that it is necessary for women to enter Parliament in
order to voice the needs of women and children, and my meetings
always broke up with the most enthusiastic demonstrations of good
will. Frequently my friends were rather fearful as to how I should
fare at the hands of those electors who attend election meetings for
the express purpose of giving the candidate a bad time. They came,
but they treated me as men at all worthy of the name will always
treat a woman — with the utmost courtesy. Of course I was invariably
asked the question, ' Are you in favour of a tax on bachelors ? ' As
I am an unmarried woman, this question was considered the joke of
the evening ; but when I replied that ' I should be exceedingly sorry
to accept any proposal that would be likely to encourage some men to
get married,' the questioner, having an uncomfortable feeling that he
might be included amongst the undesirables, generally concluded it
was safer to get back to the domain of practical politics. Addressing
crowded, orderly, good-humoured, enthusiastic audiences is a delight
to a public speaker, and I can truthfully say that I thoroughly enjoyed
my campaign. There were eighteen candidates in the field, and, while
unsuccessful, my record of 51,497 votes, when 85,387 were sufficient to
secure election, is most gratifying. I polled more heavily than one
candidate who has been Premier of Victoria, and than another who
had been for twenty-six years a member of the State Legislature,
defeating the one by 24,327, the other by 32,436 votes— 51,000 odd
votes, in spite of the opposition of the powerful daily papers, and the
prejudice that a pioneer always has to encounter, is nothing less than
a triumph for the cause that I represent, the cause of women and
children.

That many women not pledged supporters of the Labour party
voted for some, if not all, of the Labour candidates, is strongly depre-
cated by the other rival parties. It would have been strange had
they done otherwise, considering that it is primarily due to the Labour

party that woman suffrage is such a live question in Australia. There
have up to the present been three political parties here — Free-traders,
Protectionists, Labour — we have no strongly denned Conservative
and Liberal parties. The Free-traders and Protectionists have been
so wedded to their respective fiscal theories that they have deemed
everything except the tariff of minor importance. Bent on securing
material prosperity, either by means of high tariff, or revenue tariff,
or no tariff, they forgot to be just to the women of Australia. The
Labour party in each State, whether Protectionist or Free-trade,
placed woman suffrage first ; it fought hard for it, in and out of Parlia-
ment ; consequently, owing nothing to the other political parties, we
are not likely to forget the party through which woman suffrage has
been made a question of practical politics throughout Australia,
instead of remaining, as in other countries, the four suffrage States in
America excepted, a purely academic question. I do not believe
that woman suffrage will ever become a vital question in other countries
until it is made a fighting plank of the Labour party's platform.
Recent political history teaches us that every real reform affecting
human liberties and human rights has come as the result of agitation
by the people's party, and the Labour party is essentially the people's
party. These reforms have only been advocated by one of the ortho-
dox political parties after popular enthusiasm has been aroused by
the friends of the people. Social, and industrial, and political reforms
are only won through the enthusiasm that bitter suffering creates.
Most men and women who are tolerably well circumstanced are
content to glide along the surface of life. It is those to whom hard
work brings little but anxiety and suffering, or those in whom sympathy
and imagination are well developed, who strive to bring about a
better, a juster social order. Many supporters of woman suffrage
are found amongst English Liberals and Conservatives, but as parties
they ignore the principle ; the last Trades Union Congress defeated a
woman suffrage proposition by the narrow margin of seven votes,
and that because there was a property qualification advocated instead
of ' plain ' womanhood. So it seems as if our experience will be the
experience of the women of England. They will look in vain to the
orthodox parties to fight their battles for them. The Labour party
will come forward and present a united front in favour of their enfran-
chisement ; then it will dawn upon either a Conservative or a Liberal
Government that it will be a popular political expedient to declare
for woman suffrage, and the women of Great Britain will find them-
selves the political equals of their sisters in this country.

The enfranchisement of the women of Australia has already given
an impetus to the woman suffrage movement in other countries.
Last year a suffrage amendment was submitted to the voters in the
State of New Hampshire, U.S.A., when it secured a larger measure of
support than has previously been accorded to a similar amendment in

112 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

an Eastern State. Only last week the news was cabled from England
that a woman suffrage deputation from the Women's Liberal Federa-
tion had been received by Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman and Mr.
John Morley, who, while they did not commit the party to the reform,
expressed themselves in favour of it. Similar action has previously
been taken by women's political societies in England, similar expres-
sions of approval have been voiced by leading members of the House
of Commons, but never has it been considered worth while cabling
such news to Australia, which would have been of great interest to the
woman suffrage party here. But now that we have got the suffrage,
it is held to be important to let us know that the question is also being
placed before English statesmen. ' In the gain or loss of one race all
the rest have equal claim,' and we rejoice to know that our great
suffrage gain is helping other women in their struggle for liberty.
Our Australia is a baby nation as yet, but she begins life as no other
nation has begun it, she begins with equal rights for men and women.

VIDA GOLDSTEIN.
Melbourne, February 1904.

1904

THE CAPTURE OF LHASA IN 1710

THE capture of Lhasa by the Eleuths at the beginning of the eighteenth
century has been quite overlooked in the recent voluminous literature
on the Tibet question. Perhaps the explanation is that it belongs
to the least carefully studied period of Asiatic history. The incident
deserves to be rescued from oblivion at a time when, after the lapse
of nearly two hundred years, the same task now lies before the soldiers
of the Indian Government as was successfully accomplished by the
hordes of Tse Wang Rabdan. This chieftain, whose name will be
unfamiliar to the general reader, was one of the greatest rulers that
Central Asia ever produced, defying with no inconsiderable success
Russia on one side and the famous Chinese Emperor Kanghi on the
other. It is not a little curious that our principal authority on the
subject of the campaign in Tibet that we are about to describe should
be a Russian traveller, Unkoffsky, who visited the Eleuth capital
not long after the event, and of whose narrative in Russian there is
a copy in the British Museum library.

The century which closed with the Eleuth invasion in 1710 was the
most important in the history of Tibet, for it witnessed the disappear-
ance of the old reigning dynasty, the establishment of the power of
the Dalai Lama in its place, the expulsion of the military faction, and
the arrival of the first Chinese garrison. In earlier times Tibet had
been ruled by a line of princes who had waged war and made peace
on equal terms with the Emperors of China, and the last king was
reigning during at least the first twenty years of the seventeenth
century. Father Andrada, the missionary who visited Tibet about
that time, speaks of the king's leanings towards Christianity, and
perhaps this was the final cause of the downfall of his dynasty. Until
the year 1625 the Buddhist priests had been content with their priestly
duties. They had kept to their monasteries and prayer-wheels, and
although the transmigration of the eternal spirit of Buddha through
a child was always the essential feature in the recognition and pro-
clamation of the head of the Tibetan Church, the name of the Dalai
Lama had not been heard of until the first Manchu Emperor, Chuntche,
conferred it on the High Priest of Potola in or about the year 1650.

But for some time previous to that event the priests had been

VOL. LVI — No. 329 113 I

114 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

striving to obtain the control of the civil government, and the com-
pliments and presents of the Manchu ruler, still insecurely seated on
the throne of Peking, were the recognition of their success. They had
come out of their monasteries and entered the political arena. Assum-
ing the Yellow Cap as their distinctive mark in contrast to the Red
Cap of the military party, which then enjoyed the ascendency, they
entered upon a struggle for power which covered the first fifty years
of the seventeenth century, for it commenced in the life of the last of
the kings. The Yellow Caps enjoyed the sympathy and support of
the Chinese, but it is not easy to fix precisely the value of their aid,
for China herself was passing through the throes of the last Tartar
conquest. On the other hand the Red Caps, too confident in their
strength, did not seek assistance in any direction, and when at length
the priests, pouring out of the lamaseries in thousands, bore down
on them, they ended the struggle by sheer weight of numbers, and
the surviving Red Caps had no alternative but to flee into the Hima-
layan State of Bhutan, where they still enjoy the supremacy that
they lost in Tibet. The Jongpin who visited Colonel Younghusband's
camp the other day would in all probability be the descendant of
one of these Tibetan soldiers who were expelled over 250 years ago
by the Lamas. This event happened in or a little before 1649, and
the Chinese Emperor's edict conferring on the High Priest of Potola
the title of Dalai Lama — meaning Ocean Lama, because his learning
was supposed to be equally vast — was the formal recognition of the
triumph of the Yellow Caps.

The Lamas, having expelled the regular rulers of the country,
had to provide for a new government. A civilian official with the
title of the Tipa was given charge of the civil and military adminis-
tration in the name of the Dalai Lama. The first Tipa, of whom
Duhalde wrote : — ' This Tipa wore the dress of a lama without having
to be subject to the heavy obligations of the order ' — was the man
who had chiefly aided the priests in getting rid of their military rivals.
His son in due course succeeded to his authority, and, being a man of
great ambition, he was not content with even the slight and nominal
control of the Dalai Lama. An opportunity was not long in presenting
itself. The first Dalai Lama died in 1682, and the Tipa then took
steps to prevent the discovery of his successor. In other words, he
suppressed the office of Dalai Lama, but while acting thus arbitrarily
he carefully concealed the truth of the case from the Emperor Kanghi,
the new ruler of China. The Tipa imposed so skilfully on the Chinese
ruler that he received as a reward for his loyal and useful services to
the Dalai Lama the title of Prince of Tibet — Tibet Wang— at the
hands of Kanghi. The fraud was not discovered for sixteen years.
In 1698 the facts became known at Peking, and the indignation and
astonishment of the Emperor on discovering that he had been imposed
upon found relief in a series of admirably composed letters and edicts

1904 THE CAPTURE OF LHASA IN 1710 115

which the curious reader will find in the interesting pages of the -Abbe
Duhalde.

The Tipa, having tasted the sweets of power, was determined not
to lose it without an effort, and he looked about him to see who could
render him aid. Even before he was discovered he had negotiated
a treaty with Galdan, then at the height of his power and more than
holding his own against the Chinese. It looks as if it were the discovery
of their correspondence that first made Kanghi dubious of the Tipa's
good faith. But although Galdan was not at all unwilling to profit
by the success of the Tipa, he was not in a position to render him any
definite support, and without external support it was soon made
evident that the Tipa could not maintain his position. The lamas
looked to China, and the suppression of their religious head was not
at all to their liking. When Kanghi wrote that the true Dalai Lama
must be found, they quickly fixed upon the suitable child. The Tipa
fell from his seat of power, and was promptly dealt with as an insub-
ordinate officer. No difficulty was found in getting rid of him. One
of his own lieutenants, to whom, as a reward for the deed, was given
the title of Latsan Khan, killed him at the first opportunity.

The death of Galdan while these occurrences were going on pro-
duced a lull in the march of rival policies in Central Asia. The Chinese,
satisfied with tranquillity, took no steps, while the new king of the
Eleuths hesitated as to the direction in which he should turn his
energy. This potentate was Tse Wang Rabdan, and in extenuation
of his restless turbulence it must be allowed that the Chinese armies
under their Manchu leaders had advanced far into the Gobi desert,
crushed the Khalkas on the Kerulon, and threatened to overrun
Kashgaria and Kuldja. The offensive measures of Tse Wang Rabdan
might then be justified on the ground that in a strict sense they were
really defensive. In the time of Galdan the struggle had been carried
on chiefly round the modern town of Urga. The new turn of the
political wheel brought Tibet into prominence. Tse Wang Rabdan
determined to put an end to Chinese influence in that country by
capturing the Dalai Lama and carrying him off to Hi. The scheme
was a bold one, and it would undoubtedly have succeeded if the young
Dalai Lama, discovered as a child in 1698 or 1699, had been left at
Lhasa. His timely removal to Sining was the sole cause of the failure
of the Eleuth King in accomplishing his main object.

Before we take up the description of the military expedition, the
facts that have been mentioned suggest a few pertinent observations
on the present situation, that has so much practical interest for us
and for the people of India. In a debate in the House of Lords on
the 26th of February Lords Ripon and Rosebery made speeches in
which the dominant note was incredulity as to the feasibility of Russian
intervention in Tibet. The former appealed to the natural difficul-
ties described by Dr. Sven Hedin, the latter questioned the likelihood

i 2

116 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

of any convention having been signed between Russians and Tibetans.
Both were disposed to represent that any apprehensions of outside
interference in Tibet, other, of course, than Chinese, rested on an
illusory foundation. We may refer these statesmen to the history
of Tibet from, let us say, 1690 to 1710. Lord Ripon will see that
Ghereng Donduk with an army at his back was a more successful
traveller than Sven Hedin. Lord Rosebery will admit that, if an
Eleuth prince could not merely conclude an arrangement with Tibet
but send an army to Lhasa to enforce it, the same achievement is
not beyond the capacity of a European State in possession of practic-
ally the same base — viz. the major part of the old Eleuth country,
while dominating beyond any possible disputation the rest.

To return to Tse Wang Rabdan. The Emperor Kanghi believed
that the death of Galdan meant a more tranquil time on the side of
Central Asia. He had no real love for those costly enterprises in the
desert beyond the Great Wall. He recognised the ability of Galdan,
but he counted on the balance of chances that his successor would
not be his equal, for it is rarely in the world's history that ' Amurath
to Amurath succeeds.' It happened, however, that the new chief
of the Eleuths was no less ambitious and scarcely less able than his
predecessor. But whereas Galdan had thought that the Chinese
armies were to be driven back in the deserts of Mongolia, Tse Wang
Rabdan came to the conclusion that the master-stroke might be
dealt to Chinese influence and fame in Tibet. For this reason he
recalled the treaty that the Tipa had concluded with his uncle, and
resolved on exacting vengeance for the murder of his family's ally.

In 1709 he organised his forces for a protracted expedition. Organ-
ising meant for him the collection of a sufficient number of camels,
and he advanced at the head of his army to Lob Nor or its neighbour-
hood. Here he learnt that the young Dalai Lama had been carried
ofi for safety to Sining on the borders of Shensi, and as his main object
was to capture the person of the priest ruler of Tibet, he decided to
divide his army into two bodies, leading one himself against Sining,
and entrusting the other to the command of his brother or cousin
Chereng Donduk for the express purpose of capturing Lhasa. The
available authorities are uncertain as to the relationship between the
Eleuth prince and Chereng or Zeren Donduk, but the probability is that
they were only cousins. It will be convenient to mention at this point
that Tse Wang Rabdan's attack on Sining was repulsed, or at all events
that it failed of success, and thus the Dalai Lama personally escaped
from the consequences of the capture and plunder of his capital.

The force with which Chereng Donduk marched from Lob Nor to
Lhasa did not exceed 6000 men, and it is stated that it was accom-
panied by several thousand camels. Some of these carried swivel
guns, which were discharged from their backs, but the bulk of them
conveyed the provisions of the army. Unlike modern travellers,

1904 THE CAPTUEE OF LHASA IN 1710 117

the expedition made little of the difficulties encountered on the route.
In the narrative of Chereng Donduk, as preserved by Gospodin
Unkoffsky, there are no striking pictures of salt deserts or sand-
storms, which makes one suspect that neither Colonel Prjevalsky nor
Dr. Sven Hedin discovered the best route from the north into Tibet.
The Eleuth army reached the district south of Tengri Nor without
loss and in good condition. At some point between that lake and the
capital it found the Tibetan forces drawn up to oppose its progress.

The Tibetan army of that day was not more formidable in a military
sense than its antitype is now, but Latsan Khan — the Talai Han
of Duhalde — had collected in some way or other a body of 20,000
men. Many of these were mercenaries from Mongolia or the Hima-
layas, and probably the bulk of those present were civilians or priests,
ignorant of the use of arms, and brought there for the day merely
to make a show. The advance of the Eleuth camel corps, and the
noise if not the execution of the swivel guns, put the whole of the
Tibetan force to the rout. It became a general sauve qui peut, and
in the confusion Latsan Khan, the Tibetan generalissimo, lost his
life, probably at the hands of some of his own followers. Thus com-
pletely defeated at the first encounter, the Tibetan army never re-
assembled. Military resistance to the Eleuth -invaders was not again
so much as attempted.

A few days after the fight near Tengri Nor the Eleuths reached
and entered Lhasa. They entered without firing a shot, the pagodas
and lamaseries were pillaged, an immense spoil was taken in the
residence of the Dalai Lama at Potola, and then, having plundered
several other towns in the valley which are not named, the Eleuth army
prepared to return to Ili. In addition to the loot taken the Eleuths
carried off a considerable number of lamas as prisoners. Duhalde
affirms, with a certain degree of satisfaction at the troubles of rival
priests, whom he calls elsewhere idolaters, that ' all the lamas who
could be found were put in sacks and strung across the backs of camels
and thus carried off to Tartary.'

Two minor incidents in this campaign may be mentioned. The
Eleuths found at Lhasa a Tartar (really Kirghiz) princess and her
son, who had come, with the permission of the Russians, from their
home in the Astrachan district to make the pilgrimage to the holy
city of Tibet. She was the sister-in-law of Ayuka, the Tourgouth
chief who had fled from Chinese territory, and whose grandson returned
later on with his people to China, as described by De Quincey in his
brilliant essay ' The Flight of a Tartar Tribe.' The presence of these
interesting pilgrims is in its way evidence of the ease with which
Lhasa could be reached from Russian territory. The second incident
was the narrow escape from the invaders of the ' lama missionaries,'
as Duhalde calls the Christian converts of his order, who were employed
on the collection of the materials for the great map of Tibet, with which

118 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

the name of D'Anville was subsequently associated. They had only
quitted Lhasa a few days when the Tartar hordes burst in upon it.

Unkoffsky, the Russian envoy to Tse Wang Rabdan, who visited
his camp or capital in 1722, states that on this expedition the Eleuths
suffered little or no loss. But their attack on Sining was repulsed,
and the failure to secure the person of the Dalai Lama converted
their daring invasion of Tibet into a mere plundering raid. But
that does not diminish the value, as an object-lesson for the present
day, of their capture of Lhasa.

In consequence of the Eleuth invasion, and the proof it afforded
that the Tibetan lamas were unable to protect themselves, the Emperor
Kanghi sent a Chinese garrison to Lhasa, and there was no further
invasion of Tibet until 1790, when the Goorkhas entered the country
and plundered Teshu Lumbo. The circumstances of that campaign,
including the Chinese invasion of Nepaul and the imposition of a humi-
liating treaty on the Goorkhas near Khatmandu, are fairly well known.

Less well known is the contest between the Eleuths and the
Russians that followed. Chereng Donduk therein gave further proof
of the military skill with which he had conducted the march to Lhasa.
The early relations of Russia and China are full of interesting matter.
In the seventeenth century the Emperor of China styled himself
' the Czar's elder brother.' When the fort of Albazin was razed to
the ground, and its residents — 101 in number, with their priest, Maxime
Leontieff — were carried off to Peking to found there the still existing
colony, and to build the first Greek church in 1695, no one anticipated
the complete inversion in their positions that has occurred within
the last twenty years. Baffled on the Upper Amour, the next forward
movement of the Russians was in the Kirghiz region towards the
possessions of Tse Wang Rabdan. The gold-seeking mission of
Prince Gagarine was followed by the establishment of several petty
forts or blockhouses. His lieutenant, Bukholz, founded one of the
more important of these, named Fort Yamishewa, on the stream
Priasnukha, and Tse Wang Rabdan, finding its proximity irksome,
sent Chereng Donduk to demolish it, and to expel or capture the
foreigners. The Russians suffered some loss, but discreetly abandoned
their fort and established themselves at a safer distance from the Eleuth
ruler. This event happened in 1715 or 1716, and the mission of Unkoffsky
was sent with the object of establishing more neighbourly relations.

On the principle that what has once been accomplished may be
repeated, this brief record of a half-forgotten, or at least obscure,
historical event may convince the British public that a Russian
invasion of Tibet, by diplomatic missions in the first place and by
armed force later on, is not the fantastic or impossible undertaking
that so many persons have represented it to be.

DEMETRIUS C. BOULGER.

1904

ISCHIA IN JUNE

IN these days of fevered excitement, the full ' harvest of a quiet eye '
can but seldom be reaped and gathered in. The driving and driven
twentieth century is always finding excuse for telephoning and tele-
graphing after us ' Hurry up ! ' One single fortnight, which is all
that I was able to spend this summer at the Bagni di Casamicciola, in
the island of Ischia, gives me but scant right to describe this paradise.
When I say ' paradise,' I mean literally a garden ; for such was our
first and last impression of the island. Following the road up the hill
from the landing-place in the direction of the principal hotels, past
the little villas of Casamicciola, we were always struck anew by the
rich luxuriance of vines, of orange and lemon trees ; roses, carnations,
and cactuses; and the brilliance of many a red geranium, tumbling in
cataract adown the tier-planted terrace walls. In the early morning, the
falls of deep blue convolvuli, escaping from the flower-beds over the wall,
showed masses of blossoms, larger and finer than I have ever seen
elsewhere. It is curious that whatever blossoms in this little island
attains to larger size and richer colour. Soil and sun are exceptionally
favourable. Ferns and flowers, some of them rare, grow wildly every-
where. I was told of a work I have not seen, which contains an
account in Latin of the flora of the island, and mentions two or more
plants belonging to tropical regions, but finding a congenial home in
chasms near the fumeoli, whence issue hot vapours from the labouring
furnaces below. For this garden rests on the bosom of a volcano. It
is a child of the volcano, which, besides bestowing so rich a gift of
fertile soil, is also so greatly beneficent in yielding the miraculously
healing mineral waters, known and used by suffering humanity for
more than two thousand years. Analyses of the various waters, or
accounts of their curative action, may be found in a long line of authors,
from Strabo down to Dr. Cox and his later confreres. The well-
appointed Stabilimento di Bagni of Signor Manzi at Casamicciola
(who, by the by, speaks English fluently, and whose wife is from Scot-
land) leaves nothing to be desired, and has been recently rearranged.
There are other bathing-houses of a cheaper sort, and on the sea-
shore is a large house of charity, ' Monte della Misericordia,' for sick

119

120 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

poor coming to be healed. At the time of our visit it was not yet
open, the season not having commenced. This pious foundation has
existed since the year 1604, when a small beginning was made by the
sale of fragments gathered up from the remains of a high feast of the
jeunesse doree of that period.

I have often wished we could set against the total of those who
have suffered in the earthquakes the incomparably greater number of
cures and restorations to more or less happy existence of those who
have benefited by the waters ; and man has been far more cruel to
his fellow man than ever has been Nature. It would be a grievous
task to go through the history of the Neapolitan provinces, which has
always found its echo in the neighbouring islands, and notably in
Ischia. Tyranny, oppression, pillage, war — unreal words to most of
us who run so glibly over them. The choice of King David might
here give utterance to our conclusion : ' Let us fall into the hand of
the Lord, for His mercies are great ; and let me not fall into the hand
of man.'

Since the last earthquake, in 1883, the new houses have been
built under Government inspection, after a plan adopted in Calabria,
and are held to be proof against earthquake shocks.

Our island is not a winter residence, for the winds are cold, and
storms make it too often impossible for steamers to land their pas-
sengers and mails. In July and August it is cooler than in the imme-
diate neighbourhood of Naples, and in the month of June we found it
delightful. It was free from the tourists, who mostly come in the
spring, and from the multitude of midsummer bathing guests. If the
vineyards were not in the rich ripeness of autumn, the flowers were in
their early summer freshness. The bright yellow Spanish broom, in
blossom all over the island, seemed continually to greet us with
heaven-sent laughter, as in innocent gladness of heart victorious over
an infernal havoc of lava. I recall one specially typical picture of
this prophetic triumph on the road leading downward from Barano to
Ischia, near the vent in the mountain-side of the latest eruption of
1302. "Wide-spreading black lava blocks contrasted with the brilliant
golden splendour of the flowers of the genista, springing up, Heaven
knows how, in the crevices, and all aglow in the kindred glory of a
setting sun. The right was flanked by a grove of pine trees, with their
dark green billowy masses of foliage, while ever and anon the castle
rock of Ischia came into view at the end of a forest glade, and the
expanse of deep blue summer sea sparkled below in varying tints and
lights.

Suddenly we had come on a little valley dip crossed by an aqueduct ,.
which conveys water to Ischia from the one only cold spring in the
island. Higher up stands the fragment of an ancient oak — the only
tree not of comparatively recent growth that I noticed ; but some old
inhabitants are probably to be found in the chestnut groves near

1904 ISCHIA IN JUNE 121

Barano. The island yields little or nothing for the ordinary food of
man. Everything must be brought from the mainland. The peasants
are very poor, and they emigrate in numbers every year to America,
never to return, as in other parts of Italy.

Everywhere the land is so broken up into hills, and rocks, and
chasms, that almost every turn affords a fresh vignette. Our ex-
plorations were limited to drives in the little carrozzelle, and there
is a fairly good road all round the island.

Monte Epomeo, 2,616 feet above sea-level, unrolls a wide map at
the foot of the climber ; and what a map is here presented may be
foretold by whoever has but some slight knowledge of the classic
sites which lie around Naples — I should prefer to say, which lie around
the tomb of the immortal poet, for this tomb of Virgil is the ideal
spot in a city alike indolent and corrupt in the past and the present,
and where bright beacons of a higher and productive life are but
rare.

A bare mention of some of the renowned sites visible from the
summit must suffice. The view was thus described to me by a nimble
spirit who ascended the mountain: — Looking south is unfolded the
entire Bay of Naples, with the well-known islands. Vesuvius, now
slumbering, scarce seems to breathe from its awful mouth ; the
majestic outline of its silent slopes sweeps westward towards the city.
On the right, the promontory and town of Sorrento, and the coast
leading down to Castellamare. Pompeii and Herculaneum are indi-
cated behind the suburbs, which extend in a long and weary line of
streets into Naples. At the opposite end of the city, and nearer to
our island, the villas and promontory of Posilipo. What shall I say
of Puteoli, point of pilgrimage for all who follow the journeyings of
St. Paul ? Then the sulphurous neighbourhood of Baiae ; the lofty,
wide-stretching promontory of Misenum ; Cumae, with its acropolis
(nearly opposite to Casamicciola) ; the Gulf of Gaeta, whose past
honours are divided between the Nurse of JLneas and Pope Pius IX.,
follows the long line of coast reaching to Monte Circello ; while
the Apennines of the Abruzzi are towering above the horizon on
the left. Such is the bird's-eye southern outlook from Monte
Epomeo.

There is no crater now traceable on the silent summit. As seen
from Casamicciola, the highest point displays yellow sandstone rock
surrounded by masses of many-tinted fragments of tufa, trachyte,
scoriae, pumice, and I know not what other combinations, running
over from Nature's melting-pot. Further down we perceive clefts of
the greyish-blue marl, which affords material for the industry of the
island — the brick and pottery works. In this marl are found shells
of fishes still common in the Tyrrhene Sea. The theory is that these
submarine deposits, flung upward in the earlier eruptions, washed up
with sea-water, hurled hither and thither, together with the lava,

122 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY July

finally choked up the crater's mouth. Later eruptions found vents in
the sides of the mountain.

Ancient tradition tallies in some measure with scientific theory,
telling how Monte Epomeo vomited fire and ashes, how the sea
receded and then returned, overflowing the land and extinguishing
the fire.

For examples of the lateral vents, see Monte Rotaro and II Mon-
tagnone, a couple of little extinct volcanoes near Casamicciola, with
lava streams flowing down to the sea. Another vent is evident at the
head of the broad stream of the lava of the Arso, which marks the
latest eruption of 1302, and which I have mentioned as now clad
with marvellous beauty of flowers and trees.

Driving from Barano to Forio, we passed one of the many stufe,
or fumeoli. Some of these pour out steam to the tune of 140° to
180° Fahrenheit, and in their depths may be heard the boiling and
bubbling of seething waters and turbulent gases. The theory of their
origin is the communication of waters of the sea with volcanic fires
immediately underneath. This, of course, can mean nothing else than
the visits of the god of the ocean, Poseidon, to his stormy old friend,
Typhoeus, who is lying buried alive under the ' hard couch,' Inarime
by name, which appears to have been upset over his mighty frame to
bind him fast by order of Zeus. This ' hard bed,' Inarime, is now
our fair island of Ischia. On the beach, near the pleasing little town
of Lacco Ameno, we trod on a black, sparkling sand, sensibly hot to
the feet, and in which hot water may be seen to rise immediately on
our making such holes as children at play might dig with their small
spades. The blackness is owing to an abundance of oxide of iron, the
sparkling to the presence of quartz, and the heat to the untiring
furnace below. Virgil sings, hard by to his mention of Inarime
(Mn. ix. 714) :

Miscent se maria, et nigrce adtolluntur arence.

But the black volcanic sand is not peculiar to Ischia ; it is common
in those regions.

We searched in vain, being no botanists, for a flower called by the
islanders the lily of Santa Restituta. It is a plant of the squill tribe,
flowering only in the autumn, and is fabled to have sprung up in the
sand near the spot where Santa Restituta came on shore after she had
suffered martyrdom in Africa, being thrown alive into a cask and
cast into the sea. The church dedicated to the saint contains a
series of modern pictures, telling the miraculous story of her life and
her landing in the island. These pictures are full of feeling, and are
well imagined, however wanting in technique. They are probably
the work of some young enthusiast, but the 'parroco ' could not give us
the name of the artist, or tell us anything about him. The simple
country people and sailors delight greatly in those graphic tellings of

1904 ISCHIA IN JUNE 123

the story of their honoured saint. They throng here on the day of her
festival (17th May), this year delayed because of repairs going for-
ward, and we were sorry not to remain a few days longer to behold the
festive gathering. The ' parroco ' told us the church is then decorated
with straw work, which is an industry of the island, richly coloured
and highly polished, but woefully wanting in taste.

(How is it, by the by, that, generally speaking and with few
exceptions, all Italian work of the present day, from the statues of
Dante to the straw work and the pottery of our island, is bathos ?)

In the chancel, beside the high altar, we found a Madonna and
Child, by an Old Master — a painting of great merit in colour and
expression, eyebrows and eyes singularly beautiful. Whether this
picture was brought here from the convent close by, or what was the
history of it, we could not ascertain. It stands in a very unfavourable
light and position — the ' parroco ' said because there was nowhere else
to put it. I ignorantly suggested it might be removed to an altar in
the nave, in place of some daub representing — I forget what. He
replied, in a tone of astonishment, that it would be impossible to put
a strange picture on an altar dedicated to some other saint or subject.

The basin for holy water at the church door is an exquisite little
cinerary urn in white marble. From two cornucopiae, reversed,
issues a garland of flowers, and below is a basket, also reversed, con-
taining fruits and flowers. The touching dedication is by a wife to
her husband. It was found, with other urns and remains, in the
valley of San Martino, near by. Another church in the street of the
little town contains some of these ' finds.' A marble column is spoken
of as having been brought from a temple of Hercules ; but the doors
were closed, and we did not effect an entrance.

I should not omit all mention of the church at Forio, planted
on a rock jutting out into the sea, with a beautiful view, and
interesting within from the many votive offerings of sailors and
fishermen, and the painted tiles, which may perhaps be described
as a coarse majolica ware. The road from Barano to Forio winds
downward above the heads of numerous deep ravines, which run
straight into the sea, and are here and there used by the peasants
as wine-cellars.

One afternoon the small boy driver of our carrozzella, a sharp
urchin of twelve years old, was bent on showing us ' Casamicciola
antica,' a melancholy sight indeed. Houses in ruins, a large church
in the centre, of which the walls only remain standing. This devasta-
tion was wrought by the earthquake of 1883.

From the earliest up to recent times, inhabitants and visitors
have fled before the earthquakes. The first settlers in the island are
said to have transferred their homes to Cumse, on the opposite shore
of the mainland. This latest earthquake of 1883 has left many
beautifully situated villas uninjured, but now scarcely visited by

124 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

their owners, who are either intimidated by dread of a recurrence, or
heart-stricken by memories of relatives and friends lost or maimed
among the ruins. I noticed an unusual number of lame and crippled
among the people, and was told that most of these had been among
the victims. Dr. Menella gave us a touching account of the loss of
his father, buried amid the ruins of their house. The story of his
leading his mother away in safety reminded one of the narrative of
the younger Pliny. Menella said the whole event remained in his
mind like the memory of a bad dream. He could scarcely believe
that it was his actual self who had endured that time, or that the
thing had ever happened.

Hardly less heartrending was the recital of the poor old keeper of
the cemetery, in which I know not how many of the gathered-in
corpses lie buried. The old man lost his wife and five children — his
whole family. I understood him to say that the ruins of his house
are still lying among those we had just seen in ' Casamicciola antica.'
He related at length the prompt visit of the King to the scene of sorrow,
and the awful task of the soldiers employed in digging out the bodies.
It was sad to hear that some of the peasants came down immediately
from the hills and carried off money and valuables from among the
debris. The site of the burial-place, above the sea, affords a soothing
view of beauty beyond ; but the high surrounding walls shut out
everything, and enhance the deep depression and desolation of the
place. It is passed on the road from Casamicciola to Ischia, at the
foot of the little extinct volcano of Monte Rotaro.

We found the drive to Ischia one of the loveliest in the island,
the sea ever and anon coming into sight just below, deep blue that
day, with white-plumed billows rising and vanishing on the surface,
chasing each other like evanescent swans. Near the town arises a
grove of pine trees. And here, in the long street, is the Palazzo Reale ;
and here, with its garden, richly planted on the lava stream, is the
Villa MeuricofEre.

Built into and upon a lofty solitary rock of volcanic tufa rising
abruptly out of the sea, at the end of a narrow neck of land, is the
Castle of Ischia, whose outline is familiar to us in many sketches,
and in Stanfield's grand picture, recently exhibited in London, the
property of Lady Wantage. The story of the Castle would be the
history of the island— long and distressful. It is hallowed by the
memory of Vittoria Colonna, ' uncanonised ' saint, sought by the
master minds of Italy in that eventful period, and the honoured friend
of Michael Angelo. Her name is inseparable from the Castle of Ischia.
Through the utterance of her lofty and humble soul, in the sonnets
and poems which were the consolation of her troubled life, she may
become to us more than a name to conjure by. As poems they are
of studied perfection. Restrained by the * freno dell' arte,' they give
passionate expression to unchangeable affection, and to the sublime

1904 ISCHIA IN JUNE 125

faith and trust of genuine piety. And. that she was sensible to the
ministrations of the beauty of Nature we may see in her lines :

Quand' io dal caro scoglio miro intorno
La terra e '1 ciel nella vermiglia aurora,
Quante nebbie nel cor son nate, allora
Scaccia la vaga vista e il chiaro giorno.

The volume is an Italian classic, firmly fixed as such in Italian
literature as is the castled rock in the Tyrrhene Sea.

A. P. IRBY.

126 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

CONCERNING SOME OF THE
'EN FA NTS TROUVtiS* OF LITERATURE

I SUPPOSE that most young men, even those who appear to be merely
reasonable or hopelessly commonplace, have experienced, at one time
or another, some sort of sentimental or spiritual awakening, which
has rendered them susceptible to the elevating influences of poetry.
Religious enthusiasm, domestic affliction, or involuntary exile from
the old familiar places ; a sudden sense of the hollowness and muta-
bility of earthly things — all these are calculated to encourage the
poetic mood, although, where there exists any hereditary predisposi-
tion, it may be called into being by the death of a goldfish, or the
escape of a favourite canary. With or without any previous training
or natural capacity, however, it is particularly apt to assert itself
when a chivalrous and susceptible adolescent imagines himself, for
the first time, to be really in love, and when, as so often happens,
he finds that the course of his passion is running anything but
smooth.

Poets, as we know, have written almost exhaustively upon the
subject of the affections, and those that were hopeless or unrequited
have ever seemed to appeal more particularly to their sympathies.
So, when the young lover, quite by accident, as may happen, turns to
the pages of some great poet for solace or consolation, lo and behold,
he discovers that even this choice spirit has gone through all the
varied symptoms from which he is now suffering himself, and that he
has described them in the very same language that he would have
made use of, if only the said choice spirit had not been before-
hand with him !

So many people, ever since the very beginning of the world, have
been, or have imagined themselves to be, in love ! About love ' pure
and simple,' the love of the young man for the maiden, it would seem
to be very difficult to write anything that was absolutely original ;
although, of course, the old torments may be described in a new and
appropriate sequence of words. The young lover, therefore, can revel
to his heart's content in rhythmical combinations and reiterations, ex-
pressive of the state of his feelings. The swing of the metre fascinates

1904 'ENFANTS TROUVtiS' OF LITERATURE 127

and enthralls him ; the rhymes haunt him, even when he is asleep.
He ' lisps in numbers,' without exactly knowing or caring whose
numbers they are ; his whole soul is as though flooded with the music
of the spheres. His eye begins ' rolling in a fine frenzy ' ; he strongly
suspects that he must have been born, unwittingly, in ' a golden
clime,' and, by and by, all his thrills and tremors find vent in a slim
little booklet, bound, generally, in dark green linen or white vellum
(although I have one in my possession which is bound in black calico,
whereupon is depicted a shattered lyre, surmounted by skull and
cross-bones), dedicated to mysterious initials, and published anony-
mously, or under a nom de plume, ' at the earnest request of friends.'
Even as these remarks may apply to the passion of love, so is it with

The measure of Pleasure, the measure of Glory,
That is meted out to a human lot.

In every emotional crisis and emergency of life, there is always a
chance that an enthusiastic and impulsive youth may be tempted to
express himself in ' numbers ' without possessing any of the qualifica-
tions which are essential to the true poetic calling. The phase is an
acute one ; it will soon pass off, but for the time being he feels that he
is existing upon a higher plane than most of his workaday neighbours,
and it is because of this rapid development and subsequent evanescence
of mood that he seems to be especially marked out by destiny for
what the elder D'Israeli has designated ' a man of one book.'

For this it would be hard to blame the author. Fertility is no
nearer allied to strength than prodigality to riches, but yet, for all
this, fertility and sterility must remain two utterly different things.
From the point of view of the collector, the ' one book ' of an unsus-
pected poetaster may grow, with time, into something ' rare and
strange ' ; a source, too, of never-ending amazement, to those who
are acquainted with its author's personality. And, no doubt, when
he is comfortably married and settled, and embarked in banking,
brewing, stockbroking, or what not, he, too, may start at sight of the
slim green or white creature of his imagination as though it were an
asp or a scorpion. Sometimes, fearing lest its heterodox opinions
should revolutionise the world, or else, when he thinks that its tone
may be regarded as too sensuous and redolent of the ' fleshly school,'
he will endeavour to strangle it, shortly after its birth, arresting its
headlong course to the butterman by buying up the very limited
edition at his own cost. This was what happened — a good many
years ago now — to the poems of ' Alastor,' only in that instance,
unless I am mistaken, it was the lady-mother of the aspiring author
who took the initiative and bought up the edition. I wonder how
many persons now living would be able to tell me her name ?

I have always felt that there was something particularly pathetic
about the fate of these poor children of the imagination ; mere accidents

128 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

as it were, resulting from a single juvenile indiscretion, whose parents
are so often ashamed of having begotten them, and who will never
have any brothers or sisters ; and just as a compassionate mother-
superior might fold to her bosom some poor little esposito, discovered,
tied up in a bundle, at the door of a foundling hospital, I have always
been one of the first to give shelter and welcome to the waifs and
strays that are thus cast out upon a cold world without anybody to
' log-roll ' them, or give them a word of comfort or encouragement.
There they stand, safely enclosed in their comfortable bookcase, and
I feel almost irresistibly impelled to write about some of them. They
have shelf-mates, too, with whom I have kindly permitted them to
rub shoulders (alas, with no hope of any possible contagion !), trans-
parently anonymous, the identity but flimsily veiled, or else, wearing
fearlessly the proud cognisance of their illustrious parentage : a pre-
sentation copy of The Wanderer, and of the beautiful Love-Sonnets
of Proteus ; poems of the late Lord De Tabley, with those of Mr.
Theodore Watts-Dunton (his splendid Ode upon the burial of Cecil
Rhodes not yet incorporated with them) ; and to some of these treasures
it will be difficult for me not to allude, seeing them thus ranged on
high whenever I look upwards. As, however, the more accomplished
singers here represented have already found appreciative critics far
abler than I am to sound their praises, I shall endeavour to confine
myself as much as possible to the study of my little nursery of
foundlings.

As is so often the case, how alike they all are, at a first glance, not
only in dress, but in most of their prominent features ! They have
the pinched, attenuated aspect of things that have been starved,
and baby-farmed, and treated ungenerously, and so take up but little
room upon one's shelves ; and when they do not, as often, breathe
entirely of earthly passion, or are not merely weak invertebrate
imitations of Rudyard Kipling, Conan Doyle, or Adam Lindsay
Gordon, and others, rollicking, bacchanalian, or, it may be, patriotic,
how terribly and hopelessly melancholy they are apt to be with the
morbid and lugubrious despair of the later French decadents, whose
felicity of expression, however, has been cruelly denied them : a form
of melancholy which seems to be the almost inseparable accompani-
ment of intellectual youth in the age in which we are living.

Poor Maurice Rollinat with his Apparitions, his' Nevroses, his
Spectres, and his Tenebres, has just made his tragic final exit. But,
a disciple himself, he has, like his master, Baudelaire, a numerous
following in this country. In the index of the little black-hound
volume of which I have already made mention, and which belongs to
what I may appropriately call ' the death's head and cross-bones '
school of poetry, I find several evidences of this. Here we have Ode
to a Dead Body, The Corpse, The Suicide, &c., whilst there is something
gruesome, in another book by the same author, which is evidently

1904 'ENFANTS TROUVES' OF LITERATURE 129

derived from the loves of Les deux Poitrinaires. These volumes,
however, are merely mentioned parenthetically, and must on no
account be confounded with any of those that are housed in my
nursery of enfants trouves. Rather would I compare them, in the
language of Le Sieur de Brantome, to des batards de grande famille,
the result of a mere passing flirtation with the muse, of one who has
come to be a redoubtable critic and a powerful writer of the realistic
school, but who has yet permitted them to bear his name upon their
title-pages. Perhaps they do not pretend to be anything more than
free translations, after all ?

In the beautiful sequence of poams entitled A Shropshire Lad, and
which again I only venture to allude to by way of a verification, for
here we are confronted with the work of a true poet, this note of latter-
day sadness is particularly accentuated. The genius of the author
communicates it to the reader, and we lay down the volume oppressed
by a sense of haunting despondency at thought of what has been so
persistently and mercilessly reiterated :

Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long,

and where, to quote an exquisite final verse : >

Lovers lying two by two

Ask not whom they sleep beside ;
And the bridegroom all night thro'

Never turns him to the bride.

By this concentration of thought upon the obvious and inevitable
end of all, we are led to assume that Mr. A. E. Housman is still young.
Like the traditional eels, that were said to have become used to
the skinning process, the older thinkers have already realised ' the
tragedy of Condemnation and Reprieve,' and have endeavoured to
make the best of it, though to neither young nor old can the idea be
altogether exhilarating. There is a Spanish proverb which says that
' Death, like the sun, should not be looked at too fixedly,' and surely
its * rapture of repose,' so beautifully described by one who was yet
sufficiently infected with the melancholy of his time to write as though
all the joys of earth had come to an end with his thirty-third year,
is more profitable and comforting to dwell upon than

La pourriture lente et 1'ennui du squelette.

Even Maurice Rollinat has admitted that there is always cremation !
Mr. A. E. Housman, however, is not to be counted amongst the
' men of one book,' and I am in hopes that so accomplished a singer
will soon cease to derive his chief inspirations from the creak of the
gibbet and the odour of the charnel-house. Another young poet,
whose last book I have just opened, and one who is also endowed

VOL. LVI— No. 329 K

130 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

with the true poetic gift, concludes thus a poem which is entitled

Ennui :

The sun has stink into a moonless sea
And every road leads down from Heaven to Hell,
The pearls are numbered on Youth's rosary,
I have outlived the days desirable.
What is there left ? And how shall dead men sing
Unto the loosened strings of Love and Hate,
Or take strong hands to Beauty's ravishment ?
Who shall devise this thing ?
To give high utterance to Miscontent,
Or make Indifference articulate ?

Whilst, elsewhere in the same volume, he thus deliberately invites
those very emotions which (if we except the first of them) have ever
been regarded by the majority of mankind as their most unwelcome
guests ;

0 Love ! 0 Sorrow ! O desired Despair 1

1 turn my feet towards the boundless sea,
Into the dark I go and heed not where,
So that I come again at last to thee !

But I must return from poets of a higher plane to my waifs and
strays. Here is an anonymous singer who makes his ' indifference
a-rticulate ' in the following lines :

WThat have I here to live for ? What the goal

I reach at length by nearing day by day ?
What is the composition of the soul

That fails to guide me with its flickering ray ?

Another young poet — for I have a shrewd suspicion that he must
l)e young — would have preferred to have remained

A protoplasmic substance, undefined,
Floating upon the bosom of the deep,

and never to^have been born into the world at all. He is indignant at
the impertinence of his own incarnation, without so much as a ' with
your leave or by your leave,' though how to stand upon ceremony
with ' a protoplasmic substance, undefined,' it is difficult to imagine.

Here is the angry protest of yet another anonymous bard, who,
I fancy, from his style, must be even younger still :

Why was I born, I often ask,

Into this world of Death and Doubt ?

To con an uncongenial task ?

I can't make out I I can't make out !

I had despised so mean a boon ;

The life I share with boor and lout,
But ' ah the die was cast too soon ' I

My heart moans out, my heart moans out I

1904 'ENFANTS TROUVtiS' OF LITERATURE 131

There is generally more spirit and joie de vivre about verses of this
calibre when the writer has availed himself of the ballad form, about
which there is generally a certain jauntiness of movement, or when
he condescends to deal with historical subjects, however distorted,
because he is then obliged, for the time being at least, to get outside
his own personal sensations, and to cease preying, as it were, upon his
own vitals.

From a small volume of Jacobite songs, printed some years ago,
and then suppressed possibly out of deference to the feelings of the
reigning Royal family, for I have never chanced upon it since, I
cull the following gem. The lines are expressive of the passionate
love of Flora Macdonald for ' the Young Pretender,' with whom, in
spite of her loyal devotion, her relations are known to have been

purely platonic :

Oh, Charlie, Charlie ! with thy face

So comely and bewitching 1
Of royal race, thy princely grace

Has set nay poor heart itching !

An ' itching ' or a ' moaning out ' heart : which of the two would
be the more undesirable possession ? ' I can't make out ! I can't
make out ! '

Very different in quality is the spirited ballad of Perkin Warbeck,
which I find in the distinguished collection of poems entitled The City

of the Soul.

At Turnay in Flanders I was born,

Fore-doomed to splendour and sorrow,
For I was a king when they cut the corn
And they strangle me to-morrow !

Thus laments poor Perkin in the opening verse, by which it will be
apparent that the poet accepts the orthodox historic version of his
story.

I was nothing but a weaver's son,

(he is made to confess later on in the ballad),

I was born in a weaver's bed,
My brothers toiled and my sisters spun,
And my mother wove for our bread.

Had this been fully proved, all would have been plain sailing, and
the hero of the poem would not have shared with the ' Man in the Iron
Mask ' the doubtful honour of ranking still as one of the most im-
penetrable mysteries of European history, for there are many people
now living who believe that he was indeed ' the milk White Rose of
York ' after all, in spite of the confession extorted from him when in
prison by the astutest of our Henries. Who can decide, at this
distance of time, when, as I read in my morning paper, ' grave doubts '
exist as to the death in the Temple of a much more modern scion of ill-
fated royalty — the unhappy little Louis XVII., for whose coffin a search

K 2

132 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

is even now being made ' in the cemetery in which he was probably
buried, in order to try and settle, once for all, the question whether it
was the poor little King or another who was buried there ' ? There
are ' Perkin Warbecks ' too, in America, I am informed, quite ready to
prove that they are descended from this later royal captive ; and where
so much difference of opinion exists as to ' how history was written '
in the eighteenth century, I feel that it would be rash indeed to make
sure of what may or may not have happened in the reign of the first of
the Tudors.

Be this how it may, here are two charming verses. ' Perkin ' is,
again lamenting his hard fate :

For I was not made for wars and strife,

And blood and slaughtering,
I was but a boy who loved his life,

And I had not the heart of a king.

Oh ! why hath God dealt so hardly with me,

That such a thing should be done,
That a boy should be born with a king's body

And the heart of a weaver's eon ?

By a process of thought-transference which will be obvious to the
initiated, I am here reminded of the terrible Ballad of Reading Gaolr
with its splendours and inequalities ; its mixture of poetic force, crude
realism, and undeniable pathos. Perhaps this hard-featured offspring
of genius, begotten in shame and misfortune, ought not, appropriately y
to keep company with the pretty effeminate weaklings of which, for
the most part, my collection consists, but there it is, nevertheless,
standing out, in wan and ghastly pre-eminence, upon the shelf, its
brow indelibly branded with the stigma of the ' Broad Arrow.' The
genesis of the poem is fraught with tragic interest. It is dedicated by
the author (a man of letters, and a poet of culture and refinement,
who unfortunately became subject, through his own delinquencies,
to the rigours of the law) to the memory of a trooper of the Royal
Horse Guards, one ' Woolridge ' or ' Wolredge ' (as I have lately
learnt) : a handsome good-for-nothing scoundrel, though a smart
soldier when sober, who, after a career of drink and dissipation,
ended by cutting the throat of his wife (a deserving young woman,
who supported herself by dressmaking at Windsor) with a razor,
which he took down with him from Knightsbridge Barracks for the
purpose. For this crime, as we read in a preface to the ballad, he
was hanged at Reading Gaol on the 7th of July, 1896. Oddly enough,
the first line of the poem contains an inaccuracy, due, perhaps, to its
author's Celtic origin :

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,

&c. As we are particularly informed, upon the fly-leaf, that the con-
demned man had been a trooper in the Blues, he would certainly not

1904 'ENFANTS TROUVtiS" OF LITERATURE 133

have worn a ' scarlet coat ' even if blood and wine had changed to
some abnormal colour ! This error, however, which it would have
been easy enough to correct, in no way interferes with the interest of
the poem. There is no joie de vivre here ; none of the careless abandon-
ment of the ordinary narrative ballad. All is grim, concentrated
tragedy, from cover to cover. A friend of mine, who looked upon
himself as a judge of such matters, told me once that he would
have placed certain passages in this poem, by reason of their
terrible tragic intensity, upon a level with some of the descriptions in
Dante's Inferno, were it not that ' The Ballad of Reading Gaol was so
much more infinitely human ' !

Let those who are inclined to smile at such a comparison read it
through, from beginning to end, and then judge for themselves. For
my own part, an impression of hopeless and helpless human agony
haunted me for days after reading it for the first time : an effect
which a descent into the Inferno has certainly never yet produced
upon me, although I have heard the groaning swing of the great
bronze doors at St. John Lateran which are said to have suggested
to the immortal Florentine the door over which was written these
terrible words, ' di colore oscuro,'

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che 'ntrate.

For Dante's august poem is open, to some extent, to the criticism
which Sainte-Beuve applies to Paradise Lost. The whole thing is
imaginary from beginning to end : a quality common to most works of
genius, it may be said, only that of this, in the present instance, for all its
beauty and magnificence, the reader is conscious from the first. Even
what I may call the most ' infinitely human ' incident of the Divina
Commedia — an incident of everyday occurrence in our own times, to
which poets and dramatists have clung with so much tenacity — has,
I fear, been a good deal coloured by the poet's luxuriant imagination.
An Italian savant, 'who had investigated the matter at Rimini and
elsewhere, assured me quite lately that Francesca must have been at
least forty-five years old at the time of her supposed act of infidelity,
which (even assuming that it ever occurred, a very doubtful matter)
the brothers Malatesta treated with unconcern, dwelling together
afterwards in perfect harmony, whilst the lady died peacefully in her
bed at a good old age. I hope with all my heart that this was not the
case ! Early illusions are precious things, and hard to part with, and
for me, at least, the guilty couple will continue to float on together
through space, for all time — as depicted in the well-known painting by
Ary Scheffer — transfixed by the same rapier, as I saw Signora Duse
transfixed, with the young gentleman who acted the role of Paolo,
after sitting for five mortal hours at the Costanzi Theatre, at Rome,
during the first night's performance of Gabriele d' Annunzio's recent
drama. But this is a digression.

134 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

The author of The Ballad of Reading Gaol essentially a { sensitive,'
learning what is to be the doom of the unfortunate trooper, who takes
his exercise in the same yard, though ' in another ring,' has thoroughly
imbued himself with his feelings, or with what he conceives that they
must be, and imagines, probably wrongly, that all his fellow- prisoners
are similarly impressed. Here is a graphic description of ' the man
who has to swing ' :

He walked amongst the Trial Men

In a suit of shabby grey ;
A cricket cap was on his head

And his step seemed light and gay ;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked

With such a wistful eye
Upon the little tent of blue

Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went

With sails of silver by.

The miserable sensations of a condemned felon are communicated
to the reader's mind in all their gruesome intensity. It was /, and no
other (or so I felt whilst reading), who had to ' die a death of shame,
on a day of dark disgrace ' ; to have ' a noose about ' my neck and ' a
cloth upon my face,' and to * drop feet foremost, through the floor,
into an empty space ' ; I became, for the time being, one of those
' souls in pain ' whose fate it is, as a beginning of the end, to

... sit with silent men

Who watch him night and day ;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,

And when he tries to pray,
Who watch him lest himself should rob

The prison of its prey.

The shivering Chaplain robed in white,

The Sheriff, stern with gloom,
And the Governor, all in shiny black,

With the yellow face of Doom.

All these seemed to be gathering round me in the flesh in the hour of
my agony, whilst

The hangman, with his gardener's gloves,
Slipped through the padded door.

Then, too, how wonderfully vivid is the description of the long night
before the condemned man's execution, when, as we read :

Crooked shapes of Terror crouched

In the corner where we lay ;
And each evil sprite that walks by night

Before us seemed to play ;

1904 'ENFANTS TROUVES' OF LITERATURE 135

They glided past, they glided fast,

Like travellers through a mist :
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon

Of delicate turn and twist.

What is a ' rigadoon ' ? Some kind of weird, diabolical taran-
tella ? Perhaps I am writing myself down ignoramus, but I
candidly confess that I never heard of one before, and I am all the
more impressed by the word because I have no notion of its correct
meaning. La femme aime Vinconnu (as a wise and witty French-
man has justly remarked), so a ' rigadoon,' whatever kind of measure
it may be, will always have a certain mysterious fascination for me,
until, as may happen, it becomes a fashionable cotillon figure at balls
and soirees dansantes.

Let us turn to something less lugubrious, even if it be less ' infinitely
human.'

Words of this description, which begin by being merely far-fetched
and unusual, and which hence seem to be fraught with something of
occult significance to sensitive minds and ears, have always been
extremely popular not only with the young ' men of one book,' but
with their intellectual superiors. I inquired, the other day, of a
singularly intelligent little girl of seven years old, what she took to
be the true meaning of the word ' poetry.' She was silent for some
time, and then said, as after due reflection : ' I think it must mean
beautiful words, and looking upwards ' : a relief to me, I confess,
for I had felt almost certain that she would have fancied that poetry
consisted in rhyme !

The definition is not at all a bad one, for, in spite of certain modern
innovators who take a different view, ' beautiful words,' combined
with the power of looking at life from a standpoint inaccessible to the
multitude, must ever go far towards the making of a true singer.
But surely the most important thing of all must be that the poet
should be endowed with that far-reaching human sympathy which
enables its possessor to receive and assimilate the subtle influences
which produce no impression upon more stolid natures, and which
engenders the precious faculty de tout comprendre et de tout pardonner,
and this the most ' beautiful words ' in our language are powerless to
supply !

The introduction of words which, independent of actual beauty,
were archaic, and out of date, was made fashionable in poetry some
thirty or forty years ago by a great singer, whose voice has not been
very long silent, and of whom we read — in the interesting biography
published, after his death, by his distinguished brother — that he kept
a whole list of them in reserve, to be called to the front, like emergency
men, when the occasion seemed to require it. I can thoroughly
sympathise with the magic spell of the pre-Raphaelite movement :
with the peace, and reverence, and far-off, holy calm with which a

136 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

return to ' the primitive ' in Art or Literature is prone to inspire certain
exceptional spirits, and so have more patience than most of my neigh-
bours with the so-called ' affectations ' of this particular school.

Lo, only a few strokes, it may be, of an ordinary ' J ' pen, and the
present, with its fret and turmoil, its shrieking and snorting trains,
' trams,' and abominable motor-cars, seems to shrivel up and dis-
appear like a decayed bat's wing ! Once more we are in pieno quattro-
cento, revelling in the vague iridescent hues of early pots, cathedral
window-panes, and faded embroideries, or in the cruder smalts, and
chromes, and dead gold of the old illuminators. There is no ' gold
reef city,' no ' De Beers Consolidated Diamond Company,' and the
diamonds of Brazil, with the rubies of Burmah and Ceylon, very seldom
find their way to Europe. In the very old days — say about B.C. 41 —
Cleopatra, as we know, was possessed of a pair of pearl earrings,
which, judging by a picture I have seen representing her in the act of
dropping one of them into a goblet in order that she may drink it off
as a toast to Mark Antony, must have been unusually fine specimens
of their kind. But then we must remember that she was a queen
and a Ptolemy — a family celebrated for their learned and artistic
tastes — beloved, too, of the mightiest conqueror in the world, who,
for aught we know, may even have fished up the gems in far-off
Britain, his recent conquest, and to which, we read with some surprise,
he was originally attracted by the reputation it had acquired for the
beauty of its pearls. For a person of so much consideration, slaves
were, no doubt, delving and diving all over the world with the object
of gratifying her slightest whim. Long after the second Triumvirate,
however, Oriental pearls and jewels of the first quality were only
' casual ' in their appearance and unattainable save to the monarch
upon his throne. Dame or ' damozel ' of the Middle Ages, therefore,
who wished to set off her ' trailing robes of samite or brocade,' had
to content herself with gems of inferior value, such as we may meet
with, even now, roughly encrusted in ancient chalices, or in the massive
bindings of early missals. In an old family document to which I
lately obtained access, a necklace of carnelian ' cut in tables ' is
deemed worthy of being handed down to posterity as an heirloom,
and to such jewels, each one emblematic of some particular virtue,
the young poets who are the apostles of sham medievalism are wont
to give, perhaps, a somewhat undue pre-eminence, chiefly because, in
so many instances, their names consist of rare and ' beautiful words,'
which minister to their craving for the ideal. Thus,
Beryl is a liquid gem ;
Bright and pure as when a beam
Cleaveth water . . .

writes one of our modern pre-Raphaelites, in a little volume which
lies open before me ;

Amethyst ; a place is set
For its lovely violet, &c. &c.

1904 'ENFANTS TROUVtiS' OF LITERATURE 137.

Then, too, we have the ' onyx ' and the ' sardonyx,' the * chalce-
dony ' and the * chrysoprase,' though, for obvious reasons, not
unconnected with the exigencies of rhyme, some of our latter-day
singers are apt to prefer, for the ending of their lines, the mysterious
' chrysolite,' which is, amongst gems, even as is the ' asphodel ' in the
poet's flower garden.

Chrysolite for goodness doth
Sparkle like an oven's mouth,

I read in the same little volume, and here it is thrown in gratuitously
and entirely independent of rhyme.

We said things wonderful as chrysolites,

writes the accomplished author of The City of the Soul, from which
I have already quoted, and where we also read of a sword fashioned
of the same perishable material.

The above verses, in spite of a few doubtful rhymes, are full of
spiritual suggestiveness. All that is vulgar, sensual, ' of the earth,
earthy,' seems to crumble away and perish as we read. Nor is the
book from which I have made most of these extracts one of those
fatherless foundlings to whom I have given a home merely out of
charity. The author of its being has set his name upon the title-
page like a man ; but, alas, this is its sole claim to virility ! The
contents are emasculate and disappointing for all their prettiness,
besides being — as the late Mr. A. W. Kingiake remarked of a
certain Parliamentary candidate — ' very considerably tainted with
purity.'

After all, the world is not wholly composed of saints and ascetics.
There are healthy as well as wwhealthy yearnings in the human heart,
which even such pure gems as the chrysolite are powerless to satisfy !

* What man is there of you, of whom if his son ask bread, will he give
him a stone ? ' It is a case of ' beautiful words and looking upwards '
with a vengeance. We are almost tempted to wish that the poet had
looked downwards sometimes for a change, and picked up some-
thing a little more ' infinitely human,' even if he chanced upon it in
the gutter !

Still, ' good ' and ' wonderful,' indeed, is the * chrysolite ' if it can
illuminate the souls of the sadder of our poets with its ' oven-mouth '
sparkle, and lead them thus decorously and discreetly towards the

* realms of the higher fancy.' I cannot say that I ever remember to
have set eyes upon one myself !

Occasionally, when these green or white firstfruits of genius seem
to their creators to be too slim and ephemeral to bear the rude buffets
of ' this world of Death and Doubt,' they are padded out with a
romance in blank verse, or in rhymed heroic measure, divided into
' parts ' or * cantos.' It is from such a volume, and one that was

138 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

not published anonymously, either, that I quote the following descrip-
tion of the heroine :

A line of beauty did the eyebrows trace,
And, like the Grecian fair one, down her face
In a straight line, her scenting-organ sped.

(The italics are my own.) Alas, poor ' scenting-organ ' ! But for
the immortal line describing thee as ' tip-tilted like the petal of a
fiow'r,' how seldom hath honourable mention been made of thee in
Poesy ! Eyes, lips, ears, hair, with many etceteras, have come in for
almost more than their fair share of notice and approbation, and yet,
without thee, of what account are any of them ? Whilst, when thou
surpassest thy ordinary dimensions by one-fourth part of the traditional
inch that is said to be so much ' upon a man's nose,' the courage and
chivalry of Cyrano de Bergerac himself can scarcely persuade us to
tolerate thee, even upon the boards of the Parisian stage !

This is the same young lady — she of the ' scenting-organ ' — of
whom we read in the same poem that her

• . • forth-bursting proved her mother's death.

Once more we are treading upon the solid earth. We descend, as
it were, with a thud, from the ' realms of the higher fancy ' ; from
the * protoplasmic substance undefined ' ; ' indifference articulate ' ;
from ' onyx ' and ' sardonyx,' ' chalcedony ' and ' chrysolite ' ; from
the aesthetic atmosphere of those who wander aimlessly in the fields
of asphodel after having breakfasted off the ' Bodley bun.'

And yet these lines, for all their seeming absurdity, result in
reality from ' looking upwards,' and straining after the 'perfection of
expression which seems to demand the employment of ' beautiful
words.' ' Dilatation,' ' exaltation of spirit ' — we may call it what we
like — an inspiration ' of sorts,' are not wanting, but the author has
not been endowed with the faculty of discrimination, and so all these
go for naught. Still, the man who can so far forget himself and his
ordinary traditions as to allude to a nose as a ' scenting-organ,' whilst
incurring, it may be, the ridicule of ' the great uninspired,' has soared
in spirit to regions that are far beyond reach of the arrows of their
scorn, where to describe the feature in question by its usual name
would seem almost like an insult and a sacrilege. When he can bring
himself to call a nose ' a nose ' again, he will have fallen once more
to earth, where, I fancy, judging from the rest of the contents of his
book, he is likely to abide for ever. How precious, therefore, should
be the outward and visible sign of his brief trial trip into the Empyrean,
if things become valuable merely by reason of their rarity, which
everything leads us to believe that they do !

Some of these slender little volumes contain, indeed, the subli-
mated essence of their authors' poetical being. We hold in our hands,

1904 'ENFANTS TROUVfiS' OF LITERATURE 139

as we read them, a part of the man's nature which bears no sort of
resemblance to his material self, as we may come to know it when
once he has ' reverted to the briar.' His ' material self ' we may meet,
probably, as often as we choose, if such meetings can afford us any
satisfaction. We may see it stout, prosperous, complacent, hailing
cabs or omnibuses with the well-furled umbrella of conventional
respectability, and little suspecting that, for all this, we know for
certain that ' in the days that are done ' it became responsible — at the
instigation of that other ' self,' which is now dead and departed — for
some such verses as the following :

Our passions sustain us, and move

To the motion of instinct desire ;
With the rhythmical anguish of love,

And the heaving of tremulous fire.

The thirst unassuaged yet unsloken

Will be drowned in the fiercest delight,
And love will be rent and be broken
And kissed out of feeling or sight.

(Only this is an exceedingly favourable example.)

But I might as well endeavour to describe the features and com-
plexions of a whole regiment of soldiers, together with those of their
commanding officers — for all the minds represented in my collection
are by no means upon an equality — as to set down the characteristics
of each one of the separate volumes upon my inconveniently crowded
shelves. I have quoted from barely a dozen of them, and already
time and space are coming to an end, and yet there they stand —
many more — in their serried lines, and I am not at all sure
that I ought not to have given precedence to some that I have left
quite unnoticed, and whose lettered backs, to my sensitive eye, seem
suddenly to have assumed a piqued and offended expression.

Then, too, there are the ladies, the female poets, illustrious and
obscure, to whom I have not even ventured to allude, but about
whom I should like to say just a few words by way of conclusion.

Mr. George Moore, in his Avowals, says that woman ' excels in
detail, but never attains synthesis, not being herself synthesic ' (sic) ;
and, furthermore, that ' it were well that the fact were fully recognised
that the presence of women in art is waste and disappointment.'

Not for worlds would I enter into controversy with Mr. George
Moore, feeling sure that I should be worsted, and fearing that then
he might call me bad names — ' small, weakly creature, ridiculously
shapen, &c. &c.,' as upon p. 328 of the March number of the Pall
Mall Magazine — or declare, perhaps, that I cooked * inadequately ' —
a reproach that would really strike home, since one cannot help regard-
ing cooking (adequately or 'inadequately'), even in these enlightened
days, as rather more of a woman's legitimate vocation than Art or
Literature. What I would venture to say, however, is that when we

140 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

take into consideration her limitations — the very limitations alluded
to by Mr. George Moore — it has always struck me that, when a woman
is impelled to depart from her natural mission — the mission of cooking
* inadequately,' let us say — and to plunge into pathways which lead
only to * waste and disappointment,' her ' call ' must be much more
definite and imperative than the 'inspiration' of a man, although,
according to Mr. George Moore, the result is always so unsatisfactory.

A man, fresh from a successful career at one of our great Universi-
ties, the swing and rhythm of Greek and Latin verses still ringing in
his ears, and imbued, it may be, with the works of the master- singers
of antiquity, finds little difficulty, even if he be not a truly inspired
poet, in tossing ofi couplet or epigram, if only with the object of
killing time upon a wet day, or when, perhaps, there is nothing
else to kill with rod or gun, and so may be induced to write very
respectable derivative verse merely from a feeling of ennui. He has
striven, perhaps, when he was at Oxford, for the ' Newdigate ' ;
possibly he may even have obtained it. This is enough to stimulate
any literary ambition. Why should not the author of Ravenna
aspire to the same honours that were showered, eventually, upon the
head of the author of Timbnctoo, seeing that the two prize poems are
' much of a muchness ' as regards their intrinsic value ?

But it is altogether different with a woman. Ten to one that,
with a few noteworthy exceptions, she knows little or nothing of the
immortal poets of antiquity, and has never breathed, even in fancy,
the stimulating atmosphere, or trod

. . . the thymy pasture -lands
Of high Parnassus.

Even when she is not a professional cook or mere household drudge,
compelled to pore over weekly accounts or darn the holes in the
family linen, she has so many other ways of profitably passing her
time, so many urgent demands upon her sympathy and attention,
particularly when she is blessed, or encumbered, with noisy human
offspring ! The ' inspiration ' must be a very potent one which can
induce her to neglect her so-called ' duties,' even her so-called * plea-
sures,' sometimes, in order that she may be able to satisfy her so-
called ' poetic ' yearnings. She need never write, at any rate, simply
from a feeling of ennui.

And yet how decently our female poets have acquitted themselves
in the glorious reign which has but recently come to a close ! (In the
face of our stern critic I dare use no more enthusiastic terms.) From
Mrs. Browning (the ' hen-bird, singing to its mate,' of Mr. George
Moore, and to whom my remarks about a defective classical education
do not, of course, apply) to the refined and graceful author of Opals,
there is not much to complain of in the quality or finish of their
work.

1904 'ENFANTS TROUVES' OF LITERATURE 141

Daphnis and Chloe, with other impossible shepherds and shep-
herdesses of the past, have almost entirely disappeared from our
midst, together with the paste-board flocks of an artificial Arcadia
(though we may, perhaps, purchase the history of their pastoral loves
* traduit du Grec par M. Amiot et un anonyms, for the sake of its
binding by Derome, or its petits pieds ' inventts et peints par la main
de S. A. R. Philippe Due d 'Orleans, Regent de France*). But that the
more subtle and imperishable Hellenic influences still survive — influ-
ences which inspired Homer and Hesiod long before the plague of
Egyptian myths and fables — is made apparent whenever we turn to
the writings of the greatest of our living bards, and to these the more
cultivated of our modern female poets have been by no means insensible.
Not to mention the ' hen-bird singing to its mate,' the late Jean Inge-
low, to whom we are indebted for that fine poem The High Tide upon
the Coast of Lincolnshire, is also the author of Persephone, with its
haunting musical refrain ; Mrs. Pfeiffer, Mrs. Meynell. Miss Mary
Robinson (who, I am told, prefers still to be known by the maiden
name in which she achieved her first triumphs), have all gone to the
fountain-head for their inspiration, whilst I have often thought how
proud and pleased ' the great god Pan ' might well have been,
Down in the reeds by the river,

could he have only foreseen that, even in these far-off, practical days
of ' bike ' and * motor,' he would find an enthusiastic admirer and
apologist in the charming Lady Margaret Sackville !

And yet Mr. George Moore says that we are not ' synthesic,' and,
what is more, that we can never become so ! ... Being, unfortunately,
a woman myself, and knowing all our little ways, I will go a step
further than Mr. George Moore, and wager that comparatively few
of us are even aware of the derivation or correct significance of the
term. But then this is just what makes me so particularly proud of
my sex, although it is one that has been imposed upon me without
the asking. We can make our omelets without eggs, and our bricks
without straw, and the omelets are really quite eatable, and the bricks
tolerably substantial, for all that. This is our own precious secret,
a ' woman's privilege,' and that it should make some people rather
provoked with us I can perfectly well understand.

MARY MONTGOMERIE CURRIE.

142 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND THE
PRESENT WAR

THE present war has already been fruitful in novel questions of inter-
national law. A few of the many special questions which have
arisen in consequence of the changed conditions of modern warfare
I propose discussing. But before doing so I touch upon some of the
larger aspects of this war, interesting to the jurist and likely to
reappear in the future. One of them is the change to be noted in
the policy of neutrals in regard to the action of belligerents at sea : a
change in a movement which has long been going on. and an un-
expected result or concomitant of the growth of large armaments.
For some years the development of maritime international law pro-
ceeded along one line. The supremacy of the Navy of this country
was either taken for granted as natural in view of its possessions
and dependence for food upon foreign supplies, or the day when this
supremacy was to be overthrown was regarded as distant and un-
certain. The other chief States of the world, possessing great armies,
were resigned, for a time at least, to England's predominance at sea.
In these circumstances the laws of war at sea were moulded by two
forces : England pressing hard and exaggerating the rights of belliger-
ents, while other Powers were the champions of the rights of neutrals.
They favoured ' free ships making free goods.' They were jealous of
the exercise of the right of search ; France carrying that jealousy to
the point of suffering for many years the slave trade to flourish in
certain waters rather than British cruisers should exercise this right,
and again in 1887 declining to be a party to the much-needed con-
vention for the suppression of the sale of liquor among North Sea
fishermen by the keepers of floating public-houses, rather than
sanction ' a derogation of the fundamental principles of our public
maritime law.' l Those Powers refused to recognise cruiser blockades,
or blockades of which there has been no notification. They were,
on the whole, though with oscillations in practice, in favour of a strict
limitation of contraband to articles directly of use in war as against
the comprehensive conception recognised by England. If there did

1 Report of Commission of Chamber of Deputies, 1892.

1904 QUESTIONS ON THE PRESENT WAR 143

not always exist in form an armed neutrality, there was a standing
array of interests on the side of neutrals. There was a cloud of writers
of the stamp of Dupuis and Hautefeuille who denounced the egotism
and tyranny of England. On the whole, until the latter half of lasj;
century the belligerents had the best of it. There was some truth in
M. Dupuis's remark : ' Dans le compromis que le droit des gens
tend a realiser entre les interets contradictoires des belligerants et des
neutres, le balance risque fort de pencher toujours quelque peu du
cote des premiers.' 2

But from 1856, when England surrendered one of the sharpest of
her weapons, there was a shrinkage in belligerent rights. They were
asserted, it is true, with somewhat of the old force, though in new
forms, in 1861-64 by the United States. But, on the whole, since that
time the disposition has been to insist that, peace being the normal
order of things, the interests of neutrals should prevail in a conflict
with those of belligerents ; that, for example, the intercourse between
nations by mail steamers and otherwise should be little obstructed ;
that only munitions of war and the like should be treated as contra-
band ; and that blockades should be respected only if they were strictly
efficacious. It would seem, however, as if there was a recovery in
belligerent rights. Perhaps that is only the inevitable outcome of a
naval war ; belligerents using every weapon in their power, and
neutrals not being organised or pressing collectively with equal spirit
and zeal their interests. Perhaps it is a consequence or natural con-
comitant of great armaments. Several States possessing, or aspiring
to possess, powerful navies able to cope, single-handed or jointly, with
any fleet ; the supremacy at sea of any Power being regarded as
dangerous ; the value of ' sea power ' as a factor in warfare realised as
it never was before, there is a rise in belligerent rights ; a reluctance
to propose or assent to any declaration which may fetter the action
of the States which have not hitherto possessed maritime power, but
which may one day acquire it. If I am not misinformed, more than
one Government has, on the advice of its experts, refrained from
speaking distinctly as to recent acts which on the face of them
seemed to conflict with the plain interests of neutrals. On the outlook
for what is to their advantage, they do not know what it may prove
to be. There is reluctance to do anything which might hinder
Governments in the event of war doing all that expediency may in
unforeseen circumstances dictate as to wireless telegraphy or sub-
marine cables. At the opening of this century there seems to be
what there was at the beginning of last century, an exaggeration of
maritime belligerent rights ; with this difference — it is an exaggeration
all round. :

I note a second peculiarity of this war, and one which has already
produced much perplexity and confusion and with far-extending con-
2 R. G, do Droit International, 1903, p. 342.

144 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

sequences. Usually belligerents fight on belligerents' soil. If they
make war on the soil of neutrals, they in effect make war on the latter,
or give cause for the latter doing so. The very basis of international
law is the assumption that each nation is master in its own house,
that its territory is to be respected. But in the present contest this
is ignored; all is confusion ; it is hard to make out who are bellige-
rents and what is neutral soil. It is true that, with spheres of in-
fluence, protectorates and suzerainties, and military occupations,
with such anomalies as the administration of Cyprus, Egypt, and
Bosnia, ideas on this point are not as clear as they once were. We
have seen of late so much interference by strong States in the
affairs of the weak in the name of European concert that one might
at times fancy the days of the Congress of Vienna and the ' European
police ' then exercised over the weak had returned. Things were
topsy-turvy in China when the Allies in 1900-1, declaring that they
were not at war with her, killed her soldiers and occupied her capital.
Manchuria, which is occupied by Russia, is still an integral part of
the Chinese Empire. Yet it is treated in many ways as if it were not
occupied militarily but actually annexed. Its inhabitants, Chinese
subjects, are compelled to guard the Siberian railways. Korea has
been alternately a protectorate of Japan and China. Nominally there
subsisted a treaty by which Japan renounced its sovereign rights and
declared Korea to be a sovereign State, the King subsequently pro-
claiming himself Emperor in manifestation of his independence.
Korea, probably under pressure, has since the war concluded a con-
vention with Japan : a strange incident in a war avowedly begun
for the securing of the independence of the former. Instead of con-
forming, as in theory might have been expected, to the articles in the
Hague Convention relating to military occupation, both Powers have
treated Korea from the outset very much as if it were belligerent
soil. Nor is it satisfactory to say ' Korea is outside the region of
international law.' That simplifies the problems here touched, but only
by ignoring the difficulties. Nice questions of private law will arise
in these circumstances. Suppose that munitions of war were sent to
Seoul ; may they be lawfully seized as contraband, an essential of
which is that they are going directly or eventually to a hostile
destination ? Would a prize court condemn them, and neutrals
acquiesce in such a decision ? It is probable that courts would
look, as is their inclination nowadays, to the actual condition of
things, and have regard to the State which in fact controlled the
situation, without reference to the titular sovereign Power. But
what is happening there opens up prospects prejudicial to smaller
States. ' Buffer States ' in particular are likely to have a bad time of
it in future wars. The assumption of the equality of the States of
the world, always a fiction, promises to become an absurdity.

I note a further characteristic of this war : a set of facts lying

1904 QUESTIONS ON THE PRESENT WAR 145

perhaps outside the domain of international law, but affecting some of
its problems. Hitherto, at the opening of almost every war, whether
the parties to it were civilised or not, it has unconsciously been deemed
necessary to resort to an artifice or expedient in order to create (if
I may say so) the sort of atmosphere in which two nations of ordinary
humanity can contemplate in calmness or without remorse the suffer-
ings inflicted upon an adversary by war — that monster, to quote
Bossuet's words, ' le plus cruel que 1'enfer a jamais vomi pour la
mine des hommes.' Only, it would seem, when racial hatred had
been thus roused could the work be done with satisfaction. And so
it has often been the self-imposed mission of a certain class of writers
to spread and foster the notion that the people opposed to their own
were cruel, or barbarous, or repulsive in their habits, or somehow odious.
Almost regularly at the opening of almost every war there has been
a flight of such calumnies ; the lie patriotic being the necessary con-
comitant of a declaration of hostilities. It is matter of history that
men of genius have stooped to this ignoble traffic in slander. It is
a lasting regret to the admirers of Mommsen that he penned an epistle
containing insults to the French people in their bitter hour, and that
there came from Paris retorts equally calumnious. And as war has
gone on, there has generally been developed greed for stories, for the
most part unsupported by credible evidence, to the prejudice of the
foe and about his treachery and his cruelty. Now, so far, there has
been little or nothing of the kind. Both sides recognise the virtues
of their opponents. They speak of their bravery and their kindness
to the wounded ; and there have been fewer allegations of abuse of
the white flag than was ever probably known.

What will be the outcome of this ? These good signs may dis-
appear if the business drags on ; but it is a new factor in war that the
spurious and artificial racial hatred which has almost always accom-
panied it is absent at the beginning. Not more remarkable is the
swift assimilation by Japan of the resources of military science than
the assimilation, rapid and complete, of the best traditions, the
courtesies and amenities of European warfare. Experience shows
that if hostilities are long continued, passions kept in check at last
break loose ; the vanquished are irritated and desperate ; the victors
become impatient at resistance unreasonably continued. But, so far
as things have gone, one may say that a non-Christian State has set an
example to Christian nations in the conduct of war (as far as it is
possible) on the lines of civilisation. The superior prestige of the
West for humanity is gone. Touches of humanity and sympathy,
never wanting in war, have abounded. The Japanese have tended
their wounded adversaries, and have resorted to no shabby subter-
fuges ; and on the death of Admiral Makaroff they paid the tribute
of brave men to a fallen foe. They have paid for what they have
taken. They have made friends of the population in which they
VOL. LVI — No. 329 L

146 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

moved. Already the ring of European nations whose consent has
made international law is broken in upon by the admission of Turkey
and Japan. International law cannot be quite what it was if it
henceforth expresses the consent of powerful Asiatic non-Christian
States as well as of European nations.

The last general remark to be made is this : In view of the swift
fate of the Petropaulovsk and Japanese transports — hundreds of men
destroyed as if by an earthquake or a volcanic outburst such as that
of Mount Pelee — is there any limit in modern warfare to the use of
destructive agencies which chemistry may devise, provided they are
effective ? The committee which, in 1847, rejected Lord Dundonald's
scheme for destroying by poisonous gases or other agencies whole
armies and garrisons, did so mainly on the ground of humanity;
it did not ' accord with the feelings and principles of civilised warfare/
Would a military committee of to-day have the same scruples ? The
Duke of Wellington's objection to the scheme was ' Two can play at
that game.' Lord Dundonald's retort, ' Yes, but the first of the two.
wins,' might be deemed convincing. With torpedoes and submarine
mines regarded as part of * good war,' it seems almost squeamish to*
stop at anything. All the Powers at the Hague except the United
States were against the use of shells containing asphyxiating gases.
But there was weight in Admiral Mahan's contention ' that it was
illogical and not demonstratively humane to be tender about
asphyxiating men with gas when all were prepared to admit that it
was allowable to blow the bottom out of an ironclad at midnight,
throwing four or five hundred men into the sea to be choked by water,
with scarcely the smallest chance of escape.' The compromise which
the usages of war have made between what was allowable and what
was not was never quite reasonable ; it differs capriciously as to land
and sea ; it does not rest on any real ethical distinction, but is the
outcome of historical accidents and traditions ; a strange mixture of
caste and general morality ; it now seems to be hopelessly absurd.

Of the special questions which have pressed to the front since last
February, few are yet sufficiently ripe for speaking positively about
them. What Colonel Lonsdale Hale calls ' the fog of war ' hangs thick
over them, and will not completely rise until it is over. One obscure
point concerns neutrals. If half of what is stated with respect to
the sale of vessels or munitions of war taking place in Germany and
Chili be true, there will be a serious case for compensation. To be
sure, so far the mercantile marine of Japan has not suffered much
from these purchases, if real. But if cruisers traceable to German
ports are fitted out or sold to Russia, it would require little ingenuity
to figure out a heavy claim for losses and expenses attributable to
these vessels. History seems to show that the result of such demands
against neutrals depends on the measure of military success of the
belligerent. The victor in war has a way of succeeding in arbitrations.
At the outset of hostilities was raised a delicate question, too

lightly settled by many who professed to speak in the name of inter-
national law. A formal declaration is not needed to constitute a
state of war, with all the results to neutrals and belligerents ; 3 and in
modern times such a declaration has been rather the exception than
the rule. With actual hostilities at once arise all the rights and
duties of belligerents and neutrals. But this does not completely
dispose of the question which has arisen, or justify every attack by
surprise. International law offers no excuse for such acts as the
invasion of the Palatinate by Louis XIV., or of Silesia by Frederick
the Great, without warning, formal or otherwise. An attack
without intimating, directly or indirectly, that a refusal of demands
is to be followed by war, is criminal in the forum of the jurist as it is
according to the consciences of plain men. Some clear indication of
what is the alternative to denial of demands is admitted to be essential
to loyal warfare. About the 5th of February the Japanese Government,
after a long delay of which they had apparently good cause to com-
plain, recalled their Ambassador, and notified interruption of diplo-
matic relations — a state of things which is not, of course, neeessarily
equivalent to a state of war, and has not always been followed by it.
On the night of the 8th or 9th Admiral Togo torpedoed the Russian
vessels at Port Arthur. It was an attack of surprise. Was it a
treacherous and disloyal act ? The question must be put with the
knowledge that a nation which is patient may be duped ; that the
first blow counts much ; and that under cover of continuing negotia-
tion a country unprepared might deprive another better equipped of
its advantages. But it is a nice question whether the negotiations
had reached on the 8th or 9th of February a point at which discussion
had been abandoned, and both sides had accepted the arbitrament of
.battle. I will only say that the recent precedent is of evil omen, and
that it is to be feared that in future we may see blows struck, not
merely without formal notice, but while diplomatists are still debating.
I am not expressing an opinion on the particular act in saying that
there has been an unfortunate — perhaps inevitable — retrogression.
Since 1870 there has been a tendency to abide by the old rule, which
.regarded a war without a declaration or ultimatum as disloyal. For
example, notice was given by Montenegro to Turkey in 1876, by
Russia to Turkey in 1878, and by the United States to Spain in 1898.
In the absence of trustworthy information there is little use dis-
cussing the charge against the Russians of sowing at haphazard mines
in the open sea to the peril of neutral shippers. The facts are alto-
gether controverted, and we must wait until the reports of the com-
manders of neutral fleets are forthcoming. The probability is that

3 This is not universally admitted. M. Fillet (Les Lois Actttelles de la Guerre,
1. 64) says : — ' Une guerre sans declaration n'est pas une guerre loyale.' See Clunet,
1904, 257. Writing in La Libre Parole with reference to the outbreak of hostilities,
M. Drumont says :— ' Le droit international a ve"cu ! '

L 2

148 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY July

such mines were placed in the waters contiguous to Port Arthur, and
in bad weather drifted out to sea ; which happened to the Russian
mines laid in the Baltic in 1856 ; 4 an accident which might give rise to
claims for compensation by injured neutrals, just as might injuries
done by stray shots or by torpedoes or submarine boats.

Of the special questions which this war has brought forward the
most perplexing is that of wireless telegraphy. It confronts inter-
national lawyers before they have made up their minds what to say
as to the rights and duties of belligerents in regard to submarine cables.
Their position in time of war has been more than once discussed at
international conferences. But no rules have so far been generally
adopted by nations. The Cable Conference of 1884 declined to go
into the matter ; Article 15 of the Convention says : ' II est bien
entendu que les stipulations de la presente convention ne portent
aucune atteinte a la liberte d'action des belligerants.' Apart from the
difficulties inherent in adapting old rules to this new mode of com-
munication, a powerful instrument of war as well as a servant of
peace, there is another in the disposition to regard the matter as if it
were a question of England against the rest of the world. She possesses
or controls a large part of the existing cables ; many of them pass
through or touch her territory ; and there is force in the contention
that : ' Dans 1'etat actuel des communications telegraphiques le monde
entier est le tributaire de la Grande Bretagne, car c'est a Londres
qu'aboutissent la plupart des fils qui relient PEurope aux autres
Continents.' 5

The Institut de Droit International in 1879 adopted a resolution
that in time of war cables connecting neutral countries were inviolable.
At its meeting in Brussels the Institut passed a series of resolutions
which probably express the general understanding as to what is right
and proper. After reaffirming the inviolability of cables connecting
neutral territories, the Institut added :

Le cable reliant les territoires de deux belligerants ou deux parties du terri-

4 See Earp's Sir Charles Napier's Campaign in the Baltic, pp. 132, 165, 276.

* B. G. de Droit International, 1901, p. 682. I quote for what it is worth the
statement of M. Bey : ' En 1870, la notification de la declaration de guerre n'est
transmise a 1'escadre d'extreme-Orient qu'apres avoir et6 communique'e aux navires de
commerce allemands a ce moment dans les ports chinois. Lors de la campagne du
Tonkin, en 1885, 1'Angleterre se procure la clef du chiffre employ^ par le Gouverne-
ment francais, et prend avant celui-ci connaissance des de"p£ches de 1'Amiral Courbet ;
de m£me, en 1893, les instructions envoyees & 1'Amiral Humann au conflit franco-
Siamois sont communiquees au Foreign Office par les compagnies anglaises chargees
de les transmettre. En 1888, un telegramme du Gouvernement du Congo au Hoi des
Beiges au sujet de 1'exp^dition Stanley-Emin Pacha est connu par la presse anglaise
avant d'etre parvenu a destination ; il en est de meme du succes de ['expedition du
General Duchesne a Madagascar en 1895. Enfin, en 1894, la mort du Sultan du
Maroc, susceptible d'entrainer de graves complications, est dissimule'e vingt-quatre
heures aux Gouvernements inte"resses pendant que le Ministre d'Angleterre a Tanger,
pour correspondre avec le Foreign Office, occupe pendant une nuit entiere le cable
anglais, qui seul reliait alora le Maroc au reste du monde." (R. G. de Droit Inter-
national, 1901, p. 683.)

1904 QUESTIONS ON THE PEE SENT WAR 149

toire d'un des belligerants peut etre coupe partout, excepte dans la mer territoriale
et dans les eaux neutralisees dependant d'un territoire neutre.

Le cable reliant un territoire neutre au territoire d'un des belligerants ne
pent en aucun cas etre coupe dans la mer territoriale ou dans les eaux neutra-
lisees dependant d'un territoire neutre. En haute mer, ce cable ne peut etre
coupe que s'il y a blocus effectif et dans les limites de la ligne du blocus, sauf re-
tablissement du cable dans le plus bref delai possible. Ce cable peut toujours
etre coupe sur le territoire et dans la mer territoriale dependant d'un territoire
ennemi jusqu'aune distance de troismilles marins de la baisse de basse-mare'e.

Few of those who discuss the subject dwell sufficiently upon the
differences between contraband or quasi-contraband and vessels
conveying the same and telegrams and submarine cables. Telegraphic
communications may be called quasi-contraband. But you do not
seize a vessel because it may be carrying contraband ; you do not
destroy it if it does ; you do not confiscate it if the owner has acted
innocently. Transmitting messages to belligerents may be likened to
breaking a blockade. But the analogy is faint. You do not destroy
vessels which may break it; you do not capture them, unless the
blockade is effective. In a maritime war a cable is something sui
generis. A belligerent cannot exercise over it any right similar to that
of search ; it may be an instrument of war much more important than
a cargo of contraband or a blockade-runner ; the fact to be recognised
is that he may be safe only if he cuts it. The hesitation of States
unable to foresee circumstances in which interruption to cable com-
munications might be vital to them is natural. Looking to what may
hang upon telegraphic communication — transports intercepted, a fleet
destroyed, the fate of a campaign [affected — it is too much to expect
belligerents always to keep within the four corners of the rules which
I have quoted. There will be circumstances, it may be anticipated, in
which they will not suffer, if they can help it, a telegraphic cable, no
matter who is the owner or what are its termini, to be used to their
detriment. To whatever rules they assent will probably be added
the sacramental formula, ' So far as circumstances permit.'

I put less trust in rules which there may be an irresistible temptation
to break or evade than in a proper system of compensation by belli-
gerents not only for structural injuries, but loss of traffic, meted out
by a tribunal possessing general confidence. In legal development,
when a new principle has not yet been evolved, and when, in the
absence of accepted rules, each case depends on its peculiar cir-
cumstances, compensation is, as here, the only possible alleviation
of hardships. At present, however, there are no settled ideas or
practice as to such compensation. The Americans, in their war with
Spain, cut the cable of the Eastern Extension Company from Hong-
Kong to Manila at the shore end. The company claimed compensa-
tion for Admiral Dewey's act of war. English counsel gave an
opinion favourable to the claim of the company for indemnity to the
extent of the amount expended on repairing the cable cut at Manila.
The Attorney-General of tin United States advised his Government

150 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

that the claim was not maintainable, on the ground that the ' property
of a neutral permanently situated within the territory of our enemy
is, from its situation alone, liable to damage from the lawful 'operations
of war, which this cutting is conceded to have been, as no compensa-
tion is due for such damage. . . . That is a rule applying to property
of a neutral which he has placed within the territory of our enemy,
which property our necessary military operations damage or destroy.
It takes no account of the character of the property, but only of its
location. ... It argues nothing that cables have not heretofore been
the subject of any discussion of this rule. The same might be said
of many kinds of property, either because they happened not to be
injured, or because the rule was so well understood that a discussion
was deemed superfluous. ... It is said that the whole utility of the
cable is destroyed for many miles by a cutting within territorial
waters; in other words, that the damage extends outside of terri-
torial waters. But is this true ? Undoubtedly the interruption of
traffic over it does or may extend for many miles ; but the interrup-
tion of traffic is not the basis of the claim. When repaired, it was
repaired, as it had been cut, within territorial waters, and was then the
same as before the injury. It was possible to take up the outer end
and operate the cable to Hong-Kong from the time it was cut ; and it was
the sealing of the cable at Hong-Kong, and not the cutting, which pre-
vented this from being done. . . . The obvious difference between a cut-
ting within and a cutting without territorial waters, however it may be
equally troublesome to the owner, goes to the foundation of the rule au-
thorising the destruction of property because it is within the territory.' 6

These reasons are highly technical, and are not convincing. They
do not accord with the equity of plain men. The property of an
innocent subject of a neutral State — property which he could not
remove when war broke out — had been injured. The whole line
from Hong-Kong to Manila was rendered for a time useless to the
company. It is conceived that a proper system of compensation
should provide for such cases and others pretty certain to arise in
maritime warfare. It is somewhat a waste of time and ingenuity,
I fear, to attempt to determine beforehand with great detail the precise
limits of action to which in this matter belligerents may be expected to
conform. More pressing is the preparation of a carefully thought-out
scheme of compensation.

The reluctance to speak positively as to the use by neutrals on
the high seas or on neutral territory of wireless telegraphy is intelli-
gible. Its utility in warfare has yet to be determined. It was absurd
to describe, in the language of the Russian note, the telegraphists on
board the Haimun as ' spies ' — a term defined in every military manual.7

6 Opinions of Attorney-Generals, xxii. p. 315. I gather from the Secretary of the
Company that the claim is still under consideration.

7 See Bismarck's famous note of November 19, 1870, as to the treatment of
aeronauts in time of war.

1904 QUESTIONS ON THE PRESENT WAR 151

If there is any doubt as to its meaning, it arises from the
modern tendency to greater leniency towards a class of men per-
forming duties which every soldier considers honourable. In these
days Major Andre might not have been executed. He probably
would not have experienced the humiliation of being hanged.
Wireless apparatus on shipboard could not by any stretch of reason
be classed, according to the threat in the Russian note, as contra-
band ; every requisite is absent. Nor is there a recognised doctrine
according to which neutrals may be excluded from ' the sphere of
military operations ' outside the belligerents' territory — a somewhat
novel phrase covering a novel doctrine. But all cause for complaint
by belligerents is not removed by vessels with wireless telegraphy
keeping outside the three-mile line. That for some purposes is a
sufficient zone of safety, while it is not so for others ; it is a popular
error that international law draws a hard-and-fast line as to this.
Operation by wireless telegraphy might be on such a scale and in
such circumstances as to amount to assisting the enemy. It would
be unreasonable to expect a belligerent to look on while a vessel
•equipped with this apparatus cruised seven or eight miles off shore,
collecting military information and transmitting it, directly or cir-
cuitously, to the other belligerent ; this might be lending aid, and of
a most valuable kind, to the enemy. What is at present a small
matter might conceivably become by some future development and
organisation so serious as to be a breach of neutrality and an offence
to be taken cognisance of in an amendment to Section 8 (4) of the
Foreign Enlistment Act. What is to be insisted upon as to this and
many other points which have arisen in this war is that there is no
•consensus of nations as to them, and that no one is entitled to say,
* International law condemns this.' That holds good even of such a
matter as what is contraband by the law of nations.

One minor matter of some novelty may be mentioned. It is a
nice question of casuistry how far it is legitimate to set troops of
•wholly different degrees of civilisation to fight against each other ;
and it is a question as to which opinion is apt to be inconsistent
The employment of black troops by the United States was applauded
by those who, borrowing Chatham's invectives against the use of the
Red Indians in war, denounced the employment of the>Turcos in
1870. The Russian Government appear to have done something
which is almost as questionable as the conduct of the French. Certain
•of the convicts detained in the Island of Sakhalin — a particularly
bad class of criminals — are, it is said, to be used as soldiers ; a revival
of a practice not known, so far as I am aware, since in France in
1793 was formed a legion of formats. These recruits are to be em-
ployed on what is akin to police duty. But should the tide of war
roll in their direction, deplorable things may happen ; and in any
case it is an unfortunate precedent.

JOHN MACDONELL.

152 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY July

LAST MONTH

THE Whitsuntide recess, and Ascot, not to speak of the ordinary
gaieties of the season, have interfered to some extent with the course
of politics during the past month. Possibly, also, our politicians have
been glad of any excuse for absenting themselves from the House o£
Commons. At all events, it has hardly been in the Parliamentary
debates that the political interest has centred of late. And yet it is
difficult to recall a time when the political situation was at once more
difficult and more interesting than it is at this moment. The life of
the Ministry and of Parliament seems to hang by a thread. At any
moment it may be cut short. But the thread is a tough one, and
has successfully withstood so many shocks that wise men have given
up speculating upon the precise moment at which it will at last b*
severed. For the mere partisan the situation is quite simple. The
thick-and-thin advocate of the Ministry sees in Mr. Balfour the most
adroit of Parliamentary tacticians, and he looks to him to juggle
successfully, possibly for a couple of years to come, with the succes-
sive difficulties which he has to face. The resolute Liberal, on the
other hand, whilst admitting Mr. Balfour's cleverness, maintains,
first, that the cleverness is not in itself very reputable ; secondly, that,
after all, the Prime Minister is not a free agent, but is compelled to
keep measure to the tune played by Mr. Chamberlain ; and, finally,
that it does not matter a rap with what skill Mr. Balfour glides over
thin ice, so long as public feeling out of doors rises daily and per-
ceptibly against him. These, however, are only the crude outward
features of the situation. Beati possidentes ! No doubt it gives much
comfort to the average Ministerialist to know that his party is still in
possession of power, and that no day for its ejectment has as yet
been fixed. No doubt, also, the sturdy member of the Opposition is-
equally satisfied by the testimony of the by-elections, and the proof
forthcoming on all hands of the grotesque failure of the raging and
tearing agitation which he feared so greatly twelve months ago. But
behind these obvious facts lie others of greater importance, which the:
events of last month have forced into prominence.

1904 LAST MONTH 153

To begin with, it looks, at the moment at which I write, as though
there must be an early end to what has been widely, but not inaccu-
rately, described as the farce of Mr. Balfour's fiscal policy. The
Prime Minister has successfully evaded every attempt made in the
House of Commons to extract from him a frank and intelligible defini-
tion of that policy. He still sits triumphantly upon the fence, and
neither the reproaches of his opponents nor the entreaties of his
friends have caused him to descend from it. But apparently pressure
has been brought to bear upon him from another quarter, and it is
pressure to which he may yet have to yield. The Duke of Devonshire
has been formally ejected from the Presidency of the Liberal Unionist
Association, and his place, we are now told, is to be taken by
Mr. Chamberlain. No one can reasonably object to this step. Mr.
Chamberlain is, without doubt, the most powerful and important
person left in the Liberal Unionist party, and he is certainly entitled
to succeed the Duke in the office of President. But with him are to
be associated as Vice-Presidents two members of the Cabinet, the
Marquis of Lansdowne and the Earl of Selborne. This in itself is a
quite unobjectionable arrangement. But if it be true, as semi-official
announcements declare, that the first step of the reorganised Liberal
Unionist Association will be to pronounce strongly in favour of Mr.
Chamberlain's fiscal policy, it is difficult to see how an acute crisis is
to be avoided in the Ministerial ranks. The Free Traders in those
ranks are hardly likely to accept with equanimity a declaration in
favour of Protection from a body two of whose officials are Cabinet
Ministers of the first rank. The bland assurances which have hitherto
sufficed to avert an open rupture among the majority in the House of
Commons will scarcely carry weight in face of the capture by the
Protectionists not only of the Liberal Unionist organisation, but of
members of the Cabinet so distinguished as Lords Lansdowne and
Selborne. I have never, in these pages, dwelt upon the gossip which
at all times runs riot in the lobbies at Westminster. Most of it is
foolish, and it is generally based upon the slightest of foundations ;
but it is impossible for anyone to close his ears to the rumour which
asserts that this new step on the part of Mr. Chamberlain in the
reorganisation of the Liberal Unionist Association is the result of a
determination on his part to force the running, and to commit, so far
as he can, the whole Ministerial party to his fiscal policy. He has
had to submit to many mortifications of late, and his is by no means
a nature that loves to kiss the rod. It must be bad enough for him to
see election after election resulting in the return of those who are
opposed tooth and nail to his food-tax ; but what must be infinitely
worse is the fact that his own chosen candidates resolutely shrink
from being publicly identified with his policy. The Balfour umbrella,
to revive an illustration of old Gladstonian days, furnishes them with
a shelter of which they eagerly avail themselves — not, apparently,

154 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

with great success so far as electoral results are concerned. It is easy
to understand that this is not a state of things pleasing to the ex-
Colonial Secretary. In his eyes, those who are not for him are against
him, and no one can be surprised if he should have resolved that a
farce which has been somewhat unduly prolonged should be ended
with as little delay as possible. It thus seems not impossible that
before another month has passed over our heads we shall be brought
face to face with a change in the political situation which may alter
many things.

It is not to the current and open events of the past month that
we have to look for real light upon the great political movements of
the time. So far as these events are concerned they are almost wholly
unfavourable to Mr. Chamberlain. The by-elections have proved
once more that the masses of the electors have not only been unaffected
by his strenuous appeals, but are still resolutely opposed to his re-
actionary ideas. Fiscal reform has even, it is said, ceased to be
popular in smart society, where a year ago it was the fashionable cult.
The Cobden centenary celebrations, though they may have had the
defects common to all popular celebrations of the kind, have undoubtedly
shown how strong a hold Cobdenism has secured upon the nation.
Mr. Chamberlain's Tariff Commission, it is true, is still at work, and I
am told by those who ought to know that the new Protectionists
expect much from the result of its labours. But for the present it
conducts its proceedings with a decorous privacy, and the bomb
which it is to launch against Free Trade has still to be fashioned. But
behind the labours of the Cobden Club on one side, and of the Tariff
Commission on the other, the real forces are silently at work ; and
among these none is more potent than the personality of Mr. Chamber-
lain himself. Whatever he may have lost in prestige by his abortive
agitation in the country, he has certainly not lost the unique power
which he wields within the Ministerial ranks in Parliament. The
Government depends for its continued existence upon his support,
and though it is natural to conclude that he would be loth to pass
sentence of death upon an Administration of which his son is a member,
no outsider can venture to predict when the psychological moment
may arrive when he will decide that, for the benefit of his cause, the
curtain ought to be rung down upon the present act in the drama.
His speech at the City dinner to the Chancellor of the Exchequer
suggests that he has already framed a new plan of campaign, and that
his present idea is to ask the country for its confidence on the strength
of his assumed ability to provide it with new sources of revenue, the
burden of which will fall, not upon us, but upon the stranger outside
our gates. That we shall have to discover new sources of revenue,
if our trade does not improve and there is to be no reduction of our
expenditure, is only too certain ; but that we are in a position to
compel other people to provide us with the money we need is a pro-

1904 LAST MONTH 155

position that Mr. Chamberlain will find it somewhat difficult to induce
the country to accept. Even Mr. Gladstone, as we know, failed
signally on the one occasion on which he made an appeal to the mer-
cenary instincts of the electors, and in matters of finance Mr. Chamber-
lain's warmest admirer will admit that he is not Mr. Gladstone. Still,
the fact remains that we seem to be entering upon a new phase of the
great controversy, a phase in which our unbridled expenditure and
the trade depression so largely due to the losses of the South African
war will be claimed as assets by the fiscal reformers. It is not impos-
sible that one of the consequences of this change of tactics will be an
earlier dissolution than many seem to anticipate.

Rumour — one must again apologise for referring to so very doubtful
an authority — has for months past informed the world that Mr.
Chamberlain does not look for a Ministerial victory at the next
General Election. In this instance the rumour is not, I believe,
unfounded. What Mr. Chamberlain anticipates is a Liberal majority
of somewhat uncertain extent. The Opposition is then to come into
power, and is to remain in office for a very limited period, not ex-
ceeding two years. This is the forecast of one who is both a shrewd
judge and a pronounced adversary of the Liberal party. This being
the case, it cannot be presumptuous to deal with the prospects of
Liberalism, more especially since, during the last month, some light
has been thrown upon those prospects by Lord Rosebery's speech at
the Queen's Hall. I need not discuss that speech at length. What-
ever else may be said about it, it was at least the speech of one who,
whatever may be the number of his followers, undoubtedly spoke as
a leader. His survey of the general situation was wide and luminous,
and even those Liberals who have the least sympathy with his opinions
upon some subjects would be very ill-advised if they failed to benefit
by it, and by the general tenor of the advice which he gave them.
But the great merit of Lord Rosebery's declaration was the emphasis
with which it drew attention to that which is, after all, the crux of
the situation, so far as Liberalism is concerned. The party must,
before long, make its great appeal to the electors. It has enough, and
more than enough, in the Ministerial blunders of the last nine years
upon which to found its claim to a vote of confidence from the public.
The old khaki cry is dead ; how completely dead it is was proved by
the Market Harborough election, in which a typical representative of
those whom their opponents were wont to describe as pro-Boers
secured a much larger majority than any Liberal had ever before
obtained in the constituency. But if this cry is dead, another, and
a still more formidable one, remains. What is to be the policy of a
Liberal Government, supposing one to be formed as the result of the
General Election, with regard to Ireland ? Upon some points there
need be no hesitation in answering this question. Administrative
reform, sorely needed in all parts of the United Kingdom, is nowhere

156 TEE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

needed so urgently as in Ireland. Upon that point the Liberal party
in all its branches is united. The sympathetic treatment of all reason-
able Irish demands with a view to giving the country, so far as justice
permits, the government which it desires, and without which it will
never be content, is another question upon which there is but one
opinion in the ranks of Liberalism. But are the Liberals, if they
should return to power, to take up the thread broken in 1894, and to
seek to revive that Home Rule legislation which they pursued with so
much ardour, and at so great a cost to themselves, during the latest
years of the Gladstonian regime ? This was really the question dis-
cussed briefly but clearly by Lord Rosebery in the Queen's Hall
speech. There is no need to say how he dealt with it. He declared
plainly that the next Parliament, if it had a Liberal majority, neither
could nor would deal with the question of Home Rule. His views
are those which I feel convinced are held by the overwhelming majority
of Liberals, certainly by all who care to look the facts in the face.
We cannot revive the passionate pilgrimage of the years between
1885 and 1894 ; and if we could, there is no reason to suppose that
public opinion in Great Britain has changed to such an extent as to
support a renewed Home Rule policy, or that the House of Lords has
repented of its rejection of Mr. Gladstone's scheme. To seek to
revive that scheme under present conditions would be an act of
suicide on the part of the Liberal leaders. They have work of their
own to do for Great Britain and the Empire as a whole, more important
and more pressing than anything they can hope to do in the next
Parliament for Ireland. Mr. Birrell, who, as President of the National
Liberal Federation, speaks with authority, has been almost as emphatic
in proclaiming this truth as Lord Rosebery himself. The misfortune
is that there are still many Liberals who, if they could, would revive
the ten-year-old shibboleth, and seek to burden themselves with it,
to the detriment of their party and their cause. For those who feel
so strongly on this subject that they insist upon being Home Rulers
and nothing else, one can only feel sincere respect, even though their
worldly wisdom may not be very obvious. But the Home Rule cry
has other supporters, who regard it as being not so much the embodi-
ment of a sacred principle as an instrument for electioneering pur-
poses. They believe but faintly in the possibility of securing a
Liberal majority in the next Parliament without the help of the
Irish, and it is their desire to secure the Irish vote that makes them
stick to Home Rule. Naturally, they are furious against Lord Rose-
bery for his distinct refusal to countenance the idea of an alliance
between British Liberals and Irish Nationalists, or the formation of a
Ministry which would depend for its existence upon the support of
the latter. This, as I have said, is the crux of the question with
which the Liberal leaders and the Liberal party have now to deal.
To me it seems that Lord Rosebery spoke both as a statesman and

1904 LAST MONTH 157

a patriot. It would be impossible for the Liberal party to do the
work which now lies before it, work dealing more particularly with
free trade, education, and licensing reform, if it could only carry out
its policy by the aid of the Irish members ; whilst no position could
be more intolerable or more humiliating for any English Ministry
than that of having to rely upon an Irish alliance, unless it were in
& Parliament elected ad hoc for the purpose of dealing with the Irish
question. All this is so obvious that it seems to be a truism, and
yet it is a truism upon which depends the future of Liberalism in the
next House of Commons. To play with the question in any way, or
to try to evade it by means of soothing commonplaces which deceive
nobody, would be to betray the interests not merely of the party, but
of the country. The greatest misfortune that could happen to the
nation as the result of the next General Election would be a condi-
tion of things in which the Irish members would hold the balance of
power. Lord Rosebery's purpose at the Queen's Hall was to point to
the existence of this danger, and to warn his fellow Liberals against
those who would lightly expose themselves to it. He deserves the
thanks not only of Liberals but of the whole country for the courage
with which he has spoken the truth on a delicate and serious question,
without stopping to consider the misconceptions to which such plain-
speaking was certain to subject him.

The Prime Minister referred at least once during last month to
the alleged lists — ' alternative lists,' I think he called them — of the
next Administration which are popularly supposed to be enshrined
in the cabinets of certain prominent members of the Opposition.
Personally, I know nothing even as to the existence of these lists ;
but I do know that a great many people believe that they are actually
in being, and they undoubtedly form a topic which seems to interest
all classes of politicians. The forming of imaginary Cabinets is always
a fascinating amusement, especially to those who are not too far off
the sacred circle to feel a personal interest in the game. But in the
case of the next Liberal Government so much depends upon the choice
of Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary that, until the allotment of
these posts has been definitely settled, no good can be done by specula-
tion as to minor appointments. That there are alternative Govern-
ments ready to step into the shoes of Mr. Balfour and his colleagues
in the present Ministry is certain ; and Liberals, at all events, believe
universally that no new Government, whatever might be its general
character, could possibly be worse than the present one, or could
blunder so conspicuously and so constantly as the oft-transformed
Cabinet of 1895 has done. But what is to be the special brand of
Liberalism that the next Ministry will represent ? There are writers
in the Press and a few speakers on the platform who insist that it
must be openly and strenuously anti-Imperialist in tone, and must
renounce not only the jingoism of the khaki days, but the ' sane

158 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

Imperialism ' of the Liberal League. There are others who hold that
even the least infusion of the ' Little England ' spirit into the new
Government would certainly discredit it, and probably bring about
its destruction well within the brief term of life which Mr. Chamber-
lain and his friends have assigned to it. The truth, of course, lies
between these two extremes. The policy of ostracism for which a few
extreme Radical writers, possessed of greater fluency than influence,
are always clamouring, is one that under present conditions the Liberal
party is certainly not in a position to adopt. The next Ministry will
contain the representatives of all the sections into which the Opposition
has been split during its long years of wandering in the wilderness.
But its predominating character can only be decided when it is known
who is to be at its head, who is to hold the Foreign Secretaryship, and
what is to be its attitude towards the Irish question. Until these
points have been settled — and they can hardly be settled before the
General Election has taken place — it is sheer waste of time to speculate
on the contents of those mysterious lists to which Mr. Balfour referred.
The only point that emerges clearly from the turbid sea of speculation
is the fact that, upon whomsoever the duty of forming the next Liberal
Administration may fall, there is no one who is likely to envy him
his task.

The question of the Army and the defensive forces of the country
has been very much in men's minds during the month. The Report
of the Royal Commission upon the Volunteers, with its rather crude
conclusion in favour of conscription, startled everybody, and appar-
ently was most startling to those who in the Press and in Parliament
have long been dallying with the subject in an amateurish fashion.
Seldom has a document of this importance been received with such
general and outspoken condemnation. A couple of days sufficed to
establish the fact that, at the present moment, the nation will not
stand the idea of conscription at any price. The Report of the Com-
mission was blown into the air by a gust of almost universal indignation,
and Ministers made haste to declare that they had no intention of
acting upon its proposals. If, as seems by no means improbable, the
Report was in the nature of a ballon d'essai, sent up on behalf of the
Ministry, it undoubtedly served its purpose, and for some time to
come we are little likely to hear anything further on the subject of
compulsory military service. But there are some who suggested
from the first that, in procuring this declaration of opinion from the
Royal Commission, Ministers were not so much trying to ascertain
the true views of the public with regard to conscription, as seeking
to furnish themselves with a weapon by means of which they could
induce the House of Commons to accept fresh proposals of theirs on
the subject of the Army. It is unfortunately evident that the present
condition of the Army is deplorably bad. Between the havoc wrought
by the war and the still greater mischief caused by Mr. Brodrick's

1904 LAST MONTH 159

alteration of the terms of enlistment, the ranks of our regiments are
being quickly depleted, and it is impossible to find recruits to take
the places of the men who insist upon returning to civil life. The
subject is not one upon which I wish to dwell. Probably the less it
is discussed in public the better. But it is known only too well that
we are within a few months of a crisis in the history of our Army such
as we have never had to face before. Ministers seem to have one
remedy, and one only, for this deplorable state of things. It is the
old remedy of increased expenditure. With the Report of the Volunteer
Commission in their hands, they can go to Parliament and say, ' Here
is a proposal for conscription ; but you will not even look at it ; that
being the case you must face the only alternative, and provide sufficient
money to enable us to compete successfully for our recruits in the open
labour market.' Such, at least, is the explanation which some give of
the origin of this very remarkable Report.

But, in the meantime, what of that great scheme of War Office
reform which was to give us the efficiency in military administration
that we need so badly ? Everybody rejoiced at the business-like
promptitude with which Mr. Arnold-Forster, after his installation in
office, brought the Esher Committee into existence, and we rejoiced
even more gladly when that body turned out its sweeping scheme of
reforms with such unexampled celerity. But months have elapsed
since the historic documents revolutionising our system of Army
administration were given to the world ; it is even months since we
were practically assured by the Secretary for War that the scheme
had been adopted and was in process of being put in force. Where
is it now ? Many wild rumours are current as to its fate, but they
are not rumours that one need pause to examine here. One thing,
however, has happened during the past month that is distinctly
ominous. It was announced that on the 16th of May Mr. Arnold-
Forster would take the House of Commons into his confidence, and
make his eagerly-expected statement with regard to the position of
his great scheme. The spirit of the reformers rose at this announce-
ment, and the prophets of evil, who had been trading on the rumours,
to which I have referred, were correspondingly depressed. But alas !
on the eve of the date mentioned the Prime Minister, in an apologetic
statement worded so curiously that it could not have failed to create
suspicion in the minds of those who heard it, intimated that a mistake
had been made — a mistake the sole responsibility for which rested
with himself — and that Mr. Arnold-Forster would not be in a position
to make his promised speech on the day fixed. Then, indeed, did the
flood of rumour that had been gathering so long burst all bounds ,,
sweeping everything before it. Not merely the loss of the Esher-
Clarke scheme, but even the downfall of the Ministry itself, were
declared by the quidnuncs to be impending ; and tales of a prolonged
fight within the Cabinet, waged with a desperate resolution worthy of

160 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

General Kuroki himself, filled all mouths. Perhaps by the time that
these lines appear in print the truth may have been made manifest.
One hears many versions of it ; but it is no business of mine to purvey
the gossip of the clubs. For the present I am content to note the
fact that as last month drew to a close the hopes both of Army reformers
and of economists seemed to sink to the lowest point at which they
had stood since Mr. Brodrick retired from his throne of thorns in Pall
Mall.

Parliament has been engaged during the month with the Licensing
Bill, and other measures for the most part of secondary importance.
On the Licensing Bill, Ministers have so far held their own, and have
successfully resisted even the attempt, strongly supported on their
own side of the House, to induce them to impose a time limit on their
measure for conferring a practical endowment on the publicans. But
their success in the House of Commons has not followed them into the
country, where public opinion is steadily growing more hostile to the
Bill. The bishops and clergymen of the Church of England have
come forward to protest against it, and popular demonstrations for
the purpose of denouncing it have been held in many of the large
towns throughout England. The demonstrations may not in them-
selves be immediately operative ; but they undoubtedly swell the tide
of resentment against the Government which is growing so steadily in
all quarters. More important, perhaps, than any individual measure
dealt with during the month is the movement within the House of
Commons which has been caused by the systematic attempt of certain
members to deprive the House of its liberty of action, in the interests
of particular parties. Debate, on a motion for the adjournment of
the House, is not, under the rules, permitted on any question with
respect to which a notice of motion is standing on the paper. In itself
there are doubtless good reasons for this rule, but it is deliberately
abused by members who put down what can only be called sham
notices of motion for the purpose of preventing any real debate upon
the questions with which their notices deal. It seems intolerable
that the freedom of Parliament should be curtailed in this matter by
the hacks of parties or the advertisers of their own names. The Prime
Minister has undertaken, at the request of Sir Henry Campbell-Banner-
man, to consider how this scandal may be dealt with. Public respect
for the House of Commons will hardly be increased if it should prove
to be powerless to protect itself from this gross infringement of its
rights.

The 'Dundonald incident,' as it has been called, is one of the
least pleasant features of the history of the month. The Earl of
Dundonald, a soldier of brilliant reputation, was appointed, after the
South African War, General in command of the Canadian Militia.
Recently, in that capacity, he nominated certain persons for com-
missions in one of the regiments of militia. One at least of these

1904 LAST MONTH 161

nominations was rejected by Mr. Fisher, Minister of Agriculture, to
whom the matter was referred by the Minister to whose department
questions connected with the national defence belong. Lord Dun-
donald thought he had reason to believe that Mr. Fisher acted from
motives connected with party politics, and he made a speech on the
subject at a public gathering, in which he protested strongly against
the intrusion of politics into matters of military discipline. There is
no doubt that he committed an indiscretion in taking this action, and
that he showed his failure to appreciate the constitutional laws by
which he, in common with other persons, must be content to be
governed. But his indiscretion was not treated generously or even
leniently by the Dominion Government, whilst Sir Wilfrid Laurier's
reference to this distinguished British soldier as a ' foreigner ' — an
indiscretion, it is true, immediately repented of — leaves a very bad
taste in the mouth. The incident ought to be a lesson to the poli-
ticians who, ignoring the advice of the wise men of the past, are anxious
to anticipate the work of time in cementing a closer relationship
between the Mother Country and the Colonies. Of other incidents
of the month, two which must be noticed in this chronicle are the
assassination of General BobrikofT, the Governor-General of Finland,
by an official of the Finnish Administration who afterwards committed
suicide, and the terrible fire on a pleasure-boat in East River, New
York, by which some 900 lives, chiefly those of children, were lost.
So far as the tragedy at Helsingfors is concerned, public opinion in
this country seems to be divided between our righteous abhorrence
of assassination as a weapon in political warfare, and our indignation
at the harsh and arbitrary way in which the Government at St. Peters-
burg has for years past been engaged in the attempt to substitute
autocratic rule for the once free constitution of Finland.

The war between Russia and Japan has undergone a great develop-
ment during the month, and has now attained proportions which
irresistibly recall the mighty conflict of 1870. With one exception, all
the events of the month have been unfavourable to the arms of Russia.
This exception is the successful raid of the Vladivostok fleet into
Japanese waters, where the swift Russian cruisers were able to inflict
serious damage upon a fleet of the enemy's transports. The loss of
life was great, and the interruption to the Japanese operations has
been considerable. The Russian vessels were exceptionally fortunate
in being able to evade the Japanese squadron, and to return to Vladi-
vostok in safety. But though the Russians have been naturally
cheered by this, their first successful operation during the war, the
record of the month has been, in all other respects, uniformly adverse
to them. The investment of Port Arthur was completed on the
4th of June, and the Japanese armies began at once to move north-
wards in the direction of Mukden. A desperate attempt was made
by General Kuropatkin, at the urgent instigation of the authorities in

VOL. LVI — No. 329 M

162 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

St. Petersburg, to send a relieving force to Port Arthur. The result
has been at least one pitched battle, and a series of sanguinary engage-
ments. The pitched battle resulted in the complete defeat of the
Russians, with \ a loss that has been estimated at as high a figure as
10,000, and that probably does not fall far short of that number.
Since then there have been rumours of another engagement scarcely
less disastrous to the armies of the Czar, and the position of the corps
which made the abortive attempt to relieve Port Arthur is extremely
precarious. Not merely in scientific strategy, but in power of endur-
ance on the field of battle, the Japanese continue to manifest their
superiority to their foe, whose unquestionable valour seems of little
avail against the desperate courage and better generalship of the
enemy he has to face. General Kuropatkin is apparently being rein-
forced as rapidly as possible, but the Russian position in Manchuria
is not more hopeful than it was, and we seem to be on the eve of
grave, possibly even of decisive, events.

WEMYSS REID.

LAST MONTH

II

* As far as possible all actions of the Chinese Government are regu-
lated by precedents reaching back thousands of years, and a board
of the highest officials have to watch that all edicts and proclamations
conform in style, spirit, and substance with the ancient dynastic
regulations and Confucian precepts.' Only the other day I read
this sentence in an able article about the Yellow Peril, published last
month in this Review. In common with most of my brother publicists
my mind, such as it is, has been of late so much occupied with the
fiscal controversy that whatever I am reading I find myself reverting
to Cobden and the Anti-Corn Law League. My first impression on
reading this passage was that by some printer's error the words China
and Confucius had been substituted for England and Cobden. A
second perusal dispelled this illusion ; but, as I read on, I learnt that
the writer of the article in question attributed the decay of the Celes-
tial Empire to the persistency with which the Chinese direct their
policy, and regulate their action, in accordance, not with the condi-
tions of the present day, but with theories laid down and promulgated
by teachers in the bygone past. A subsequent study of the speeches
delivered by the pundits of Liberalism on the occasion of the centenary
of Cobden's birth has caused me to feel deep anxiety about the extent
to which the Liberal party are adopting similar principles of govern-
ment to those which commend themselves to the collective wisdom of
China. Like causes produce like results ; and if, as I am daily assured,
the control of the British Empire is about to pass into the hands of a
party whose one article of faith is the infallibility of Cobden, I can
only come to the conclusion that sooner or later Great Britain must
incur the fate which has befallen the nation whose faith is pinned to
the omniscience of Confucius. The French have a proverb that
' so long as you live, you have got to live with the living, not with
the dead,' and the truth conveyed in this proverb is violated by any
country which refuses to deal with the present and adheres to the past.
In order to show how far the Cobdeniat and the Confucian evangels

163 M 2

164 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

resemble each other it may be well to quote a few flowers of rhetoric
culled from the adulatory speeches of the leaders of the Liberal party
during last month's commemoration of the centenary of Cobden's birth.

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman gave the note of the Cobden
demonstration by calling on his audience at the Alexandra Palace
* to declare their adherence to the doctrines which Cobden taught and
their determination that the power of these doctrines should not,.
God helping them, be impaired.' In respect of Cobden Sir Henry
seems to be what it is the fashion of the Liberals of to-day to call a
' whole hogger.' He not only pins his salvation to the faith of Free
Trade as expounded by the some time member for Stockport, but he
swallows without flinching the peace dogmas of which his guide,
philosopher, and friend was the exponent. He informs us that
' Cobden's belief in Free Trade was not a mere isolated doctrine
standing forlornly by itself ; it was part, and an essential part, of his
general outlook on the world. He saw the nations separated by
their selfishness and their suspicions ; he saw that militarism and
protection went hand in hand.' Even Sir Henry's enthusiasm could
not quite blind him to the fact that, though England under Cobden's
advice had adopted Free Trade for the last sixty years, militarism
has increased instead of declining. In order to meet this obvious
objection he informs his listeners that ' they were to assert, not with
bated breath, but in confident tones and in accents of triumph, that
Cobden's dream was no illusion, and that the strength of the country
depended not upon war equipment, not upon fleets and armies, but
upon peace equipment.' In plain language, the policy, in virtue of
which the eulogist of Cobden's foresight (the Minister of War under
the last Liberal administration and the nominal leader of the Liberal
party) proposes to secure to England the blessing of peace, is to reduce
our armaments, to leave our shores and harbours unprotected, on the
strength of his own conviction that Cobden was no dreamer of dreams,
but was right in his theories, however facts may have gone against
their realisation. Sir Henry's pompous eulogies were supported by a
claptrap speech of Mr. Winston Churchill, who ignored Cobden, except
as far as he dwelt upon the importance to Free Trade of his own con-
version to Cobdenian orthodoxy, and wound up with a stirring perora-
tion, in which he described the Unionists, whom he had just deserted,
as ' a capitalist party, the mere washpot of plutocracy, the engine of
the tariff and the trust, a hard confederation of interest and monopoly
banded together to corrupt and to plunder the Commonwealth.'

At Birmingham Mr. Morley had the good sense to admit that the
sudden desire exhibited by the Liberals to resuscitate the somewhat
faded memory of Cobden was ' not a purely ceremonial tribute to a
great public servant.' He had the good taste also to avoid any
personal attack on the member for West Birmingham. With a total
disregard, however, of historical proportion he poured forth his gall upon

1904 LAST MONTH 165

Prince Bismarck, and described the statesman who created a United
Germany as being a far less important personage than the politician
who founded the Anti-Corn Law League. ' What,' he asked the
operatives of Birmingham, ' was the use of stirring the people to-day
with German professors or economics of the moon ? ' No answer
being forthcoming to this inquiry, he proceeded to state ' that the
German nation had lost all confidence whatever, if they ever had any,
in these economics of the moon, which Prince Bismarck planted on
them twenty-five years ago.' In confirmation of his assertion that
Cobden's prophecies, however they had been discredited by the course
of events, must and would come out right in the end, he repeated a
remark made, or said to have been made, by Lord Melbourne three-
score years ago to the effect that ' it is madness to think you can ever
repeal the Corn Laws.' I should have thought myself that, as the
Corn Laws were repealed a few years later, this saying was a proof of
the folly of making prophecies as to the durability of any policy or
institution. Everything changes ; and yet Mr. Morley makes a
strong demand upon the credulity of his fellow countrymen when he
asks them to believe that the policy of Free Trade is the only thing
immutable in a world of change. In like fashion Sir Robert Giffen
informed the electorate of Hayward's Heath that ' no one can deny
the past . . . and that Cobden's work in the matter of commercial
policy was for all time.' At Carlisle the same dogma was affirmed by
Sir Robert Reid when he stated that ' the lessons which Cobden
taught our fathers were not lessons merely of passing value ; they
were founded on principles which were true for all time.' Freedom of
trade was declared by the Solicitor-General of the last Liberal Govern-
ment to occupy the first place in the category of ' things upon which
the true stability of this country depended.' To speak the plain
truth, the centenary celebration of Cobden's nativity was a happy
thought devised by the guiding spirits of the Liberal party in order
to discredit the cause of Tariff reform under the pretence of com-
memorating the public services of a well-nigh forgotten politician.
The more indiscriminate and the more exaggerated were the eulogies
showered upon Cobden and his policy, the more obvious was the
inference that Mr. Chamberlain was not deserving of public support.
If once it could be accepted as an article of faith that the authority of
Cobden in matters of trade must be accepted as final and conclusive,
it follows logically that there is no necessity even to consider the
arguments which prove, or try to prove, that a system of trade which
may have been beneficial to the community sixty years ago has,
owing to altered conditions, become prejudicial in the present year of
grace. When in the heyday of the Papacy the Sacred College closed
any controversy by the formula, ' Roma locuta est,' there was no more
to be said. In like fashion our latter-day Liberals seem to think that,
as the theories of Cobden are to dictate the commercial policy of this

166 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

country for all time, there is an end of all further discussion about
Tariff reform.

I doubt, however, whether these tactics will meet with the success
deserved by their ingenuity. There is great truth in the old saying
that a live dog is better than a dead lion. Without admitting that
canine or leonine characteristics can fairly be attributed to Cobden
or to Chamberlain, it is certain that the latter is very much alive,
and that the former is not only dead himself, but belongs to a dead
past. When the constituencies are called upon to vote, one speech
of Mr. Chamberlain's will exercise a greater influence on public senti-
ment than a score of eulogies on Cobden's sendees in having brought
about the repeal of the Corn Laws. There was little or nothing about
Cobden to appeal to popular imagination. He was a kindly, worthy
man, honourable, both in his public and private life ; an energetic
organiser of political agitation ; an excellent expositor of other men's
ideas ; an earnest worker on behalf of any cause he espoused, though
his earnestness owed more than half its effect to his inability to realise
that there are always two sides to every question. Of genius he had
not a touch. The accident of fortune associated his name with the
Anti-Corn Law crusade, but in reality Adam Smith, Sir Robert Peel,
John Bright, George Thompson, and Charles Villiers played equally
important parts in the establishment of Free Trade as the basis of
our fiscal policy. This policy, I would add, owed its success far more
to the Irish famine than to the efforts of any individual, however
meritorious. Even the high literary ability and the charm of style
possessed by my friend John Morley proved insufficient to make the
Life of Richard Cobden interesting to the general reader. To sum up,
Cobden's is not a name to conjure with, and I believe before many
months are over the truth of this opinion will be made manifest in a
way to which even the Cobden Club will be unable to shut their eyes.

The sentence with which I commence this article reminds me
of another instance in which the example of China seems to have
commended itself to the approval of our Liberal mandarins. I am
informed by persons well acquainted with the Celestial Kingdom that
though the Chinaman under intelligent discipline will make an effi-
cient soldier, any real reorganisation of China as a military Power
is rendered impossible by the extraordinary respect and reverence
entertained for education by all classes in the Empire. From the
days of Confucius the literati amongst his fellow countrymen have
been taught to believe that war is an occupation unworthy of a rational
human being, that the study of killing is one which could not be
pursued without loss of self-respect, and that proficients in the degrad-
ing art of war are not fit to associate with men who have earned dis-
tinction and fortune by passing successful examinations. This teaching
has so impressed itself upon the Chinese mind that no man of any
social position or standing will ever consent willingly to enter the army

1904 LAST MONTH 167

as a profession. To become an officer is to lose caste, to bring disgrace
upon your relatives and even your ancestors. The result is that the
offieers of the Celestial army are to-day, and have been for centuries,
men of no character, who have enlisted in order to save themselves
from destitution, and whose sole ambition is to add to their inadequate
pay by corruption and peculation. It would be absurd to say that a
similar danger threatens the military power of England. The fighting
instincts of our race are happily too strong to allow of our ever learning,
as a nation, to look with contempt on the trade of soldiering. Our
robust common-sense leads us to recognise the absurdity of the saying,
«o fashionable in the ' forty years of peace ' era, that the pen is stronger
than the sword, or to believe that courts of arbitration will ever remove
the necessity for standing armies. Still, it is impossible for any
impartial observer to be blind to the fact that the tendency of the
English Liberals, as a party, is to decry militarism, to deprecate
Imperialism, to spread abroad the conviction that the first duty of
English statesmanship is to occupy itself with domestic reforms, and
to remove social abuses rather than to provide for the safety of Great
Britain and the British Empire. When war is described as con-
sisting, to use Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's phrase, in ' methods
of barbarism,' when the mere suggestion of a resort to conscription is
denounced by the organs of Liberalism as being an outrage upon the
working population of the United Kingdom, it is impossible to avoid
the conclusion that the party which associates itself with the traditions
of Cobden is treading in the footsteps of Confucius. I do not dispute
the genuineness of Cobden's convictions. What I object to is the
assumption that these convictions were the result of deep study or of
any profound insight into human nature. The basis of his fiscal
policy was that it would be for the good of humanity if every nation
devoted itself to the cultivation of those products it was best fitted
to produce by its natural conditions. According to his theory England,
which, in virtue of her possession of coal and iron, was then the chief,
almost the sole manufacturing Power in the world, was to make herself
the workshop of the globe and to retain her monopoly of production
by throwing open her markets to all countries who in return would
supply her with bread stuffs.

Owing to Cobden's utter inability to comprehend the force of
nationality he failed to perceive that other nations were not prepared
to forego the advantage of having factories and workshops of their
own in consideration of gaining a higher profit on their agricultural
exports. The result was that his scheme ended in signal failure. The
poliey of open markets propounded by the Anti-Corn Law League,
instead of converting other nations to Free Trade, caused them,
without exception, to adopt the system of Protection, under which
they have developed manufactures of their own capable of under-
selling the manufactures of England in her home markets. In like

168 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY July

fashion Cobden was unable to comprehend that cheap food would not
prove a sufficient boon to induce British workmen to forego the prospect
of earning higher wages by forming trade unions, whose reason of being
is to raise the profits of the workman at the cost of his employer.
Throughout his public career Cobden never concealed his want of
sympathy with the attempts made by working men to better their
condition through co-operation. Whether his views on this point were
right or wrong is not the question under consideration. My only
reason for alluding to the subject is to show how little he understood
the nature of the British working classes if he believed that to them
cheap bread was the one thing needful. If proof were needed of the
weakness of the Liberal party it would be found in the fact that they
have attempted to win over the working class electorate by recalling
the memory of Cobden as that of an authority which outweighs any
possible argument in favour of tariff reform. If they are again to regard
the cheap loaf as their in hoc signo vinces they will not be long in find-
ing out their mistake. I should, therefore, recommend them to study
the example of the Chinese in simply reciting the greatness of Confucius
without giving reasons for their belief. I learn that the following
eulogy of the sage is one still popular in the Celestial Empire :

Confucius ! Confucius ! How great was Confucius !

Before him there was no Confucius ;

Since him there has been no other.

Confucius 1 Confucius ! How great was Confucius !

I venture to suggest that if for Confucius the celebrators of the
recent centenary had substituted the name of Cobden, and had recited
a like stanza at their demonstrations, they would have saved them-
selves an unnecessary outpour of words and have done more to impress
upon their audiences the claim of their hero to be regarded as a man
whose wisdom was above discussion. If for the sake of euphony they
should Latinise the name of Cobden and call him Cobdenius, the
change would improve the euphony of the stanza, without detracting
from its intrinsic value.

In connection with this subject I trust I may be permitted to
say a few words as to certain strictures on the present writer which
have recently been made by Lord Avebury in his treatise on Free Trade,
and which have been reproduced with warm approval in the Spectator.
There is nothing in those strictures of which I have any cause to com-
plain, except that they are utterly irrelevant to the question at issue.
I do not profess to be an authority on questions of political economy.
All I claim is to be an authority, though on a small and humble scale,
on questions of common-sense. I am not sufficiently conversant
with trade matters to decide between the merits or demerits of Free
Trade as a working system. All I contend is that Free Trade is not
a dogma which cannot be called in question ; and that the issue

1904 LAST MONTH 169

between restricted and unrestricted competition must as a matter
of right, as well as of fact, be ultimately decided by the voice of the
country, not by that of its self -constituted pedagogues. In support
of this contention I have dared to point out that Cobden, whatever
may be the value of his opinions enunciated threescore years ago, is
not entitled to credit as a prophet. I am asked by Lord Avebury
to recant my words and to acknowledge Cobden' s claim to prophetic
wisdom because he foresaw that Free Trade would be good for England.
To put forward this statement as self-evident is to beg the question,
a mode of argument unworthy even of the Cobden Club. Lord
Avebury proceeds to dispute another statement of mine made also in
these pages, that ' the opinion of the " civilised world," about which
we used to hear so much during the Boer war, is dead against Free
Trade.' His Lordship admits that ' in practice, no doubt, most
countries are Protectionist.' He retorts with a tu quoque remark that
I am not justified in making this statement, because I attached no
value to the opinion of the civilised world concerning the Boer war.
The fallacy of this retort is too obvious to be overlooked even by
Macaulay's typical schoolboy. Let me say in passing from this
subject that Lord Avebury's treatise on Free Trade is free from the
personal vituperations of Mr. Chamberlain which, as a rule, discredit
the utterances of the Unionist Free Fooders.

I note one feature in the speech delivered last month by Lord
Rosebery at the Liberal League for which I must express my sincere
gratitude. I do not find a single reference to Cobden or his centenary
contained therein. The omission, I think, can best be accounted for
by the supposition that his Lordship is alive to the fact that nowadays
the name of Cobden is not a trump card even in the Liberal pack, and
that if the Liberals hope to win the day at the next general election
the less they say about the Anti-Corn Law League the better for their
prospects of success. The Liberal League was, if my memory serves me
rightly, founded during the war by a small section of the Opposition
who were unable to join the hostility of the Liberals to the Boer war.
and who were anxious to dissociate themselves from the Anti-Imperialist
policy espoused by their Radical colleagues. Having formed the
league, and having thereby recorded their protest against being
described as Pro-Boers and Little Englanders, they felt under no
obligation to take any further steps to convert their fellow Liberals
to sounder views of policy. They considered themselves to be the
elite of Liberalism ; and they were convinced the presence in their
ranks of Lord Rosebery would suffice, to quote his own words, ' to
rescue and differentiate sane Imperialism from shoddy Imperialism.'
Having thus vindicated the orthodoxy of the League in Imperial
matters, the ex-Premier proceeded to declare that ' in no case he was
aware of, and on no occasion, has loyalty to the Liberal League con-
flicted in the slightest degree with loyalty to the leaders and the policy

170 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July

of the Opposition.' In other words, the Liberal League supports
Imperialism in the abstract, but declines to support it in the concrete.
Such an attitude undoubtedly avoids the necessity of taking any
action which might commit the League definitely to the cause even of
sane Imperialism. Nothing can be more comprehensive than Lord
Rosebery's statement of the terms on which outsiders can obtain
admission to the League. ' You ' (the Liberal Leaguers) ' want
everybody that you can rally to your standard — Liberal Leaguers
or official Liberals, or the various other leagues that exist, and besides
those let me say that you require, when you can secure them on any-
thing like fair terms, all the support of those Tories who have fought
for Free Trade under circumstances so difficult and dangerous to
themselves.' We know what the standard is under which Liberals of
all sorts are invited to enlist ; we need no telling that the object of the
campaign is to turn out the Government and to place the Liberals in
office. But as for what ends and for what purposes their tenure of
office is to be employed is a matter concerning which we are left in
utter ignorance. We are furnished instead, by Lord Rosebery, with
a series of prolix platitudes. We are assured that efficiency is to be
the dominant feature of the coming Liberal Administration ; that oppor-
tunism will not be excluded from consideration, and that ' Liberalism
is no particular measure, but it is the frame and spirit of mind in which
we approach great political questions. . . . Liberalism is the readiness
to accept and to assimilate the best ideas of the time, and to apply
them honestly in action.' As to this definition of Liberalism, I need
only remark that it is a repetition of the stock phrases by which every
Ministry, Whig or Tory, Liberal or Conservative, Unionist or anti-
Unionist, has heralded its accession to office. If the end and aim of
the Liberal League is to furnish Lord Rosebery with an opportunity for
uttering commonplace truisms in a graceful manner there is no more
to be said, except that his Lordship has an unlimited flow of words,
and that his followers have a still more unlimited store of patience.
If, however, I am rightly informed, the real reason which justifies the
existence of the Liberal League is the necessity of not allowing Lord
Rosebery's claims to the next Liberal Premiership to drop out of
sight. The League is, in fact, an agency for the advancement of
Lord Rosebery's candidature in the event of the Premiership being
thrown open to competition. Fortunately, perhaps, from a Con-
servative point of view,Tiis Lordship has an invincible repugnance to
putting himself forward as the leader of his party. He is eager to
secure the apples of office, but he insists that the apples should fall
into his mouth, and even declines to take any part in shaking the apple
tree. This is the explanation of the revival of the Liberal League.
The muster-roll has been called. Sir Edward Grey, Sir Henry Fowler,
Mr. Asquith, Mr. Haldane, and some sixteen members of Parliament
have responded to the call, and the Radical section of the Opposition

1904 LAST MONTH 171

have been given to understand that if they want to see a Liberal
administration in office they can only do so on condition that they are
willing to accept Lord Rosebery as the future Premier. If we are to
have a Liberal Ministry in office after the General Election I should
prefer either Lord Rosebery or any of his squires to Sir Henry Camp-
bell-Bannerman. But at the best the choice between a Rosebery or a
Campbell-Bannerman Ministry would only be a choice of evils. For
my own part I distrust the good faith or the sagacity of a statesman
who, while he acknowledges that the support of the Irish Nationalists
is essential to the maintenance of the Liberal party in office, seriously
informs his personal supporters that the policy of a Liberal administra-
tion with respect to Home Rule will not be affected by the necessity
of conciliating the Home Rule vote. Hitherto, whenever any criticism
has been made as to the qualifications of the various politicians who
are destined in their own opinion, and in that of their followers, to
occupy prominent positions in the Ministry which is to replace the
Unionist Government, the critics were met with one stock rejoinder.
If we doubted the special fitness of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman to
become once more Secretary of State for War ; if we were not con-
fident as to Mr. Asquith being competent to discharge the duties of
the leader of the House of Commons ; if we ventured to suggest that
Mr. Lloyd George might cut a sorry figure as a Cabinet Minister, or if
we raised some other equally frivolous objection, we were told that at
all events Lord Rosebery was pointed out by the consensus of public
opinion as the ideal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Even
this consolation is no longer forthcoming. The ex-Premier went out
of his way, while expatiating to the Liberal League upon the imminence
of a great Liberal reaction, to denounce the Anglo-French compact by
saying that ' no more one-sided agreement was ever concluded between
two Powers at peace with each other.' In order to leave no doubt in
the minds of the Liberal Leaguers as to which side had had the worst
of the bargain, his Lordship proceeded to drive home his assertions by
remarking : ' I hope and trust, but I hope and trust rather than I
believe, that the Power which holds Gibraltar may never have cause to
regret having handed Morocco over to a great military Power.' Now,
if words have any meaning, these words mean that France purports
to employ the free hand we have accorded to her in dealing with
Morocco to deprive us of our naval supremacy in the Mediterranean.
Even if this insinuation were based upon any serious foundation there
was no possible good to be gained by throwing doubt on the good
faith of France, and the very last man in the whole of the United
Kingdom who could have been justified in making such an aspersion
is the predecessor of Mr. Balfour in the Premiership and of Lord
Lansdowne at the Foreign Office. Both as Prime Minister and as
Foreign Secretary Lord Rosebery must have had ample opportunities
of observing how seriously England was hampered in consolidating

172 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY July 1904

her authority in Egypt by the constant hostility of France. Yet,
knowing what he does, he has deliberately striven in his address to the
Liberal League to depreciate the advantages England derives from
having France with her, instead of against her, in her administration
of Egyptian affairs. Since his retirement from office his Lordship has
lost no opportunity of dilating on the arduousness of his labours in
Downing Street. Possibly, if he had worked fewer hours and indited
fewer despatches, he might have acquired a better knowledge of foreign
affairs than he now seems to possess. The only explanation of the
extraordinary indiscretion thus committed by Lord Rosebery is that
he was led astray by his desire to disparage an agreement which he is
shrewd enough to see has done much to influence popular opinion in
favour of the Government under whose control a cordial understanding
has been established between France and England . So long, however, as
he could at last convey the impression how much better a bargain he
could have made for this country, supposing he had been in command at
Downing Street, he was apparently indifferent to minor considerations.
Such at least is the best excuse I can suggest for a speech that never
ought to have been spoken, and above all not by the speaker who
gave it utterance.

Somehow or other neither the resuscitation of Cobden nor the re-
appearance of Lord Rosebery as a candidate for the Premiership
seems to have got matters much forwarder in our home politics. The
Opposition appears for the time to have lost heart, while the Ministry
are sanguine as to their retention of power till after the close of the
Session, and of their being able before Parliament is prorogued to show
a satisfactory record of legislation. Personally I attribute the lull of
public interest in political controversies to the fact that the fortunes
of the war now waging in the Far East monopolise popular attention.
The more protracted the war seems likely to become the more men's
thoughts are turned to the effect the campaign, whichever way it may
end, must necessarily produce on the fortunes of all non-belligerent
States, and especially of the British Empire.

The war in the Far East seems to me likely, in the near future, to
bring about indirect results of far graver importance than its direct
effects on the fortunes of the two belligerents. Even if Russia, as
now seems daily less probable, should come out victorious from the
conflict the world will be confronted with the hard fact that an Oriental
nation, with a code of religion and morality utterly different from, if
not antagonistic to, our European ideas, has attained a standard
of patriotic altruism far exceeding any ideal attained before or
even conceived as possible in this old world of ours.

EDWARD DICEY.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake
to return unaccepted MSS.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTURY

AND AFTER

XX

No. CGCXXX— AUGUST 1904

JAPAN AND THE COMMENCEMENT
OF THE WAR WITH RUSSIA

AMOXG other questions raised by an article from the pen of Sir John
Macdonell, in this Review for July, on ' The Present War,' there is
one on which I should like to offer some observations from a Japanese
point of view.

Sir John Macdonell appears to think that our attack came to
Russia as a surprise, and was therefore unjustifiable ; and whilst he
makes reservations on account of his lack of accurate information
concerning the actual state of affairs at the commencement of the
war, he proceeds to argue that it was a nice point whether the negotia-
tions had or had not, on the 8th or 9th of February last, reached a
stage at which discussion had really been abandoned, and both sides
had resolved to accept the arbitrament of battle. Sir John seems to
consider that notice should be given to an adversary, before beginning a
war, that hostilities have become inevitable.

I will not say anything about the fact that the first shot was fired
by the Russians on the Japanese vessels at Schimulpo ; nor is it ray

VOL. LVI— No. 330 N

174 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

intention to enter upon any justification of Japan's course of action
on the common theory of international law, or on the basis of the
prevailing practice in such cases, or it could be shown that a formal
declaration is not needed to constitute a state of war. On the con-
trary, I rather appreciate Sir John's contention that no blows should
be struck without adequate warning, or while diplomatists are still
debating the matters in dispute. And it is my desire to prove that
Japan, far from taking her enemy unawares, did actually do precisely
as Sir John Macdonell is anxious to show she ought to have done, and
that, in the sense of his comment on the operations, there was no
room for the Russians to be surprised in any degree whatever.

I will first endeavour to demonstrate the truth of this proposition
by recalling the successive stages of those negotiations which cul-
minated in hostilities ; but it is unnecessary to dwell upon the earlier
part of the diplomatic correspondence, nor is it worth while to enlarge
either on the flagrant neglect of Russia to fulfil her own pledges, or
on the persistency with which she sought to (the expression may be
pardoned, since there is no other term that applies equally well) make
a fool of Japan throughout the protracted negotiations. It may
suffice to point out that, from the very nature of those negotiations,
any failure to arrive at a satisfactory understanding was tantamount
to an admission that war was inevitable.

The most acute phase was reached in November 1903, as was
plainly indicated in the telegram despatched on the 21st of that month
to Mr. Kurino, the Japanese Minister at St. Petersburg, by Baron
Komura, Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Government of Tokio, in
which the following passage occurs :

Baron Bosen added that he had not yet received any instructions on the
subject of the counter-proposals, consequently you are instructed to see Count
Lamsdorff as soon as possible, and after explaining to him Baron Eosen's state-
ments, as above, you will say that the Japanese Government are anxious to
proceed with the negotiations with all possible expedition, and you will urge
him to exert his influence to secure the early despatch of instructions to Baron
Bosen, in order that negotiations may be resumed and concluded without delay.

This view was, of course, communicated to the Russian Foreign
Minister, and after further futile endeavours on Japan's part to elicit
an early reply. Baron Kornura telegraphed to Mr. Kurino on the
1st of December 1903, again urging the importance of a speedy solution
of the question at issue, in yet more plain-spoken fashion ; and he
wound up his despatch thus :

In these circumstances the Japanese Government cannot but regard with
grave concern the situation, for which the delays in the negotiations are largely
responsible. You are instructed to see Count Lamsdorff as soon as possible, and
place the foregoing considerations before him in such form and manner as to
make your representations as impressive as possible. You will add that the
Japanese Government believe they are rendering a service to the general
interest in thus frankly explaining to the Bussian Government the actual state
of things.

1904 JAPAN AND THE WAR 175

When Mr. Kurino made these representations, which could scarcely
have been more explicit, to Count Lamsdorff, the Russian Minister
said that ' he would fully explain the urgency of the matter on the
occasion of his audience on the following Tuesday ' ; but things in
reality were made to drag on, and the Russian preference for the
game of diplomatic seesaw was exemplified to the full, until at last,
on the 23rd of December, when three whole weeks had been frittered
away, Mr. Kurino, reporting to Baron Komura an interview which
he had just had with Count Lamsdorff, thus ended his despatch :

In conclusion, I stated to him that under the circumstances it might cause
serious difficulties, even complications, if \ve failed to come to an entente, and
I hoped he would exercise his best influence so as to enable us to reach the
desired end.

On the 6th of January 1904 a Russian reply was handed at Tokio
by Baron Rosen to Baron Komura, but in substance it amounted to
little more than a repetition, save for mere changes of wording, of
what had gone before, and the attitude of Russia, it was plain, had
undergone no sensible alteration. Speaking candidly, there was an
end to all hope ; but the Government of Tokio, still willing to exert
itself, and even to make some concession, again invited the Russian
Government, on the 13th of January ,rto reconsider the matter, in terms
which, though conciliatory enough, constituted practically an ultimatum.
In the despatch conveying this decision to the Russian Government
the subjoined phrase occurred :

The grounds for these amendments having been frequently and fully
explained on previous occasions, the Imperial Government do not think it
necessary to repeat the explanations. It is sufficient here to express their
earnest hope for reconsideration by the Imperial Kussian Government.

And again :

The above-mentioned amendments being proposed by the Imperial Govern-
ment entirely in a spirit of conciliation, it is expected that they will be received
in the same spirit at the hands of the Imperial Russian Government ; and the
Imperial Government further hope for an early reply from the Imperial Eussian
Government, since further delay in the solution of the question will be extremely
disadvantageous to the two countries.

Even in the face of such earnest representations of the danger of
procrastination Russia still dallied, and on the 23rd and 26th of
January 1904 Baron Komura successively telegraphed to Mr. Kurino,
pressing for a prompt response. In one of the telegrams Mr. Kurino
was instructed to seek an interview with Count Lamsdorff and state
to him, as a direct instruction received from the Japanese Government,
that,

in the opinion of the Imperial Government, a further prolongation of the present
state of things being calculated to accentuate the gravity of the situation, it is
their earnest hope that they will be honoured with an early reply, and that they
wish to know at what time they may expect to receive the reply.

N 2

176 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

On the 28th of January Mr. Kurino reported to Baron Komura
his interview with Count Lamsdorff, in which he explains how

He (Count Larnsdorff) stated that -the Grand Duke Alexis and the Minister
of Marine are to be received in audience next Monday, and the Minister of War
and himself on Tuesday, and he thinks an answer will be sent to Admiral
Alexeieff on the latter day. I pointed out the urgent necessity to accelerate the
despatch of an answer as much as possible, ' because further prolongation of
tlie present condition is not only undesirable, but rather dangerous.' I added
that all the while the world is loud with rumours, and that I hoped he would
take special steps so as to have an answer sent at an earlier date than men-
tioned. He replied that ' he knoivs tJie existing condition of things very ivsll,
but that the dates of audience being fixed as above mentioned, it is not now
possible to change them ' ; and he repeated that ' he will do his best to send the
reply next Tuesday (the 2nd of February).'

Upon this Baron Komura, still anxious beyond measure to avoid
the risks attendant upon these indefinite conditions, again telegraphed,
on the 30th of January, to Mr. Kurino to see Count Lamsdorff at the
earliest opportunity and state to him that :

Having reported to your Government that the Kussian Government would
probably give a reply on next Tuesday, you have been instructed to say to
Count Lamsdorff that, being fully convinced of the serious disadvantage to the
two Powers concerned of the further prolongation of the present situation, the
Imperial Government hoped that they might be able to receive the reply of the
Kussian Government earlier than the date mentioned by Count Lamsdorff.
As it, however, appears that the receipt of the reply at an earlier date is not
possible, the Imperial Government wish to know whether they will be honoured
with the reply at the date mentioned by Count Lamsdorff, namely, next Tuesday
(2nd of February), or, if it is not possible, what will be the exact date on which
the reply is to be given.

On the evening of the 31st of January Mr. Kurino saw Count
Lamsdorff, who said that he

fully appreciated the gravity of the present situation, and was certainly
desirous to send an answer as quickly as possible, but that the question was a
very serious one and not lightly to be dealt with. The opinions of the Ministers
concerned and of Admiral Alexeieff had to be brought into harmony — hence the
delay. As to the date of sending an answer, it was not possible for him to give
the exact date, as it entirely depended on the decision of the Emperor, though
he would not fail to uso his efforts to hurry the matter.

It was not until the fifth day after this interview which Mr. Kurino
had with Count Lamsdorff, and the third day after the reply had been
promised to be given, namely, on the 5th of February 1904, at
2.15 P.M., that Baron Komura telegraphed to Mr. Kurino as follows :

Further prolongation of the present situation being inadmissible, the Imperial
Government have decided to terminate the pending negotiations and to take
such independent action as they may deem necessary to defend their menaced
position and to protect their rights and interests. Accordingly, you are
instructed to address to Count Lamsdorff, immediately upon receipt of this
telegram, a signed Note to the following effect :

1904 JAPAN AND THE WAR 177

' The undersigned, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of his
Majesty the Emperor of Japan, has the honour, in pursuance of instructions
from his Government, to address to his Excellency the Minister for Foreign
Affairs of his Majesty the Emperor of All the Eussias the following com-
munication :

' The Government of H.M. the Emperor of Japan regard the independence
and territorial integrity of the Empire of Korea as essential to their own repose
and safety, and they are consequently unable to view with indifference any
action tending to render the position of Korea insecure.

' The successive rejections by the Imperial Eussian Government, by means
of inadmissible amendments, of Japan's proposals respecting Korea, the adop-
tion of which the Imperial Government regarded as indispensable to assure the
independence and territorial integrity of the Korean Empire and to safeguard
Japan's preponderating interests in the peninsula, coupled with the successive
refusals of the Imperial Russian Government to enter into engagements to
respect China's territorial integrity in Manchuria, which is seriously menaced
by their continued occupation of the province, notwithstanding their treaty
engagements with China and their repeated assurances to other Powers pos-
sessing interests in those regions, have made it necessary for the Imperial
Government seriously to consider what measures of self-defence they are called
upon to take.

' In the presence of delays which remain largely unexplained, and naval and
military activities which it is difficult to reconcile with entirely pacific amis, the
Imperial Government have exercised in the pending negotiations a degree of
forbearance which they believe affords abundant proof of their loyal desire to
remove from their relations with the Imperial Eussian Government every
cause for future misunderstanding ; but, finding in their efforts no prospect of
securing from the Imperial Eussian Government an adhesion either to Japan's
moderate and unselfish proposals, or to any other proposals likely to establish a
firm and enduring peace in the extreme East, the Imperial Government have
no alternative than to terminate the present futile negotiations.

' In adopting that course the Imperial Government reserve to themselves the
right to take such independent action as they may deem best to consolidate and
defend their menaced position, as well as to protect their established rights and
legitimate interests.'

Simultaneously with the presentation of this Note Mr. Kurino was
instructed to address Count Lamsdorff in writing to the following
effect :

The undersigned Envoy Extraordinary, &c., &c., has the honour, in pursu-
ance of instructions from his Government, to acquaint H.E. the Minister for
Foreign Affairs, &c., &<;., that the Imperial Government of Japan, having
exhausted, without effect, every means of conciliation, with a view to the removal
from their relations with the Imperial Russian Government of every cause for
future complications, and finding that their just representations and moderate
and unselfish proposals in the interest of a firm and lasting peace in the extreme
East are not receiving the consideration which is their due, have resolved to
sever their diplomatic relations with the Imperial Eussian Government, which
for the reason named have ceased to possess any value.

In further fulfilment of the command of his Government, the undersigned
has also the honour to announce to H.E. Count Lamsdorff that it is his intention
to take his departure from St. Petersburg, with the Staff of the Imperial
Legation.

These Notes were presented to Count LamsdorS by Mr. Kurino on

178 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Aug.

the 6th of February, at 4 P.M., and on the same day Baron Komura
conveyed a formal intimation to Baron Rosen, in Tokio, in the sense
that

Whereas the Japanese Government had made every effort to arrive at an
amicable settlement of the Manchurian question with Russia, the latter had not
evinced any disposition to reciprocate this peaceful purpose. Therefore Japan
could not continue the diplomatic conferences. She was regretfully compelled
to take independent action for the protection of her rights and interests, and she
must decline to accept the responsibility of any incidents that might occur in
consequence.

A dispassionate perusal of all the foregoing despatches cannot fail
to lead the student of history to the conclusion that repeated warnings
were given by Japan in the successive stages of the negotiations, and
that the last two despatches, dated the 5th of February, left absolutely
no room for doubt that Japan had finally, though reluctantly,
arrived at the conclusion that war was inevitable. The wording is
polite, but who can doubt that it was a clear notice of war ?

I must go farther than this ; and it will, I think, be equally plain
when I have finished that not only had Japan made up her rnind upon
this point, but that Russia by her actions — which ' speak louder than
words ' — conclusively manifested that her intentions were warlike too.
First, let me mention that the day on which Count Lamsdorff had
led Mr. Kurino to expect that the reply would be ready was Tuesday,
the 2nd of February. The day on which negotiations were finally
broken ofi was Saturday, the 6th of February. On the intervening
Thursday the Russian fleet at Port Arthur suddenly emerged from
harbour and steamed out for hours to the south-eastward, ultimately
returning to port. For what purpose this cruise was undertaken
could not be divined, but it created of necessity intense excitement
and anxiety in Japan, where it was interpreted as the prelude to some
desperate measure, and the activity of the Russian naval squadron,
thus exemplified, is wholly inconsistent with the theory of unprepared-
ness. It should be remembered that for a long time before this Russia
had been pouring regiment after regiment into Manchuria, her Cossacks
had invaded Korea, warship after warship had been despatched from
Western waters to reinforce the fleet which she already had in Far
Eastern seas, and in her diplomacy she had displayed a persistent arro-
gance which contrasted strongly with the conciliatory attitude of Japan.

But this is not all. At the moment when Admiral Togo actually
made his attack the Russian ships laij outside the harbour in a perfect
battle array, in front of the shore forts and batteries of the fortress, a
position that they had taken up on their return from their cruise to
the south-eastward. Wherein was the unpreparedness ? If the
officers of the Russian ships were caught in an unguarded moment,
blame must not be imputed to the Japanese. The cause must rather
be sought in a misconception on the part of the Russians of the watchful

1904 JAPAN AND THE WAE 179

strategy which the situation demanded. The facts are, moreover,
that the Russian ships had lain under a full head of steam for days
off the Port Arthur entrance, had been continually using their search-
lights as though they apprehended an attack, the battleships had
their decks cleared for action, and the instant that the first torpedo
was launched the Russians opened fire on the Japanese boats.

These remarks should alone suffice to show that Russia was not
taken by surprise ; but I will show a few well-authenticated figures in
addition. Her warlike preparations in the Far East had been going
on from the previous April, when she ought by right to have been
completing the evacuation of Manchuria in accordance with her
solemn pledges. In the remaining months of 1903 she despatched to
Far Eastern waters

Combined
Tonnage

Three battleships ........ 38,488

One armoured cruiser ....... 7,727

Five other cruisers 26,417

Seven destroyers 2,450

One gunboat 1,344

Two mine-laying craft 6,000

Seven other destroyers were sent by rail to Port Arthur and there
put together, and two vessels of the ' Volunteer ' Fleet were armed
and hoisted the Russian naval ensign at Vladivostock.

On land the increase of the Russian forces was equally marked.
The known augmentations, subsequent to the end of June 1903, were
two infantry brigades, two artillery battalions, and a large force of
cavalry. The total was continually being increased by troops being
sent by train from Russia, up to 40,000, and plans were made for
despatching over 200,000 more men. In October a train of fourteen
cars was hurriedly sent off, laden with the equipment of a field hospital.

On the 21st of January two battalions of infantry and a detach-
ment of cavalry were sent from Port Arthur and Dalny to menace
the northern frontier of Korea. On the 28th of January Admiral
Alexeieff gave to the Russian forces then stationed in the vicinity
of the Yalu River orders to prepare for war. Troops were advanced
in large numbers at the same time from Liao-Yang towards the Yalu.
And on the 1st of February the military commandant at Vladivostock
formally requested the Japanese Commercial Agent at that port, by
order of the Russian Government, to notify Japan that a state of siege
might be proclaimed at any moment. This was five days, be it
observed, before Japan broke off diplomatic relations.

Sir John Macdonell says :

It [the first torpedoing the Russian vessels] was an attack of surprise. Was
it a treacherous and disloyal act ? The question must be put with the know-
ledge that a nation which is patient may be duped ; that the first blow counts
much ; and that under cover of continuing negotiations a country unprepared
might deprive another better equipped of its advantages.

180 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

All that I have said above would be sufficient to solve these points
of the question. The attack on Port Arthur was not an attack of
surprise in the sense of international law. It can be at the most
spoken of as an attack of tactical surprise, though it was not also
the case. The party who was defeated can complain of it no more
than he can complain of the defeat of the Yalu or Kinchow. The
Russian plan was to deprive Japan of her chance, and either to bluff
her off to the end or to fight at the hour of their own choice. Japan
was patient enough ; if she were patient longer she would have been
completely duped. As a matter of fact, there was some report that
the plan of the Russians was to make a sudden raid on Japan on about
the 20th of February, and that was not at all improbable. Some
Russians say that Russia never meant to go to war, and that the
very fact that she was not at all prepared to cope with a little nation
like Japan is the best proof of it. This does not follow at all, and
nothing is more foreign to the fact than to imagine that Russia was
sincerely anxious to maintain peace. In the eyes of the Russians
there was no such Japan as they have, or rather the world has, begun
to see since the opening of the war. They trusted, no doubt, either
to bs able to bluff through or crush at a blow if necessary. Even
in the battle of the Yalu, nay, even in the battle of Kinchow, or
Wafangu, they were unable to believe that the Japanese were not
after all ' monkeys with the brain of birds ' ! Only a little time ago
an eminent French statesman told me that France understood Japan
little ; Russia still less. It was the sole cause of the present un-
fortunate war. ' In that respect,' he continued, ' England was
sharper, for she understood the Far East, and, consequently, the
changing circumstances of the world, before any other Occidental
nation.'

There is, I believe, a good deal in it.

SUYEMATSU.

1904

OUR BI-CENTENARY ON THE ROCK

ON the 4th of August 1704 (New Style), the Eock of Gibraltar was
captured by Great Britain, and it has remained in her possession from
that day to this. Among the many possessions scattered all over
the globe that are comprised in the British Empire to-day, there is
none that the nation holds with greater tenacity for reasons both of
sentiment and of material interest, and none that it would lose with
more poignant shame and sorrow, than the redoubtable stronghold
we took from Spain at the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne.
Short-lived indeed would be the Ministry who, in some amicable settle-
ment of long-standing disputes, proposed to hand over Gibraltar to
its original and (in a geographical sense) natural owners or to any
other Power ; and the pride and strength of England would have to be
humbled to the very dust in war before the surrender of the Rock could
be included in any conditions which a British Government would so
much as take into consideration as the price of peace.

The fact that throughout the eighteenth century, when so many
conquests in both hemispheres changed hands backwards and for-
wards in successive wars and under successive treaties, Gibraltar
remained permanently in the keeping of England, might seem to
prove that British sentiment with regard to it was from the first the
same as it is to-day. But this is far from having been the case. For,
although at the end of two hundred years of our possession of the for-
tress, at a time when the Imperial instinct of Englishmen has become
more consciously developed and more deeply ingrained than ever
before, and at the same time more intelligently appreciative of the true
meaning of sea power and alive to the strategical requirements of its
maintenance, the retention of the key of the Mediterranean has
become an essential article of our political creed, it was a considerable
time before the immense value of the acquisition was fully realised
by British statesmen. It seems strange enough to us to remember that
King George the First and his Ministers were ready to give up Gibraltar
merely to secure Spain's acquiescence in the arrangement by which
the Quadruple Alliance was anxious to make some pettifogging modi-
fications in the shuffle of territories effected by the Treaty of Utrecht ;
but it is still more extraordinary that so clear-sighted, patriotic, and

181

182 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

high-spirited an empire-builder as Lord Chatham himself should
have made a similar offer as an inducement to Spain to help us to
recover Minorca — and this, moreover, at a time when the fortress had
been in our hands for more than half a century, and its vital importance
to our growing maritime supremacy had already been abundantly
proved in the naval wars of the period. Happily the Spaniards were
as blind as ourselves to the supreme importance of the position com-
manding the road from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Their
pride was, it is true, grievously wounded by its loss, and throughout
the greater part of the eighteenth century its recovery was one of the
most cherished aims of their policy and of their warlike efforts ; but
they clung to the hope that fortune would restore it to them without
requiring them to pay even the paltry price demanded on different
occasions by England. At all events, the continual readjustments
of territory elsewhere in Europe made or proposed to be made in the
interests of the various reigning dynasties were deemed by Spain
of greater immediate moment than the ownership of Gibraltar.
England's short-sighted proposals to part with its possession were
therefore once and again rejected, with the fortunate result that we
are this month entering on our third century of occupation of the
Rock.

The truth is, as readers of Mahan do not need to be reminded,
that the importance of sea power and the nature of the foundations
on which it is based were very imperfectly grasped even by England
in the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century, and
scarcely at all by any other European Power. Occasionally, at
intervals, some statesman like Colbert in France or Alberoni in Spain
had more than an inkling of the truth ; but no nation except England
made deliberate and sustained efforts with a view to maritime develop-
ment. Even England did so rather by instinct than by insight.
Instinct led her to take measures, first for expanding, and secondly
for protecting her sea-borne trade ; and these measures proved to be
just those required for the establishment of a world- wide Empire
based on sea power. But it was only by slow degrees that she gained
insight into the significance of this commercial policy in relation to
empire.

Of this blindness to the true principles of maritime policy, the
taking of Gibraltar and its history during the following three-quarters
of a century afford a striking illustration. Just as the vast import-
ance of its acquisition was at the time underrated both by England
and Spain, so its actual capture by the former was an afterthought,
and (it may almost be said) an accident. It became a British posses-
sion in the first instance because at a time when we happened to be
at war with one of the rival claimants to the Spanish throne our
admiral in the Mediterranean happened to have no particular objective
in view, and, having failed in his only enterprise of that year, was

1904 OUR BI-CENTENARY ON THE BOCK 183

unwilling to return home with a fine fleet that had done nothing for
the honour of the flag. So he thought he might as well make an attack
on Gibraltar as do anything else. Nevertheless, his action has to be
reckoned among the notable ' deeds that won the Empire,' and one
that on its bi-centenary deserves to be had in remembrance. Com-
pared with Wolfe's memorable exploit fifty-five years later, Rooke's
achievement in 1704 was less heroic and illustrious in a military sense,
and produced results less conspicuous at the moment. But if it did
not, like the storming of Quebec, accomplish the conquest of half a
continent, nor add an immense territory to the dominions of the
Crown, the acquisition of Gibraltar was destined to have a still more
far-reaching influence in building up and rendering secure for the
future the maritime power, and with it the over-sea empire, of Great
Britain.

England became involved in the war of the Spanish Succession,
in which this famous episode occurred, within two months of the
accession of Queen Anne. One of the first acts of the new Sovereign
was to appoint her consort, Prince George of Denmark, to the office
of Lord High Admiral. At the same time Sir George Rooke became
* Vice-Admiral of England,' and received in addition the high-sounding
title of ' Lieutenant of the Admiralty of England and Lieutenant of
the fleets and seas of this Kingdom.' He was also made a member
of a Council established to assist Prince George in the execution of his
office. His administrative duties at the Admiralty did not, however,
prevent his taking command of a fleet as soon as war was declared.
Sir George Rooke was at this time an officer who had seen a lot of
active service in which he had won distinction, though for political
reasons he had not received as much credit as he deserved. Thirty
years before, while still a lieutenant, he had made his mark in the
wars against the Dutch. He it was who as Commodore commanded
the squadron that convoyed Kirke to the Foyle in 1689, and raised
the siege of Londonderry. In the following year, having been pro-
moted to flag rank, he took part in the battle of Beachy Head, and at
La Hogue he performed a brilliant exploit in following the French
inshore and burning their men-of-war and transports — a service for
which he was rewarded by the honour of knighthood from William the
Third when the King shortly afterwards dined on board his flagship
at Portsmouth. Since that date Rooke had been in command of fleets
in the Mediterranean and the Channel, besides holding the appoint-
ment of a Lord of the Admiralty ; and so recently as the year 1700 in
conjunction with a Swedish squadron had forced the Danes to come
to terms with Charles the Twelfth.

There was therefore no British naval officer with a higher reputa-
tion than Sir George Rooke when the disputed succession to the
Spanish crown led to a declaration of war by England against France
and Spain on the 14th of May (N.S.) 1702. The events of the first

184 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

two years of the war do not concern us here, though it may be men-
tioned that Rooke received the thanks of the House of Commons —
he was himself member for Portsmouth — for his success in destroying
the Spanish treasure-ships in the harbour of Vigo. In the beginning
of 1704 he was ordered to escort to Lisbon the Archduke Charles, who
had proclaimed himself King of Spain and had resolved to proceed in
person to the Peninsula to assert his rights. A powerful fleet was
commissioned for this service, but it was found impossible to fit out
all the ships by the appointed date, so Sir Cloudesley Shovel was placed
in command of a second squadron with orders to follow the Com-
mander-in- Chief as quickly as possible. After Rooke sailed informa-
tion reached the Admiralty that a French fleet was preparing to sail
from Brest. Shovel thereupon received fresh orders to proceed to
Brest and blockade it. He was too late, however, to do this, and
was obliged to follow in the wake of the French in the hope of eluding
them and effecting a junction with Rooke somewhere near the Straits
of Gibraltar. Rooke, meantime, had reached Lisbon without falling
in with an enemy, and landed the Archduke ' after two days had been
spent in adjusting the ceremonial ' for conducting 'His Catholic Majesty
Charles the Third' from the flagship to the shore. The admiral
then spent a month cruising off the Spanish and Portuguese coasts in
search of a Spanish fleet returning from the West Indies. But early
in May orders reached him from home to go on to the Mediterranean
to relieve Nice and Villafranca, which were in danger of falling into
the hands of the French. This move was not at all to the liking of
Charles the Third, who was chiefly intent on securing his own position
in Spain, and accordingly ' the admiral was extremely, pressed by his
Catholic Majesty to undertake somewhat in his favour.' Rooke's
orders were explicit, and he knew he might incur a heavy respon-
sibility by delaying their execution. But he was hampered by the
additional absurd instructions to undertake nothing without the con-
sent of the Kings of Spain and Portugal, who could seldom agree on
anything whatever. Anyhow, he consented to make an attempt on
Barcelona, where it was represented to him that the inhabitants were
ready to declare for the Austrian candidate as soon as he appeared
before the city. This soon proved to be a complete delusion, and the
attempt to reduce the place was a fiasco.

Ten days after this abortive undertaking Rooke learnt the where-
abouts of the French fleet from Brest, and, although still without Sir
Cloudesley Shovel's reinforcements, he gave chase to the French and
succeeded in driving them into Toulon. He next passed the Straits
into the Atlantic once more, and on the 26th of June was joined at
last by Shovel's squadron off Lagos. The combined fleet then con-
tinued aimlessly cruising about while awaiting orders from home.
But, as the old eighteenth- century naval chronicler puts it, ' Sir George
Rooke being very sensible of the reflections that would fall upon him,

1904 OUR BI-CENTENAEY ON THE EOCK 185

if, having so considerable a fleet under his command, he spent the
summer in doing nothing of importance,' he called a council of war in
the Tetuan roadstead on the 27th of July. Several schemes for
doing ' something of importance ' were discussed and found im-
practicable ; the admiral ' declared that he thought it requisite that
they should resolve upon some service or other, and after a long
debate it was carried to make a sudden and vigorous attempt upon
Gibraltar.' Three reasons were given for this decision. ' First,
because in the condition the place then was, there was some pro-
bability of taking it ; which in case it had been properly provided,
and there had been in it a numerous garrison, would have been im-
possible. Secondly, because the possession of that place was of
infinite importance during the present war. Thirdly, because the
taking of this place would give a lustre to the Queen's arms, and
possibly dispose the Spaniards to favour the cause of King Charles.'

On the 1st of August the fleet, which included a few Dutch ships,
appeared off Gibraltar. The tactics to be employed for reducing the
stronghold were dictated by the configuration of the promontory.
Nor was it the first time that such a plan for its capture had been
devised by an English admiral. Half a century earlier, in Cromwell's
time, Admiral Montague, when serving under Blake in the Mediter-
ranean, had sent a memorandum to Secretary Thurloe containing a
proposal for an attack on Gibraltar ' as a place that would be of great
utility in case it could be reduced.' The only way of taking it, he
added, was ' to land a body of forces on the isthmus, and thereby
cut off communication of the town with the main ; and in this situa-
tion to make a brisk attempt upon the place.' Curiously enough
this suggestion' came to nothing in 1656, because soldiers were not to
be had for the purpose and the British sailors of that day could not
be trusted, since ' the hasty disposition of the seamen rendered them
unfit to perform any effectual service on shore.' But in 1704 things
had changed in this respect, and Rooke put in execution with complete
success Montague's plan, which it will have been noticed was similar
in principle to that of the Japanese at Port Arthur two hundred years
afterwards. Accordingly the same day that the fleet arrived a force of
1,800 English and Dutch marines under the Prince of Hesse were put
ashore ' on the neck of land to the northward of the town.' How
strange, it may be observed in passing, it must have seemed to English
and Dutch sailors of that day to find themselves actually fighting
together as allies of ' his Catholic Majesty ' of Spain, in whose name
the Governor of the fortress was called upon to surrender it to the
Prince of Hesse. This demand being of course refused, Sir George
Rooke ordered his captains to take up positions for bombarding the
place next day. In the morning of the 2nd of August the wind was
unfavourable for the necessary evolutions of the ships, so it was
late in the afternoon before they got into their appointed places.

186 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug.

Meantime, ' to amuse the enemy,' as Rooke quaintly phrased it in his
despatch, ' Captain Whitaker was sent in with some boats who burnt
a French privateer of twelve guns at the mole.' At daybreak on the
3rd the bombardment began. So furious was the cannonade that
we are told more than 15,000 rounds were fired in five or six hours ;
' insomuch that the enemy were soon beat from their guns, especially
at the South Molehead.' At this juncture Rooke signalled to Captain
Whitaker — presumably for the better ' amusement ' of the enemy —
to take in all the boats and drive the defenders from their fortified
position on the mole. This order was so promptly obeyed by two
captains, Jumper and Hicks, who were already close inshore with
their pinnaces, that before the rest of the boats could take part the
fortifications were in their possession, though with the loss of two
lieutenants and 100 men killed and wounded by the springing of a
mine by the Spaniards. The survivors of the storming party held
their ground, however, till supported by Whitaker, whose blue-
jackets were not long in forcing their way into a redoubt between
the mole and the town, the possession of which by the English appears
to have rendered the whole fortress untenable ; for on receiving ' a
peremptory summons ' now sent him by the Prince of Hesse at Rooke's
instance, the Governor made no further attempt at defence. The
following morning, the 4th of August 1704, the capitulation was
signed, and the troops under the Prince of Hesse marched in and
occupied the fortress the same day.

It does not appear that the assailants suffered any very heavy
loss ; in fact, there is no doubt that the defence of the Spanish garrison
was a tame affair. The French, indeed, anxious to minimise the
importance of Rooke's success, asserted that the Spaniards had
neither garrison nor guns on the Rock. This, however, was clearly
not the fact ; for Rooke, in his report to the Admiralty, expressly
said * the town is extremely strong and had 100 guns mounted, all
facing the sea and the two narrow passes to the land, and was well
supplied with ammunition.' This seems hardly consistent perhaps
with the alleged state of affairs that moved the Council of War at
Tetuan to make the attack — namely, that the weak and unprovided
condition of the garrison offered a prospect of success which would
otherwise have been out of the question ; and it is possible that Rooke
was as willing to magnify his work after the event as his enemies
were to discount it. On the other hand it is possible that the natural
strength of the place and the state of its equipment had not been
realised until it was seen from inside. This explanation of the
apparent inconsistency is supported by the opinion of the military
officers, who after inspecting the fortifications declared that ' fifty
men might have defended those works against thousands,' and that
the place had only fallen because .' there never was such an attack as
the seamen made.'

1904 OUR BICENTENARY ON THE BOCK 187

The Union Jack was hoisted by Rooke's sailors as soon as they had
established themselves on the mole ; but the capitulation was accepted
in the name of Charles the Third, to whom the soldiers "and inhabitants,
in accordance with one of its articles, had to take an oath of allegiance.
The fact that at the close of the war, nine years later, England insisted
on retaining the fortress in her own hands and obtaining a formal
cession of it from Spain might be taken as proof that the experience
of the war had taught its true value, were it not for the subsequent
proposals already mentioned for giving it back in return for com-
paratively worthless concessions elsewhere. Be that as it may, for
the time being at all events the Prince of Hesse was left in command
of the garrison to hold the place for his Catholic Majesty, while the
English fleet sailed away quite content with the ' something of im-
portance ' accomplished for the purpose of ' giving a lustre to the
Queen's arms.'

The taking of Gibraltar was immediately followed by the battle
of Malaga, which, according to Dr. John Campbell, Rooke's biographer,
finally ' decided the empire of the sea,' an opinion practically endorsed
by the French historian, Martin. Nevertheless, when Sir George
Rooke shortly afterwards returned home, attempts were made, in a
spirit with which we have been only too familiar in more recent times,
to belittle his services for party reasons. The reign of the Revolu-
tionary Whigs was not yet at an end. Rooke had been elected member
for Portsmouth in 1698, and in Parliament had committed the un-
pardonable offence of Noting mostly with those that were called
Tories.' For this offence William the Third had been pressed to
remove him from his seat at the Admiralty Board, but honourably
refused to do so. In 1704 he was still in bad odour with the
ruling party, who accordingly resented the very mention of
Gibraltar or Malaga in the same breath with the triumph of the
great Whig hero at Blenheim, which occurred in the same year.
The Commons insisted all the same on coupling the victories by
land and sea in an address of congratulation to the Crown, though
the expressions used gave great offence ' to many of the warmest
friends of the Ministry.' In the House of Lords, where Whig influence
remained more powerful than in the Lower House, Rooke's services
were passed over altogether in silence ; and the rancour of party spirit
was such that in the same year in which he placed in the hands of his
countrymen the key of the Mediterranean and the empire of the
sea, he found himself obliged to retire into private life. He never
was employed again. And just as, from motives of party, the Whig
politicians thus treated him with injustice and neglect, so for the
same reason the Whig historian perpetuated the injustice to his
memory. Bishop Burnet persistently belittled the exploits, falsified
the facts, and misrepresented the motives of Sir George Rooke's
career. Rooke did not, it need hardly be said, possess the genius of

188 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

a Marlborough, and none of his deeds can justly be compared for a
moment from a military standpoint with Blenheim or Ramillies ; but
after making all allowance for the historical importance of Marl-
borough's illustrious victories in putting a check to the menacing
power of France, it may be questioned whether any of them con-
ferred so lasting a benefit on the British Empire as the happy-go-
lucky enterprise of his naval contemporary whose very name is by
many scarcely remembered to-day, though the fruit of his action is
one of our most cherished possessions after two hundred years, while
the ambition and the schemes of Louis the Fourteenth have long since
passed into limbo. More fit to be remembered than the churlish jealousy
of bygone Whigs, whether politician or historian, is the judgment of the
weightiest modern authority on the relation between sea power and
empire ; and at this time of the bi-centenary of our occupation of the
Rock we may well bear his words in mind. ' The English possession
of Gibraltar,' writes Captain Mahan, ' dates from the 4th of August
1704, and the deed rightly keeps alive the name of Rooke, to whose
judgment and fearlessness of responsibility England owes the key of
the Mediterranean.' l

RONALD McNEiLL.

1 The Influence of Sea Power upon History, p. 210.

1904

BRITISH SHIPPING AND FISCAL REFORM

No industry is more vitally important than shipping to the welfare
of Great Britain, and none more susceptible to the attack of foreign
competition. Its decadence would bring widespread and serious
distress to the working people of our country ; in fact it is a truism
that the decline of the supremacy of the mercantile marine must
mean the decline of Great Britain as an empire.

The prevailing desire in the country for ' cheapness ' — i.e. the wish
to pay down at the moment as little cash as possible without thinking
where such economy may lead — seems to constitute a national danger.
For instance, some British shipbuilders have imported German
forgings and castings at prices 30 per cent, below their cost of manu-
facture in this country ; and by so doing they have increased the
tendency to sacrifice the primary processes of manufacture, which
form the great field of employment of our people.

There can be no doubt that once our employers of labour have
been induced to exchange the primary processes of manufacture for
that of fitting together ready-made parts, we shall become increasingly
dependent upon the foreigner not merely for the supply, but also for
the price of our shipbuilding materials.

To-day the producing capacity of German iron and steel firms is
nine times as great as it was twenty- two years ago. There are twenty-
one steel-works fitted out with heavy bar-rolling appliances, and in
the matter of forgings and castings the industry is ahead of the ship-
building trade, thus placing it in a favourable position to cater for
work abroad.

Foreign merchants do not sell their goods in this country below
the cost of production in Britain, and often below the cost of pro-
duction to themselves, without having some definite purpose in view.
Their policy is not one of charity, but is one well calculated to capture
our markets. So long as our manufacturers turn out iron and steel
goods similar to those which foreigners export, it will be necessary
for the latter, as a matter of competition, to sell lower than the British

VOL. LVI— No. 330 189 0

190 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug.

prices. This they are able to do by means of home bounties and
protective tariffs, which leave a sufficiently large profit on their home
sales to recoup any loss on their exports and give a net gain on their
total output.

It is often asserted that to stop by means of a tariff the unlimited
importation of these foreign manufactures must certainly lead to
handicapping British shipbuilders in their competition for orders.
As an example of such argument the following is a paragraph taken
from the Glasgow Herald Supplement on the year's (1903) shipbuilding
and engineering.

Looking at the position in this light, there can only be one answer to the
question. Building material cannot be too cheap, and if foreign makers can
supply it at less cost than our own, it is not only to builders' interests but
for the national benefit that the foreign material be used. No doubt it is
' hard lines ' for home makers, but they are not the men to sit down under
it. New circumstances and new forces will stimulate new methods and
economies.

Surely there never was a more flagrant example of how ' spurious
free trade ' argument can be made to subserve private ends, of how
it can be utilised to favour one class, or one industry, at the expense
of another, of how it can by selfish application sap away the prosperity
of a nation ; for it certainly would not be to the national benefit to
sacrifice the prime industries of the land.

Another way in which British shipping stands to lose heavily
is by the increasing amount of partly finished stuff it brings to this
country in place of raw material.

Kaw material as a rule is of much greater bulk and weight than
the semi-masiufactured article, and therefore needs a greater amount
of transport. An eminent authority recently gave figures in the Western
Mail showing how the importation into Newport (Wales) of 200,000
tons of German steel, instead of the material to manufacture it from,
had caused a loss to shipowners of not less than 39,OOOZ. in freights.
This can be readily believed when it is said that it requires about
30,000 tons of hematite ore to manufacture 10,000 tons of steel, not
to mention the need of some 25,000 tons of coal and coke for that
manufacture.

Thus in the interest of prosperous employment for the people it
is essential that British shipping should preserve its ascendency ; and
in no way allow foreign nations to usurp its carrying power, ship-
building, or allied industries.

In order to see how shipping legislation may be rendered less
oppressive to shipowners it is essential to consider how they are unduly
handicapped by the laws of to-day.

A prime grievance is the load-line restriction to which British
ships, when laden, are bound to conform, while foreign vessels are

1904 BEITISH SHIPPING AND FISCAL EEFOEM 191

not made to comply with the Act, with the consequence that foreign
vessels of the same carrying capacity as British ones are enabled to
carry larger cargoes and earn greater profits.

As an illustration we have the case given in the report of the Select
Committee on Shipping Subsidies (year 1901) of a ship which, while
trading under the British flag, was limited to a carrying capacity of
1825 tons ; but when sold to the Germans actually traded into Liver-
pool with the cargo of 2100 tons, or with an excess of 15 per cent.
over her former carrying capacity.

Another difference is that between the British and foreign regis-
tered tonnage of a vessel, which in the matter of paying dues seriously
mulcts the shipowners of this country. Thus two vessels may have
exactly the same cargo-carrying capacity ; but the British ship would
by our measurement be registered at 2000 tons, while the foreign
vessel is registered at 1800 tons ; thus causing the British vessel to
pay dues on 200 tons more than the foreigner, although in reality both
ships are of the same size.

Mr. Beasley, general manager of the Taff Railway Company,
South Wales, has given some valuable figures in the Times, which
show that out of 100 vessels previously British-owned, but now belong-
ing to seven foreign nations, the difference between the former and
latter registration varies between 12 and 10 per cent. Thus, on the
aggregate tonnage of the 100 vessels, amounting to 158,000 tons, the
foreign registration shows 17,617 tons less — upon which to levy dues
— than when the ships were on the British register.

The President of the Board of Trade has expressed recently his
intention of dealing with such unfairness ; but it is not so much fresh
legislation that is wanted as official activity.

Section 84 of the Merchant Shipping Act already provides that
' where the tonnage of any foreign ships materially differs from that
which would be the tonnage under the British flag she may be re-
measured under the terms of the Act.'

But unless a case is glaringly apparent steps of that kind are
seldom if ever taken. This is the more to be regretted, for when ship-
ping competition is so fierce, and the margin between profit and loss
so small, it seems imperative to adopt some policy which will place
all foreign shipping when trading in British waters on at least the
same footing as that of our own country.

When advocating ' a fair field and no favour ' the exclusion of
British vessels from certain foreign coastal trades must be taken into
account. At present every nation is allowed absolute free trade on
the coasts of the United Kingdom, and also on those of the Crown
colonies and dependencies, as well as between the colonies and the
mother country. Most of the self-governing colonies also allow free
trade on their coasts ; but Canada stipulates that such privilege is
granted solely on condition of reciprocity,

o 2

192 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug.

On the other hand, British shipping is excluded from the home
coasting trade of the following countries : United States of America
(on both coasts, Atlantic and Pacific ; and even on voyages extending
from coast to coast), Russia (on all coasts, and even on voyages extend-
ing from ports in the Baltic to ports, like Vladivostock, in the East),
France, Spain, Portugal. It is also excluded from trading between
the following countries and their possessions : France and her
Algerian trade (free trade exists between France, Guadaloupe, Mada-
gascar, and other island colonies, but other shipping is specially
taxed) ; United States of America (trade to Philippine ports open
to British and Spanish vessels till 1909. But on trade between
Philippine ports and U.S.A. special duties are levied on goods
when carried in foreign or British ships); Spain (handicapped
by levying surtaxes on produce brought home in foreign hulls) ;
Portugal (excepting those possessions exempted by special decrees) ;
Russia.

When we consider the enormous power we possess in our shipping
for negotiation, it seems strange that in 1854 we should have abolished
the old navigation laws, and removed all power of taxing foreign
shipping without retaining a clause in favour of reciprocity. In the
days of old the reservation of coastal trade to national keels was well
recognised as one of the most powerful and promising arguments for
use in demanding an open market. Alexander Hamilton, the great
American statesman, laid it down as an essential to be included in
the articles of the United States Constitution.

In advocating the acceptance of such a policy he wrote in his
paper, the Federalist, November 1787, thus :

Suppose for instance we had a Government in America capable of exclud-
ing Great Britain (with whom we have at present no treaty of commerce) from
all our ports, what would be the probable operation of this step upon her
politics? Would it not enable us to negotiate, with the fairest prospect of
success, for commercial privileges of the most valuable and extensive kind in
the dominions of that Kingdom ? . . . Such a point gained from the British
Government, and which could not be expected without an equivalent in exemp-
tions and immunities in our markets, would be likely to have a correspondent
effect on the conduct of other nations, who would not be inclined to see them-
selves altogether supplanted in our trade.

If we simply exchange the names of the countries mentioned above,
and speak of Britain where Hamilton says America, and vice versa,
no more lucid or cogent appeal in favour of reserving British coastal
trade to British shipping excepting on conditions of reciprocity could
be put forward.

In the famous Board of Trade Blue-book, C. D. 1761, ' British and
Foreign Trade, and Industrial Conditions,' figures are given showing
the classification of the foreign tonnage participating in the trade
between the United Kingdom and British colonies and possessions,

1904 BEITISH SHIPPING AND FISCAL BEFOEM 193

and showing to what extent that trade is shared by countries giving
free trading to British ships on their coasts or refusing it.

In 1902 the total trade between the United Kingdom colonies
and possessions amounted to 13,250,000 tons l (11,750,000 British,
1,500,000 foreign). Of the foreign tonnage 94 per cent, was that of
countries granting open coastal trade to British ships ; G per cent,
was that of countries refusing such privilege.

Hence it follows that were ' reciprocity ' made a test of admission
to British, colonial, and coasting trade, 5 or 6 per cent, of the foreign
shipping now engaged in that trade would be excluded until such time
as arrangements were made to the mutual benefit.

The power of laying embargo is pregnant with great possibilities.

A considerable proportion of foreign tonnage is enabled to trade
solely through the receipt of State-aid. The following table shows
approximately the amount of subsidy granted by the various foreign
Governments to their national shipping ;

£

United States 357,723

France (mails and bounties) . - . . . . 1,787,270

Germany (mail subsidies) 400,000

Italy (mails and bounties) 500,000

Eussia (mails and bounties) 374,700

Austria-Hungary (mails and bounties) . . . 400,000

Portugal (mail subsidies) 13,000

Netherlands „ 75,000

Norway „ 30,000

Sweden „ 17,000

Denmark „ 20,000

Japan (mail and bounties) 700,000

There can be no doubt as to what is the object aimed at by the
Governments granting these bounties. It is first to develop their national
marines both as a source of industry and as a support to their naval
power. In the second place, to undercut British shipping, and so
secure a portion of this country's trade. If such were not the inten-
tion, it would be a matter of surprise that so many bounty-fed vessels
are to be seen in British ports, such as Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore,
Hongkong, Durban, Melbourne, and Sydney. These subsidies cover
either all or some of the following expenses : interest on capital
borrowed by the shipping companies, depreciation, insurance of the
vessels, crews' wages and stores, and in consequence enable foreign
shipowners to carry cargoes at a rate of freight which would ruin
unsubsidised British shipping.

The evidence given by Sir Henry Beyne, K.C.M.G., before the
Parliamentary Select Committee on steamships subsidies in 1901,
throws valuable light on this matter. He quoted instances in which
he knew of French sailing ships of about 3200 tons earning bounties

1 These figures do not refer to inter -trading between the colonies and possessions.

194

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Aug.

of 4000L per annum ; and certain vessels in particular earning bounties
as follows :

Per cent.

. 34
. 37

Charles Gounod on value of vessel .
General Neumayer „ ,,

Per cent.

. 17 on value of shares
. 18*

Heine Blanche

22

44

The effect of these vessels seeking cargoes in a port where British
ships are lying cannot be otherwise than disadvantageous to the
latter, and though working at a loss, they are (to use an Irishism)
able to pay dividends. To illustrate how the reservation of the
imperial coastal trade to British vessels, excepting on conditions of
reciprocity, could be made a powerful means of securing free and fair
competition, take the case of French ships trading along the British
East and West African coasts.

The subsidies paid in these trades by France are :

£

East Africa and Indian Ocean 76,985

And West Coast of Africa 20,036

Were these ships interdicted from trading along British African coasts
until such time as France gave reciprocal permission to British ship-
owners to trade in her Franco-Algerian trade, there can be little
doubt that the French ships would remain on that portion of the
coast left open to them either at great loss, or with a great increase in
their subsidies ; either of which conditions could not but react adversely
upon the national finance.

If to some people the policy of ' real free trade ' is distasteful,
there remains an alternative measure, and that is to levy a special
duty on all subsidised flags equivalent to the amount of their
subsidy. By either method of differential treatment increased trade
under fair conditions would be assured ; for no nation can afford to
bolster up indefinitely such an industry as the sailing of unprofitable
ships.

The severity of foreign shipping competition has certainly some
bearing on the question of the decrease of British sailors in the mer-
cantile marine. One effect has been to prevent the wages of the
seafarer from rising in the same degree that they have in employ-
ments on shore, and thus the sea has ceased to tempt young men
to adopt it as their career in life in the same way as it used to do.

In the evidence given before the committee recently appointed by
the Board of Trade to enquire into questions affecting the mercan-
tile marine ; it was shown how British sailors had decreased steadily
from 1890 to 1901, and how foreign (other than Asiatic) sailors had
steadily increased thus :

—

1890

1895

1901

British
Foreign (exclusive of Asiatics)

165,827
27,035

158,983
32,045

151,376
37,174

1904 BRITISH SHIPPING AND FISCAL EEFOEM 195

The following table illustrates tlie advance of wages made relatively
in shore and sea life :

Trade

1850

I860

1897

Increase of

s.

s.

s. d.

Per cent.

( Carpenters

104

112

142 8

38

Ashore < Compositors

120

120

140 0

16

[_ Bricklayers

116

128

168 0

45

fAble Seaman —

Sea . <^ Sail

45

50

60 0

33

L Fireman

79

85

85 0

7

To pay higher wages in British ships is now impossible ; the same
may be said indeed of any reform that calls for expenditure on the
part of the shipowner. When once it is recognised that the important
thing is not so much what wages are paid for, as where they come
from, it will not be difficult to see the truth of this statement. The
capitalist shipowner is the wage fund of the seaman. So long as the
shipowner lives, so long does the wage fund last, and is available for
the purchase of labour. If through good trade the shipowner grows
rich, the wage fund grows with him ; if through a surplus of tonnage,
severe competition, or trade depression, he grows poorer, the wage
fund dwindles too. The main point then is to preserve the wage fund
at the back of the shipowner ; and having done that, the wage-earners
have ample power through combination to ensure that they get their
share of ' the better times ' that follow.

If British shipowners were supported, in times of need, by a policy
possessing retaliatory power against those nations which sought to
ruin their trade by artificial means, there can be little hesitation in
saying that seafaring would become more popular as it became more
profitable, and would once again resume its position as the calling of
those who should form the backbone of the navy and the nation.

The progress of British shipping forms an interesting study. In
short, it may be said that prior to 1805 Britain maintained her supre-
macy through the zeal and courage of her naval commanders ; subse-
quent to Trafalgar through the navigation laws — in other, words, through
legislative prohibition to import goods to British shores in foreign
ships. After the repeal of the navigation laws in 1854, a set-back
occurred to British shipping, with a concurrent augmentation in foreign
shipping. Indeed, so great was the impetus given to alien shipping by
the repeal that the foreign tonnage visiting British ports was almost
doubled in a decade.

Then came the introduction of iron in place of wood for shipbuilding,
which restored once more to Britain her leading position as a maritime
power.

When ships were built of wood, and the motive power was sail,
timber had to be imported with which to build the vessels, as also
the hemp, cordage, and flax for setting up the rigging and sails.

196 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug.

But when iron came to be used, our shipbuilders were able to
depend upon home supplies of iron ore, lime, and coal, all of which
are found in the United Kingdom. Other nations might be able to
build wooden ships cheaper than we ; but none could compete in the
price of an iron or steel steamer. Hence the dawn of the iron age
enabled Britain to recover her decline following on the repeal of the
navigation laws.

The annexed figures, gleaned from a paper read before the Royal
Statistical Society by Sir John Glover, will show the varying changes
as described.

Table showing percentage of foreign tonnage as compared with
British tonnage entered and cleared in British ports :

Foreign British
Per cent. Per cent.

1848 (Previous to the repeal of the navigation laws) . 28-8 71-2

1860 (Effect of the repeal) 41-8 58'2

1870 (Subsequent to the introduction of iron in ship-
building) 29-8 70-2

With the greater portion of the world's ' carrying power ' in
British hands, it is not surprising that British trade should have
developed in greater proportion, and with more rapidity, than the
commerce of all other nations.

During the twenty years between 1860 and 1880 railway transport
was still in the first stage of development. Carriage by sea for goods in
quantity was by far the cheapest and most convenient mode of trans-
port. British shipowners were able by reason of earning ' double
freights ' (outward as well as inward cargoes) to allow of low cost of
carriage for home merchandise. Hence British merchants, through
British maritime supremacy, were able to exploit their wares in foreign
and neutral markets with such advantages in their favour as pro-
hibited all other nations from competition.

In the early days of continental manufacturing activity there
was a tremendous demand for British coal, which export formed
a paying ballast cargo, and enabled vessels to return with
' imports ' of rarw material at a lower rate of freight than they would
otherwise have been able to do. But it seems doubtful whether
coal will long continue as a staple export of this country. As new
fuels and more economical methods of propulsion are devised, the
demand for coal will be restricted, and what demand there is will be
more readily and more cheaply supplied from foreign or colonial pits
than from those in the United Kingdom.

Already Germany, the United States of America, Australia,
Belgium, Japan, India, Natal, and New Zealand export coal in ever-
increasing quantities.

This cheapness given by ' export cargoes ' to imports has a great
and beneficial effect upon the well-being of the people, both as regards
their food and employment ; and it is essential for the continued pre-

1904 BBITISH SHIPPING AND FISCAL REFORM 197

valence of ' cheapness,' and for the competitive power of the mercan-
tile marine, that ' export cargoes ' of some sort should be found for
British shipping. If it is not permanently possible to put our trust
in coal, then we should strive all we can to develop our manufactures.

Of recent years there has been a marked increase in the amount
of competitive foreign tonnage afloat, mainly due to the develop-
ment of foreign shipbuilding. One result is that a distinct advance
has taken place in regard to the amount of carrying which certain
nations do of their own trade.

The following table gives an idea of this, showing as it does the
percentage of tonnage entered and cleared under the national flag of
the total tonnage entered and cleared in the ports of the countries
named, and also showing the percentage of British tonnage entered
and cleared in the same ports.

16

90

1900

Country

_

National

British

National British

Eussia

7-3

55-1

10-3 44-7

British decrease.

Norway

631

16-3

66-1 12-0

British decrease.

Sweden

33-7

22-1

38-3 12-0

British decrease.

Germany

42-4

36-6

47-5 29-9

British decrease.

Italy .

24-8

48-4

48-8 23-8

British decrease.

U.S.A.

22-1

52-8

16-9 52-8

Remained the same.

The point to be noted is that as foreign tonnage increased and came
into competition with British tonnage, the latter had to give way.

When one remembers that there is a limit to the demand for carry-
ing capacity in the world, and that the favour of a cargo falls to the
vessel that will carry it at the lowest rate of freight, it is not sur-
prising that some people should question whether, if things go on as
they are going now without alteration or change, the dominating
position of British shipping may not be seriously undermined.

In times gone by we obtained our strength from within the United
Kingdom — from iron ore and coal. But these old-time buttresses
have lost their efficacy. Let us alter our policy and draw our strength
to-day from an empire united commercially.* Let us aim at a
federation framed not merely in regard to personal or insular pro-
sperity, but having as its basis the advancement and defence of trade
on broad and reciprocal lines, and which we should be ready to share
with all who meet us in freedom and fairness.

Some may object to reciprocal measures because they see in them
a leaning towards protection. Others oppose such reform because
they do not imagine it can benefit this or that industry. And others,
again, because they do not believe in adapting the policy of their
day to suit the circumstances of their time ; trusting rather to fortune
to bring all things right in the end.

To such as these the words of Alexander Hamilton must come with

198

Aug.

disconcerting emphasis, for he says : ' It is too much characteristic of
our national temper to be ingenious in finding out and magnifying
the minutest disadvantages ; and to reject measures of evident utility,
even of necessity, to avoid trivial and sometimes imaginary evils.
We seem not to reflect that in human society there is scarcely any
plan, however salutary to the whole and to every part, by the share
each has in the common prosperity, but in one way or another, and
under particular circumstances, will operate more to the benefit of
some parts than of others. Unless we can overcome this narrow dis-
position, and learn to estimate measures by their general tendencies,
we shall never be a great or a happy people, if we remain a people
at all.'

GRAHAM.

1904

THE LIBERAL PRESS
AND THE LIBERAL PARTY

To one who, for some time past, has not only been cultivating a con-
stituency of his own, but has, in addition, been paying electioneering
visits to other constituencies, the least satisfactory feature of the
Liberal position in the country is the inefficiency of its press. It is
a parrot cry — particularly on the part of those having no great depth
of conviction themselves — that the press has ceased to influence the
country ; that people merely read papers for their news, and not for
their opinions ; and that, in short, conductors of newspapers and their
leader-writers are, as professed guides and teachers, found out and
played out. This is probably no more true nowadays than it has
been since organs of public opinion existed. My own experience
has convinced me that the man who does not read opinions in daily
or weekly papers and reviews is, in nine cases out of ten, a man having
neither knowledge nor views on public questions ; in the tenth case
his views are a mere collection of crudities or a reflection of those
he hears expressed around him, in office, workshop, factory, public
conveyance, or club. They have no fixed quality, they are never
informed, and have rarely even the vitality of prejudices. The
point indeed is hardly worth labouring, and no one who takes the
trouble to test the origin of the average man's views can fail to find
that they spring from the acceptance or the rejection of the opinions
laid down in newspapers.

How could it be otherwise ? What I find the normal busy man
does not read in the newspapers are the Parliamentary reports, not
even in the attenuated form in which they are given in many of the
Tory organs, and in all the so-called leading Liberal papers — with
the commendable exception of one or two of the principal provincial
journals. For this abstention the average man is certainly not to
be blamed, the attempt — if it may even be dignified by the name of
an attempt — to pack into a couple of columns reports of discussions
ranging over a wide variety of subjects, and lasting perhaps some
eight hours, merely resulting in a blurred impression that conveys
little or no meaning to the man who brings no special knowledge to
their perusal. Even the gentlemen whose mission it is, from the

199

200 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

Press Gallery of the House of Commons, to provide in narrative form
a running report of, and commentary on, the debates, seldom succeed
in conveying an adequate presentment of what has taken place. They
are hampered, in the first place, by space limitations, and in the
second — and this, perhaps, is the more important consideration of
the two — they are, for the most part, so much more interested in
personalities than in politics that one unfamiliar with the leading
personages in Parliament derives neither refreshment nor knowledge
from their chronicles. So far, therefore, as these two features of the
daily papers are concerned — where they exist at all — I agree that
they play very little part in the political education of newspaper
readers. There remain, therefore, as educational factors, the leading
article and the special article, and these, I am convinced, from inquiry
and observation, exert at the present time as much influence on the
general reader as they have done at any time in the history of the
popular press.

This much admitted, it is not surprising that Liberalism had until
the recent cataclysmal series of blunders on the part of the Govern-
ment, become a broken force, incapable of winning fresh converts
on its own merits, and mainly indebted for the foothold it contrived
to maintain to the recklessness and costliness of the Ministerial
policy.

For it is my purpose to show that much of the anti-Liberal feeling
that has distinguished politics in this country for nearly twenty years
past has been due to the general weakness of the Liberal press, and
to its very partially representative character. It has, during that
time, produced no really great journalist, and its conductors have
been content to shape their line of conduct by a more or less blind
following of individuals rather than by framing and enforcing a
distinctive policy. Of course there has been Mr. Stead, and if that
gentleman had had a less consuming vanity and had not mistaken
a somewhat crude emotionalism for pure reason, he might and pro-
bably would have acquired a reputation greater than that of any
journalist in this country. But Mr. Stead's amazing lack of stability —
amazing considering his tenacity and his perspicuity — made him, as
it has left him, a hot gospeller rather than a journalist-statesman.
And yet, amid the crowd of more commonplace mortals who have
conducted newspapers at any time during the past twenty years,
his is the only name that emerges from the ruck, and in this are to be
included not only Liberal but Tory editors.

To journalists themselves other names, and mostly those at the
head of the leading provincial papers, are familiar, but though the
heavier metal is undoubtedly to be found in the provinces, there is
hardly a single provincial editor whose name is known as a political
guide outside the area of his own town. But while the Conservative
press has been as barren as its Liberal counterpart, it has, up to quite

1004 THE LIBERAL PRESS AND THE PARTY 201

recently, had the good fortune to reflect a fairly constant element in
politics. This has to a large extent atoned for its commonplaceness
and its uninspiring character, and has made it a tolerably cohesive
force in the country. The Liberals, on the other hand, except for the
Konfliktszeit of 1892-95, three years of pitiful attempt tempered by
almost ceaseless intrigue of a particularly ignoble sort, have been
sheep without a shepherd, and as a result the Liberal press has been
swayed by this group or that, by this individual or the other. What
has been the consequence ? A press feebly groping for a policy, and
speaking with many voices — a more or less exact reflection indeed of
what has been found on the front Opposition Bench of Parliament
itself. It has been Roseberyite, Bannermanite, Morleyite, and even
Harcourtite, according as these great men took its transient fancy or
seemed like ' coming out on top.'

What wonder, then, that save for a few exceptions to be noted
hereafter, the provincial Liberal press has become feebler and feebler,
and in the smaller towns has almost ceased to exist, the little pro-
vincial editor, with no particular ideas of his own, and with no great
depth of conviction, adapting the course of his paper to the local
stream of tendency. Thus he saw, until recently, most of the public
offices, the knighthoods, the * gentry,' and even the shopkeepers
following the main stream of Toryism, and he damped down his Liberal
enthusiasm, when he had any, and ambled along with the larger
crowd. This is a process I have found repeated over and over again
in the smaller towns, and it has happened not infrequently in many
of the larger cities. There have, as already stated, been some notable
exceptions, and these — perhaps because they were farther removed
from the political centre of disturbance — have not only escaped the
indecisions and wobblings of their London contemporaries, but have
strengthened and solidified their position. Their influence, in con-
sequence, is immeasurably greater than that of the more pretentious
London papers.

At their head must still be placed the Manchester Guardian, the
vitality of which enabled it to emerge successfully from the well-nigh
disastrous situation it created for itself owing to its attitude over the
South African war. I cannot, of course, pretend to say how far this
attitude injured its financial prosperity ; but that it, for a time, almost
completely nullified its former great political influence is certain. It
now stands admittedly at the head of the press of the Midlands, alike
in influence and in circulation, and if it were possible to transplant it
bodily from Manchester to London — with the remodelling of certain
news features necessitated by the change of locus — London Liberalism
would be greatly the gainer. That Manchester has not been wholly
lost to Liberalism is due to the Guardian, and it will,^no doubt, when
the country has been given the opportunity of expressing its judgment
at the polls on that virtuous record of the Government which is tne

202 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

object of such smug self-complacency to Mr. Joseph Chamberlain,
become once more the authoritative voice of that long discredited
•* Manchesterthum ' that we had all thought had become a bygone.

It is less easy to award second place to the few remaining Liberal
provincial journals of note. Of first-class importance there are only
two — the Liverpool Post and the Glasgow Herald — though the Dundee
Advertiser, the solitary exponent of Liberalism of any note for the
whole of the north and east of Scotland, and the Sheffield Inde-
pendent remain sturdily Radical, even if their influence is not
far-reaching.

But it is in the old provincial homes of Liberalism that the defec-
tion of its press is most marked, a defection that must be pronounced
to be due, not so much to a real decline in Liberal convictions on
the part of the people, as to the rise of the halfpenny press. Up to
twenty years ago, when the daily press was as decorous as it was
often dull, the methods that have revolutionised our newspapers
would have made no successful appeal to the country at large. Their
authors were probably at that time in short frocks or knickerbockers,
and the bulk of their present readers were also either in the nursery
or attending one of the lower standards of the Board Schools. It
would be foolish, however, to rail against this product of a shallow,
hurried, and unthinking age. The most noteworthy fact in con-
nection with it is that the conductors and proprietors of Liberal news-
papers should have been entirely blind to the growth of this army of
potential newspaper readers, people with just sufficient education
to enable them to find interest in the events of the day, but with
intelligences so untrained that the only means of reaching them was
to make strident appeal to their emotions, through the medium of
platitude and claptrap. Fixity of views, honesty of purpose, mattered
little. What this great uninformed public wanted first of all was
news in brief compass, and more attractively presented than by the
older-fashioned papers. No doubt this represented the measure of
the intentions of the earliest promoters of the halfpenny press, and
they were probably driven in spite of themselves to the propagation
of political views and opinions — not always the same views and opinions,
but varying according to the signs or mood of the moment. And
meanwhile the more sedate and undoubtedly duller Liberal press,
alike in London and the provinces, refused to change its methods,
and left the guidance of this amorphous and undisciplined army to
its not too scrupulous opponents, until it found itself threatened with
extinction ; until in some cases individual newspapers realised that it
was too late even for a change of methods, and they had perforce to
consent to absorption or destruction. This want of alertness led in
the provinces to more than one of the large towns being deprived of
any Liberal journal of a representative character. Newcastle, that
old pillar of earnest Radicalism, has gone, the Newcastle Daily

1904 THE LIBERAL PEESS AND THE PARTY 203

Chronicle having been squeezed out by its younger and more vigorous
rivals, with the result that, from Glasgow to Bradford, there is no
representative Liberal daily newspaper. And even in Bradford,
where the political parties are about equally divided, and in the
neighbouring town of Leeds, where the Liberals had a not incon-
siderable majority at the last election, the party press has for some
time past been steadily losing ground.

In the Southern and Home counties, local Liberal journalism can
hardly be said to exist, the long spell of Tory Government having
driven nearly all the journalistic sheep into the Tory pasture. There
are towns in the Home Counties of sufficient importance to supporc
three or four weekly papers and perhaps an evening paper in addition,
in which the Liberals have no representative organ. No doubt the
accession of the Liberals to power would bring some of these weaklings
over to the Liberal side, but the battle that is to bring this about
has to be fought without their assistance, and for the most part
against their opposition, although many recent by-elections have
shown that the electorate is preponderatingly Liberal.

In the West the situation is even more anomalous. Passing over
Dorsetshire and Somersetshire, where the sparse and scattered nature
of the population does not encourage vigorous newspaper develop-
ment, we find the same Liberal journalistic inertia in Devon and
Cornwall, the most influential papers being Conservative in com-
plexion, although the Parliamentary representation of both counties
is overwhelmingly Liberal. This may seem to tell against my con-
tention that newspaper readers are influenced by the views expressed
in the journals they read. To this I would reply that, as almost
invariably happens, the readers have run ahead of their guides for
the many reasons that have contributed to weaken the present Govern-
ment in the country, and, with the timidity that distinguishes most
newspaper conductors, these latter are listening for the fully ex-
pressed voice of the country before changing their policy. If, there-
fore, as seems tolerably assured, the Liberal party emerges trium-
phantly from the next trial of strength at the polls, it will owe little
to the work and influence of the provincial Liberal press.

In London, the relative disproportion of the Liberal and Con-
servative daily papers — alike in numbers, in influence, and in cir-
culation— is no less marked. It is clear, indeed, that in spite of the
manifest revival of Liberalism in London, its representative press
has dwindled both in magnitude and in importance. The first step
in the downward path dates, it need hardly be said, from the time of
the Home Rule split. There were at that period only two Liberal
morning newspapers, the Daily News and the Daily Chronicle, and as
each took a different course on the Irish question, cohesion disap-
peared from the ranks of the party. Neither, it is true, has been
consistent in its attitude on Irish affairs, and each has, at different

204 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Aug.

times, displayed a suspicious alacrity to declare Home Rule outside
practical politics.

But in this matter, the two papers may be said to have reflected
rather than formed the opinions held by the rank and file of the
party. At the present moment, though the Daily News refuses to
admit that the question can be shelved, and makes periodical excur-
sions into the open for the purpose of waving the tattered green flag,
and reminding non-Home Rulers that it has its eye on them, its
earnestly meant attempts to restrict the Liberal party to a drab and
sad type of Nonconformity and a nebulous but flighty form of Radical-
Socialism cannot be said to have been conspicuously successful.
But, notwithstanding a decided narrowness of outlook, and an over-
ready disposition to ban all who cannot ' bolt the bran ' of its peculiar
type of Liberalism, the Daily News has, since it reduced its price to a
halfpenny, grown greatly in circulation, and possibly also in influence.
It does not represent the Liberal party as a whole ; it would be difficult,
for example, for a Churchman, or a Liberal Roman Catholic — and
there are still some left — to find in it other than many causes of offence ;
but it is a gospel to a large section of Liberalism, and the party
would be in exceedingly bad case without it. In its recent growth
among the more earnest sections of Liberals, it has no doubt been
largely assisted by the newest development of the Daily Chronicle,
which in reducing its price to a halfpenny has relegated the serious
consideration of political and social questions to a very secondary
place. But where the Chronicle condescends to politics it certainly
makes a wider appeal to the party than its principal rival, and if
it did not overload its columns with the more meretricious side of
journalism ; if, in fact, it did not give up to things of no importance
about as large a proportion of its space as the Daily News devotes to
a narrow sectarianism, there is still no reason why it should not
become in London the really representative Liberal newspaper.
There remains, among the fighting forces of London Liberalism, the
Morning Leader, which, with a good circulation in the North, East,
and South-Eastern districts of the metropolis, has built up a new
class of Liberal — or, rather, Radical — readers. But no one of the
three papers in question can be said to make a strong, or even
a direct, appeal to the party at large, and they offer but a pitiful
contrast to the eight Conservative morning papers of the capital,
which, whatever their differences on points of detail in Conservative
policy, are united in support of the Unionist party.

In evening newspapers the contrast is equally marked, for while
the two halfpenny organs, the Star and the Echo, compare more than
favourably in conduct and influence with the two halfpenny Tory
papers, the Evening News and the Sun, the only heavier ordnance
the Liberals can oppose to the Globe, the Pall Mall Gazette, the
St. James's Gazette, and the Evening Standard is the Westminster Gazette.

1904 THE LIBERAL PRESS AND THE PARTY 205

Here, however, the superiority on the Tory side is merely in point of
numbers. Needless to refer to the enormous value of Mr. Gould's
cartoons, which, though limited in range of ideas, have been justly
described as one of the best assets of the Liberal party. Nothing,
indeed, could better attest to the dearth of real political cartoonists
on both sides than the fact that among the lesser men who essay this
form of pictorial art there is not one who comes within measurable
distance of the Westminster cartoonist. One feels that the only man
who could approach him, if he possessed the same political insight,
is Mr. E. J. Reed. But while the latter gentleman is a born artist,
Mr. Gould is a born politician, in whose equipment art occupies but
a secondary place. It would, however, be unjust to attribute the
entire political value of the Westminster to its cartoons. Partly, no
doubt, as a result of the uncertainty that has characterised the leading
columns of its two principal morning contemporaries for some years
past, the Westminster has come, in the minds of the more influential
section of Liberals, to represent a much-needed moderation of tone
and constancy of views. In its treatment of those questions con-
cerning which the Liberal party is of at least two minds, the West-
minster acts consistently as Moderator, holding the balance very
skilfully ; and while it did not, during the progress of the South African
war, escape the reproach of being labelled ' Pro-Boer ' by the Imperialist
Liberals, and while it is occasionally suspected by the other side of
being out of sympathy with the advanced programme, the fact remains
that it is perhaps the only representative Liberal paper with which all
sections practically agree, and if it were on occasion a little more
vigorous, more outspoken, when a strong line is indicated, it might
easily become a great fighting force. $

In Sunday and weekly papers and reviews, published in London,
an even greater disparity exists than in the case of the daily press.
Of the distinctively weekly papers, those, that is to say, giving a
survey of the week's news, not one represents the Liberal party since
the defection of Lloyd's, which, though under the same proprietor-
ship as the Daily Chronicle, has become the advocate of a somewhat
tepid form of Unionism. In purely Sunday papers also the only one
out of some half dozen which the Liberals can claim is the Sunday
Sun, and this is neither very robust in its politics nor very lively as
to the rest of it. The remainder, even if not very intelligent in their
politics, are either whole-heartedly or flippantly Tory.

Of the weekly reviews, but one — The Speaker — flies the Liberal
colours, and that one, though it contains much admirable work,
makes a deliberate appeal only to a section, and that a rather narrow
section, of the party. It is, indeed, mainly distinguished by a youthful
and not very enlightened intolerance of all who do not share its
somewhat doctrinaire views. Some advantage has undoubtedly
accrued to the Liberal party from the revolt of the Spectator against
VOL. LVI— No. 330 p

206 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Aug.

Chamberlainism, and if, as some people profess to think probable,
there should follow on the next'general election a regrouping of parties,
in which the Free Trade and more Progressive Unionists should decide
to act with the Moderate Liberals, the Spectator \vould no doubt
become once more a recognised exponent of broad Liberal views.

The foregoing survey shows, I think, that the unquestioned con-
version of the majority of the country — as testified by the past score
or so of by-elections — owes very little to the Liberal press. In number
of newspapers and in circulation the Tory press has, as I have shown,
an immense and unquestioned superiority, and yet the Conservatives
are as surely slipping back as the Liberals are pressing forward. What
use does the Liberal press throughout the country propose to make
of the powerful weapon that is ready forged to its hand ? Is there
to be found the same want of cohesion, the same ridiculous bickering
over non-essentials that has marked the conduct of Liberal newspapers
and reviews for nearly a score of years past ? If so, it is certain that
the country's support of the party will not be of long duration, and
the next state of Liberal journalism, and therefore of Liberalism,
will be even worse than that which it has just managed to survive.
If Liberal journalism is to flourish, if it is to serve as something more
than a subsidised vehicle for the dissemination of particular and
peculiar views, it must regain the confidence of those upon whom ife
must at all times be largely dependent for its prosperity. This it
can only do by the cultivation of greater moderation of tone, which
need entail no sacrifice of its principles, and by disabusing the com-
mercial class of the erroneous idea — a very fixed one in the minds of
many — that Liberalism means spoliation and disturbance of trade.

No doubt the amenities which are now so conspicuously wanting
in a considerable section of the Liberal press will come more easily
and more naturally when the positions of the two political forces are
reversed. It may then be possible for one or two of its principal
representatives, who have converted the practice of proscription into
a fine art, to exercise a wider tolerance and to give themselves a much-
needed respite from banning those with whom they do not at the
moment happen to agree on all points of Liberal policy. That would
go a long way towards reassuring the larger public, and so would tend
to restore to the Liberal press the authority, stability, and prosperity
it has so largely lost during the years it has been wandering in the
wilderness.

W. J. FlSHHR,

Late Editor of the ' Daily Chi onisle.'

1904

THE
ETHICAL NEED OF THE PRESENT DAY

' I

WHEN we cast a glance upon the immense progress realised by all the
exact sciences in the course of the nineteenth century, and when we
closely examine the character of the conquests achieved by each of
them, and the promises they contain for the future, we cannot but
feel deeply impressed by the idea that mankind is entering a new era
of progress. It has, at any rate, before it all the elements for opening
such a new era. In the course of the last hundred or hundred-and-
twenty years, entirely new branches of knowledge, opening unexpected
vistas upon the laws of development of human society, have grown
up under the names of anthropology, prehistoric ethnology, the
history of religions, the origin of institutions, and so on. Quite new
conceptions about the whole life of the universe were developed by
pursuing such lines of research as molecular physics, the chemical
structure of matter, and the chemical composition of distant worlds.
And the traditional views about the position of man in the universe,
the origin of life, and the life of the mind were entirely upset by the
rapid development of biology, the reappearance of the theory of
evolution, and the growth of physiological psychology. Merely ^to
say that the progress of science in each of its branches, excepting
perhaps astronomy, has been greater during the last century than
during any three or four centuries of the Middle Ages or of antiquity
would not be enough. We have to return 2300 years back, to
the glorious times of the philosophical revival in ancient Greece, in
order to find another period of sudden awakening of the intellect and
of sudden bursting forth of knowledge which would be similar to what
we have witnessed lately. And yet, at that early period of hunven
history, man did not enter into possession of all those wonders of indus-
trial technique which have been arrayed lately in our service. A youthful,
daring spirit of invention, stimulated by the discoveries of science,
and taking its flight to new, hitherto inaccessible regions, has increased
our powers of creating wealth, and reduced the effort required
for rendering well-being accessible to all to such a degree that no

20v r 2

208 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

Utopian of antiquity, or of the Middle Ages, or even of the earlier
portion of the nineteenth century, could have dreamt anything of the
sort. For the first time in the history of civilisation, mankind has
reached a point where the means of satisfying its needs are in excess of
the needs themselves. To impose, therefore, as has hitherto been
done, the curse of misery and degradation upon vast divisions of
mankind, in order to secure well-being for the few, is needed no more :
well-being can be secured for all, without overwork for any. We are
thus placed in a position entirely to remodel the very bases and con-
tents of our civilisation — provided the civilised nations find in their
midst the constructive capacities and the powers of creation required
for utilising the conquests of the human intellect in the interest of all.

Whether our present civilisation is vigorous and youthful enough
to undertake such a great task, and to bring it to the desired end, we
cannot say beforehand. But this is certain, that the latest revival of
science has created the intellectual atmosphere required for calling
such forces into existence. Reverting to the sound philosophy of
Nature which remained in neglect from the times of ancient Greece,
until Bacon began to wake it up from its long slumber, modern science
has now worked out the elements of a philosophy of the universe,
free of supernatural hypotheses and the metaphysical ' mythology of
ideas,' and at the same time so grand, so poetical and inspiring, so
full of energy, and so much breathing freedom, that it certainly is
capable of calling into existence the necessary forces. Man need no
more clothe his ideals of moral beauty, and of a better organised
society, with the garb of superstition : he can free himself from those
fears which had hitherto damped his soaring towards a higher life.

One of the greatest achievements of modern science was, of course,
that it firmly established the idea of indestructibility of energy
through all the ceaseless transformations which it undergoes in the
universe. For the physicist and the mathematician this idea became
a most fruitful source of discovery. It inspires, in fact, all modern
research. But its philosophical import is equally great. It accustoms
man to conceive the life of the universe as a never-ending series of
transformations of energy, among which the birth of our planet, its
evolution, and its final, unavoidable destruction and reabsorption in
the great Cosmos are but an infinitesimally small episode — a mere
moment in the life of the stellar worlds. The same with the researches
concerning life. The recent studies in the wide borderland, where the
simplest life-processes in the lowest fungi are hardly distinguishable — if
distinguishable at all — from the chemical redistribution of atoms which
is always going on in the more complex molecules of matter, have
divested life of its mystical character. At the same time, our concep-
tion of life has been so widened that we grow accustomed now to
conceive all the agglomerations of matter in the universe — solid,
liquid, and gaseous — as living too, and going through those cycles of

1904 ETHICAL NEED OF THE PRESENT DAY 209

evolution and decay which we formerly attributed to- organic beings
only. Then, reverting to ideas which were budding once in ancient
Greece, modern science has retraced step by step that marvellous
evolution which, after having started with the simplest forms, hardly
deserving the name of organisms, has gradually produced the infinite
variety of beings which now people and enliven our planet. And, by
making us familiar with the thought that every organism is to an
immense extent the produce of its own surroundings, biology has
solved one of the greatest riddles of Nature — its harmony, the adapta-
tions to an end which it offers us at every step. Even in the most
puzzling of all manifestations of life, the domain of feeling and thought,
in which human intelligence has to catch the very processes by means
of which it succeeds in retaining and co-ordinating the impressions re-
ceived from without — even in this domain, the darkest of all, science
has already caught a glimpse of the mechanism of thought by follow-
ing the lines of research indicated by physiology. And finally, in the
vast field of human institutions, habits and laws, superstitions, beliefs
and ideals, such a flood of light has been thrown by the anthropolo-
gical schools of history, law, and economics that we can already main-
tain positively that ' the greatest happiness of the greatest number '
is not a mere Utopia. It is an ideal worth striving for, since it is
proved that the prosperity and happiness of no nation or class could
ever be based, even for the duration of a few generations, upon the
degradation of other classes, nations, or races.

Modern science has thus achieved a double aim. On the one side
it has given to man a great lesson of modesty. It has taught him to
consider himself as but an infinitesimally small particle of that im-
mense whole — the universe. It has driven him out of his narrow,
egotistical seclusion, and has dissipated the self-conceit under which
he considered himself the centre of the universe and the object of a
special attention in it. It has taught him that without the whole
the 'ego' is nothing: that our 'I' cannot even come to a self-definition
without the ' Thou.' l But at the same time science has taught man
how powerful mankind is in its progressive march ; and it has given
him the means to enlist in his service the unlimited energies of Nature.

So far, then, as science and philosophy go, they have given us
both the material elements and the freedom of thought which are
required for calling into life the reconstructive forces that may lead
mankind to a new era of progress. There is, however, one branch of
knowledge which lags behind. It is ethics. A system of ethics worthy
of the present scientific revival, which would take advantage of all the
recent acquisitions for revising the very foundations of morality on a
wider philosophical basis, and produce a higher moral ideal, capable of
giving to the civilised nations the inspiration required for the great

1 Schopenhauer, The Foundations of Morals, section 22. All the paragraph is of
the greatest beauty. Also Feuerbach and others.

210 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug.

task that lies before them — such a system has not yet been produced.
But it is called for on all sides, with an emphasis the sense of which
cannot be misunderstood. A new, realistic moral science is the need
of the day — a science as free of superstition, religious dogmatism, and
metaphysical mythology as modern cosmogony and philosophy already
are, and permeated at the same time with those higher feelings and
brighter hopes which a thorough knowledge of man and his history
can breathe into men's breasts.

That such a science is possible lies beyond any reasonable doubt.
If the study of Nature has yielded the elements of a philosophy which
embraces the life of the Cosmos, the evolution of the living beings,
the laws of psychical activity, and the development of society, it
must also be able to give us the rational origin and the sources of the
moral feelings. And it must be able to indicate and to reinforce
the agencies which contribute towards the gradual rising of these
feelings to an always greater height and purity, without resorting
for that purpose to blind faith or to religious coercion. If a closer
acquaintance with Nature was able to infuse into the minds of the
greatest naturalists and poets of the nineteenth century that lofty
inspiration which they found in the contemplation of the universe —
if a look into Nature's breast made Goethe live only the more intensely
in the face of the raging storm, the calm mountains, the dark forest
and its inhabitants — why should not a widened knowledge of man and
his destinies be able to inspire the poet in the same way ? And when
the poet has found the proper expression for his sense of communion
with the Cosmos and his unity with fellow-men, he becomes capable
of inspiring thousands of men with the highest enthusiasm. He
makes them feel better, and awakens the desire of being better still.
He produces in them those very ecstasies which were formerly con-
sidered as belonging exclusively to the province of religion. What
are, indeed, the Psalms, which are described as the highest expression
of religious feeling, or the more poetical portions of the sacred books
of the East, but attempts to express man's ecstasy at the contemplation
of the universe — the first awakening of his sense of the poetry of
Nature ?

II

The need of realistic ethics was felt from the very dawn of the
present scientific revival, when Bacon, at the same time as he laid
the foundations of the present advancement of sciences, indicated
also the main outlines of empirical ethics, perhaps with less thorough-
ness than this was done by his followers, but with a width of con-
ception which was not much improved upon in later days. The best
thinkers of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries continued
on the same lines, endeavouring to work out systems of ethics, indepen-
dent of the imperatives of religion. Hobbes, Locke, Shaftesbury and

1904 ETHICAL NEED OF THE PRESENT DAY 211

Paley, Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith boldly attacked the pro-
blem on all sides. They indicated the empirical sources of the moral
sense, and in their determinations of the moral ends they mostly stood
on the same empirical ground. They combined in varied ways the
' intellectualism ' and utilitarianism of Locke with the ' moral sense '
and sense of beauty of Hutcheson, the * theory of association ' of
Hartley, and the ethics of feeling of Shaftesbury. Speaking of the
ends of ethics, some of them already mentioned the ' harmony '
between self-love and regard to fellow-men which took such a develop-
ment in the nineteenth century, and considered it in connection with
Hutcheson's ' emotion of approbation,' or the ' sympathy ' of Hume
and Adam Smith. And finally, if they found a difficulty in explaining
the sense of duty on a rational basis, they resorted to the early influences
of religion, or to some inborn sense, or to some variety of Hobbes'
theory of law, considered as the educator of the otherwise unsociable
primitive savage. The French Encyclopaedists and materialists dis-
cussed the problem on the same lines, only insisting more on self-love,
and trying to find the synthesis of the opposed tendencies of human
nature in the educational influence of the social institutions, which
must be such as to favour the development of the better sides of human
nature. Rousseau, with his rational religion, stood as a link between
the materialists and the intuitionists, and by boldly attacking the
social problems of the day he won a wider hearing than any one of
them. On the other side, even the utmost idealists, like Descartes
and his pantheist follower Spinoza, even Leibnitz and the ' tran-
scendentalist-idealist ' Kant, did not trust entirely to the revealed
origin of the moral ideas, and tried to give to ethics a broader founda-
tion, even though they would not part entirely with an extra-human
origin of the moral law.

The same endeavour towards finding a realistic basis for ethics
became even more pronounced in the nineteenth century, when
quite a number of important ethical systems were worked out on the
different bases of rational self-love, love of humanity (Auguste Comte,
Littre, and a great number of minor followers), sympathy and intel-
lectual identification of one's personality with mankind (Schopen-
hauer), utilitarianism (Bentham and Mill), and evolution (Darwin,
Spencer, Guyau), to say nothing of the negative systems, originating
in La Rochefoucauld and Mandeville and developed by Nietzsche and
several others, who tried to establish a higher moral standard by their
bold attacks against the current half-hearted moral conceptions, and
by a vigorous assertion of the supreme rights of the individual.

Two of the nineteenth-century ethical systems — Comte's posi-
tivism and Bentham's utilitarianism — exercised, as is known, a deep
influence upon the century's thought, and the former impressed
with its own stamp all the scientific researches which make the glory
of modern science. They also gave origin to a variety of sub-systems,

212 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

so that most modern writers of mark in psychology, evolution, or
anthropology have enriched ethical literature with some more or less
original researches, sometimes of a high standard, as is the case with
Feuerbach, Bain, Leslie Stephen, Wundt, Sidgwick, and several
others. Numbers of ethical societies were also started for a wider
propaganda of empirical ethics. At the same time, an immense move-
ment, chiefly economical in its origins, but eminently ethical in its
substance, was born in the first half of the nineteenth century and
spread very widely under the names of Fourierism, Saint- Simonism,
and Owenism, and later on of international socialism and anarchism.
This movement was an attempt on a great scale, supported by the
working men of all nations, not only to revise the very foundations of
the current ethical conceptions, but also to introduce into real life
the conditions under which a new page in the ethical life of mankind
could be opened.

It would seem, therefore, that since such a number of rationalist
ethical systems have grown up in the course of the last two centuries,
it is impossible to approach the subject once more without falling into
a mere repetition or a mere recombination of fragments of already
advocated schemes. However, the very fact that each of the main
systems produced in the nineteenth century — the positivism of Comte,
the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, and the altruist evolutionism
of Darwin, Spencer, and Guyau — has added something important to
the conceptions worked out by its predecessors proves that the matter
is far yet from being exhausted. Even if we take the last three
systems only, we cannot but see that Spencer failed to take advantage
of some of the hints which the evolutionist philosopher finds in the
short but very suggestive sketch of ethics given by Darwin in The
Origin of Man ; while Guyau introduced into morals such an important
element as that of an overflow of energy in feeling, thought, or will,
which had not been taken into account by his evolutionist pre-
decessors. If every new system thus contributes some new and
valuable element, this very fact proves that ethical science is not yet
constituted. In fact, it never will bs, because new factors and new
tendencies will always have to be taken into account in proportion
as mankind advances in its mental evolution.

That, at the same time, none of the ethical systems which were
brought forward in the course of the nineteenth century has satisfied,
be it only the educated fraction of the civilised nations, hardly need be
insisted upon. To say nothing of the numerous philosophical works
in which dissatisfaction with modern ethics has been expressed,2 the
best proof of it is the decided return to idealism which we see in all
civilised nations, and especially in France. The absence of any
poetical inspiration in the positivism of Littre and Herbert Spencer,

J Sufficient to name here the critical and historical works of Paulsen, Wundt,
Leslie Stephen, Guyau, Lichtenberger, Fouillee, De Roberty, and so many others.

1904 ETHICAL NEED OF THE PRESENT DAY 213

and their incapacity to cope with the great problems of our present
civilisation ; the striking narrowness of views concerning the social
problem which characterises the chief philosopher of evolution,
Spencer ; nay, the repudiation by the latter-day French positivists of
the humanitarian theories which distinguished the eighteenth- century
Encyclopaedists — all these have helped to create a strong reaction in
favour of a sort of mystico-religious idealism. The ferocious inter-
pretation of Darwinism, which was given to it by the most prominent
representatives of the evolutionist school, without a word of protest
coming from Darwin himself for the first twelve years after the appear-
ance of his Origin of Species, gave still more force to the reaction
against ' naturism ' — we are told by Fouillee. And, as always happens
with every reaction, the movement went far beyond its original pur-
pose. Beginning as a protest against some mistakes of the naturalist
philosophy, it soon became a campaign against positive knowledge
altogether. The ' failure of science ' was triumphantly announced.
The fact that science is revising now the ' first approximations ' con-
cerning life, psychical activity, evolution, the structure of matter,
and so on, which were arrived at in the years 1856-G2, and which must
be revised now in order to reach the next, deeper generalisations —
successive approximations being the very essence of the history of
sciences — this fact was taken advantage of for representing science
as having failed in its attempted solutions of all the great problems.
A crusade in favour of intuitionism and blind faith was started accord-
ingly. Going back first to Kant, then to Schelling, and even to Lotze,
numbers of writers have been preaching lately ' spiritualism,' ' inde-
terminism,' ' apriorism,' ' personal idealism,' and so on — proclaiming
faith as the very source of all true knowledge. Religious faith itself
was found insufficient. It is the mysticism of St. Bernard or of the
neo-Platonians which is now in demand. ' Symbolism,' ' the subtle,*
' the incomprehensible ' are sought for. Even the belief in the
mediaeval Satan was resuscitated.3

It hardly need be said that none of these currents of thought ob-
tained a widespread hold upon the minds of our contemporaries ; but
we certainly see public opinion floating between the two extremes —
between a desperate effort, on the one side, to force oneself to return
to the obscure creeds of the Middle Ages, with their full accompani-
ment of superstition, idolatry, and even magic ; and, on the opposite
extreme, a glorification of ' a-moralism ' and a revival of that worship
of ' superior natures,' now invested with the names of ' supermen ' or
' superior individualisations,' which Europe had lived through in the
times of Byronism and early Romanticism.

It appears, therefore, more necessary than ever to see if the present

3 See A. Fouillee, Le Mouvcment idtaliste et la Reaction contre la Science
positive, 2nd edition ; Paul Desjardins, Le Devoir present, which has gone through
five editions in a short time ; and many others.

214 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

scepticism as to the claims of science in ethical questions is well
founded, and whether science does not contain already the elements
of a system of ethics which, if it were properly formulated, would
respond to the needs of the present day.

Ill

The limited success of the various ethical systems which were
born in the course of the last hundred years shows that man cannot
be satisfied with a mere naturalistic explanation of the origins of the
moral instinct. He means to have a justification of it. Simply to
trace the origin of our moral feelings, as we trace the pedigree of some
structural feature in a flower, and to say that such-and-such causes
have contributed to the growth and refinement of the moral sense,
is not enough. Man wants to have a criterion for judging the moral
instinct itself. Whereto does it lead us ? Is it towards a desirable
end, or towards something which, as some critics say, would only
result in the weakening of the race and its ultimate decay ? If struggle
for life and the extermination of the physically weakest is the law of
Nature, and represents a condition of progress, is not then the cessation
of the struggle, and the ' industrial state ' which Comte and Spencer
promise us, the very beginning of the decay of the human race — as
Nietzsche has so forcibly concluded ? And if such an end is un-
desirable, must we not proceed, indeed, to a re-valuation of all those
moral * values ' which tend to reduce the struggle, or to render it less
painful ? The main problem of modern realistic ethics is thus, as
has been remarked by Wundt in his Ethics,4 to determine, first of all,
the moral end in view. But this end or ends, however ideal they may
be, and however remote their full realisation, must belong to the
world of realities. They must be born out of it, and remain accessible
to our senses, because modern man will not be taken in by mere words
or by a metaphysical substantiation of his own desires. The end of
morals cannot be ' transcendental,' as the idealists desire it to be : it
must be real.

When Darwin threw into circulation the idea of ' struggle for
existence,' and represented this struggle as the mainspring of progres-
sive evolution, he agitated once more the great old question as to the
moral or immoral aspects of Nature. The origin of the conceptions
of good and evil, which had exercised the best minds since the times
of the Zend Avesta, was brought once more under discussion with a
renewed vigour, and with a greater depth of conception than ever.
Nature was represented by the Darwinists as an immense battlefield
upon which one sees nothing but an incessant struggle for life and an

4 W. Wundt, Ethics, English translation in three volumes, by Professor Titchener,
Prof. Julia Gulliver, and Prof. Margaret Washburn, New York and London (Swan
Sonnenschein), 1897.

extermination of the weak ones by the strongest, the swiftest, and the
cunningest : evil was the only lesson which man could get from Nature.
These ideas, as is known, became very widely spread. But if they are
true the evolutionist philosopher has to solve a deep contradiction,
which he himself has introduced into his philosophy. He cannot
deny that man is possessed of a higher conception of ' good/ and that
a faith in the gradual triumph of the good principle is deeply seated in
human nature, and he has to explain this conception and this faith.
He cannot be lulled into indifference by the Epicurean hope, expressed
by Tennyson — that ' somehow good will be the final goal of ill.' Nor
can he represent to himself Nature, ' red in tooth and claw,' at strife
everywhere with the good principle — the very negation of it in every
living being — and yet this good principle triumphant in the long run.
He must explain this contradiction. But if he maintains that the
only lesson which Nature gives to man is one of evil, then he neces-
sarily has to admit the existence of some other, extra-natural, or
supra-natural influence which inspires man with conceptions of
' supreme good,' and guides human development towards a higher
goal. And in this way he nullifies his own attempt at explaining
evolution by the action of natural forces only.

In reality, however, things do not stand so badly as that for the
theory of evolution. The above interpretation of Nature is not
supported by fact. It is incomplete, one-sided, and consequently
wrong, and Darwin himself indicated the other aspect of Nature in
a special chapter of The Origin of Man. There is, he pointed out, in
Nature itself, another set of facts, parallel to those of mutual struggle,
but having a quite different meaning : the facts of mutual support
within the species, which are even more important than the former,
on account of their significance for the welfare of the species and its
maintenance. This extremely important idea, to which, however,
most Darwinists paid but little attention, I attempted further to
develop a few years ago, in a series of essays originally published in
this Review, and in which I endeavoured to bring into evidence the
immense importance of Mutual Aid for the preservation of both the
animal species and the human race, and still more so for progressive
evolution.5 Without trying to minimise the fact that an immense
number of animals live either upon species belonging to some lower
division of the animal kingdom, or upon some smaller species of the
same class as themselves, I indicated that warfare in Nature is chiefly
limited to struggle between different species ; but that within each
species, and within the groups of different species which we find
living together, the practice of mutual aid is the rule, and therefore
this last aspect of animal life plays a far greater part in the economy
of Nature than warfare. It is more general, not only on account of

5 Nineteenth Century, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1894, and 1896 ; Mutual Aid : A Factor
of Evolution, London (Heinemana), 2nd edition, 1904.

216 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

the immense numbers of sociable species, such as the ruminants,
many rodents, many birds, the ants, the bees, and so on, which do
not prey at all upon other animals, and the overwhelming numbers of
individuals which all sociable species contain, but also because nearly
all carnivorous and rapacious species, and especially those of them
which are not in decay owing to a rapid extermination by man or to
some other cause, also practise it to some extent.

If mutual support is so general in Nature, it is because it offers
such immense advantages to all those animals which practise it best
that it entirely upsets the balance of benefits which otherwise might
be derived from a superior development of beak and claw. It repre-
sents the best arm in the great struggle for life which continually has
to be carried on in Nature against climate, inundations, storms, frost,
and the like, and continually requires new adaptations to the ever-
changing conditions of existence. Therefore, taken as a whole,
Nature is by no means an illustration of the triumph of physical
force, swiftness, cunningness, or any other feature useful in warfare.
It teems, on the contrary, with species decidedly weak, badly pro-
tected, and all but warlike — such as the ant, the bee, the pigeon, the
duck, the marmot, the gazelle, and so on — which, nevertheless,
succeed best in the struggle for life, and, owing to their sociability and
mutual protection, even displace much more powerfully-built com-
petitors and enemies. And, finally, we can take it as proved that while
struggle for life leads indifferently to both progressive and regressive
evolution, the practice of mutual aid is the agency which always
leads to progressive development. It is the main factor of progressive
evolution.

Being thus necessary for the preservation, the welfare, and the
progressive development of every species, the mutual aid instinct
has become what Darwin described as ' a permanent instinct,' which
is always at work in all sociable animals, and especially in man. Having
its origin at the very beginnings of the evolution of the animal world,
it is certainly an instinct as deeply seated in animals, low and high,
as the instinct of maternal love ; perhaps even deeper, because it is
present in such animals as the molluscs, some insects, and most
fishes, which hardly possess the maternal instinct at all. Darwin
was therefore quite right in considering that the instinct of ' mutual
sympathy ' is more permanently at work in the sociable animals
than even the purely egotistic instinct of direct self-preservation.
He saw in it, as is known, the rudiments of the moral conscience.

But this is not all. In the same instinct we have the origin of
those feelings of benevolence and of that partial identification of the
individual with the group which become the starting-point of all the
higher ethical feelings. It is upon this foundation that the higher
sense of justice, or equity, is developed. When we see that scores of
thousands of different aquatic birds come together for nesting on the

1904 ETHICAL NEED OF THE PRESENT DAY 217

ledges of the ' birds' mountains,' without fighting for the best positions
on these ledges ; that several flocks of pelicans will keep by the side of
each other in their separate fishing grounds ; and that hundreds of species
of birds and mammals come in some way to a certain arrangement
concerning their feeding areas, their nesting places, their night quarters,
and their hunting grounds, and respect these arrangements, instead of
continually fighting for upsetting them ; or when we see that a young
bird which has stolen some straw from another bird's nest is attacked
by all the birds of the same colony, we catch on the spot the very
origin and the growth of the sense of equity and justice in the animal
societies. And finally, in proportion as we advance in every class of
animals towards the higher representatives of that class (the ants,
the wasps, and the bees amongst the insects, the cranes and the
parrots amongst the birds, the higher ruminants, the apes and man
amongst the mammals), we find that the identification of the individual
with the interests of his group, and eventually sacrifice for it, grow in
proportion — thus revealing to us the origin of the higher ethical
feelings. It thus appears that not only Nature does not give us a
lesson of a-moralism, which need be corrected by some extra-natural
influence, but we are bound to recognise that the very ideas of bad and
good, and man's abstractions concerning ' the supreme good ' and ' the
lowest evil,' have been borrowed from Nature. They are reflections
in the mind of man of what he saw in Nature, and these impressions
were developed during his life in society into conceptions of right and
wrong. However, they are not merely subjective appreciations.
They contain the fundamental principles of equity and mutual sym-
pathy, which apply to all sentient beings, just as mechanical truths
derived from observation on the surface of the earth apply to matter
everywhere in the stellar spaces.

It is self-evident that a similar conception must also apply to the
evolution of the human character and human institutions. True
that up to the present time the history of mankind, notwithstanding
the extreme wealth of materials accumulated lately, has not been
told as the development of some fundamental ethical tendency.
But it is already possible now to conceive it as the evolution of
an ethical factor which consists, as I have tried to prove, in the
ever-present tendency of men to organise the relations within the tribe,
the village community, the commonwealth, on the bases of mutual
aid ; these forms of social organisation becoming in turn the bases of
further progress. We certainly must abandon the idea of repre-
senting human history as an uninterrupted chain of development
from the pre-historic Stone Age to the present time. Just as in
the evolution of the animal series we consider the insects, the
birds, the fishes, the mammals, as separate lines of development, so
also in human history we must admit that evolution was started
several times anew— in India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome,

218 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug<

and finally in Western Europe, beginning each time with the primitive
tribe and the village community. But if we consider each of these
lines separately, we certainly find in each of them, and especially in
the development of Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire, a
continual widening of the conception of mutual support and mutual
protection, from the clan to the tribe, the nation, and finally to the
international union of nations. And, on the other side, notwithstand-
ing the temporary regressive movements which occasionally take
place, even in the most civilised nations, there is — at least among the
representatives of advanced thought in the civilised world and in the
progressive popular movements — the tendency of always widening
the current conception of human solidarity and justice, and of con-
stantly refining the character of our mutual relations, as well as the
ideal of what is desirable in this respect. The very fact that the
backward movements which take place from time to time are con-
sidered by the enlightened portion of the population as mere temporary
illnesses of the social organism, the return of which must be prevented
in the future, proves that the average ethical standard is now higher
than it was in the past. And in proportion as the means of satisfying
the needs of all the members of the civilised communities are improved,
and room is prepared for a still higher conception of justice for all,
the ethical standard is bound to become more and more refined.
In scientific ethics man is thus in a position not only to reaffirm his
faith in moral progress, which he obstinately retains, notwithstanding
all pessimistic lessons to the contrary, he sees that this belief,
although it had only originated in one of those artistic intuitions
which always precede science, was quite correct, and is confirmed now
by positive knowledge.

IV

If the empirical philosophers have hitherto failed to state this
steady progress which, speaking metaphorically, we can describe as
the leading principle of evolution, the fault lies to a great extent with
our predecessors, the speculative philosophers. They have so much
denied the empirical origin of man's moral feelings ; they have gone
into such subtle reasonings in order to assign a supernatural origin to
the moral sense ; and they have so much spoken about ' the destina-
tion of man,' the ' why of his existence,' and ' the aim of Nature,'
that a reaction against the mythological and metaphysical conceptions
which had risen round this question was unavoidable. Moreover, the
modern evolutionists, having established the wide part which certainly
pertains in the animal world to a keen struggle between different
species, could not accept that such a brutal process, which entails so
much suffering upon sentient beings, should be the unravelling of a
superior plan ; and they consequently denied that any ethical principle

1904 ETHICAL NEED OF THE PRESENT DAY 219

could be discovered in it. Only now that the evolution of species,
races of men, human institutions, and ethical ideas has been proved to
be the result of natural forces, has it become possible to study all the
factors which were at work, including the ethical factor of mutual
support and growing sympathy, without the risk of falling back into a
supra-natural philosophy. But, this being so, we reach a point of
considerable philosophical importance.

We are enabled to conclude that the lesson which man derives
both from the study of Nature and his own history is the permanent
presence of a double tendency — towards a greater development, on
the one side, of sociability, and, on the other side, of a consequent
increase of the intensity of life, which results in an increase of happiness
for the individuals, and in progress — physical, intellectual, and moral.
This double tendency is a distinctive characteristic of life altogether.
It is always present, and belongs to life, as one of its attributes,
whatever aspects life may take on our planet or elsewhere. And this
is not a metaphysical assertion, or a mere supposition. It is an
empirically discovered law of Nature. It thus appears that science,
far from destroying the foundations of ethics — as it is so often
accused of doing — gives, on the contrary, a concrete content to the
nebulous metaphysical presumptions which were current in transcen-
dental ethics. As it goes deeper into the life of Nature, it gives to
evolutionist ethics a philosophical certitude, where the transcendental
thinker had only a vague intuition to rely upon.

There is still less foundation in another continually repeated
reproach — namely, that the study of Nature can only lead us to
recognise some cold mathematical truth, but that such truths have
little effect upon our actions. The study of Nature, we are told, can
at the best inspire us with the love of truth ; but the inspiration for
higher emotions, such as that of ' infinite goodness,' must be sought
for in some other source, which can only be religion. So we are told,
at least ; but, to begin with, love of truth is already one half — :the better
half — of all ethical teaching. As to the conception of good and the
admiration for it, the ' truth ' which we have just mentioned is certainly
an inspiring truth, of which Goethe, with the insight of his pantheistic
genius, had already guessed the philosophical value,6 and which
certainly will some day find its expression in the poetry of Nature and
give it an additional humanitarian touch. Moreover, the deeper we
go into the study of the primitive man, the more we realise that it
was from the life of animals with whom he stood in close contact,
even more than from his own congeners, that he learned the first
lessons of valour, self-sacrifice for the welfare of the group, unlimited
parental love, and the advantages of sociability altogether. The con-
ceptions of ' virtue ' and ' wickedness ' are zoological, not merely
human conceptions. As to the powers which ideas and intellectually

* Eckermann, Ge.iprii-ch«, 1848, vol. iii. 219, 221.

220 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Au*

o

conceived ideals exercise upon the current moral conceptions, and
how these conceptions influence in their turn the intellectual aspect
of an epoch, this subject hardly need be insisted upon. The intel-
lectual evolution of a given society may take at times, under the
influence of all sorts of circumstances, a totally wrong turn, or it may
take, on the contrary, a high flight. But in both cases the leading
ideas of the time will never fail deeply to influence the ethical life.
The same applies to a great extent to the individual. Most certainly,
ideas are forces, as Fouillee puts it ; and they are ethical forces, if the
ideas are correct and wide enough to represent the real life of Nature — •
not one of its sides only. The first step, therefore, towards the elabora-
tion of a morality which should exercise a lasting influence is to base
it upon an ascertained truth ; and this is so much so, that one of the
main causes opposed now to the appearance of a complete ethical
system, corresponding to the present needs, is the fact that the science
of society is still in its infancy. Having just completed its storing of
materials, sociology is only beginning to investigate them with the
view to ascertaining the probable lines of a future development.

The chief demand which is addressed now to ethics is to do its best
to find in philosophy, and thus to help mankind to find in its
institutions, a synthesis — not a compromise — between the two sets of
feelings which exist in man : those which induce him to subdue other
men, in order to utilise them for his individual ends, and those which
induce human beings to unite and to combine for attaining common
ends by common effort : the first answering to that fundamental
need of human nature — struggle, and the second representing another
equally fundamental tendency — the desire of union and sympathy.
Such a synthesis is of absolute necessity, because the civilised man of
to-day, having no settled conviction on this point, is paralysed in
his powers of action. He cannot admit that a struggle to the knife
for supremacy, carried on between individuals and nations, should
be the last word of science ; he does not believe, at the same time, in
the solution of brotherhood and resigned self-abnegation which Chris-
tianity has offered us for so many centuries, but upon which it has
failed to establish a commonwealth ; and he has no faith either in the
solution offered by the communists. To settle, then, these doubts, and
to aid mankind in finding the synthesis between the two leading
tendencies of human nature, is the chief duty of ethics. For this
purpose we have earnestly to study what were the means resorted to
by men at different periods of their evolution, in order so to direct
the individual forces as to get from them the greatest benefit for the
welfare of all, without paralysing them. And we have to define the
tendencies in this direction which exist at the present moment —
the rough sketches, the timid attempts which are being made, or even
the potentialities concealed in modern society, which may be utilised
for finding that synthesis. And then, as no new move in civilisation

1904 ETHICAL NEED OF THE PRESENT DAY 221

has ever been made without a certain enthusiasm being evoked in
order to overcome the first difficulties of inertia and opposition, it is
the duty of the new ethics to infuse in men those ideals which
would move them, provoke their enthusiasm, and give them the
necessary forces for accomplishing that synthesis in real life.

This brings us to the chief reproach which has always been made
for the last two hundred years to all empirical systems of ethics. Their
conclusions, we are told, will never have the necessary authority for
influencing the actions of men, because they cannot be invested with
the sense of duty, of obligation. It must be understood, of course,
that empirical morality has never claimed to possess the imperative
character which belongs to prescriptions that are placed under the
sanction of religious awe, and of which we have the prototype in the
Mosaic Decalogue. True, that Kant thought of his ' categorical
imperative ' (' so act that the maxim of thy will might serve at the
same time as a principle of universal legislation ') that it required no
sanction whatever for being universally recognised as obligatory ; it
was, he maintained, a necessary form of reasoning, a ' category ' of
our intellect, and it was deduced from no utilitarian considerations.
However, modern criticism, beginning with Schopenhauer, has shown
that this was an illusion. Kant has certainly failed to prove why it
should be a duty to follow his injunction. And, strange to say, the
only reason why his ' imperative ' might recommend itself to general
acceptance is still its eudaemonistic character, its social utility, although
some of the best pages which Kant wrote were precisely those in which
he strongly objected to any considerations of utility being taken as the
foundation of morality. After all, he produced a beautiful panegyrip
of the sense of duty, but he failed to give to this sense any other
foundation than the inner conscience of man and his desire of retaining
a unity between his intellectual conceptions and his actions.

Empirical morality does not claim anything more. It does not
pretend in the least to find a substitute for the religious imperative
expressed in the words ' I am the Lord.' But it must also be said in
justification that the painful discrepancy which exists between the
ethical prescriptions of the Christian religion and the life of societies
professing to belong to it — a contradiction which surely shows no signs
of abatement — and, on the other side, the criticism that has been
made so successfully since the times of the Reform, concerning the
efficiency of morality based upon fear, have deprived the above
reproach of its value. However, even empirical morality is not entirely
devoid of a sense of conditional obligation. The different feelings
and actions which are usually described since the times of Auguste
Comte as ' altruistic ' can easily be classed under two different headings.
There are actions which may be considered as absolutely necessary,
once we choose to live in society, and to which, therefore, the name of
' altruistic ' ought never to be applied : they bear the character of

VOL. LVI — No. 330 Q,

222 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

reciprocity, and they are as much in the interest of the individual as
any act of self-preservation. And there are, on the other hand, those
actions which bear no character of reciprocity, and which, although
they are the real mainsprings of moral progress, can certainly have no
character of obligation attached to them. A great deal of confusion
arises from not having sufficiently kept in view this fundamental
distinction ; but this confusion can easily be got rid of.

Altogether it is quite evident that the functions of ethics are different
from those of law. Moral science does not even settle the question
whether legislation is necessary or not. It stands above that. It
soars on a higher level. We know, indeed, ethical writers — and these
were not the least influential in the early beginnings of the Reform
movement — who denied the necessity of any legislation and appealed
directly to human conscience. The function of ethics is not even so much
to insist upon the defects of man, and to reproach him with his ' sins,'
as to act in the positive direction, by appealing to man's best instincts.
It determines, of course, or rather it sums up, the few fundamental
principles without which neither animals nor men could live in societies;
but then it appeals to something superior to that : to love, courage,
fraternity, self-respect, concordance with one's ideal. It tells to man,
that if he desires to have a life in which all his forces, physical, intellec-
tual, and emotional, should find a full exercise, he must once and for
ever abandon the idea that such a life is attainable on the path of dis-
regard for others. It is only through establishing a certain har-
mony between the individual and all others that an approach to such
complete life will be possible ; and it adds : ' Look at Nature itself !
Study the past of mankind ! They will prove to you that so it is in
reality.' And when the individual, for this or that reason, hesitates
in some special case as to the best course to follow, ethics comes to
his aid and indicates how he would like himself to act, if he placed
himself in the place of those whom he is going to harm.7 But even
then true ethics does not trace a stiff line of conduct, because it is
the individual himself who must weigh the relative value of the different
motives affecting him. There is no use to recommend risk to one who
can stand no reverse, or to speak of an old man's prudence to the
young man full of energy. He would give the reply — the profoundly
true and beautiful reply which Egmont gives to old Count Oliva's
advice in Goethe's drama — and he would be quite right : ' As if
spurred by unseen spirits, the sunhorses of time run with the light cart
of our fate ; and there remains to us only boldly to hold the reins
and lead the wheels away — here, from a stone on our left, there
from upsetting the cart on our right. Whereto does it run ? Who
knows ? Can we only remember wherefrom we came ? ' ' The

7 ' It will not tell him, " This you must do," but inquire with him, " What is it
that you will, in reality and definitively — not only in a momentary mood ? " '
(F. Paulsen, System der Ethik, 2 vols., Berlin 1896, vol. i. p. 20.)

1904 ETHICAL NEED OF THE PRESENT DAY 223

flower must bloom,' as Guyau says,8 even though its blooming meant
death.

And yet the main purpose of ethics is not to advise men separately.
It is rather to set before them, as a whole, a higher purpose, an ideal
which, better than any advice, would make them act instinctively
in the proper direction. Just as the aim of intellectual education
is to accustom us to perform an enormous number of mental opera-
tions almost unconsciously, so is the aim of ethics to create such an
atmosphere in society as would produce in the great number,
entirely by impulse, those actions which best lead to the welfare of
all and the fullest happiness of every separate being. This is the
final aim of morality ; but to reach it we must free our morality of
the self-contradictions which it contains. A morality of charity,
compassion, and pity necessarily breeds a deadly contradiction. It
starts with the assertion of full equity and justice, or of full brother-
hood. But then it adds that we need not worry our minds with either.
The one is unattainable. As to the brotherhood of men, which is the
fundamental principle of all religions, it must not be taken too closely
a la lettre : that was a mere fafon de parler of enthusiastic preachers.
' Inequality is the rule of Nature,' we are told by religious people,
and with regard to this special lesson Nature, not religion, is the proper
teacher. But when the inequalities in the modes of living of men
become too striking, and the sum total of produced wealth is so divided
as to result in the most abject misery for a very great number, then
compassion for the poor, and sharing with them what can be shared
without parting with one's privileged position, becomes a holy duty.
Such a morality may certainly be prevalent in a society for a time,
or even for a long time, if it has the sanction of religion interpreted
by the reigning Church. But the moment that man begins to consider
the prescriptions of religion with a critical eye, and requires a reasoned
conviction instead of mere obedience and fear, an inner contradiction
of this sort cannot be retained any longer. It must be abandoned —
the sooner the better. Inner contradiction is the death- sentence of
all ethics.

A most important condition which modern morality is bound to
satisfy is that it must not aim at fettering the powers of action of the
individual, be it for so high a purpose as the welfare of the common-
wealth or even the species. Wundt, in his excellent review of the
ethical systems, makes the remark that from the eighteenth-century
period of enlightenment they became, nearly all of them, individualistic.
This is, however, true but to some extent, because the rights of the
individual were asserted with great energy in one domain only — in

8 M. Guyau, A Sketch of Morality independent of Obligation or Sanction, trans,
by Gertrude Kapteyn, London (Watts), 1898.

Q 2

224 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug.

economics. And even here individual freedom remained, both in
theory and in practice, more illusory than real. As to the other
domains — political, intellectual, artistic — it may be said that in
proportion as economical individualism was asserted with more
emphasis, the subjection of the individual — to the war machinery
of the State, the system of education, the intellectual atmosphere
required for the support of the existing institutions, and so on — was
steadily growing. Even most of the advanced reformers of the present
day, in their forecasts of the future, reason under the presumption
of a still greater absorption of the individual by the society to which
he will belong. This tendency necessarily provoked a revolt, to which
Godwin at the beginning of the century, and Spencer towards its
end, already gave expression, and which brought Nietzsche to conclude
that all morality must be thrown overboard if it can find no better
foundation than the sacrifice of the individual in the interests of the
race. This revolt is perhaps the most characteristic feature of our
epoch, the more so as its mainspring is not so much in an egoistic
striving after economical independence (as was the case with the
eighteenth- century individualists, with the exception of Godwin)
as in a passionate desire of intellectual freedom for working out a new,
better form of society, in which the welfare of all would become a
groundwork for the fullest development of the personality.9

The want of development of the personality and the lack of indi-
vidual creative power and initiative are certainly one of the chief
drawbacks of the present period. Economical individualism has
not kept its promise : it did not result in any striking development
of individuality. As of yore, sociological creation is extremely slow,
and imitation remains the chief means for spreading progressive
innovations in mankind. Modern nations repeat the history of the
barbarian tribes and the mediaeval cities when they reproduced one
after the other, in a thousand copies, the same political, religious, and
economical movements. Whole nations have appropriated to them-
selves lately, with an astounding rapidity, the results of the West
European industrial and military civilisation ; and in these unrevised
new editions of old types we see best how superficial that civilisa-
tion is, how much of it is mere imitation. It is only natural, therefore,
to ask ourselves whether the current moral teachings are not instru-
mental in maintaining that imitative submission. Did they not too
much want to make of man the ' ideational automaton ' of Herbart,
who is plunged into contemplation, and fears above all the storms
of passion ? Is it not time to vindicate the rights of the real man, full

• Wundt expresses himself in these words : ' For, unless all signs fail, a revolution
of opinion is at present going on, in which the extreme individualism of the enlighten-
ment is giving place to a revival of the universalism of antiquity, supplemented by a
better notion of the liberty of human personality — an improvement that we owe to
individualism.' (Ethics, iii. p. 34 of English translation ; p. 459 of German original.)

1904 ETHICAL NEED OF THE PRESENT DAY 225

of vigour, who is capable of really loving what is worth being loved
and hating what deserves hatred, apart from the personalities in which
the lovable or the spiteful has been incarnated — the man who is
always ready to enter the arena and to fight for an ideal which ennobles
his love and justifies his antipathies ? From the times of the philo-
sophers of antiquity there was a tendency to represent ' virtue ' as
a sort of ' wisdom ' which induces the wise man to ' cultivate the
beauty of his soul,' rather than to join ' the unwise ' in their struggles
against the evils of the day. Later on that virtue became ' non-
resistance to evil,' and for many centuries in succession individual,
personal salvation, coupled with resignation and a passive attitude
towards evil, was the essence of Christian ethics; the result being
the culture of a monastic indifference to social good and evil, and the
elaboration of an intricate argumentation in favour of ' virtuous
individualism.' There is no doubt, however, that a reaction begins
now, and the question is asked whether a passive attitude in the
presence of evil does not merely mean moral cowardice ? whether,
as was taught by the Zend Avesta, an active struggle against Ahriman
as not the first condition of virtue ? 10 We need moral progress, but
without moral courage no moral progress is possible.

Such are some of the main currents of thought concerning the
ethical need of the day which can be discerned amid the present
confusion. All of them converge towards one leading idea. What
is wanted now is a new comprehension of morality : in its funda-
mental principle, which must be broad enough to infuse new life in
our civilisation, and in its methods, which must be freed from both
the transcendental survivals and the narrow conceptions of philistine
utilitarianism. The elements for such a comprehension are already
at hand. The importance of mutual aid in the evolution of the
animal world and human history may be taken, I believe, as a posi-
tively established scientific truth, free of any hypothetical admission.
We may also take next, as granted, that in proportion as mutual aid
becomes more habitual in a human community, and so to say instinc-
tive, this very fact leads to a parallel development of the sense of
justice, with its necessary accompaniment of equity and equalitarian
self-restraint. The idea that the personal rights of every individual
are as unassailable as the same rights of every other individual grows
in proportion as class distinctions fade away ; and it becomes esta-
blished as a matter of fact when the institutions of a given community
have been altered permanently in this sense. A certain degree of
identification of the individual with the interests of the group to which
it belongs has necessarily existed since the very beginning of sociable
life, and it is apparent even among the lowest animals. But in
proportion as relations of equalitarian justice are solidly established

18 C. P. Thiele, Geschichte der Eeligion im Alter thiim, German translation by
G. Gehrich. Gotha, 1903, vol. ii. pp. 163 sq.

226 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

in the human community, the ground is prepared for the further and
the more general development of those more refined relations, under
which man so well understands and feels the feelings of other men
affected by his actions that he refrains from offending them, even
though he may have to forsake on that account the satisfaction of
some of his own desires, and when he so fully identifies his feelings
with those of the others that he is ready to sacrifice his forces for their
benefit without expecting anything in return. These are the feelings
and the habits which alone deserve the name of Morality, properly
speaking, although most ethical writers confound them, under the
name of altruism, with the mere sense of justice.

Mutual Aid — Justice — Morality are thus the consecutive steps of an
ascending series, revealed to us by the study of the animal world and
man. It is not something imposed from the outside ; it is an organic
necessity which carries in itself its own justification, confirmed and
illustrated by the whole of the evolution of the animal kingdom,
beginning with its earliest colony-stages, and gradually rising to our
civilised human communities. Speaking an imaged language, it is
a general law of organic evolution, and this is why the senses of Mutual
Aid, Justice, and Morality are rooted in man's mind with all the force
of an inborn instinct — the first being evidently the strongest, and the
third, which is the latest, being the least imperative of the three. Like
the need of food, shelter, or sleep, these instincts are self-preservation
instincts. Of course, they may sometimes be weakened under the
influence of certain circumstances, and we know numbers of such
instances, when a relaxation of these instincts takes place, for one
reason or another, in some animal group, or in a human community ;
but then the group necessarily begins to fail in the struggle for life ;
it marches towards its decay. And if it perseveres in the wrong
direction, if it does not revert to those necessary conditions of survival
and of progressive development, which are Mutual Aid, Justice, and
Morality — then the group, the race, or the species dies out and dis-
appears. It did not fulfil the necessary condition of evolution — and it
must go.

This is the solid foundation which science gives us for the elabora-
tion of a new system of ethics and its justification ; and, therefore,
instead of proclaiming ' the bankruptcy of science,' what we have
now to do is to examine how scientific ethics can be built up out of
the elements which modern research, stimulated by the idea of
evolution, has accumulated for that purpose.

P. KROPOTKIN.

1904

THE HARVEST OF THE HEDGEROWS

A LANDSCAPE WITH fIGURES

EVERY lover of the open air, who follows Nature through sunshine
and rain, has found some spot which is dearer to him and carries a
deeper meaning than any other place on earth. From the earliest
green of the swelling bud to the last parched winter leaf, that clings
to sheltered oak or beech until the memory of a year ago is swept
away by the gales of March, the colours seem brighter there than else-
where, and the little confidences with which Nature rewards his con-
stancy become more tender and intimate.

It may be an open moorland, robed in summer in its mantle of
imperial purple and gay only in the unprofitable riches of golden-
spangled furze ; or a treeless down, sprinkled with delicate blue hare-
bells, that darkens under no sorrow heavier than the passing shadow
of a wind-driven cloud ; or even a melancholy fen, where the grey
heron stands motionless for hours by the brink of a muddy ditch, and
cold blue sedges lean trembling before the storm. But whether it be
mountain, woodland, or broad plain, if he have not caught the spirit
of his bit of countryside he has missed one of the finer joys of life.
Though he may have travelled the whole world over, and viewed the
wonders of another hemisphere, he is like one who, after a thousand
gay romances, has found no abiding love, or amidst a teeming humanity
has made no enduring friendship.

The spot I love the most is within easy walking distance from my
home, and thither my errandless footsteps always wander by some
indescribable attraction.

A narrow byway cuts through a sandy hollow, and then warily
descends aslant the steep hillside. Again it rises over a gentle knap,
a sort of outwork of the range, and from this lower summit a broad
valley lies full in view.

The land below is rich in green pastures, sparingly intermixed with
square arable fields, in which, after a yellow stubble, the furrows turn
up a light brown behind the plough. Everywhere there is a soil so
deep that no outcropping rock can shame us with the nakedness of
its poverty by wearing holes in its imperishable garment of verdure
decked with flowers. The fields are small ; therefore it is a country

227

228 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug.

of hedgerows, with stately elms and here and there an oak standing
along the banks and casting mysterious shade upon the dark water
that often lies in the ditches below. Yet many of the fields have
once been smaller still ; and then a gentle ridge and hollow, covered
with grass of a deeper green, and a row of tall, spreading trees show
where a hedge and ditch have at some time been.

A spirit of tranquil plenty and contentment lightly rests upon the
whole valley, filling every nook and corner, like sunshine of a cloud-
less summer noon.

At early morning, and again of an afternoon, a dairyman comes
down to the pasture and throws open the gate. You can hear his
voice calling to the herd, and perhaps the barking of his dog. The
patient red and white milch-cows deliberately obey, and slowly pass
out of sight. Yet now and again there is a glimpse of bright colour
as they wind along the lane. Sometimes a wagon, laden with shining
tins and laughing folk, rattles to the meadow instead ; and then the
cattle gather in a shady corner and are milked in the field. All the
rest of the day, whether they stand on the bright after-grass that
comes after the hay or he in a sea of glistening buttercups, they are
left to ruminate in peace. Starlings congregate around them. Wag-
tails run quite close to catch the flies. Through all the summer
months nesting wood-pigeons, out of sight amidst foliaged-curtained
branches or from the dark ivy, that has run up from the hedge and
overgrown so many a stalwart trunk, make known their satisfac-
tion with the unceasing monotony of their one never-changing
phrase.

There are places a thousand times more lonely and less populated
than this quiet vale.

Every mile or so, a square church- tower and a cluster of thatched
gables rise above or peep between the elms, and a film of grey smoke
tells a tale of hearths unseen. Yet a few steps from the highroad,
not even the solitary woodland can offer a more beautiful seclusion.
This is the greatest charm of this country of old hedgerows.

They are beautiful, these hedgerows. Oftentimes neglected and left
uncut for years, they grow into a wild profusion. Though they keep
out the sun, at least they offer shelter from the winter wind. Black-
thorn and wrinkled maple, hawthorn and hazel, straight sapling of
grey ash, and frequent suckers from the long roots of the elm trees, all
push each other and intermingle their leaves of various shapes and
colours. The honeysuckles, hoping to flower unpicked, climb high
out of reach. The briars hang down and offer their sweet pink flowers.
Brambles thrust themselves and straggle everywhere. Here is a mass
of clematis ; and there white bryony, in close company with the
broad, glossy, heart-shaped leaves of the black, meets in a tangle
with the little purple, yellow-eyed flowers of the woody nightshade.
From the snowy blossom of the blackthorn upon a leafless hedge,

1904 THE HARVEST OF THE HEDGEROWS 229

through all the fragrant summer to the frost, when fieldfares come in
a flock to clear away the blood-red haws in a day, the hedgerow is a
glory and delight.

At last, in winter, or at least when the sap is low, a new figure is
seen in the landscape.

The hedger comes in his gloves and long leathern gaiters. He clears
away the useless stuff — ' trumpery,' he calls it — chooses with care the
likeliest growing wood for ' plashers,' with here and there a straight
sapling to grow into a tree, stands high upon the bank, and chops
down all the rest. With a deft blow of his hook he cuts the ' plasher '
almost through, so that it seems wonderful that it can live. He lays
it, and pegs it down; builds up the bank with sods, and fills the
new-made ditch with thorns, lest cattle should come and trample
upon his work. So the old hedge is turned to account. Nothing is
wasted. There is wood to burn, and fagots for the baker's oven.
The younger hazel goes for sticks for next year's peas ; the straight
ashen poles to fence sweet-smelling ricks. Even the ' trumpery ' will
serve as staddle to make a dry foundation for some future mow.

This, no doubt, is the true harvest of the hedgerow ; but it is not
the harvest which gave a title to this sketch.

It was autumn, and all the corn was hauled. Upon many of the
squares of golden stubble droves of pigs were running to pick up the
ears missed by the rake, and the ripe grains that had fallen when
the sheaves were pitched. On others the plough was already at work.
The ploughman shouted to his team as he turned under the hedgerow
to come back upon the other side. The rooks, that are so wary of
the harmless rambler like myself, rose as he drew near, circled within
easy gunshot above his head, spread their black wings, and lightly
dropped upon the fresh- turned furrow behind his back. From beyond
the hedge came the sound of the woodman's axe, for the September
gales, where the ditch lay to windward, had here and there torn up
an ancient elm by the roots, and he was lopping off the branches in
readiness for the timber wagon to haul away the trunk.

I was in the valley walking down a broad green lane. On either
hand were signs of the declining year. Where the wild roses grew the
briars were decked with crimson hips ; and, although a solitary flower
might still be seen, the honeysuckles had changed to clusters of
reddening berries. The hazel leaves were yellow, and the maple bush
was turning to old gold. A few sparse leaves and a sprinkling of apples
brighter than guineas still hung upon the crab. Surprised by the
quietness of my approach, a startled blackbird rushed out of the
ditch. A little later my eye caught sight of a wren, creeping like a
mouse and hiding out of sight behind the old level plashing upon the
bank ; and all the while I had the company of a flock of linnets, that
waited till I came, flew out of the hedge with a whirring of wings,

230 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

alighted only a few paces in front, all on one bush, and waited
again.

Far away down the lane something moved.

For a moment it was impossible to be certain, and yet surely a
living thing had stirred in the distant shadow of the hedgerow.

Then, just beyond a clump of dark gorse, I could distinguish the
stooping figure of an old woman. Her clothes also were old and
had taken on autumnal hues. Faded with the summer sun and
weather-stained by rain, her skirt and shawl, whatever their original
colours, were in keeping with the landscape, and mellow and unobtru-
sive as the russet-grey on the back and wings of a song-thrush. Some-
times she crept down into the ditch; then came out into the lane
and stooped to take something from the ground, which for the time
being she put into her apron. At last she stood up and shook one of
the guinea-laden branches. She was gathering crab-apples.

What could she want with them ?

The uses of the crab, forgotten long ago in the village, are known
only to the lover of old customs. Verjuice is but a name, pomatum
almost an unread line in the dictionary. Could this old crone, whose
face was brown and wrinkled like the shell of a walnut, season the
dryness of a parish loaf and secretly comfort her elderly heart with
some old-world bowl, in which a roasted crab should bob against her
lips, 'and on her withered dew-lap pour the ale ' ? She looked old
enough even for that. On the ground beside her was a sack half filled.

Imagination refused to picture an orgie so extensive.

She was the first to speak. In the rural parts of this West Country
people do not meet and pass without a word.

•* Nice weather,' said she.

* Beautiful weather,' said I.

' Zo 'tis,' said she, and stepped aside to pour a stream of little
yellow, rosy apples out of her apron into the open mouth of the sack.

' But what be about then, mother 1 What good is it to pick up
such stuff as that ? '

' Lauk-a-massy, master,' she laughed, ' I do often zay to myzelf
this time o' .year I be but like the birds that do pick a liven off the
hedges.'

' But what do you do with them ? '

•' Zell 'em.'

' And what do they do with them ? '

' Pay vor 'em.'

In spite of rags and poverty she was a humorous old soul. How-
ever she presently put a sudden check upon her mirth, and answered
with quiet civility.

' They don't use 'em here,' she explained. ' The man that do
buy 'em o' I do zend 'em to London. I do believe they do use 'em
to gie a bitter flavour to a jelly. I really do.'

1904 THE HARVEST OF THE HEDGEROWS 231

Then she chuckled. The thing seemed so amusing. She was
laughing at an unknown world, distant and strange, where people pay
such heed to the flavour of a jelly.

At the mention of London the recollection of two boys from
Pimlico, whom I had met in a lane about three months before, came
into my mind. Philanthropy had sent them down here, but until
then they had never seen a green field. Their inferences were strange
enough. I wondered what impressions the mind of this old woman
of the hedgerows would gather if suddenly she could be transplanted
to a city street.

' Do you live near here ? '

' I do live across to Sutton,' she answered, ' in the little old cottage
that do lie under the hill.'

' I suppose you've lived there a long time ? '

' All my life, as mid zay,' she laughed. ' I wur out to sarvice
dree year ; but I wur married when I wur nineteen. I wur brought
to the little cottage then, an' vrom thik day to theas I ha'n't never
laid head to piller under another roof.'

It was by the merest accident, and only for the sake of hearing
her talk, that I remarked : ' Then for certain you can't have been to
London to look after the crab-apples.'

In a moment her good-humour vanished. The wrinkles deepened,
and the weather-beaten, upright furrows between her brows. Her
eyes regarded me sharply and with suspicion.

' Who put 'ee up vor to come here an' ax me 'bout that, then ? '
she inquired, angrily.

I asserted my innocence. I pointed out that after all the idea of
a visit to London had been rendered incredible, if not impossible, by
her statement that she had never been away for a night from the
little cottage under the hill.

She scanned me attentively, was satisfied with the explanation,
and consoled.

' Ah, well ! They do laugh at I about that, an' I thought mayhap
you knowed,' she cried merrily. ' I have a-bin to London. An'
I ha'n't never a-bin away vrom home. An' I baint no liar for all
that.'

She delighted in this quibbling manner of the clowns of the six-
teenth century. But old-fashioned West Country folk still love to
riddle in their speech. She stood expectant, eager for an invitation
to go on, but fully determined to loiter.

' I can't make that out,' said I.

* An' never went inzide a house,' said she.
I only shook my head.

* Nor zet voot in a street.'

She paused ; then raised her voice in the excitement of success,
' Nor so much as laid out a penny-piece vor a bit or a zup.'

232 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

It was no good. I implored her to relieve me from further mental
effort by telling me without delay ; but, once started, her story became
a monologue — an epic of the ' little old cottage that do lie under the
hill.' For the emotions which prompted her to undertake that
memorable journey were still warm in her heart, and they carried
her back even to the days of early motherhood under that little ridge
of brown thatch.

' Wull, then, master,' she cried, ' I'll just tell ee how it all corned
about. My man an' I we dragged up a terr'ble long family, we did.
Massy 'pon us ! Things wur different in them days. We did all goo
out in groun' to work then, wimmin an' men. An' need o' it too.
There werden much wheaten bread vor poor volks them days. The
wimmin vokes an' maidens did all goo out a bit to leasey a'ter the
wheat wur a-hauled. We did carr' the corn down to mill. But la !
The little grist-mill down to brook, he is but vower walls an' a hatch-
hole now. He vailed in years agone. Miller couldn' make a liven, an'
zo he gi'ed un up. 'Tis the big mills, zo the tale is, do zell zo low.
But I tell 'ee what, master, vokes wur jollier, one wi' another,
them times than they be now. Ah ! They mid eat better victuals
nowadays, but there's more pride. They baint zo simple as they
wur. All they do want now is to save up a vew ha'pence, an' put
viner clothes to their backs, an' forget who they be.'

She stopped to laugh. No philosopher ever took a more genial
view of human folly than this old woman of the hedgerow.

' But I wur a-gwaine to tell 'ee,' she went on, suddenly remembering
that the visit to London was the real subject before us. ' Iss. We
had zixteen, an' reared 'em all but one. Nine o' 'em bwoys, an' all
growed up tall an' straight as the poplar trees along the churchyard
wall. Ay, 'twur a many bellies to vill. An' a house o' childern,
master, is like a nest o' drushes wi' their mouths ever agape. But
somehow or another God-a-Mighty did send a crust. An' then the
biggest bwoy growed up to sar a little a bird-kippen, or to drave
roun' the wold hoss for the chaffcutter or the cider-maken. An' the
biggest maid did mind the childern for I to go out. An' zo we knocked
along till the bwoys had a-growed up hardish lads like. An' then there
wur a rabbit, now an' then. Wull, there wur a rabbit pretty often, on
along then. An' then there corned a bother. An' two o' 'em, master,
they had a-tookt the Queen's shillen an' drinked un, an' marched
off wi' the sergeant wi' the colours in their hats, afore the summons
wur out. An' they wouldn't none o' 'em bide here in parish. Two
o' 'em went to furrin parts, but we never heard o' 'em since, an'
whither they be live or dead is more 'an I can tell. They be all o'
'em one place or tother, an' I hope they be doen well. An' the
maidens be all married away. Little Benjamin he wur the last to
goo. I wur terr'ble sorry, too. But I said : " 'Tis no more 'an a
brood o' dunnocks, an' when they be vlush they do vly." '

1904 THE HARVEST OF THE HEDGEROWS 233

She paused again, picked up half a dozen crab-apples, and dropped
them into her apron.

' But I wur a-gwaine to tell 'ee,' she quickly resumed. ' Ben-
jamin's wife she did use to zend a letter, an' one o' the school childern
did read un out to me. He wur a porter to London, but house rent,
her zaid, wur most wonderful dear. When I wur out quiet a-picken
berries, Benjamin wur a'most for ever in my mind. Mus' be up ten
year agone, an' I carr'd in nineteen peck o' berries. I do mind 'twur
nineteen peck at tenpence in to factory. I can see the foreman dyer
now, out in yard a-measuren o' 'em out wi' a peck measure. An'
the men wur all a-chacklen about the next year's wayzgoose. " What ?
zaid I, " do 'ee arrange next zummer's holiday afore the winter is
begun ? " " We be gwaine to London for the day, an' you can
come too if you be a-minded," zaid he, though to be sure 'twur no
more 'an a joke. But jus' the very nick o' time the master his own
zelf corned by ; an' the foreman dyer he up an' laughed. " Here's
Mary do think to go to London wi' we next zummer." Then they
did all grin at I. But the master, he said . " How many years have
'ee brought berries in to I, Mary ? " I zaid : " Tis a score or one-an'-
twenty, master." Zaid he : " Come an' ax me next zummer-fair, an'
I'll gie 'ee a ticket, Mary." An' wi' the very zame on he went.

' I thought a lot about thik ticket. I thought a lot about Ben-
jamin too. There corned a letter in the spring, that zaid that Ben-
jamin's wife — 'tis his second wife — had just a-got her third. I wur
a-picken watercresses, an' 'twur most wonderful cold. I really do
believe I veeled wolder them days 'an now I be sich a ancient wold
'ooman. I do mind I wur wet-vooted an' vinger-cold. That wur
about the time my wold man wur a-tookt. I thought then I werden
a-gwaine to live myself zo very long. I did long to zet eyes 'pon
Benjamin — most terr'ble.

' Wull, when corned zummer-fair I bucked up courage an' in I
went. There wur the ticket sure 'nough. I carried un home. But
lauk ! Afore night 'twur the talk o' all the parish, an' folk did run
in an' out all day long for a week to look at un. An' I got a basket
o' apples an' a papern bag o' lollipops for the childern to carr' in my
pocket. An' the neighbours they all zaid : " Do 'ee step in an' pick
what viewers you do want in the early marnen afore you do start."
Zo I had a tutty — a nosegay, master, bigger — ay, zix times zo big
as the biggest picklen cabbage that ever wur growed. A'most zo
zoon as the zun wur up I wur 'pon the road. An' 'twur sich a beautiful
day, wi' a dew like vrost, an' the sky misty clear in the marnen. The
train did start at vive. But I waited vor un a good half -hour, I did.
An' on the road the foreman dyer he said : " You do know how to
act when you do get there, don't 'ee, Mary ? " An' I told un : " My
son 'ull be at the station for certain sure."

•' But when we got out to London station, master, sure there wur

234 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

niwer sich a hurry-push in theas world afore. Made I that maze-
headed I wur bound to zit down 'pon the seat to let 'em all pass.
But zb zoon as one train wur gone thsre wur another. I wur afeard
o' my life to move, an' there I zot. An' when corned to a lull like,
I up an' zaid to a porter : " Can 'ee run an' tell young Benjamin
Bracher that his mother is here ? " Zo he said : " Who ? " An' I
told un again. " I niwer heard the name," said he. " But he's a
porter like yourself to London Station." " Which station ? " he axed
me. " Why, London Station," said I. " Oh, there's vifty London
stations an' more," said he. " Then how shall I get at un ? " said I.
" Do 'ee know where he do live ? " he axed me. " 'Tis in Silver
Street," said I. " There's a hundred Silver Streets," said he ; an'
then he wur gone.

' They ha'n't got no time to talk to a body in London. I wur
afeard to move. I put the basket o' apples under the seat, an' there
I zot.

' Come midday the zun did strike down most terr'ble hot, an'
the place were like a oven. The nosegay o' vlowers beginned to
quail in my han'. Zoon enough they went off zo dead as hay. Volk
did stop an' stare at me. The childern did turn their heads. But
there I zot.

' I wur afeard o' my life to move. Come a'ternoon I put down
my han' for my hankercher to mop my face. But the lollipops had
all a-melted drough the papern bag, an' he wur a-stickt to my pocket.
Zo I just pat my face wi' my sleeve. An' there I zot.

' I wur too much to a mizmaze, master, ever to think. You
niwer zeed sich crowds, an' like a river never stop. There I zot till
come the cool o' the evenen. An' then the forman dyer corned along.
An' he hollered to me : " Mary, Mary, you'll be lef behine ! " an'
he pushed me on by the shoulders afore un, a'most like a wheelbarrer,
an' bundled me into the train.

' 'Twur midnight when the train got to Yeovil town, an' I had up
vive mile to walk. 'Twur daylight when I got home, an' a marnen
misty-clear like when I started. I took the kay down out o' the
thatch an' put un in kayhole. But fur the life o' me I couldn' turn
un, an' I zot down 'pon step an' cried.'

• In a moment she was merry again.

' Zo now they do ax me if I've a-bin to London,' she said ; ' but
I do laugh wi' the rest.'

She told me in quaint phrase all about the harvest of the hedgerows
— how the blackberries were the first to come, with the black-ripe,
the red, and the green all on one bunch ; and the little pale purple
flowers still in bloom on the same spray, and looking as fresh as spring
until the frost. They were sold not by measure but by weight. It
paid better to pick at a penny when they were plenty than for three-

halfpence when they were scarce. And the dealer he did come — oh,
yes, he did come in a two-wheeled cart twice a week, every week of
his life, and weigh and pay — no trouble about that, but money in
hand paid.

But the privet berries, now, for the dyer, they must wait until
after the frost, when they would pinch soft between finger and thumb,
and leave a deep purple stain. And they must be carried to the fac-
tory in the town. But then — there was many a good sort about in
the village or on the road to give an old woman a lift.

And sloes must wait for the winter too, and some years they were
on the blackthorn bushes so thick as ever they could stick. Really
and truly until it was washed off by the rain they were sometimes
blue with bloom — most beautiful. But they went to the gentry,
mostly to make sloe gin. She had quite a private connection for the
sloes, and the same people bought them year after year.

' Why, you must get quite rich,' said I, ' at this time of the year.'

* I can knock along,' she boasted, ' wold as I be, an' put away
a shillen, too. I've a-bin poor all my life. But I've a-bin happy an'
picked up bread day by day. There is that in the open vields is
more company to I, 'an a street o' volk I don't know. Zunshine or
rain, an' all but the hard vrostes, I do enjoy life. I do. But the
young mus' all run away now-a-days.'

She paused to think. Then suddenly raised her arms above her
head.

' God-A'mighty, master ! ' she cried. ' What mus' it be to be
poor in thik girt place ? *

Appalled at the thought she turned away and bent over her apple-
picking. Yet presently she stood up and was merry again.

I positively suspected that wrinkled old eyelid of a wink.

' I baint a-gwaine to be buried by the parish,' she laughed, ' not I/

But even poverty can keep a good heart under the hedgerows.

WALTER RAYMOND.

236 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

THE UNIONIST FREE TRADERS

THE aims and objects of the Unionist Free Traders are the subject of
the following article, and by Unionist Free Traders I mean Conserva-
tives and Liberal Unionists who mean to remain Unionists as well
as Free Traders, notwithstanding the fact that for the moment the
great bulk of the Unionist party has, under the fascination exercised
by Mr. Chamberlain, given a temporary adhesion to the policy of
Tariff Kefonn. The public has been puzzled by the spectacle of
seeing certain Unionist Free Traders in the House of Commons and
in the country joining the Liberals, and imagine from this that the
Unionist Free Trade movement is nothing more than a secession
from the Unionist party to their opponents. Though it is easy to
see how such a view has arisen, no greater mistake can possibly be
made than to imagine that the Unionist Free Traders, in creating a
separate organisation, are merely making a halfway house for them-
selves in their road to Liberalism. But I shall be asked, if this is so,
what is the meaning of the Unionist Free Traders leaving the Unionist
party, and organising themselves for the political battle. My answer
is that the Unionist Free Traders are organising themselves, not
because they mean to join the Liberals, but because they mean to do
nothing of the kind. If they meant to join the Liberals there would
be no necessity for a separate organisation. Their aims and objects,
their intentions and their policy can be best expressed by stating
what they mean to do. In the first place they mean to maintain
both the Union and Free Trade. Secondly, they mean to remain
Unionists, and to withstand all attempts on the part of the Protec-
tionists to force them to give up their Unionism and become Liberals.
Thirdly, they are determined to organise themselves on a strictly
Unionist basis ; that is, they mean to keep themselves separate from
the party of their late opponents, the Liberals, in order that
when Mr. Chamberlain's policy has been defeated, as it inevitably
will be, at the next General Election, they may be ready to help
reconstitute the Unionist party on a Free Trade basis. In a word,
the Unionist Free Traders mean to make their Free Trade views
effective, by defeating Protection and by reconstructing the Unionist

1904 THE UNIONIST FREE TRADERS 237

party after that defeat on a Free Trade basis. These aspirations
will no doubt be declared ridiculous by our opponents, but at any
rate that is what they are determined to do, and history shows that
parties quite as small in number as they are have accomplished
equally important results.

II

If these are the aims and objects of the Free Trade Unionist party,
how are they to be carried out ? The essential point at the present
moment is, as I have said, for Unionist Free Traders to make their
Free Trade views effective. Though they are equally determined to
make their Unionist views effective, there is at the present moment
little necessity to take special action in regard to the Union, for in
fact the Union is not in danger. Save for a few exceptional men
and a few exceptional constituencies, it is admitted by all who think
clearly and speak honestly that Home Rule is not before the country.
The Liberal party, as a whole, is utterly tired of the issue, and though
the Liberal leaders cannot be expected to stand in a white sheet and
openly abandon Home Rule, it is clear that they have no wish what-
ever to put it before the cause of Free Trade, or to force any one to
choose between the Union and Free Trade. No Liberal Home Ruler,
that is, dreams of declaring that a man cannot be a co-worker with
Liberals for the cause of Free Trade at the next General Election unless
he will proclaim himself a Home Ruler as well as a Free Trader. Such
a coupling of Free Trade and Home Rule is never suggested even by
the most vehement of Liberals. This willingness on the part of the
Liberal party to sink Home Rule at the next election is intensified
by the disillusionment of the Liberals in regard to the Irish party,
which has been proceeding during the last four or five years, and may
be said to have become complete during the present Session. The
Irish Nationalists have proved themselves the remorseless enemies
of almost everything that the Liberals care for. Again, Liberals well
understand that, though not openly expressed, the Irish Nationalists
are Protectionists almost to a man, and would be quite willing, ' when
the proper time comes,' to do a deal with Mr. Chamberlain in order
to secure special Protectionist privileges for Ireland. Therefore the
Unionist Free Traders, while remaining as strong in their support of
the Union as ever, can feel that the essential thing before them at the
present time is the making of their Free Trade views effective. Now
this cannot be accomplished except by opposing Protection under all
its many aliases ; whether in the crude and open form supported by
Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Henry Chaplin, and the Tariff Reform League
or in the apparently milder but in reality equally dangerous form
advocated by Mr. Balfour. But under a system of Parliamentary
Government there is only one effective way of opposing Protection,
and that is to vote for Free Trade. Therefore Unionist Free Traders,
VOL. LVI— No. 330 E

238 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

though the7 are determined to remain Unionists, mean to make their
Free Trade views effective by voting for Free Trade candidates irre-
spective of party. They mean, that is, to give the coup de grace to
Protection. In doing this, however, they need not and do not feel
that they are putting off that reunion and reconstruction of the
Unionist party which is one of their essential aims. On the contrary,
they feel that they can best obtain that object by making the defeat of
the Protectionist Unionists at the polls at the next General Election
as complete as possible. It is as certain as anything can be in human
affairs that if the overthrow of both Chamberlainism and Balfourism
is as overwhelming as the Unionist Free Traders can, and I believe
will, render it, an immense number of Conservatives and Liberal
Unionists who are now under the glamour of Mr. Chamberlain's policy
will be thoroughly disillusioned. Many of them will be found to have
supported Mr. Chamberlain because they thought he was going to
sweep the country, and because they liked the idea of being con-
tributories to a great party victory. When they find that he has
done no such thing, but instead has led them to utter ruin, and when
they see that what two years ago was the strongest and most united
political party in the country has been smashed to atoms, and reduced
to a state of impotence as complete as that which marked the Liberal
party from 1895 till last year, what are likely to be their sentiments in
regard to the men who have led them into a position so deplorable ?
Will not they begin to ask whether Mr. Chamberlain was a wise guide,
and whether they had not better have kept in the old ways, and
maintained the old safe policy which Lord Salisbury represented, and
which the Duke of Devonshire, Mr. Ritchie, Lord Balfour of Burleigh,
and Lord George Hamilton were ready and willing to carry on ? It
was not, they will reflect, to ruin and destroy their party that they
followed Mr. Chamberlain, and in the stress of the reaction that will
follow thousands of voices are certain to be raised in favour of the
reconstruction of the party on its old basis, which included Free Trade.
Then will come the opportunity of the Unionist Free Traders — of
those, that is, who, while Free Traders and determined to make their
Free Trade views effective, have refused to join the Liberal party, but
have maintained their Unionism and created a Unionist though
a Free Trade organisation. Unionist Free Traders will be able to
point out that reunion can always be effected by the abandonment of
Protection. They will not, it is needless to say, ask for the sacrifice
of particular individuals, but as long as Protection is abandoned
once and for all they will be ready to reunite with their old friends
and colleagues,

III

I am perfectly prepared to hear it said that this is a dream, and
that the bulk of the Unionist party will never be able to abandon
Protection or to free themselves from the heavy burden of Mr. Chamber-

1904 THE UNIONIST FEEE TEADEES 239

Iain's policy. To this I would reply that a policy adopted so quickly
as the Protectionist policy was adopted may be abandoned with equal
promptitude. When the glamour of a promised victory has departed
from the Chamberlain policy men will find it by no means difficult to
throw over, and will long to return to saner and safer ways. No
doubt the process of reconversion and reconstruction will not be
carried out in a day, and will require time and patience ; but remember
that what the Unionist Free Traders will have to offer will be by no
means insignificant. When the Unionist Free Traders are properly
organised in each constituency, as they will be if the Unionist Free
Traders do their duty, and constitute a firm and compact body outside
the party, but ready to return to it, the temptation to the party
managers to get them once more into the party fold will be immense.
When then the Unionist party managers recognise that they
cannot regain power unless they satisfy the Unionist Free Traders,
they will in the end give the pledges which the Unionist Free
Traders are determined to obtain. It will be said, perhaps, that
this is a delusion, and I shall be told that Mr. Chamberlain and Mr.
Balfour counted the cost of secession before they abandoned the policy
of Free Trade and took up Protection. They knew that they must
lose a great many Free Trade votes, and they will not change their
policy because they have obtained practical proof of the fact. This
argument, however, ignores a very important consideration. Mr.
Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour no doubt knew perfectly well that they
would lose the Unionist Free Trade votes, but they calculated on
obtaining for Protection a wide support from the non-party portion of
the nation, and even from a good number of those who call themselves
Liberals or Radicals. These new adherents they fully believed would
outweigh the Free Trade Unionists. Their calculation has already turned
out ridiculously wrong, and will be still further falsified at the General
Election. Protection has found no adherence among Liberals, and
instead of attracting the non-party men has sent them in thousands,
as the figures of the bye-elections show, to vote for Free Trade can-
didates. I hold then that, if the defeat of Mr. Chamberlain is as
complete at the polls as I believe it will be, the shrewder minds among
the Unionist party managers will realise that reunion with the Unionist
Free Traders is essential unless the party is to wander in the wilder-
ness, as did the Liberal party after its adoption of Home Rule. In
any case the ideal of forming a body whose special aim and object it
shall be to reunite in the future the Unionist party, scattered and
broken by Mr. Chamberlain, is one well worth working for. If we
fail in this part of our policy we shall have done no harm, while if we
succeed we shall have killed Protection for the next fifty years. Per-
sonally I believe we shall succeed in both our aims, i.e. in maintaining
Free Trade and in reuniting the Unionist party on a Free Trade basis.
At any rate it will be far easier for us to succeed in our aim of reuniting

B2

240 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

the party on a Free Trade basis if we make the defeat of the Protec-
tionists as complete as possible at the General Election. Therefore
I hold that the more strongly and earnestly a Unionist Free Trader
desires to remain a Unionist and to bring about the ultimate reunion
of his party, the more ardently should he work to prevent the return of
Protectionists, whether Balfourites or Chamberlainites, at the coming
General Election, and to ensure a crushing victory for Free Trade.
The greater the defeat of the Chamberlainite and Balfourite policy
the more certain is the ultimate reunion of the party. Therefore the
aim of Unionist Free Traders should be to oppose strongly candidates
for Parliament who will not pledge themselves to withstand the
policy of Protection, no matter under what apparently amiable and
innocuous guises it is presented to them, and to give an active and
effective support to Free Trade candidates, irrespective of party.

It is clear from what I have said that those who mean to remain
both Unionists and Free Traders must lose no time in perfecting their
organisation throughout the constituencies. They must not think
that the duty of Unionist Free Traders is merely to save the seats of
the patriotic and high-minded men who sacrificed their political and
official careers rather than abandon Free Trade, and left the Ministry
last autumn. All that is possible must be done to save their seats ;
but a greater and even more important object is to secure a Unionist
bodyguard for Free Trade in every constituency, and to use every
endeavour to defeat Protectionist candidates at the poll. Our ideal
should be to reduce the Protectionist vote in the next House of Com-
mons to the lowest limits, and to make the plebiscite for Free Trade
— for such the next General Election will in fact be — as overwhelming
as possible.

IV

Personally I have no doubt that the organisation of the Unionist
Free Traders and their apparent ability to turn a great number of
elections will have the result of indirectly modifying the views of
the Liberal candidates on many important political questions. That
is, the existence of the Unionist Free Traders will encourage Liberal
candidates to stand up against the faddists and extremists. But
though I strongly hope and desire that this result may be indirectly
produced I am equally strong against the Unionist Free Traders
officially bargaining with the Liberals in regard to the views of their
candidates : and for this reason. If such direct bargaining takes
place it will mean that the Unionist Free Traders will to a certain
extent become responsible for the details of Liberal policy on other
matters than Free Trade, and they will become insensibly drawn into
an alliance with the Liberals so close as to suggest fusion and amalga-
mation. My desire is that no such intimate alliance should take
place, but merely that there should be a working and fighting agree-

1904 THE UNIONIST FBEE TRADE BS 241

ment, i.e. political co-operation for a specific purpose, that of defending
Free Trade. We want to remain free and untrammelled by any strict
or formal alliance. I say this not because I have any particular horror
of a great part of the Liberal creed, or in any sense or form regard
Liberalism as the unclean thing. I say it because I hold that our
object and duty is not directly to modify the Liberal policy or to take
any responsibility in regard to it, but at the present to maintain Free
Trade and in the future to reunite the Unionist party. If we become
in any way responsible for Liberal policy this task may be rendered
infinitely harder or even impossible. Again, if as a party we should
attempt to dictate as to the views of Liberal candidates instead of
merely co-operating heartily with them on one issue, they in return
would very naturally desire to dictate the policy of those Free Trade
Unionists who will be returned by the co-operation of Liberal votes.
We must not interfere with them or they with us. Each must trust
the other, and act in confidence and in good faith.

I hope I have made the position and aims and objects of the Unionist
Free Traders clear. To state them once more : We are both Unionists
and Free Traders, and mean that both the Union and Free Trade shall
prevail. But with us Free Trade is no mere counsel of perfection, no
academic opinion. We mean to make our Free Trade views effective
by voting and working for Free Traders irrespective of party wherever
they are opposed by Protectionists. That is our immediate object.
Our ultimate object is equally clear and equally dictated by our
determination to maintain Free Trade. We realise that unless Free
Trade is held by both parties in the State to be, like the Monarchy,
beyond political dispute, Free Trade cannot be absolutely safe. There-
fore we mean to remain Unionists and to use every endeavour to reunite
and reconstruct the Unionist party on a Free Trade basis. This, we
believe, we shall be able to accomplish after Mr. Chamberlain has led
the Unionist party to the ruin which, unhappily, is inevitable at the
next General Election. The position of the Unionist party resembles
one of those surgical cases in which a bone which has been broken
and badly set has to be broken again before it can be properly rejoined
and healed. To adopt another metaphor, only after it has been purged
in the fires of a General Election can the Unionist party be reunited.
The more complete is that process of purgation by fire the stronger will
the reunited party prove. Therefore the Unionist Free Traders can
adopt no half-measures and no timorous courses, but both in the
interests of Free Trade and of their party must strike with all their
might against the evils of Protection.

J. ST. LOE STRACHEY,
Editor of ' The Spectator.'

242 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

THE POPE AND CHURCH MUSIC

A REJOINDER

IT was inevitable that any protest against the Papal motu proprio on
the subject of Church music should arouse the displeasure of those
who regard a Papal decree as being something more than an expres-
sion of human opinion and individual intention. It was inevitable,
too, that musical technicalities should be introduced into a question
which, if examined coldly and without the bias from which neither
the professionally religious nor the professionally artistic can be
altogether free, resolves itself into a matter of personal taste and,
I may add, personal temperament.

I may perhaps be excused if I regard it as also inevitable that
the addition of the words — ' a Roman Catholic protest ' — to the heading
of my article in the June number of this Review should have excited
the wrath of a section of the Roman Catholic body whose mouthpiece
the Rev. Ethelred Taunton makes himself in his reply to me under
the title, suggestive of that of a popular play now running at a London
theatre, The Pope and the Novelist.

I have reason to believe that had it not been for the words — ' a
Roman Catholic Protest' — which appeared as a sub-title to my original
article Mr. Taunton and others of his communion would have been
content to regard that article in the light in which it was written.
They would perhaps have recognised the fact that I disclaimed any
intention of appealing to the clerically minded, and that I wrote
merely from the position, as it were, of the man in the street, who
may love music and its expression without being an expert in its
science.

I feel that in replying to Mr. Taunton's strictures upon the effrontery
of a novelist presuming to criticise the action of a Pope I am some-
what at a disadvantage, inasmuch as I am replying, not to a Roman
Catholic layman, but to a Roman Catholic priest.

Mr. Taunton in his article bases his argument against the justness
of my e protest ' largely upon personalities. I would fain have kept
such matters at a distance as being neither profitable, relevant, nor,
I would add, dignified. He alludes to me as a bored convert. I
frankly admit the impeachment, so far as my experiences of modern

1904 THE POPE AND CHURCH MUSIC 243

English Roman Catholicism are concerned ; but as I live chiefly
among Continental Catholics I am happily little affected by the ennui
which he rightly describes me as feeling. I would only observe that
had Mr. Taunton substituted a stronger term for that of ' bored '
he would have more correctly described my condition.

Mr. Taunton goes on to say, with a touch of sacerdotalism admir-
ably in harmony with the times of St. Gregory : * I will not say for a
moment that the laity, hereditary Catholics or neophytes, have not
got their rights,' and again : ' While I have sympathy with any move-
ment which seeks by legitimate methods to obtain that recognition
of the rights of the laity which the Church has always acknowledged,
I will have nothing to do with the bored convert except to wish that
he would take his boredom elsewhere.'

I do not forget that I am replying to a priest, and I am happy
if I have afforded Mr. Taunton an opportunity of scoring a point to
his credit with his ecclesiastical superiors at my expense. I would
remind him, however, that indifference is a far more difficult matter
to treat than boredom, and that there are countless Catholics in the
world, as there are countless Protestants, who remain within their
respective communions merely because they are indifferent to priestly
pretensions. I wish, to quote Mr. Taunton's own words, to do my
spiriting gently, and I trust he will not think me discourteous towards
his order if I suggest that, since it is not converts only who are bored,
he might with advantage search for the true cause of the boredom.

I will, however, pass from personal matters to the consideration
of Mr. Taunton's replies to my definition of the recent Papal edict on
Church music as an artistic and psychological blunder. Mr. Taunton
here becomes more interesting, inasmuch as he is expressing his views
on a subject which must appeal to many, and he allows himself momen-
tarily to forget my unfortunate individuality in his defence of a branch
of that art to which he is well known to be deeply attached.

Mr. Taunton reminds me that I have made an admission — an
admission which he qualifies as being unnecessary — to the effect that
I am no musical expert. I would submit that in this fact lies the
strength of my argument. I have entrenched myself behind human
nature, as the man in the street has, fortunately for human progress,
ever entrenched himself. At the same time I think I may say without
undue vanity that my musical education has not been wholly neglected,
and that music to me has ever been the first of the arts, although I
cannot, of course, meet Mr. Taunton on strictly technical ground.

He asserts that I have missed the true gist of the matter ; that the
spiritual or even artistic point of view has not troubled me at all ;
and that I have forgotten the elementary fact that music was made
for men, and not men for music.

I agree with Mr. Taunton that music was made for men ; but
does he not forget the elementary fact that all men are not priests;

244 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

that all men have not the clerical temperament ; that many, nay,
perhaps the majority of human beings are emotional rather than
genuinely religious, and that their religion can only be stirred through
the senses ?

I am aware that a religion which is of the senses alone is regarded
with reasonable distrust by those whose faith rests on a firmer basis.
Nevertheless — and here Mr. Taunton must forgive the novelist — the
majority of men are swayed by the senses, and the majority of men
are not priests. Pope Pius X., I would submit, in inculcating the
principle that all ecclesiastical music should be modelled as nearly
as possible to the Gregorian form, has forgotten this fact, and Mr.
Taunton ignores it.

Mr. Taunton declares that I have altogether misunderstood or
misrepresented the Pope's attitude towards Church music.

Writing, as I do, with his Holiness's ' Instruction ' before me, I
must affirm that I have done neither the one nor the other.

Pius X. observes that it is fully legitimate to lay down the following
rule : ' The more closely a composition for church approaches in its
movement, inspiration, and savour the Gregorian form, the more
sacred and liturgical it becomes ; and the more out of harmony it is
with that supreme model, the less worthy is it of the temple.'

And again : ' The ancient Gregorian chant must, therefore, be
largely restored to the function of public worship.'

The Pope goes on to state that the qualities possessed by the
Gregorian chant are also possessed by the classic polyphony, espe-
cially that of the Roman school as represented by Pierluigi da Pales-
trina. This classic polyphony, the Holy Father observes, agrees so
admirably with the Gregorian chant — the supreme model of all sacred
music — that it has been found worthy of a place side by side with it
in the more solemn functions of the Church.

I can assure Mr. Taunton, and others of my Roman Catholic clerical
critics who adopt a less honourable form of criticism than he, that I
fully understand the true aim and scope of the Pope's juridical code of
sacred music, and I think that the clauses from which I have quoted
admit of no misinterpretation. It is idle to assert that Pius X. means
one thing when he obviously means another, and Mr. Taunton's
quibble about the Pope not confining the -music of the Church to plain
song, ' as one would think from Mr. Bagot's article,' will scarcely
deceive any attentive reader of the Papal molu proprio. If modern
music is admitted at all into the offices of the Church, it is only under
such stringent conditions as to make it almost indistinguishable from the
Gregorian form except to musical experts, who, it may be observed,
are not so numerous as Mr. Taunton seems to imagine.

I cannot, of course, expect to convince Mr. Taunton and his friends
that I am not so inartistic, or so incapable of realising that music has
a spiritual side, as they profess to believe. The compromising words —

1904 THE POPE AND CHURCH MUSIC 245

' a Roman Catholic Protest ' — which headed my first article have clearly
rendered any justification in their eyes of my position impossible, for
reasons to which I shall refer hereafter.

In that article I ventured to assert that the Pope's attempt to
enforce the universal adoption of Gregorian, plain song, or the classic
polyphony in Roman Catholic places of worship was a threefold
blunder — artistic, psychological, and, if I may so express it, diplo-
matic. I was very well aware that such a statement would arouse
the wrath of the sacristy, but I must frankly own to indifference on
this point. I expressly stated that I was not appealing to certain
minds. Nevertheless the sacristy has answered me. I fear that I
am neither convinced by its arguments nor alarmed at its anger.
It is not a little difficult to separate Mr. Taunton's arguments from
his personalities in his article entitled The Pope and the Novelist, but
I will endeavour to deal fairly by the former, both from his point of
view and from my own ; with the latter, as they are couched in terms
which make it impossible for me to ignore them, I propose to deal
later on in these pages.

Mr. Taunton observes that he and I differ fundamentally on the
philosophy of sacred music, and I readily admit the fact. I confess
that, in common with a vast number of my fellow creatures of all
nations, I regard music, whether it be sacred or profane, from a
broader and no doubt a more material standpoint than that of the
expert or the religiously minded. If music be an art, like all art, it
must surely be progressive. Mr. Taunton himself unconsciously
supplies me with an argument to illustrate my contention that the
Pope's action, however laudable theoretically, and however logical
from the strictly scientific point of view, is an offence against art.

' From the days of Gregory I. (604), if not earlier,' says Mr. Taunton,
* the Popes have issued decrees on the subject and Councils have
legislated.' If I am not mistaken, Benedict XIV. issued a decree
even more drastic than the motu proprio of Pius X. in the hopes of
' reforming ' Church music. I would ask Mr. Taunton with whom
lay the victory, with Popes and Councils, or with the mass of the people
whose ideals had progressed since the year 604, and whose musical
needs had developed with the centuries ?

In a word, artistic progress triumphed against the ecclesiastical
love of retrogression, as it may confidently be expected to triumph
again to-day.

It will, of course, be objected that corruption and decay, rather
than artistic progress, was the result of ignoring the decrees of Popes
and Councils to which Mr. Taunton alludes, and the low standard of
Church music in Italy and Spain will be pointed to as an example.
I submit — and here I must again observe that I am not appealing to
the professionally religious or to the musical purist — that there may
be something to be said from the psychological point of view even for

246 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

the profane and theatrical music in Italian churches which so shocks
Mr. Taunton, and which the Abbe Perosi (for Mr. Taunton is in error
when he affirms that this insipid and unoriginal composer had no hand
in the Pope's project) and Pius X. very rightly wish to reform.

Mr. Taunton waxes indignant at the very idea of defending such
inartistic enormities as the rendering of a motif from the Traviata or
similar profane music during a Mass, and he professes to believe that
I defend such practices from an ' artistic ' point of view ! He has
either not read my article attentively or, as I fear is more likely, in his
anxiety to please those who had decided that I must be ' sat upon '
he has preferred to place a false construction on what he read. I
commented upon the practice of adapting light opera music to the
Mass purely from a psychological standpoint. Mr. Taunton, by the
way, jumps at an unwarrantable conclusion when he argues that I
heard Bizet's VArlesienne from a shilling front seat in a London
sanctuary, and that I, therefore, could not have studied the faces of
the congregation. When I attend a Roman Catholic church in
England I sit as near as I can to the door, lest there should be a
sermon.

To return to my argument it does not seem to strike Mr. Taunton
and the Pope that human beings are not all cast in the clerical mould,
and that temperaments differ in all classes, and among all people.
Mr. Taunton, to quote his own words, is proud to take his stand as a
musician by the side of the fearless Pius X., who recalls us to a better
sense of true art, and I congratulate him on taking up so elevated a
position. At the same time I am proud to stand by the side of any
Italian peasant whose devotions are not interfered with by the fact
that the organist is rattling out an operatic melody. Verdi's music
probably appeals to the spiritual side of some natures quite as much
as ' classic polyphony ' does to those of Mr. Taunton and Pope Pius X.
We do not all want to be recalled to the spiritual and mental conditions
of the sixth century, nor even to those of the fifteenth century.

I feel that I must not insist too much upon this point, or my Roman
Catholic critics will accuse me of upholding the performance of drinking
songs during Mass.

Mr. Taunton makes the very surprising statement that music by
itself is vague unless it has associations. If it be not too presumptuous
to differ from a musical expert, I would reply that, as a humble lover
of Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, and many smaller masters, I have
not found this to be the case. It can scarcely be necessary to inform
Mr. Taunton that I am not a religious person ; it is, I suppose, merely
my novelist's imagination that makes me prefer a movement from a
Beethoven symphony as a spiritual and intellectual aid to all the
plain song or classic polyphony ever chanted by priests.

I have already stated in my first article my reasons for believing
the recent action of Pope Pius X. to be a triple blunder, and I need

1904 THE POPE AND CHUBGH MUSIC 247

not, therefore, repeat them. Mr. Taunton has declared that I have
misunderstood the Pope's instructions. I contend that I have not
done so, and that if the obvious intentions of his Holiness are loyally
carried out, music specially composed for the Church by great masters
can never again be heard ; that a large quantity of music of minor
artistic value which yet appeals to thousands of people of all classes
is banished ; and that the complete exclusion of instrumental music
except under very special and restricted conditions is to be deplored.

Mr. Taunton's arguments, as I have said, do not convince me,
while his assertion that I have misunderstood the Pope's intentions
is manifestly absurd. The Pope speaks too plainly to be misunder-
stood. We are, as I remarked in my previous article, confronted by
another instance of the perpetual struggle on the part of the priest-
hood to force the world to move backward. Let Mr. Taunton honestly
confess the truth. He must admit that, when all is said and done,
there must always be those to whom the forms of music made obli-
gatory by the Pope appeal, and those to whom they are a weariness
to the spirit and a hindrance rather than an aid to devotion. The
latter may not be, indeed, I am sure that they are not, ' musicians '
in the technical sense, which evidently alone commands Mr. Taunton's
sympathies ; but they exist, and exist in very large numbers in every
country. So large a body are they, indeed, that their opposition has
stultified those former decrees of Popes and Councils to which Mr.
Taunton alludes. In whatever other ways I may be misunderstood,
I do not wish to be misunderstood on this point. I do not, as Mr.
Taunton would infer, uphold from an artistic point of view the use
of that theatrical music which the Pope rightly condemns. I merely
observe that the Pope and his advisers have ignored the fact that all
men are not clerics, and that few of us, save those who are clerics,
wish to revert to the sixth century. However disagreeable it may
be to Mr. Taunton and his supporters, the fact remains that thousands
of Roman Catholics in this country and millions on the Continent and
in America regret and deplore the Pope's action. Many that I have
spoken to content themselves with shrugging their shoulders and
declaring their intention of only attending Low Masses so soon as the
Papal order is put into force. No doubt this attitude, were it not for
diminished offertories, will be more pleasing to the English Roman
Catholic clergy than a ' protest ' which might appear to question their
dearly loved ' authority.'

I now, with considerable reluctance, pass to the consideration of
Mr. Taunton's personal attacks upon myself. I can assure him that
I feel no resentment on account of them, for I am fully aware that in
making them he is only the mouthpiece of his superiors, who have
long been unwilling openly to attack me lest by so doing they should
draw attention to my writings. I can but apologise to my readers
for touching upon personal matters ; but those who have read Mr.

248 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Aug.

Taunton's article in the July number of this Keview will, I think,
recognise that the responsibility for their introduction does not rest
with me.

Mr. Taunton prefaces his criticism of my previous article in this
Review by examining what he calls my ' position.' I am grateful
to him for having done so, for he has afforded me an opportunity of
stating publicly what it is of little use to state in private. He resents
the fact that my previous paper bore the sub-title of ' A Roman
Catholic Protest.' He states that I have thrown myself ' heart and
soul into the Quirinal party.' I pass over, as unnecessary to notice
here, other remarks which appear to me to be irrelevant, and to have
been written more with a view to please others than to damage me.

Mr. Taunton and his supporters must now forgive me if I examine
my ' position ' from another point of view, and I will do it as briefly
as possible.

Some years ago, in 1899, I published an article in the Nuova
Antologia entitled ' L'Inghilterra si fara cattolica ? ' Although it
touched upon no theological question, and was of a purely speculative
nature, my statements regarding the inaccuracy and exaggeration in
the returns periodically sent by Cardinal Vaughan to Rome as to the
numbers and importance of the converts received into the Church,
coupled with the fact that the article attracted considerable attention,
gave great offence to the English Roman Catholic party. Since that
occurrence, although I have studiously avoided attacking any dogma
or article of faith, with a single exception, of the Church, I have been
persistently accused of doing so. I have written from a political and a
social standpoint only against the temporal pretensions of the Vatican
and in favour of United Italy. The expressions put into the mouths of
characters in my novels have been asserted to be my own views ! An
obviously inartistic and unfair way of judging a writer of fiction.
Were any proof needed of the bitterness of the English Roman Catholic
body as a whole towards any Roman Catholic differing from the
Vatican politically, Mr. Taunton's remarks as to my ' position '
would amply provide it. 3

It is true that I am a ' convert.' But in view of the fact that it
has been repeatedly asserted by certain prominent English Roman
Catholics that I only became a ' convert ' four or five years ago in
order to make ' copy ' out of the Roman Church, I take this oppor-
tunity of observing that I joined that Church three-and- twenty
years ago.

Many reasons have been assigned to explain why I, an English
Roman Catholic, should, as Mr. Taunton expresses it, have thrown
myself heart and soul into the Quirinal party and written against
the temporal policy of the Vatican. I proposed for the hand of a
daughter of a well-known ' black ' house in Rome and was refused,
and therefore wrote against the ' black ' party out of pique. I may

1904 THE POPE AND CHURCH MUSIC 249

here observe that it has never been my misfortune to be refused by
any Roman lady, ' black ' or otherwise, or by her family ; and also
that, under somewhat exceptional circumstances not often enjoyed by
a foreigner, I made a study of the political and social questions relating
to Vaticanism for seven years before venturing to write about them.
I was the tool of unscrupulous anti-clerical journalists ; I abused my
religion in order to make money. These and many other equally
fantastic and dishonourable reasons have been advanced and widely
circulated, I regret to say, by English Vaticanists, who well know that
they were unfounded, in the hopes of gradually discrediting my
literary work with the public ; and a well-known ' converted ' ecclesi-
astic has not been wanting to take an active and untiring part in
disseminating them.

I am, as I have said before, grateful to Mr. Taunton for having
been more courageous and more honourable in his methods than some
of his supporters, and for having given me an opportunity of
publicly explaining my ' position,' and of denying certain statements
circulated with no other object than to damage my reputation as a
writer. I hope he will understand that I respect an open attack,
however bitterly it may be made. What I cannot respect is the
system of dealing secret blows on the part of those who well knew my
political views long before I put them into print, and who have until
now been afraid to answer me in a straightforward manner.

In none of my writings have I ever attacked a dogma or article
of faith of the Roman Church, with the single exception of the dogma
of infallibility, which has been attacked by some of the greatest
Catholic writers on the Continent, and which may be said to be at
least as much a dogma of political as of religious import. My per-
sonal belief or disbelief in religious doctrines I have kept rigidly to
myself as being altogether outside my sphere to discuss in print. In
my Roman novels British convert fanaticism is, it is true, held up to
ridicule and compared with the moderate and unaggressive attitude
of the vast majority of Continental Catholics ; but my English Roman
Catholic critics are very well aware that I have not attacked any
definite dogma, except the one to which I have already alluded. I
imagine that they would have been better pleased with me had I
done so.

Mr. Taunton and others resent my application of the term Roman
Catholic to myself or to any protest penned by me. I would ask
them on what grounds they do so.

If the authorities of the Roman Church disapprove of my attitude
from a dogmatic point of view an obvious course is open to them.
Until this course is adopted I am, I submit, at least officially a member
of the Roman Church, and as such I have as good a right to qualify
myself as a Roman Catholic as any other English convert, layman or
ecclesiastic.

250 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

•o-

I regret to disappoint Mr. Taunton and his party, but they must
not be surprised if I decline to be silenced by cheap ridicule. There
are many, as good Catholics as they, who are honest enough to dis-
tinguish between opposition to Vaticanism as a political and social
power and open opposition to the Church as a religious body.

As I have already pointed out, a man, even if he have the mis-
fortune to be a novelist, must either be in the Church of Rome or out
of it. There are only two methods by which he can forfeit the right
officially to define himself as a Roman Catholic — namely, voluntary
retirement or formal excommunication. I confess that the prospect
of the latter does not arouse my superstitious fears sufficiently to
tempt me to discount its terrors by taking the former step, much as
my doing so would gratify my critics. The accident of having been
born in the nineteenth instead of the sixth or even the fifteenth
century robs the priestly anathema of the terrors with which it might
otherwise have inspired me. I fear that Mr. Taunton will attribute
this to defective imagination on the part of a novelist who has ventured
to criticise the musical programme of a Pope.

RICHARD BAGOT.

1904

TO EXPLORE ARABIA BY BALLOON

THE object of the present paper is to indicate the reasonable practi-
cability of investigating, at inconsiderable risk to human life, a land
which, hitherto bidding defiance to the boldest explorers, has through
all time remained untraversed by civilised man, yet one to which
perhaps before all other lands of the wondrous East there attaches
more absorbing interest, more of marvel and mystery, and which
moreover may, for all that has been inferred to the contrary, be
found to yield the richest prizes of discovery. The country to which
we refer is Central Arabia, and the mode of approach that we advo-
cate is one which, while it appeals to a spirit of highest enterprise,
involves no mere wild or untried scheme. The true roadway across
the barrier presented not only by the physical difficulties of a water-
less wilderness but also by the hostility of native fanaticism is, we
are convinced, not by the desert but by sky. And here it cannot be
said that such previous trials and experience as we have to judge
from offer any really adverse argument. Let us carefully examine
the case as we find it.

The lamentable termination of Andree's dash to the Pole may
have, indeed, for a while diverted the public mind from the con-
templation of that perfectly legitimate and logical application of
modern science and skill — the exploration of inaccessible tracts of the
globe by balloon. It might, indeed, seem as though for the present
the world is standing watching the modern airship, and the yet more
recently conceived though somewhat visionary flying-machine, in the
hope that these will prove capable of achieving what the balloon has
as yet failed to accomplish. Yet the results of past months go to
prove that we cannot hope, at least until great advances have been
made, that any form of aerial motor will be able, holding a definite
course of its own, to contend with the streams and storms which
prevail but a little way above the earth's surface.

On the other hand, it should on no account be forgotten that the
balloon in Andree's hands, and in his peculiar circumstances, cannot
be said to have had a reasonably fair trial. Owing to the exigencies
of the case, the balloon, which seems after all to have hardly been the
best for the exceptional purpose in hand, had to be kept inflated for

251

252 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

nearly three weeks, while the intrepid navigators were waiting for
their wind, during all which time leakage was going on at a known
and very appreciable rate ; and thus it came about that in the end
Andree was constrained to commit himself to a wind that was not
wholly favourable. To have been entirely in the right direction it
should have been due south, whereas on the eve of starting it veered
somewhat west of south, and, with fatal allurement ' whistling through
the woodwork of the shed and flapping the canvas,' urged the voyagers
prematurely to their ill-fated venture. And other conditions must
have told, and perhaps more seriously, against the success of that
hazardous expedition. The extremely, low temperature near the Pole
would not only cause shrinkage of the gas, but also a constant deposi-
tion of the weight of condensed moisture, if not of snow, on the surface
of the balloon.

But over and above all, the mode adopted for the controlling of
the balloon would be very largely against the possibility of a pro-
longed voyage. This mode, it will be remembered, was by means of
a trail rope dragging on the ice, which, so long as it was in contact
with earth", would render a rudder sail operative to a small extent.
Its very efficiency, however, depended on its actually slowing down
the speed of the balloon, while it is well known to all aeronauts of
experience that it is an exceedingly difficult manoeuvre to keep a
trail rope dragging on the ground if it is desired to prevent collision
with the earth, on the one hand, or, on the other hand, to avoid loss
of gas, inasmuch as a slight increase of temperature, or drying off of
condensed moisture, may — indeed, is sure after a while to — lift the
rope off the ground, in which case the balloon, rising into upper levels,
is liable to be borne away on currents which may be from almost
any direction, and of which the observer below may have no cognis-
ance. Thus it will have to be acknowledged that Andree set himself
a task of great difficulty, in which the chances were largely against
him ; yet, in spite of all we learn from a message recovered from a
carrier pigeon that at the end of forty-eight hours the voyagers were
full of hope, with their aerial vessel still going strong, and maintaining
with good promise what must certainly have proved to be the longest
sky journey in time of any yet made on our planet.

But let us now turn to the possibilities of balloon travel under
practicable and altogether more favourable circumstances, where
climate, instead of being opposed, would be strongly in the balloon's
favour, and where the utmost advantage could be taken of the winds,
not as they travel more sluggishly near the earth's surface, but as
they blow in strength in the free heavens aloft.

America may fairly claim to have been the first to furnish an
aerial explorer of the first rank as bold and enterprising as he was
confident, who offered, as far back as fifty years ago, to vindicate
the capability of the balloon to accomplish exploration of the globe.

1904 TO EXPLORE ARABIA BY BALLOON 253

His project was to make the transit of the Atlantic by a purely
scientific method of aerial navigation which he himself conceived, and
the soundness of which is upheld by the leading meteorologists of
to-day. It was in 1843 that John Wise wrote to the Lancaster In-
telligencer :

Having from a long experience in aeronautics been convinced that a constant
and regular current of air is blowing at all times from west to east, with a
velocity of from twenty to forty and even sixty miles an hour, according to its
height from the earth, and having discovered a composition which renders silk
or muslin impervious to hydrogen gas, so that a balloon may be kept afloat for
many weeks, I feel confident that with these advantages a trip across the
Atlantic will not be attended with as much real danger as by the common mode
of transition.

Wise further specified that the requisite balloon should be of a
hundred feet diameter, and twenty thousand pounds lifting power,
and were such a craft provided him he announced his readiness to
attempt the proposed venture.

Had this enterprising offer been taken up and successfully carried
through, it cannot be doubted that there would be fewer untravelled
and unexploited regions of the globe than there are to-day. The mere
crossing of the Atlantic on the back of the west wind would have
added nought to our geographical knowledge, but it would have
proved the possibility of utilising the same westerly wind drift —
which we have shortly to consider — to reconnoitre untrodden tracts,
more particularly on the great desert belt of the earth, in compara-
tive safety, at a relatively trifling cost, with great expedition withal,
and yet with full leisure to make notes by the way, as also to sketch
or photograph, not a mere track only as seen by a weary traveller
from the height of a camel's back, but a broad tract with a practicable
horizon of near one hundred miles on either side.

Now, among eminent meteorologists there is a general agreement
of opinion as to such a prevalence of westerly winds aloft as would
well serve the purpose of the aeronaut Arabian explorer. Ferrel,
having shown in his practical treatise that strong wind currents from
the west are in general required by theoretical considerations, goes
on to say that

any one of ordinary observing habits could scarcely live a week upon the
earth without discovering from the motions of the clouds, and especially the
very high cirrus clouds, that the general tendency of the air above is towards
the east.

Again, Espy says :

I have found the true cirrus cloud to average scarcely once a year from any
eastern direction, and when they do come from that direction it is only when
there is a storm 'of uncommon violence in the east. Mr. Ley also, in his
numerous observations of the cirrus clouds, almost universally found them'to
have a motion towards the east from which they rarely deviated.

VOL. LVI — No. 330 S

254 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug.

Observations of the directions of clouds at Zi-ka-wei, 31° 12'
N. lat., 121° 26' E. long., and again at Colonia Tover, Venezuela,
lat. 10° 26', indicate that the principal component of motion above
is an eastern one.

But there are other indications of the drift of upper currents
"besides that afforded by visible clouds. Thus Ferrel adduces as facts
of striking significance :

On the 1st of May, 1812, the island of Barbadoes was suddenly obscured by
a shower of ashes from an eruptive volcano of St. Vincent, West Indies, more
than a hundred miles to the westward. Also on the 20th of January, 1835, the
volcano of Coseguina, Central America, lying in the belt of the north-easterly
trade winds, sent forth great quantities of lava and ashes, and the latter were
borne in a direction just contrary to that of the surface winds, and lodged in
the island of Jamaica, 800 miles to the E.N.E.

With regard to the volcanic eruption of the island of Sumbawa,
about two hundred miles east of Java, Lyell says : ' On the side of
Java the ashes were carried to the distance of three hundred miles,
and two hundred and seventeen miles towards Celebes.' Some
of the finest particles, says Mr. Crawford, were transported to the
islands of Amboyna and Banda, which last is about eight hundred
miles from the site of the volcano, although the south-east monsoon
was then at its height. According to Mr. Forbes, the dust cloud
from the eruption of Krakatoa was carried on the high winds to no
less than twelve hundred miles eastward.

No less convincing is the evidence of the winds as actually en-
countered on lofty mountains. Leopold von Buch says, with regard
to the Peak of Teneriffe : ' It is hard to find any account of an ascent
of the peak in which the strong west wind which has been met with
on the summit has not been mentioned.' Again, on Pike's Peak, the
observations of the Signal Service, during ten years, show the wind
to blow very constantly towards a direction somewhat north of east.
So, from the top of Mount Washington, Loomis found the resultant
direction of the wind to be west by north. So, again, at Mount
Alibut, two hundred miles west of Irkutsk, and over seven thousand
feet high, a very constant and strong W.N.W. wind is observed.

And it should be noted that it is when we approach nearer to
equatorial latitudes that we find greater regularity in the winds, even
such as blow at lower levels. It is a well-known fact that over parts
of the Australian wilds there are prevalent upper winds from the
north-west. Enduring westerly winds blow across Peru and Brazil ;
while undoubtedly across Thibet powerful and long-lasting gales,
possibly connected with the monsoons, are the heritage of the country.
Equally Js this the case with respect to the seaboard of Asia, of which
we have particularly to speak, due to a cause which at least is un-
varying— namely, the great rarefaction of the atmosphere over the
centre of that continent. It is possible to prophesy almost to the

1901 TO EXPLORE ARABIA BY BALLOON 255

inside of a week as to the coining of the south-west monsoon. And in
all cases when we pass beyond these surface winds into the upper
currents we find these currents are fast, an estimate of their speed
being deducible from the general law that the velocity of currents
increases from the lowest to the highest clouds at the rate of about
three miles an hour for each thousand feet of height.

Probably there is no unexplored tract of the earth better adapted
for an initial trial, or more likely to yield interesting results to an
aerial traveller, than the heart of the great Arabian Peninsula. The
prospects of discovering productive regions hitherto unknown by such
a survey will be discussed in due place, while the comparative certainty
with which the proposed transit of the country could be effected can
need little insisting on. The writer has learnt from veteran officers
of the P. and 0. service that from west to east across Arabia, as far
as indications go, there is every probability of finding a favouring
wind, and one persistently blowing overhead, if the right time of
year be chosen. Moreover, Mr. D. G. Hogarth, whom, as a recent and
reliable authority, I shall have to quote farther, states, from copious
information, that the tract from the desert of Sinai to the centre of
the Arabian peninsula ' is swept by an eternally westerly wind, which
keeps the Libyan sands ever moving towards the Nefud.'

This is encouraging information, and if we may assume that a
choice of starting ground anywhere along the length of the Red Sea,
and as far as Aden, is at the option of the aeronaut, then the journey,
with only a moderately fast wind, does not appear very formidable.

A few principal routes work out somewhat thus. Starting from
Aden, the Persian Gulf could be reached by balloon in nine hundred
miles. From a point a little below Mecca the breadth of the country
could be crossed with a W.S.W. wind in seven hundred miles, as
equally from a point above Mecca, while from the first of these places,
with a due west wind, the coast could be reached in about a thousand
miles, and from the latter in eight hundred miles. With a north or
south wind an important section of the peninsula could be traversed
in five hundred miles, while from Mascat a yet shorter but service-
able voyage might be carried out.

It will be seen that the Persian Gulf offers peculiar facilities for
the ressue of the balloon at the termination of its voyage ; and the
nature and conditions of the task before the balloonist are the reverse
of discouraging, as an impartial consideration will show ; his special
mode of travel, as compared with others, having distinct and all-
important advantages.

When a vessel is frozen in, her limit is already reached ; when the
last camel is down, the traveller must take his final and hopeless
survey ; but the resources belonging to the balloonist are more elastic
and more reliable. If the wind before which he drifts is inadequate
or contrary, it is within his power to seek other altitudes, with the

s 2

256 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

strong probability of meeting with other currents ; while the pro-
longation of his travel is simply a question of initial cost and cubic
capacity. When Count de la Vaulx landed in Poland he had still a
large quantity of ballast remaining, and it was a debated point with
him whether he should not add to his splendid achievement that of
the further crossing of a desolate Russian steppe.

Coming now to the consideration of practical results which might
be hoped for, and at the same time of the utter hopelessness of
obtaining such results by any other means under political and physical
difficulties at present existing, I may quote some recent and very
valuable notes which have been generously supplied me by an accom-
plished engineer and traveller whose knowledge and experience can
be second to none.

Colonel A. T. Fraser, C.E., in a paper read before the Society of
Arts in 1895, advocated the construction of a railway across Arabia
at the 30th Parallel, and a few years later went to Akabah to deter-
mine where such a railway should cross the valley previous to entering
Arabia, which he considered the chief engineering difficulty. It may
be seen from any good map that this proposed line practically marks
the easiest possible route across the country, as also that where
climatic conditions, as judged by the evidences of habit ability, would
be least severe.

Colonel Fraser, then, learning that Egyptian authorities could not
get him Turkish permission, proceeded to Jerusalem, whence he was
allowed to go to Maan and the 30th Parallel, the Turks, however,
declaring they could not let him go more than one march south of
that, or into the Akabah Pass, on any consideration. It ended in
their granting him the run of Mount Hor for the sake of making
observations, and Colonel Fraser, taking a small camp, remained two
nights ; but the Bedouins saw his lights, and there were signs that it
would have been unsafe to stay longer.

Any consideration of the projected Bagdad Railway would, it is
unnecessary to say, be outside the present discussion. In the opinion
of the secretary of the Ottoman Railway Company the enterprise
would not pay for carriage grease ; and, whether this be so or no, it
suffices to say that Bagdad approaches the 34th Parallel, while the
district which would be opened up is already sufficiently well known
and not calculated to repay development.

As to the feasibility of effecting a balloon inflation at a more
southerly latitude, which should preferably be on the shore of the Red
Sea, and which should lead to a sky passage across a tract of the
peninsula of perhaps the greatest economic value, Colonel Fraser
insists that an ascent from the east of the Red Sea would not be
easy, as it is the sacred province of the Medjar, confirming this opinion
by the fact that he himself could not so much as unroll a map of his
route in a Euphrates valley if there were any Turks about.

1904 TO EXPLORE ARABIA BY BALLOON 257

To meet this difficulty, it may be pointed out that it would not
add more than a few miles to the voyage if the inflation were effected
on the west bank of the Red Sea ; and possibly it might even be
carried out with no great difficulty, and with perfect immunity from
trouble, from one of the many islands in the lower latitudes of that sea:

Lastly, there is conceivably the expedient now being developed of
a self-contained hot-air balloon, for the success of which the air lying
over Southern Arabia would be specially favourable.

It remains to give due attention to such meagre information
regarding Central Arabia as we at present possess, and to consider the
knowledge we might hope to gain by balloon exploration, and here we
would first examine a map prepared from facts supplied by Mr. Hogarth
and others ; and, by way of sample of the country, let us note that a
central patch, marking what we may regard as the heart of the northern
half of the country, and standing, roughly speaking, between the
parallels of 27° and 29°, is claimed to be partially known. Let us,
however, further estimate what this really means. I take it that no
more experienced or adventurous explorer ever penetrated into the
Arabian interior than Mr. Wilfrid S. Blunt, whose route and survey,
drawn Jby his own hand, has been published by the Royal Geographical
Society. To use his own words, he finds this portion of Central
Arabia occupying its old condition of an almost fabulous land, whose
real nature is still a matter of doubt if not of curiosity. For more
than two hundred miles from Kaf to Jof there is no inhabited place,
while it is only along the course of the Wady that there are wells
which attract the Bedouins. Jof itself has some five hundred houses
and palm gardens, and in its whole oasis there may be seven thousand
souls. Thence, with a splendid equipment of camels, it cost the
experienced traveller eleven days to cross the Nefud — a true and
typical desert, and yet so far^from unproductive that its mere red
sand after rain becomes actually covered — so Mr. Blunt believes —
with grass and flowers. More than this, it is, we learn, in one way
blest above all other places — ' fleas do not exist there.' Of that land
Sir H. Rawlinson has said that it is the most romantic in the world,
with a sort of weird mystery about it from the very difficulty of
penetrating it. Mr. Hogarth adds his own testimony as to this
approach to Arabia, asserting that it is only entered with great diffi-
culty and pain by man and beast, so that present-day pilgrims have
almost abandoned the land route for the sea ; and the central plateau
is become more an island than ever. If, now, we pass to examine
the rich and, from its neighbourhood to the seaboard, the more
accessible oasis of Hasa, the land of running streams and many springs,
we find it is but a mere narrow strip, while immediately without to
south and west ' stretches the unknown.' Further yet, when we turn
to the nearer and more luxuriant spots of the south-west corner of
the peninsula, the portal, as it were, of J:he region we seek to reach,

258 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

the alluring plains which ere now have led explorers to hope to gain a
footing, whence they might extend our knowledge — the ' Happy
Arabia ' of ancient geographers — where once the waters were held
back by huge artificial dams, we find ourselves equally baulked, for
we learn that the newest of these works is no later than the sixth
century. All are broken now, and the waters filter away, allowing
the sand to creep once more about the villages.

Enough. We can but avail ourselves of such legendary informa-
tion as is to hand to at least form some allowable conjecture of what
the great unknown has to reveal, and how well worth at least a cur-
sory survey. It appears that from whatever side this region is ap-
proached, tribesmen dwelling on the outskirts have, in place of any
definite information, mere tales of awe and wonder bred of a certain
superstitious terror. It is a wilderness upon which Nature vents her
fiercer moods ; it is a land of wrath where the earth is shaken and the
soil in perpetual unrest. There is a vague talk of saline oases and of
wild palm groves ; but it is said that ere men can reach these the
earth opens to engulf them, or they are swallowed up in subtly shifting
quicksands. The mysteriousness of these reports endows the country
with a species of enchantment, and we can no longer regard the
so-called desert as a mere waste — the more so when we unmistakably
trace up to the limit of where any European has yet trodden how
beneficently Nature has dealt with the land, converting the desert
soil into very gardens of Paradise, and whole regions into luxuriant
fertility. Every thoughtful traveller through the Red Sea must look
out over those blue mountains to the eastward, and feel that beyond
those far and fascinating slopes must lie the hope of new discovery
and fresh scope for enterprise.

Now, if the generally accepted estimate of the upper wind currents
is fairly correct, then, for a preliminary aerial survey, a balloon no
larger than that recently employed by Count de la Vaulx might
suffice, especially if the mode of inflation by hydrogen, artificially
produced on the field, were adopted, and for the rest little more would
be needed than a proper outlook maintained on the eastern shore of
the peninsula. This, of course, is essential, as at the end of the
voyage the aeronaut will need certain efficient assistance. If he
elect to alight on the coast, he will not succeed in doing so without
assuredly having been sighted by the fanatical native, who, to say
the least, is liable to give trouble. If, on the other hand, he prefer
to drop on the water, as many a balloonist has with safety done ere
now, then there must be those afloat and sufficiently near at hand
who, having been watching the balloon in the sky, will have oppor-
tunity to direct their course and ' stand by.'

An initial experiment, altogether inexpensive, comparatively
speaking, and readily carried out, should be made by fleets of pilot
balloons designed to remain aloft in such a climate as the Arabian

1904 TO EXPLORE ARABIA BY BALLOON 259

desert for the time considered sufficient to cross the breadth of the
country, dismissed from chosen positions on the west side, and looked
out for on all the available places on the eastern seaboard. It would
not be necessary that these should be captured. If batches were
dismissed from different points on different pre-arranged dates, and
if after crossing the land any were sighted in the sky, the route that
they had taken, as also the time of transit, would be well determined.

But so far we have not said all that is to be advanced as to the
chances on the side of the aeronaut. Should it appear from pre-
liminary tests that the passage across the peninsula would occupy a
longer — even a far longer — period than we have assumed, the resources
of the aeronaut may yet by special means be rendered fully equal to
meet any enforced detention in the sky. Ordinary aerial voyages,
though they seldom fail through any inanition of the balloon itself,
are nevertheless commonly undertaken without any special econo-
mising of the gas which, for safety against bursting as also for the sake
of a certain indolent convenience, is allowed to escape by natural
diffusion from the neck of the balloon, kept constantly open. A
suitably devised valve, however, might be made to considerably
diminish this waste of gas at the lower aperture ; while from the upper
opening, usually closed with a hinged valve, the ordinary and by no
means negligible amount of leakage can be entirely obviated by a
solid valve of varnished silk, which is firmly bound over the aperture,
and which remains perfectly impervious until finally rent open at
the termination of the voyage. But should it be considered that,
even so, a single balloon would not possess sufficient ' life ' for due
safety, then a method that has been advocated by practical aeronauts,
but never yet needed to be put in force, could be adopted. This con-
sists in starting on the voyage, not with a single balloon, but with
two or more in tandem, and so arranged that when by lapse of time
the main balloon became unduly shrunken it might be replenished by
the gas from a spare balloon, which could then be discarded.

Anyhow, the fact remains that seventy years ago a balloon of no
extraordinary size, and with no special fittings, inflated, moreover,
only by household gas, then but recently adopted for ballooning pur-
poses, carried three passengers and an enormous reserve of ballast
across five hundred miles in eighteen hours. This voyage, conducted
by Charles Green, extended from London to the heart of the German
Forests, and was continued, moreover, through a long, cold winter
night, which must have told considerably against its sustentation,
yet at its termination, dictated only by considerations of convenience,
SD much ballast was still remaining that there can be no reasonable
doubt that with the sun about to rise the length of the journey might
have been doubled if desired. It may further be pointed out that
no balloon voyage soever yet undertaken in Europe or America has
been carried through under conditions which would tend most to its

260 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

prolongation. This is easily made clear, for wheresoever in balloon
travel there is much diversity of country traversed there will also be
frequent variations in the amount of heat radiated into the sky, a
fact which influences the height at which a balloon would ride not
only directly but indirectly also, owing to the vertical currents as-
cending and descending which will be engendered. And this is but
the smaller disturbing element in the sky to be met with commonly
over European or American soil. A greater disturbance in equilibrium
will be found in the diversity of cloud and sunshine assuredly to be
encountered in any extended travel. Passing in and out or even in
the neighbourhood of cloud in the free sky commonly causes great
variation of temperature within the envelope of a balloon, and then
great waste of its life inevitably ensues. This may be readily under-
stood, for any accession of heat causes an immediate rise to higher
altitudes, where, external pressure being diminished, a certain loss of
gas is the consequence, followed presently by a descent of the balloon
below its previous level, which can only be regained by another loss,
equally serious — that of ballast.

Now it is not to be doubted that the above-mentioned frequent
vicissitudes would be practically eliminated in the case of a sky
passage across such country as lower Central Arabia must be supposed
to be, while the withdrawal of the sun's rays at night would simply
entail a steady subsidence of the balloon to some lower altitude, where
the heat steadily radiated from the now adjacent earth would keep
it at a safe, if not at a constant, level without waste of ballast. Thus
an aeronaut of experience should have no difficulty in remaining in
the sky throughout any period that might be rendered necessary.

A further all-important point remains as to whether the aeronaut
voyager could keep in touch with earth by means of wireless tele-
graphy. Of this possibility I am able up to a certain point to speak
from actual experience in a trial specially organised four years ago.
At the hands of all experimenters one main obstacle had been found
in the disturbing influence of earth. Across water success was inva-
riably greater than over land — a fact which, indeed, continues to be
borne out in the most recent practice. It then naturally suggested
itself that a suitable instrument, transported high above the earth's
surface in a balloon, and put in due communication with another
instrument on the ground, might act with far greater advantage than
would similar apparatus operating between two land stations. And
this actually proved to be the case.

The apparatus was designed by Mr. Nevil Maskelyne, who also
presided at the ground station. The trial took place on the occasion
of the garden party of the British Association meeting at Bradford.
Here the ground station was established at one end of Lister Park,
while a small mine with an electric igniter was also constructed, and
thisjt was my task to endeavour to fire five minutes after I had risen

1904 TO EXPLORE ARABIA BY BALLOON 261

into the sky. The balloon carried both receiving and transmitting
instruments, making up a somewhat heavy apparatus, which unfor-
tunately suffered several smart concussions from impact with the
ground during a rough and difficult launching. It required the five
minutes' grace allowed me to restore the working parts of the instru-
ments to something like order, and, this interval having elapsed, I
pressed the button, at the same time calling the attention of my
companion in the car — Sir Edmund Fremantle — to the fact. In
about fifteen seconds the report of the exploded mine was loudly
heard, confirming our own estimate of distance, which amounted to
some three miles.

According to agreement, during the next five minutes the re-
ceiving instrument was now switched into action, and the signalling
of my colleague was at once found to be going forward, and in per-
fect order. Moreover, his messages had in no way deteriorated in
clearness after the balloon had sailed thirty miles away, and was then
settling to earth. On the other hand, it was found that after the
firing of the mine a wire in the transmitting instrument, which had
received damage at the start, had parted, and thus the majority of
the messages from the balloon were lost.

This, as I have stated, was four years ago, and the methods of
wireless telegraphy have so greatly improved since that no shadow of
doubt remains in my mind as to its successful use over very extended
land distances, where one of the stations is a high-flying balloon.
Presumably the chief obstacle would be, as in the case at sea, the
interference of a thunderstorm region ; but though this may be con-
stantly feared amid the storm systems of the Atlantic, the case must
be far otherwise over the arid plains of Arabia.

In the venture thus far sketched out, the advantage that would
accrue if the balloon were equipped with wireless telegraphy instru-
ments must be now apparent, for not only could the traveller con-
tinue to transmit back to his base a connected description of the land
opened up to his view, but in due course he could announce to some
appointed look-out station on the far shore his approximate course,
with a view to timely succour.

JOHN M. BACON.

Coldash, Newbury.

262 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

SOME MAXIMS OF THE
LATE LORD BALLING AND BULWER

IN the month of June 1852 I was sitting at my desk in the Foreign
Office when I was sent for by Lord Malmesbury, recently appointed
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He told me to start as soon
as possible for Florence, to which Legation he had attached me, and
where hands were very much wanted. I started, I think, the next
day, and after rather a difficult journey, now much easier, I arrived at
Florence.

In those days one had to go by railway from Paris to Chalons,
then down the Saone by river to Lyons, where one was transferred
to another boat for the passage down the Rhone to Avignon. At
Avignon one found the railway again, and in three hours arrived at
Marseilles. Thence the steamer went on to Genoa and Leghorn.

On arriving at Florence I was desired to go to the Villa Salviati,
on the hills beyond the Porta San Gallo, a beautiful old villa, subse-
quently purchased by Mario, the great tenor. It was then occupied
by Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, the head of the Mission to the Grand Duke
of Tuscany. I arrived at about ten in the morning, and made the
acquaintance of Sir Henry Bulwer, a most remarkable figure in
British diplomacy. I had before known several of his relations who
lived in Norfolk, and subsequently to this visit, and all through life,
I have been more or less in frequent communication with some
member of the family.

Sir Henry Bulwer had passed, and continued later, a very varied
career, accumulating a vast amount of experience. He had been in
the Life Guards, in diplomacy at Paris, at Brussels, at Constantinople,
where he negotiated a treaty of commerce, at St. Petersburg, and again
at Paris ; and in 1843, only sixteen years after his entrance into diplo-
macy at Berlin as an attache, he was made Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary to the Queen of Spain.

After holding office for five years in Spain, during a period of un-
exampled activity and excitement, Marshal Narvaez had caused him
to be expelled on account of alleged communications with the revolu-
tionists.

At that time the English Government had adopted a tone making

1904 SOME MODERN MAXIMS 263

it very unpopular in foreign retrogressive countries. Lord Palraerston,
then Foreign Minister, whose great career it is not for me to criticise,
had laid down as his policy the advocacy of constitutional against
despotic forms of government in the countries where England had
influence. England had certainly taken great part in the politics of
Spain. She had co-operated openly with the Cristina and theCristino
party for the establishment of the young Queen Isabella, and had
authorised recruiting in England for an armed body known as the
British Auxiliary Legion, organised and commanded by an English
General, Sir De Lacy Evans.

Subsequently to his leaving Spain, Sir Henry Bulwer had been
appointed Envoy Extraordinary at Washington, where he negotiated
and concluded the well-known Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. It was signed
one evening by himself and Mr. Webster over a cigar. From Washington
he was, at his own request, transferred as Minister to the Grand Duke
of Tuscany in 1852. This he resigned in 1855. He did not intend,
however, his retirement to be permanent, and in 1856^he was named
Commissioner, under the Treaty of Paris, to investigate the state of
the Danubian Principalities, and to propose a basis for their future
organisation. It may here be said parenthetically that the object
held in view by Europe was to a certain extent frustrated by
the extraordinary self-control on the part of the inhabitants of
the Principalities during the sittings of the Commission. By the
treaty it had been stipulated that the Principalities of Moldavia
and Wallachia were to be kept separate, the creation of one State
being considered dangerous to the welfare of Turkey. Such were
the lines on which the Commission proceeded, and they carefully
laid down an organisation for each Principality separately. But one
factor had been overlooked. It had been laid down that, when the
constitutions had been drawn up, the people of the two Principali-
ties should each elect their own prince. To the astonishment of
everybody, an unlooked-for development occurred from the action
of the two populations when each Principality elected the same man,
Colonel Couza. Thus, while the stipulations of the treaty had been
carried out, the populations in a legal manner practically consolidated
the two Principalities into one. This took place in 1858, in which
year Sir Henry Bulwer was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary
and Plenipotentiary at Constantinople.

He retired from the service in 1865, was elected M.P. for Tarn worth
in 1868, and in 1871 was created Baron Bailing and Bulwer, in the
county of Norfolk, his younger brother, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton,
having previously been raised to the peerage by the title of Lord
Lytton.

I have rather diverged from my original intention to limit my
remarks to the personality of Sir Henry Bulwer as he then was at
Florence. The political situation was difficult. Tuscany was occupied

264 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

by the Austrians, who, notwithstanding Lord Palmerston's retire-
ment, still associated England and her representative with his policy.
These difficulties had been increased by an assault on a British subject,
Mr. Erskine Mather, who stood in the way of an Austrian officer
marching with his regiment. The officer cut him down with his sword,
and the relations between Great Britain and Austria became very
strained. This incident was followed by many others. It was related
that water accidentally thrown out of a window by a tradesman had
fallen on the Grand Duke, who was passing. The tradesman, horrified,
rushed before the carriage, and, falling on his knees, begged for forgive-
ness. The Grand Duke replied kindly, adding, ' It is lucky for the
Minister I am not an Englishman, or there would certainly have been
a question with the British Legation.' The Legation was then also
engaged in advocating the cause of the Madiai, an old couple
imprisoned on the accusation of proselytism.

W Much bitterness was avoided by the tact, amiable bearing, and
profound knowledge of character of Sir Henry Bulwer. At this time
my colleagues at the Legation were Mr. Lytton, the son of Sir Edward
Lytton, who had been attached to his uncle's Mission at Washington,
and had come to Florence after his father's victorious return for
Hertfordshire as a Protectionist. He was later Minister at Lisbon,
Governor-General of India, and Ambassador at Paris, where he died.
The other was Mr. Fenton, who had for many years followed Sir Henry
Bulwer as his secretary. He still survives, after an honourable and
useful career at many posts, having elected to reside at the Hague,
the scene of his latest employment, and where he possesses many
friends.

Florence had always been a favourite post for statesmen requiring
repose, and Sir Henry Bulwer was succeeded in those functions by
Lord Normanby, who had been Viceroy of Ireland, a Minister in
various English Governments, and Ambassador at Paris. The family
of Bulwer is remarkably accomplished and gifted. Sir Henry Bulwer's
elder brother, though living quietly as a country squire in Norfolk,
was no doubt a man of great capacity, which could very usefully have
been employed in the public service. He left three sons — one, like his
father, an exemplary county magnate ; the second a very distin-
guished general officer of the army ; while his younger brother, Sir
Henry Bulwer, has made a great reputation in several important
governorships, amongst others Natal and Cyprus.

Lord Dalling himself had a most remarkable personal charm, and,
though he had many adversaries and critics, few could withstand the
attraction of his manner and the interest of his conversation. He
had lived with very remarkable men — with Prince Talleyrand, Prince
Lieven, Count d'Orsay, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Melbourne, Lord
Palmerston, besides many other English statesmen.

In his conversation he always appeared, and I believe naturally,

1904 SOME MODERN MAXIMS 265

to take a great personal interest in those with whom he was speaking.
He also took a joke against himself in good part. At Florence both
he and I lived on intimate terms with Charles Lever. The latter
could not refrain from noticing the weaknesses of his friends, and in
one of his novels he ascribed to a diplomatist, by name, I think, Sir
Horace Upton, one of Sir Henry Bulwer's characteristics, viz., always
thinking himself ill and taking medicine. A long time after we had
separated officially I called on Sir Henry Bulwer in London. While
talking he rang for his valet to give him a dose, saying to me, ' I can
never take a pill without thinking of that confounded novel of Lever's
and Sir Horace Upton.' I did not know he had read the work.

The great peculiarity of his conversation was that he had evidently
codified his life in fixed axioms"andj)roverbial sayings. Two or three
of these now occur to me. He used to say, ' Whenever you speak
with a man older than yourself, always recollect that, however stupid
he may be, he thinks himself wiser than you because he is older.'
He would quote a saying of Talleyrand, which was, ' Acknowledge
the receipt of a book from the author at once : this relieves you of
the necessity of saying whether you have read it.' He laid down as
a rule, quoting it from somebody else, I believe Lord de Ros, that you
should never cut anyone, as your so doing deprives you of an oppor-
tunity of saying disagreeable things to him. He would also say,
* Never discuss, because neither you nor your adversary will give in
to the other, and he will ever consider you a stupid fellow for not
agreeing with him.' He denned the advantage of matrimony as this :
' That a wife will tell her husband truths which nobody else would
venture to tell, and thus correct many of his defects.' He once said
to me, and I think his observation is correct, that intimate friends
are always about the same height. This he had found in his own
case, and it is difficult for a tall man to be intimate with a short man,
as they cannot talk confidentially when walking together.

In 1864 a little social paper was started called the Owl. The
contributors were men of considerable importance in politics, society,
and literature. It was devised by Lord Glenesk, Mr. Evelyn Ashley,
and Mr. Cameron of Lochiel, assisted later by Mr. Laurence Oliphant,
and administered by the first with his well-known tact and discrimi-
nation during the seven years of its existence. I do not know how
far it is advisable or legitimate to enter into any details of this inter-
esting publication, but suffice it to say that its pages occasionally
contained papers by Lord Dalling. Amongst other contributions,
he sent in a paper of proverbs ; these were not considered adapted
to the columns of the Owl, inasmuch as they did not relate to any
passing circumstances of the day, but were of an abstract and general
character. Shortly before Lord Balling's death I paid him a visit,
first at Hyeres, later at Trieste. Here we stayed with Charles Lever,
who, as has been mentioned, had been a friend of both of us from

266 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

Florence days. He was on his way to Egypt, from which journey he
never returned home, as he died on the 23rd of May, 1872, if I recollect
right, at Naples on his way home. Lord Bailing gave to me his
rejected proverbs, begging me some day, when I found an opportunity,
to publish them. This I now do, in the hope that they may be admired
by others as much as I have admired them.

H. DRUMMOND WOLFF.

MAXIMS.

The maxims of wisdom are the pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope : they
remain for ever unchanged and in the same case ; but every age shakes them
into a new combination of colours.

In nine cases out of ten, a man who cannot explain his ideas is the dupe of
his imagination in thinking he has any.

To say to a man when you ask him a favour, ' Don't do it if it incon-
veniences you,' is a mean way of saving yourself from an obligation, and
depriving another of the merit of conferring one.

The flattery of one's friends is required as a dram to keep up one's spirits
against the injustice of one's enemies.

Do not trust to your railroads, nor your telegraphs, nor your schools, as a
test of civilisation ; the real refinement of a nation is to be found in the justice
of its ideas and the courtesy of its manners.

The knowledge of the most value to us is that which we gain so insensibly
and gradually as not to perceive we have acquired it until its effect becomes
visible in our conduct.

The quiet of a city is the quiet that one most appreciates, for the sense of
quiet in the country is lost by want of contrast.

You will never be trusted if you do more to gain an enemy than to serve a
friend.

You are not obliged to give your hand to anyone ; but never give your
finger.

The way to be always respected is to be always in earnest.

When you notice a vague accusation you give it a reality and turn a shadow
into a substance.

You cannot show a greater want of tact than in attempting to console a
person by making light of his grief.

. One of .the charms of an intimacy between two persons of different sexes is
that the man loves the woman for qualities he does not envy, and the woman
appreciates the man for qualities she does not pretend to possess.

The best way of effacing a failure is to obtain a success.

.. .Friendship .and; familiarity are twin sisters, very much alike, but rarely

agreeing.,., .,•.;..-,

Whilst a second- rUte man is considering how he should take the lead, a first-
rate man takes it.

1901 SOME MODERN MAXIMS 267

There are a great many idle men constantly busy about something which
they know is not the thing that ought to occupy them.

When you go into mixed company, the air you should carry with you there
is that of fearing no one and wishing to offend no one.

Religious persecution is the effe ct of an exaggerated vanity rendered ferocious
by the best intentions.

If you expect a disagreeable thing, meet it and get rid of it as soon as you
can ; if you expect anything agreeable, you need not be in such a hurry, for the
anticipation of pain is pain — the anticipation of pleasure, pleasure.

The practical man is he who turns life to the best account for himself; the
good man, he who teaches others how to do so.

Only let those know you intimately who speak well of you ; and only know
intimately those of whom you can speak well.

An obstinate man dies in maintaining a post which is utterly defenceless. A
resolute man does not abandon his fortress as long as he can bring a gun to bear
on the enemy.

You may be gentle in your dealings with men just as you can be firm. Never
say ' no ' from pride, nor ' yes ' from weakness.

The great art of speaking and writing is that of knowing what to leave
out.

It is very difficult to get stupid people to change their opinions, for they find
it so hard to get an idea that they don't like to lose one.

To despair is to bury one's self alive.

We have never won a complete victory when we have not gained the good
will of those we have subdued.

If you can associate your career with the ideas of your epoch, you will be
sympathised with if you fail, and forgiven if you succeed.

A dwarf, a hunchback, and a natural son are never at their ease in the
world, for they entered it with a sore which some vanity is always rubbing.

The best trait in a man's character is an anxiety to serve those who have
obliged him once and can do so no more.

Always go out of your way to serve a friend ; never to avoid a foe.

Some men ride a steeplechase after fortune ; some seek it leisurely on the
beaten track ; and some hope to attain it by a new path which they think they
have discovered. The first arrive rapidly or not at all ; the second arrive surely,
but generally too late ; the last usually lose their way, but are so charmed with
their road that they forget the object of their journey.

Friendships are founded on character ; intimacy, on habits.

You are no better for being well thought of by those you live with if the
world thinks ill of them, and you gain nothing by living with those of whom
the world thinks well if they think ill of you.

Nothing is so common as to make a great blunder in order to remedy a small
one.

268 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

A Spanish proverb says that ' He who makes himself all sugar, the flies will
eat him up ; ' but another observes, ' He who makes himself all vinegar will
never catch any flies.'

Striking actions make reputations ; useful ones, a career.

A lady at Court assured the Prince de Conti in his later days that he was as
young as ever. ' No,' he said, ' Madame, and I will tell you how I discovered
it. Formerly, when I paid your sex compliments, they were taken for declara-
tions ; now, when I make a lady a declaration, she takes it for a compliment.'
We can always ascertain what we really are if we do not blind ourselves as to
the effect we produce.

Superior men rarely underrate the talents of those who are inferior to them.
Inferior men nearly always underrate the talents of those whose abilities are
above their own ; for the tendency of genius is to raise to its own height, that
of mediocrity to depress to its own level.

You cannot do anyone more good than by trying unsuccessfully to do him
an injury.

Man is by nature a hunter, who cares more for the sport of the chase than the
prey he is in quest of. This is why the objects we seek after are not to be esti-
mated by the pains we take to procure them. People say, ' Why give yourself
so much trouble for so small a pleasure ? ' They forget that the trouble is the
main part of the pleasure.

Bad temper and bad manners are equally bad habits, which we indulge in
because they rather affect others than ourselves. Few find it difficult to govern
the first when they are in the presence of those whom it is their interest not to
offend, and almost everyone can correct the last when he is in the presence of
those he is desirous to please.

A man's expressions of gratitude are according to the service he receives ;
his feelings of gratitude according to the manner in which the service was
rendered.

Vanity shows itself in a person in two ways : by the endeavour to please, and
by the confidence that he does please. The first makes an agreeable impression,
the latter quite the reverse.

The worst thing that you can do, if you wish to be well with the world, is to
let it see that you are afraid of losing its good opinion.

If you begin by thinking that nothing can be done without difficulty, you
will end by doing everything with facility.

Many people who seem clever are merely plated with the cleverness of
others.

Nothing is so focllsh as to be wise out of season.

Make anyone think he has been clever or agreeable, and he will think you
have been so.

1904

PEPYS AND MERCER

PEPYS as the statesman, the connoisseur, the musician, or the man of
letters, is full of interest for the student ; but it is Pepys the man who
chiefly charms the fancy of ordinary folk. Not that his character
was either powerful or without blemish. On the contrary, in the
strange medley of qualities which his Diary reveals, we find resolution
and cowardice, integrity and meanness, selfishness and benevolence,
cultivated tastes and vulgar aspirations, religious earnestness and
moral laxity, linked in a bewildering companionship. But so far as
it extends, the Diary tells the story of a life which was lived to the
utmost, and the intense humanity which throbs through it makes
even its smallest details tingle. And many of the details are small
enough. A greater man would have passed them over in silence ; a
smaller man would have presented them as lifeless trivialities. But
everything connected with himself was full of importance to Pepys,
and thus the minutiae of the Diary seem to have caught fire at the
flame of his personality. This has given to the minor characters an
interest which they would not otherwise have acquired. Though we
know them only imperfectly, they are real men and women to us, not
mere descriptions. The central figure does not throw the others into
shade, but kindles them into brightness. Yet the illumination is
partial only. So far as they enter into his life of the moment, they
are caught up and carried along by its story ; but let them once drop
out of it, and they pass straightway into oblivion. They shine, but
not with their own light ; and, though not devoid of individual interest,
their value lies rather in what they reveal to us of the life and sur-
roundings of Pepys himself.-

Among these lesser figures Mary Mercer stands conspicuous. She
became Mrs. Pepys' maid in the autumn of 1664, and her intimacy
with the family for the next four years covered the brightest and
most interesting part of the period with which the Diary deals. The
previous experience of the Pepyses in their domestic servants had been
chequered. Jane Wayneman, their servant when the Diary opens
(January 1, 1659), was a single-handed ' general,' and it was not
till some months later, in November 1660, that Mrs. Pepys could
indulge in the luxury of a maid of her own. Pepys' own sister, Paulina,
VOL. LVI— No. 330. 269 T

270 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

then came to them in this capacity. Such a situation is at best
beset with difficulties, and as a matter of fact the experiment was
not a success. Pepys himself attempted it with many misgivings,
and out of pure benevolence to his sister. But ' Pall ' was not an
amiable character. He was ' afeard of her ill temper ' ; and this was
not the worst of her faults, for, even as a guest, she had been caught
pilfering. He determined to keep her in her place from the first,
and refused to let her sit at table with himself and his wife, ' so that
she may not expect it hereafter ' from him. However, she soon
grew lazy, and demoralised the other maid, Jane. Matters finally
came to a head on the 25th of August 1661, and after a stormy inter-
view, at which he ' brought down her proud spirit,' it was arranged
that she should retire to his father's house at Brampton in Hunting-
donshire, whither she departed on the 5th of September 1661, ' crying
exceedingly,' with 20s. and some excellent advice from Pepys. Some
others followed in rather rapid succession, none of whom were of any
note except the brilliant Gosnell, whose term of service, however,
was only four or five days — from the 4th to the 9th of December
1662. Ostensibly she was withdrawn by her uncle, Justice Jiggins,
who required her services for some special business. But from Pepys'
account of the matter she seems to have expected more liberty than
she would have obtained in his household, and probably was not
unwilling to give up her place. Shortly afterwards we hear of her
appearance on the stage, where she rose to considerable distinction.
By this time the number of servants in the house had increased to at
least three ; but Mrs. Pepys seems to have managed without a maid
of her own till Mary Ashwell was engaged in this capacity on the
12th of March 1662, at 4Z. a year. Pepys considered these wages
(equivalent to about 181. of our money) high ; but on the 6th of October
1666, he speaks of a maid who asked 20Z. a year, and who, though
coming with a great reputation, turned out to be ' a tawdry wench who
would take 81.' It is not quite easy to determine whether it was
servants' wages or Pepys' ideas which had risen in the interval of four
years. Pretty, witty, a good dancer, and ' with a very fine carriage '
which put his wife's to shame, Ashwell delighted Pepys with her
merry talk, and still more with her musical ability. Before long,
however, Mrs. Pepys, stimulated perhaps by the ' very fine carriage,'
became jealous, reproaching her husband and rating her maid.
Domestic relations became very strained, and once, much to Pepys'
annoyance, there was an altercation between them at Hinchingbrooke
House. At length they came to blows, and soon afterwards Ashwell
left, on the 25th of August 1663.

Incidents of this kind, though somewhat startling to us, were by

no means unusual in the domestic life of the period;1 Mrs. Pepys

seems to have used her fists freely in her household management,

though, judging by her portrait, the punishment can hardly have

1 Domestic Life under the Stuarts, by Elizabeth Godfrey, p. 209.

1904 PEPYS AND MERCER 271

been very painful. On the llth of January 1663, Pepys, being
angered at the idleness of his servants, directs his wife ' to beat at
least the little girl ' ; and on a subsequent occasion the same or a
similar small culprit was punished rather mercilessly for the sins of the
others (February 19, 1664) :

At supper, hearing by accident of rny rnayds their letting in a rogueing-
Scotch woman that haunts the office, to helpe them to washe and secure in our
house, and that very lately, I fell mightily out, and made my wife, to the
disturbance of the house and neighbours, to beat our little girle, and then we
shut her down into the cellar, and there she lay all night.

He himself frequently chastises his boy, and he once committed

an atrocious assault upon a woman servant (April 12, 1667) :

/
Coming homeward again, saw my door and hatch open, left so by Luce, our

cook mayde, which so vexed me that I did give her a kick in our entry and
offered a blow at her.

Nemesis, however, was present in the shape of Sir William Perm's
footboy, who witnessed the incident, and as Pepys feared (pro-
bably with good reason) would ' be telling the family of it.' Even
Mrs. Pepys was not safe from corporal admonishment, and he once
came to blows with her in bed — an arena which must have seriously
cramped the style of the combatants (October 7, 1664) :

Lay pretty while with some discontent abed, even to the having bad words
with my wife, and blows too, about the ill- serving of our victuals yesterday ;
but all ended in love.

Sometimes, however, she was not so easily appeased (December 19,
1664) :

Going to bed betimes last night we waked betimes, and from our people's
being forced to take the key to go out to light a candle, I was very angry and
begun to find fault with my wife, for not commanding her servants as she ought.
Thereupon she giving me some cross answer, I did strike her over her left eye
such a blow as the poor wretch did cry out and was in great pain, but yet her
spirit was such as to endeavour to bite and scratch me.

So again (July 12, 1667) :

So home, and there find my wife in a dogged humour for my not dining at
home, and I did give her a pull by the nose and some ill words, which she pro-
voked me to by something she spoke, that we fell extraordinarily out, insomuch
that I going to the office to avoid further anger, she followed me in a devilish
manner thither, and with much ado I got her into the garden out of hearing'to
prevent shame, and so home, and by degrees I found it necessary to calme her..

Our natural indignation at Pepys' behaviour is half paralysed by
the indifference with which it is narrated. Cuffs and blows seem
incidents of domestic life too ordinary for comment, and, though
Pepys displays his usual sensitiveness to outside opinion on the

T 2

272 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

subject, internal family relations do not appear to have been dis-
turbed by them. But it shows incidentally that, in reference to women,
the chivalry of the day still savoured of the age when woman was
' half wife, half chattel.'

Five centuries before Pepys the Troubadours had preached, and
to a certain extent effected, the deliverance of woman from this
thraldom ; but even they could not wholly shake off the instincts of
the old Adam.

My boy, if you wish to make constant your Venus,

Attend to the plan I disclose —
Her first naughty word you meet with a menace,

Her next — drop your fist on her nose.

RUTHERFORD, TJie Tioubalou -s, p. 129.

This was the advice of Rambaud of Vaquieras in the twelfth
century, and it was evidently not out of date at the end of the seven-
teenth.

However, to return to the story. After Ashwell's departure,
Mrs. Pepys remained without a lady's-maid for more than a year, til],
t>n the 8th of September 1664, Mary Mercer came to fill her place.
Her engagement had been a matter of much consideration by the
Pepys. On the 28th of July 1664 he writes

My present posture is thus : my wife in the country and my niayde Besse
with her and all quiett there. I am endeavouring to find a woman for her to
my mind, and above all one that understands musique, especially singing. I am
the willinger to keepe one because I am in good hopes to get 2 or 3001. per
annum extraordinary by the business of the victualling of Tangier.

But as he further tells us :

I do now live very prettily at home, being most seriously, quietly, and
neatly served by my two mayds Jane and Sue, with both of whom I am
mightily well pleased.

It was accordingly with some misgivings that he ventured to
disturb this peaceful state of things ; and even after Mercer had been
definitely engaged, he writes on the 29th of August 1664 :

But I must remember that, never since I was a housekeeper, I ever lived so
•quietly, without any noise or one angry word almost, as I have done since my
present mayds Besse, Jane, and Susan came and were together. Now I have
taken a boy and am taking a woman, I pray God we may not be worse, but
I will observe it.

The boy was Tom Edwards, also a songster, ' having been bred
in the Kings Chappell these four years.' Pepys engaged him as
a clerk, but no doubt with an eye to his musical capabilities. These
gave great satisfaction to his master, who writes of him on the 9th of
September 1664 : ' My boy, a brave boy, sings finely, and is the most
pleasant boy at present, while his ignorant boy's tricks last, that I

1904 PEPYS AND MEECEE 273

ever saw.' The last part of this eulogy may sound strange to us,
but Pepys had a large heart.

Mercer came on the recommendation of Will Hewer, Pepys' clerk
and factotum, but the situation had almost been promised to ' a
kinswoman ' of his friend Mr. Blagrave, who seems to have been
prevented at the last moment by ill-health from accepting it. Pepys
was at first not over-anxious to engage Mercer, for a reason which
illustrates his sensitiveness to public opinion (August 1, 1664) :

So home, and there talked long with Will about the young woman of his
family which he spoke of for to live with my wife, but though she hath very
many good qualitys, yet being a neighbour's child and young and not very staid,
I dare not venture of having her, because of her being able to spread any report
of our family upon any discontent among the heai*t of our neighbours. So that
my dependence is upon Mr. Blagrave.

So too in the following entry (August 31, 1664) :

She is one that Will finds out for us, and understands a little musique, and"
and I think will please us well, only her friends live too near us.

And a similar fear of social criticism sharpens the sting of remorse
for his behaviour to the ' cook mayde Luce ' already mentioned. But
these doubts speedily vanished on the arrival of Mercer, who rose at
once into high favour. Probably ' the strange slavery that I stand
in to beauty, that I value nothing near it ' (September 6, 1664),
contributed to her esteem in her master's eyes ; but independently
of her looks, she undoubtedly possessed some attractive social qualities.
Unlike poor Pall, she is admitted from the first to her master's dinner
table (September 9, 1664) :

Mercer dined with us at table, this being her first dinner in my house. After
dinner left them and to White Hall, where a small Tangier Committee, and so
back again home, and there my wife and Mercer and Tom and I sat till eleven
at night, singing and fiddling, and a great joy it is to see me master of so
much pleasure in my house, that it is and will be still, I hope, a constant
pleasure to me to be at home. The girle plays pretty well upon the harpsicord,
but only ordinary tunes, but hath a good hand ; sings a little, but hath a good,
voyce and eare.

Pepys must have made no secret of his admiration, for Mrs. Pepya
very soon took occasion to interfere (September 19, 1664) :

Up, my wife and I having a little anger about her woman alread}', she
thinking that I take too much care of her at table to mind her (my wife) of
cutting for her, but it soon over.

Pepys, however, took the hint, and evidently became more dis-
creet. On the 29th of September 1664 he finds Mercer playing on
her ' Vyall,' ' So I to the Vyall and singing till late.' But with this
exception we hear no more of music with her till the llth of November
1664 ; and for many months afterwards, so far as appears from the

274 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

Diary, there was nothing more than the most ordinary intercourse
between master and maid. Moreover, in May 1665 the plague made
its appearance, and on the 5th of July 1665 Mrs. Pepys and two of
her maids leave London for Woolwich, her husband following early
in September, and taking up his quarters at Greenwich, whither his
office had been removed in the middle of August. Notwithstanding
the natural anxieties of the time, he continued, as usual, to enjoy
himself. He admits in his retrospect of the year (December 31, 1665)
to the ' great store of dancings we have had at my cost (which I
was willing to indulge myself and my wife) at my lodgings.' Mercer
figured in these entertainments and distinguished herself as a dancer.
On the llth of October 1665 we hear of

& fine company at my lodgings at Woolwich, where my wife and Mercer, and
Mrs. Barbara danced, and mighty merry we were, but especially at Mercer's
dancing a jigg, which she does the best I ever did see, having the most natural
way of it, and keeps time the most perfectly I ever did see.

This corroborates his previous testimony to her good ear.

About this time, however, began Mrs. Pepys' quarrels with Mercer,
•which broke out periodically afterwards. Their first serious dispute
•occurred towards the end of August (August 29, 1665) :

In the morning waking, among other discourse my wife began to tell me
the difference between her and Mercer, and that it was only from restraining
her to gad abroad to some Frenchmen that were in the town, which I do not
wholly yet hi part believe, and for my quiet would not enquire into.

Probably Pepys was right in concluding that the charge had a
foundation in fact, though his wife's account of it might be rather
highly coloured ; and every man must sympathise with his truly
masculine cowardice in keeping clear of the quarrel altogether.

Mrs. Pepys returned to their London home on the 2nd of December
1665, but Pepys himself did not return there finally till the 7th of
January 1666. In the February following, Mercer accompanies them
on their visit to Sir George Carteret, at Cranbourne, and thence to
Windsor. This visit, and the reception which greeted him, pleased
Pepys' vanity enormously. As he tells us (February 26, 1665) :

So much love and kindnesse from my Lady Carteret, Lady Jeniimah, and
Lady Slaning, that it joys my heart, and when I consider the manner of my
going hither, with a coach and four horses and servants and a woman with us,
and coming hither being so much made of, and used with that state, and then
going to Windsor and being shown all that we were there, and had wherewith
to give every body something for their pains, and then going home, all in fine
weather and no fears or cares upon me, I do thinke myself obliged to thinke
myself happy.

" Possibly the ladies may have been a little upset by their exertions,

1904 PEPYS AND MERCER 275

but we learn with regret that the harmony of this happy day ended in
a discord.

After a little at iny office, I to bed ; and an houre after was waked with
my wife's quarrelling with Mercer, at which I was angry, and my wife and I
fell out. But with much ado to sleep again, I beginning to practise more
temper and give her her way.

On the 8th of April 1666, Mrs. Pepys being at the time on a visit
to his father at Brampton, we read : ' At night had Mercer to comb
my head and so to supper, sing a psalm, and to bed.' This task,
which Mercer was called upon more than once to undertake, may
sometimes have been rather unpleasant. Personal cleanliness was
not a strong feature of the period, and Pepys was in no way. ahead of
his times in this respect. On the 23rd of January 1668 he tells us
with the utmost composure that, suspecting the presence of parasites,
he caused his wife to make the necessary search. His suspicions
proved to be fully justified, and here the language of the Diary becomes
too plain for our politer ears. But to Pepys the discovery was evi-
dently insignificant, though he was moved to a mild astonishment at
the numbers of the enemy, ' which I wonder at, being more than I
have had I believe these twenty years.' Indeed, it almost seems
from an entry of the 21st of February 1664 that he regarded cleanli-
ness as a sort of affectation.

My wife being busy in going with her woman to a hot house to bathe her-
self, after her being long within doors in the dirt, so that she now pretends to a
resolution of being hereafter very clean. How long it will hold I can guess.

Mrs. Pepys returned somewhat unexpectedly, on the 19th of April
1666, from her visit to Brampton, as to which Pepys observes :
* Anon comes my wife from Brampton, not looked for till Saturday,
which will hinder me of a little pleasure, but I am glad of her coming.'
The remark concisely sums up his general attitude towards her. In
his light-hearted way he was really fond of her, and liked her company.
He pays a charming tribute to her care and affection for him in the
days of their poverty, ' for which I ought ever to love and admire
her, and do ' (February 25, 1666). And again he exclaims, ' For my
part I and my wife will keep to one another and let the world go hang,
for there is nothing but falseness in it' (March 5, 1666). But her
follies and her indifferent management of the household annoyed
him. Thus he writes bitterly on the 4th of February 1664 :

Was cruelly vexed in my mind that all my trouble in this world almost should
arise from my disorders in my family and the indiscretion of a wife that brings
me nothing almost (besides a comely person) but only trouble and discontent.

He was also rather in dread of her tongue and her temper, but he
never hesitated to sacrifice her to his selfish pursuit of pleasure.

And now we begin to hear more of those impromptu musical

276 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

gatherings which form such a delightful element in the picture of
his life. No time or place came amiss for them, and on one occasion
he and Mercer sing together in Spring Garden till they collect a crowd
round them. But it was mostly in his garden, or on his new leads,
that he and his wife and Mercer, sometimes assisted by his boy, Tom,
or by musical friends like Mr. Hill, would pass evening after evening
in music and song. One instance will suffice (May 5, 1666) :

About 11 I home, it being a fine moonshine and so my wife and Mercer
come into the garden, and, my business being done, we sang till about twelve at
night, with mighty pleasure to ourselves and neighbours, by their casements
opening, and so home to supper and to bed.

About this time his attachment to Mercer was evidently becoming
stronger, and he was greatly disturbed by a serious quarrel between
her and his wife, which resulted in the former returning to her mother's
house on the 23rd of June 1666. Of this he writes :

I to my papers, but vexed at what I^heard but a little of this morning, before
my wife went out, that Mercer and she fell out last night, and the girle is gone
home to her mother's for alltogcther. At the office all the morning, much dis-
quiett in my mind in the middle of myVbusiness about this girle. Home at
noon to dinner, and what with the going away of my father to-day and the losse
of Mercer, I after dinner went up to my chamber and there could have cried
to myself, had not people come to me about business.

However, the quarrel was patched up, Mercer returned, and the
musical parties were resumed. Thus we hear (July 24, 1666) : ' At
noon to dinner, and after dinner with Mercer (as of late my practice
is) a song and so to the office.' But, alas ! this furnished Mrs. Pepys
with a new ground of offence (July 30, 1666) :

Thence home ; and to sing with my wife and Mercer in the garden ; and
coming in I find my wife plainly dissatisfied with me, that I can spend so much
time with Mercer, teaching her to sing, and could never take the pains with her..
Which I acknowledge ; but it is because the girle do take musique mighty
readily, and she do not, and musique is the thing of the world that I love most,
and all the pleasure almost that I can now take. So to bed in some little
discontent, but no words from me.

Still matters seem to have proceeded on the old footing, Mercer
continuing to be their companion as before in musical parties, picnics,
and other entertainments. Certainly there was no unpleasant feeling
on the 14th of August 1666, the Thanksgiving Day appointed for a
victory over the Dutch, when the remarkable party at Mrs. Mercer's
took place. The Diarist shall describe this for himself.

And then about nine o'clock to Mrs. Mercer's gate, where the fire and boys
expected us, and her son had provided abundance of serpents and rockets ; and
there mighty merry (my Lady Penn and Pegg going thither with us, and Nan
Wright), till about twelve at night, flinging our fireworks, and burning one
another and the people over the way. And at last our businesses being most

1904 PEPYS AND MERCER 277

spent, we into Mrs. Mercer's, and there mighty merry, smutting one another
with candle grease and soot, till most of us were like devils. And that being
done, then we broke up, and to my house ; and there I made them drink, and
upstairs we went, and then fell into dancing (W. Batelier dancing well), and
dressing, him and I and one Mr. Banister (who with his wife come over also
with us) like women ; and Mercer put on a suit of Tom's like a boy [" Oh, Mercer,
Mercer ! "] and mighty mirth we had, and Mercer danced a jigg ; and Nan
Wright and my wife and Pegg Pen put on periwiggs. Thus we spent till three
or four in the morning, mighty merry ; and then parted, and to bed.

After a night like this it is not surprising to find that the first
entry in the Diary for the next day is ' Mighty sleepy.' But three
weeks later the final quarrel occurred between Mrs. Pepys and Mercer,
and on the 3rd of September 1666 Mercer was dismissed. This is
Pepys' account of the affair :

This day, Mercer being not at home, but against her mistress's order gone to
her mother's, and my wife going thither to speak withW. Hewer, met her there,
and was angry ; and her mother saying that she was not a 'prentice girl, to ask
leave every time she goes abroad, my wife with good reason was angry, and
when she came home, bid her begone again. And so she went away, which
troubled me, but yet less than it would, because of the condition we are in, fear
of coming into in a little time of being less able to keepe one in her quality.

Pepys' fears were probably due to the Great Fire which was then
raging ; but his allusion to Mercer's ' quality ' seems to indicate that
she was superior to the ordinary run of maidservants. Negotiations
for her return were subsequently opened, Pepys bribing his wife with
a gown at 15s. a yard ' to incline her to have Mercer again ' ; and a
treaty in the following terms was finally arranged between husband
and wife (September 28, 1666) :

Lay long in bed, and am come to an agreement with my wife to have Mercer
again, on condition she may learn this winter two months to dance, and she
promises me she will endeavour to learn to sing, and all this I am willing
enough to.

Mercer herself, however, was not disposed to return, notwith-
standing her mother's desire that she should do so, and on the
12th of October 1666 her place was filled by Barker. But this separa-
tion did not last long, and friendly intercourse between Mercer and
her old master and mistress was soon resumed, though on a far more
natural footing. With all due allowance for the different conditions
of the period, she was evidently above the status of an ordinary ser-
vant, and was fully qualified for that of a friend. This position
she speedily fell into, and became the constant companion of
Mrs. Pepys, who, in spite of occasional tiffs, evidently enjoyed her
society. On the 18th of November 1666, a little more than two months
after her dismissal, Mercer dines with the Pepyses, and from this time
forth she was a constant visitor and not an infrequent guest at their
house. On the 24th of February 1667 Mrs. Pepys declares that she

278 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

will not send for Mercer ' to dine with us as heretofore,' on the ground
of the ill report which she ' hath got by her keeping of company.'
It may be conceded that Mercer was something of a flirt, but probably
this resolution was due more to a passing fit of ill- temper or jealousy
on the part of Mrs. Pepys than to any serious scandal attaching to
Mercer. It is certain, at any rate, that her resolution was not kept,
for on the 8th of April 1667 Mercer filled a place in a grand dinner
party of twelve, where Pepys, with a certain characteristic snobbish-
ness, brought out all his best plate for the express purpose of annoying
his guests.

But Lord ! to see with what envy they looked upon all my fine plate was
pleasant ; for I made the best show I could, to let them understand me and my
condition, to take down the pride of Mrs. Clerke, who thinks herself very great.

Indeed, Mercer seems to have shared most of their amusements,
theatres, picnics, and other jaunts. Moreover, the old musical
meetings are revived, with Barker (the new maid) to swell the choir —
a valuable addition according to Pepys.

On the 2nd of April 1668, Mrs. Pepys goes on a visit to Brampton till
the 26th of May, and Pepys at once blossoms out into a grass widower
of the most vigorous growth. His life becomes a round of festivities
in the company of Mercer, Mrs. Gayet, Mrs. Horsfield, Mrs. Turner,
and others, and he plainly enjoyed himself hugely. Small wonder,
however, that Mrs. Pepys, when tales of these junketings came to her
ears, should take an unsympathetic view of them ; and they certainly
aggravated her bitterness in the domestic convulsion which darkens
the last months of the Diary. This is Pepys' account of the situation
on the 18th of June 1668, after the return of himself, his wife, and
Deborah Willett (who had then been installed as maid in Barker's
place) from their tour to Oxford, Bristol, Salisbury, and elsewhere :

My wife still in a melancholy fusty humour, and crying, and do not tell me
plainly what it is ; but I by little words find that she hath heard of my going to
plays, and carrying people abroad every day in her absence.

He fears that the storm will soon burst ; and it does, Mrs. Pepys
reproaching him with his selfish devotion to pleasure, and begging,
with tears, ' that she might go into France, and live there out of
trouble.' However, peace was patched up in a fashion, and the old
routine continued outwardly unbroken. Mercer is still constantly in
their company, and on one occasion (May 29, 1668) she brings a friend
of her own — a Mr. Monteith — to sing with them. Pepys was not too
well pleased with this, possibly from jealousy of Monteith, whom he
described as ' a swaggering, handsome young gentleman,' contrasting
him unfavourably with his companion, one Pelham, ' a sober citizen
merchant.' However, he was obliged, as he tells us, to spend ' all
this evening till eleven at night singing with them, till I was tired

1904 PEPYS AND MERCER 279

of them, because of the swaggering fellow with the base, though the
girl Mercer did mightily commend him before me.' On the 10th of
September 1668 Mrs. Pepys abuses her husband violently for staying
with Mercer in the coach to teach her ' the Larke's song,' while she
herself is shopping. But this was only a passing displeasure, as on the
15th of September 1668 Mrs. Pepys, Mercer, Deborah, and W. Hewer
all go on a visit to Roger Pepys at Cambridge, to see ' Sturbridge
Fayre.' There is a gap in the Diary between the 29th of September and
the llth of October, but they must have returned from this visit by
the latter date, as we find on the 12th of October 1668 that Mrs. Pepys,
Mercer, W. Hewer, and Deborah go to the King's playhouse ; and at
this point Mercer disappears from the story.

It is almost more by inference than from direct information that
we can gain any general idea of this attractive but elusive figure,
who entered so largely into the Diarist's life. Her social antecedents
we know to have been good. Pepys speaks of her (September 8,
1664) as ' a decayed merchant's daughter.' Nowadays a girl of such
position would hardly go into service, but it was by no means unusual
in the seventeenth century, when ' tradesmen of the better sort were
gentlemen, not only in point of cultivation, but belonging to good
families ; younger sons of men of position went into trade as a matter
of course, and did not lose caste in any way by so doing.' 2

Pepys himself belonged to an old family, the Pepyses of Cottenham
in Cambridgeshire, and his great-aunt, Paulina, married Sir Sidney
Montagu, and became the mother of the first Earl of Sandwich. Yet
Pepys' father, before succeeding to his brother Robert's estate at
Brampton, followed the trade of a tailor, and young Samuel as a lad
used to carry parcels to his customers (March 11, 1667). Again,
' the superior sort of servants were as well educated as their masters,
and wrote letters at least as well, if not better, spelt and expressed
than those of their mistresses.' 3

But we need not go outside the Diary for evidence of the com-
paratively high social level from which the better servants were
drawn. Thus Gosnell, as we have seen, was niece to Justice Jiggins.
Deborah Willett's uncle was a Bristol merchant, ' a sober merchant,
very good company, and so like one of our sober, wealthy, London
merchants, as pleased me mightily.' Indeed, her arrival at Bristol
(June 13, 1668) produced a mild social excitement, many visitors
coming to see her out of affection to the memory of her mother, who
had been ' a brave woman mightily beloved among the poor of the
place.' So, too, in September 1664, after Mercer had been engaged,
but four days before she came, Pepys records that :

Mr. Hill came to tell me that he had got a gentlewoman for my wife, one
Mrs. Ferrabosco, that sings most admirably. I seemed glad of it ; but I hear
she is too gallant for me, and I am not sorry that I misse her.

2 Home Life under tlie Stuarts, Introd. vi. 3 Ib. 219.

280 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

Considerations of this kind throw an instructive light on such
incidents as Mrs. Mercer's party. Pepys was keenly alive to the
quality of his company, and unless he had recognised the Mercers as
socially his equals, he certainly would not have betaken himself
readily to a boisterous romp at the house of his maidservant's mother.
Of Mercer's appearance we can glean next to nothing. Pepys de-
scribes her (December 31, 1664) as ' a pretty, modest, quiett mayde ' ;
and on the 20th of April 1665 we find this entry : ' At noon dined,
and Mr. Povey by agreement with me (where his boldness with Mercer,
poor innocent wench, did make both her and me blush).' Whether
she was dark or fair we know not, but her general appearance must
have been rather distinguished, for a certain Captain Herbert
(September 22, 1665) ' did mighty seriously inquire after who was that
in the black dress with my wife yesterday, and would not believe that
it was my wife's mayde, Mercer, but it was she.' On one other occasion
only, so far as I know, is her dress noticed — namely, on the 6th of August
1667, when, on returning to dinner at noon, Pepys finds ' Mrs. Wood,
formerly Bab Shelden, and our Mercer, who is dressed to-day in a
paysan dress, that looks mighty pretty.' She was then, of course,
no longer in service, and perhaps we may assume that while she was
a member of Pepys' household a decorous black attire veiled the
well-springs of frolic that lay beneath the surface. We may be certain,
at all events, that she was simplex munditiis, for Pepys, whose taste
was most wholesome in this matter, abhorred artificial adornment in
women. He flies into a rage over his wife's ' white locks,' as he
scornfully calls the side puffs of fair hair with which she had tricked
herself out (May 11, 1667). He also detested paint (September 16,
1667) : ' My wife and Mercer called me to Mrs. Pierce's, by invitation
to dinner, where I find her painted, which makes me loathe her.'
There are indications that Mercer always inclined to embonpoint ;
indeed, on the 28th of October 1667 Pepys ungallantly records that
she ' grows fat.' But the excellence of her dancing forbids the idea
that she was in any way clumsy.

Her musical powers, and, indeed, the general diffusion of musical
ability among the middle classes, must strike us as remarkable.
Pepys was continually on the look-out for musical servants, and
seems to have had little difficulty in obtaining them. Nor was he
singular in this respect. Sir Kalph Verney, writing from abroad,
speaks of a maid whose merits and demerits present a peculiar com-
bination. ' Her two sisters are but Ramping girls, but truly she is a
civill wench, and plays well of the lute, she is well cladd, and well
bred, but rawe to serve and full of the itch.' 4

It is clear that musical proficiency was much commoner in Pepys'
community than in our own. And this was not unnatural, seeing
that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the study of music
4 Home Life under the Stiiarts, p. 213.

1904 PEPYS AND MERCER 281

usually comprised not merely musical notation, but the principles of
harmony also. In musical execution we doubtless surpass the older
musicians ; but few ordinary pianists of the present day could play
from the figured basses which were in regular use in Pepys' time.
Sir Frederick Bridge tells us that there was then ' a general custom
of keeping a cittern in a barber's shop, so that the person waiting to
be shaved could pass the time pleasantly till his turn came.' 5 Such
a custom could only have arisen in response to a tolerably wide demand.
It may be that Pepys' own circle was rather exceptionally musical ;
but he once invites a casual fellow-traveller to sing with him, and the
readiness with which the invitation is accepted shows that singing
must have been a common recreation. Mercer's musical accom-
plishments, therefore, were not singular, and in point of fact it appears
that they were not above the average. With Pepys it was a passion,
and there is something rather droll in his unaffected confession
(February 27, 1667) that ' the wind-musique ' (in The Virgin
Martyr) ' when the angel comes down is so sweet that it ravished me,
and, indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it made me really
sick, just as I have formerly been when in love with my wife.' And
for the converse we may turn to the following entry of the 22nd of
January, 1667 :

Lord ! how did I please myself to make Betty Turner sing, to see what a
beast she is as to singing, not knowing how to sing one note in tune ; but, only
for the experiment, I would not for 40s. hear her sing a tune : worse than my
wife a thousand times.

It seems, however, that neither he nor Mercer was a highly trained
singer, and, like her, he preferred to rely rather on his ear and native
taste. This he admits (April 12, 1667) :

I tried my girles Mercer and Barker singly one after another, a single song
' At dead low ebb, &c.' and I do clearly find that as to manner of singing, the
latter do much the better, the other thinking herself as I do myself above taking
pains for a manner of singing, contenting ourselves with the judgment and
goodness of eare.

He had learnt harmony, however, and his song, Beauty Retire, is,
on the whole, good in its contrapuntal construction, and, though
slightly heavy, is by no means a bad song in itself.

This community of musical tastes is the pleasantest feature of
Pepys' intimacy with his pretty maid. Whatever unworthier elements
he may at times have forced into them, their relations, so far as
music was concerned, were purely idyllic. Quite an Arcadian charm
hangs over the merry picnics with his wife, Mercer, and sometimes
Deborah, to ' Barne Elms,' ' Fox Hall,' ' Morclake,' and elsewhere,
bright with the beguilement of music, light hearts, and the moon-
shine in which he delighted, and those quiet evenings of song in the

5 Samuel Pepys, Lover of Husigue, r« 73.

282 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

garden, which he missed so sorely in the troublous days which bring
the Diary to a close.

We hear a good deal of Mercer's pretty discourse, but not a single
remark of hers has been preserved ; and though her talk may well
have been sprightly, there is no reason to suppose that she was intel-
lectually brilliant. Probably her charm lay largely in her amiability,
which, on the whole, was proof against the constant petulance of
Mrs. Pepys. Moreover, in none of their disputes do we find any
trace of that unseemly violence which so often appears in Mrs. Pepys'
altercations with her other servants. Pepys testifies (September 8,
1664) to her skilfulness in her own business, and except once
(December 26, 1665), when she wanted to have a servant under
her, she never seems to have given any trouble. Her chief stumbling-
block was her taste for getting out, a taste not unknown to modern
households, and which seems to have been rampant in Pepys' time.
One of their maids was really a gem in this respect (July 10, 1667) :

Our girle Mary, whom Payne helped us to . . . did go away declaring that
she must be where she might earn something one day, and spend it and play
away the next.

It is difficult to see how a household could be conducted on these
principles at all ; but Pepys does not appear to think her conduct
particularly unusual. Mercer's personal attractiveness probably
ministered to Pepys' inordinate love of display. His undisguised
delight in having ' all things mighty rich and handsome about ' him
may well have been gratified at the adornment of his menage by the
smart maid whose culture was fully on a level with that of his ordinary
guests. But apart from this, the mere possession of a maid was an
accession to his social pretensions which he appreciated keenly.
Thus, on the first Sunday after Mercer's arrival (September 11, 1664),
we find :

Up and to Church in the best manner I have gone a good while, that is to
say, with my wife, and her woman Mercer, along with us, and Tom, my boy,
waiting on us.

And the same feeling is displayed in the account of his visit to Sir
George Carteret.

It is, of course, obvious from the Diary that, for a time at any
rate, Pepys infused considerable warmth into the relations between
Mercer and himself ; but, none the less, they reveal an unmistakable
element of restraint which is conspicuously absent from most of his
attachments. Moreover, he records all his peccadilloes with a frank
minuteness which makes it certain that no detail of his intimacy
with her would have been omitted ; and hence the silence of the
Diary is almost conclusive to show that she filled her somewhat
perilous position with considerable tact and skill, and emerged from
it without being seriously compromised.

1904 PEPYS AND MERCER 283

Pepys' apologists have no easy task, and it is better to admit
frankly that no real apology is possible. His irregularities cannot be
ignored or explained away, but the sternest moralist will be con-
strained to deal gently with them. Admitting all that can be urged
against him, the character of the man pleads for lenience, for in
many respects it is the irresponsible character of a child. We have
but to consider his puerile squabbles with his wife, his absurd little
vows of self-denial, and the equally absurd devices by which he
evaded them ; the childish pleasure which he takes in playing with
his new watch (May 13, 1665) ; the want of self-control which
makes him ' throw the trenchers about the room ' in a fit of temper
because the cloth was crumpled (December 7, 1666) ; and, under
all, the irresolute nature, which, as he confesses (January 5, 1667),
makes him ' mighty unready to answer " No " to anything.' He is
filled with a child-like delight in life which drives him to live for the
sensations of the moment (January 6, 1667) :

And so I do really enjoy myself, and understand that if I do not do it now
I shall not hereafter, it may be, be able to pay for it, or have health to take
pleasure in it, and so fill myself with vain expectation of pleasure and go
without it.

The seduction of the fleeting hour was usually effective to stifle
not only his moral sense, which was weak, but his religious convic-
tions, which, in a way, were strong. He is genuinely concerned about
his wife's leanings to Roman Catholicism, and genuinely pleased to
find that she will still go to church with him (December 6, 1668).
His prayers for Divine pardon are apparently sincere, but a repetition
of the offence is usually treading on their heels. His carefulness in
religious observance is in curious contrast to his laxity of moral
restraint, and when the two are jumbled together the effect is rather
ludicrous. Thus, on the 28th of January 1666 :

Fast day for the King's death ... it being a little moonshine and fair
weather, and so into the garden, and, with Mercer, sang till my wife put me in
mind of its being a fast day ; and so I was sorry for it, and stopped, and home
to cards awhile, and had opportunity para baiser Mercer several times, and so
to bed.

It is certainly difficult to appreciate the principles of an abstinence
which prohibits music, but is compatible with cards and a somewhat
practical flirtation. It should not be forgotten, of course, that kissing
as a mode of salutation was freely practised in Pepys' day, and was
by no means uncommon even between men. But Pepys undoubtedly
took a generous view of his privileges where women were concerned.
He seems to have recognised this himself, and to have tried to restrain
his inclinations by the frail curb of a vow. There is an amusing entry
as to this on the 3rd of February, 1664 :

Thence, being invited to my Uncle Wight's, where the Wights all dined ;

284 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug.

and, among the others, pretty Mrs. Margaret, who indeed is a very pretty lady ;
and though by my vowe it costs me 12d. a kiss after the first, yet I did adven-
ture upon a couple.

But though a keen lover of pleasure, he was no mere voluptuary.
Every branch of literature, science, and art was full of interest to him,
and the value of his work at the Admiralty is beyond dispute. Sir
Frederick Bridge justly reminds us that Pepys was a young man —
twenty-seven to thirty-six — during the period covered by the Diary,
but in other respects I fear that his apology breaks down. His plea
that the closing words of the Diary show a genuine repentance on the
part of the Diarist is altogether untenable, for the premisses are based
on a misquotation of the passage in question, and the conclusion is
contradicted by an entry a few lines above it.

No, Pepys must be taken as we find him ; and we find him with
many a fault that no kindness can conceal, but even in his faults
intensely human, intensely alive, and withal ' mighty merry.'

But to return to Mercer. Her story has rather a special interest
for us in these latter days, when there is a certain demand for a repeti-
tion of the experiment which Pepys attempted, and with such small
success. He tried, as far as circumstances would permit, to treat his
maidservants as ladies ; and the result was not encouraging. The
attempt succeeded best with Mercer ; but even in her case it produced
domestic derangement, and her friendship with the Pepys was evidently
on a far happier footing after she left their service. In the case of
her successor, Barker, the experiment failed altogether, as appears
from her master's own admission on dismissing her (May 13, 1667) :

I am the more willing to do it to be rid of one that made work and trouble
in the house, and had not qualities of any honour or pleasure to me or my
family, but what is a strange thing did always declare to her mistress and others
that she had rather be put to drudgery and to wash the house than to live as she
did like a gentlewoman.

Pepys' mortification is intelligible, but nevertheless the girl's
instinct was sound. She was unequal to the position to which he
sought to raise her, and she found the strain of this unnatural eleva-
tion unbearable. The lesson may usefully be taken to heart by
ambitious maids of the present day, and the crotchety reformers
who stimulate their aspirations. It may be doubted whether the
general culture of our domestic servants is even actually superior to
that of the servants of the seventeenth century, and relatively to their
respective periods it is certainly inferior. There was often a real
equality between the servants of the earlier period and their masters,
which justified the position to which they frequently attained. But
where such equality is wanting, no artificial devices can bridge the
gap. Moreover, life loses in simplicity as time rolls on, and the
experiment which failed in the seventeenth century can hardly hope

1904 PEPYS AND MERCER 285

to succeed in the twentieth. But here retrospect is pleasanter than
prophecj. Mercer's successors, if any, may safely be left to the
tender mercies of the future. Mercer herself will remain untouched
by any of their failures. She is not a striking figure in the Diary, but
the mere fact that she entered so closely into the life of the famous
author gives her an interest which cannot be overlooked; and as a side-
light upon the social life of the times her story is of real value. Slight
as the sketch of her is, it gives us the impression of a pleasant and
attractive girl, of considerable culture, with the high spirits of youth
and some of its indiscretions. But she moves, be it remembered, in
an environment altogether strange to us, and she is the creature of
her own age, not ours.

NOP.MA.N PEARSON.

VOL. LVI— No. 330 U

286 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

SOME INDIAN PORTRAITS

NOTHING must strike the quiet observer in India so much as the
marked differences in the typical characters of the people who inhabit
the continent of India. To most people in England these differences
merely suggest the broad classification of the native population into
Hindus and Muhammadans. But to those who have had any per-
sonal knowledge of the country, difference of creed will very insuffi-
ciently account for the physical and social differences they have
observed among the dark or copper-coloured people they have known.
The Ardin (or cultivator), the Say1 ad (who claims direct descent from
the Arabian prophet), the domestic Khansama (or head-butler), and
the Bhisti (or water-carrier), are all Muhammadans. But in respect
of every element which goes to constitute the microcosmic man as a
whole, the Ardin differs as much from each of the other three types as
each of the latter differs from the others, although all four may be
Panjabis by birth and Muslims by religion. Again, the Banya (or
village banker and general grocer), the Mahajan (or city banker),
the Parohit (or family priest), the Rajput farmer, the domestic Bearer
(or valet), and the office clerk may all be Hindus, and all born in the
one province, possibly within a radius of twenty miles, and yet who
familiar with these types could mistake one for the other, or fail to
be struck by their essential differences ? The phenomenon is a curious
one which baffles the ethnologist, the sociologist, and all the other
scientists or ologists to explain in a satisfactory manner. I do not
propose in this paper to offer any solution of my own. My object
is the less ambitious one of trying to present a faithful picture of
some of the more prominent types I have met, from the point of view
of one who has spent a lifetime in India, and who has the deepest
sympathy with the people of that magnificent country.

Take, for instance, that much abused but very indispensable
person, the village Banya. Squat, flat-nosed, sharp-eyed, rotund-
shaped, and generally close-shaven, it is impossible to mistake him
for anyone else, or anyone else for him. And if his physical personality
is so well and sharply defined, his intellectual and moral qualities are
no less so. His capacity for trade may be said to be hereditary ; it
descended to him from his father, and he will transmit it to his son.

1904 SOME INDIAN PORTRAITS 287

He deals in everything. He is a vendor of every description of dry
goods suitable to supply the wants of the community amongst whom
he lives. He also supplies oil and sowing seeds, drugs and condiments.
He keeps a small stock of drapery for rustic use. But above all he is
the village banker and financier, and it is in this role that his presence
is most felt. He advances money to needy agriculturists — and
nearly all Indian agriculturists are needy — on the mere asking, with-
out security as a rule, and on easy terms as to repayment, on Shylock's
principle of making the rate of interest cover the risk of an unsecured
loan. He requires no investigation as to the purposes for which the
loan is demanded, nor as to the solvency of the borrower, while the
only record of the transaction that is usually made is an entry in his
day-book, setting forth the particulars of the loan, which the borrower
is asked to verify by affixing his mark or seal. The agriculturist
finds much in this system of trade which suits his tastes ; it is informal,
it involves no trouble, and it procures him what he wants at his very
door. And as to repayment, the Banya is indulgent, and what need
not be faced at once never presents much anxiety to the agriculturist.
Thus the Banya is left to make up his account at the end of the year,
to add the interest to the principal, and with perhaps a small further
advance to the debtor to enable him to purchase sowing seeds, or
agricultural cattle and implements, the total is carried forward, bearing
the same rate of interest, and the debtor having merely affixed his
seal or mark to the entry in token of his admission of its correctness,
thinks no more about the transaction till the harvest season again
comes round. Then the Banya has to look alive after his own interests.
If he is not sharp enough, the debtor steals a march upon him and
conceals as much of the produce as he can, for be it known that the
agriculturist of the present day in most parts of India is by no means
the Peter Simple he is usually represented to be, and is quite capable
of playing a trick on his creditor if the chance presents itself. It is
not often, however, that the Banya is found napping, and it is at
harvest time that he shows his capacity for exacting his full pound of
flesh. A certain portion of the produce, appertaining to the agri-
culturist's share, is first set aside to cover the current interest due :
if the harvest has been a good one, perhaps a further portion is taken
by him to reduce the principal of the debt, which, as already stated,
includes the unpaid portion of the original loan, plus previous interest
up to the date of the last balance ; of the remainder of the produce
the agriculturist is allowed to retain what is absolutely necessary for
the wants of his household, and if there is any excess over, the Banya
appropriates it by a credit in his account at an agreed rate, which, as
might be expected, is generally favourable to him. At sunset, and
before the evening meal, the Banya may be seen in his little shop,
balancing his accounts for the day ; his system is simple — a daily entry
in a single book, or if his transactions are extensive and his trade

u 2

288 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

prosperous, he adds a ledger and a journal to his series. He is seldom
found to have recorded a fictitious item, or to have omitted a true
one, and no beggar ever passes his shop without receiving a farthing's
worth of doll, or rice, or maize, or other useful staple of food. He
is usually the husband of a single wife, and, as a rule, he lives in con-
nubial happiness. The Banya seldom plays the part of a gay Lothario,
and when he does he generally plays it badly and comes to grief. He
often becomes rich and fattens in the process ; he is rarely poor, and
never troubles the bankruptcy court. Such is the man who may be
said to regulate the internal economy of the village system, without
whom the agriculturist could scarcely exist, for he is dependent upon
his resources for all his wants, who is a Shylock in one sense and a
benefactor in another. Contrast him with the well-fed, oil-besmeared,
opulent and consequential Shoukar or Mahajan (the city banker),
and you will be disposed to say that he stands in much the same
relation to the latter as a rabbit to a fox, a terrier to a bull-dog, or
a weasel to a stoat. Yet both are Hindus, both belong to the third of
the three great regenerate classes, whose vocation is trade and who
have a soul to save from the torments of that Hindu hell called put.
There is a family likeness between them, and the difference upon a
closer acquaintance may seem only to be one of degree. But that
may mean a great deal or it may mean next to nothing, according to
the standard you apply for computing the degree. Speaking generally,
it may be safely asserted that the difference is at all events a sub-
stantial one, and in no case could it be said to be microscopic. Look,
for instance, at the Mahajan clothed in spotless white, with a flat
turban of the finest muslin artistically arranged to cover his baldness
or to conceal his one solitary lock of hair, seated in his carriage
drawn by a pair of fast-trotting greys, as he drives forth to 'eat the
air ' at the close of a busy day ; and then picture to yourself the squat
village Banya riding home on his jaded pony, with a bundle of account
books slung on his back after a troublesome day spent in court suing
one of his many constituents, and your comment if you know both
men will be, alike and yet how different ! The difference in truth lies,
as Teufelsdrockh would say, in the outer garment and not in the
inner soul. The soul in each case is that of Mr. Isaacs.

Then let us take another and a widely different type — the ordinary
native clerk in a Government office. He may be a Hindu or he may
be a Muhammadan, but the former is the more general type. He
also is a very distinct species, the like of which is not met with out of
India. He is a skilled penman, his caligraphy is unique, distinguished
for its regularity, clearness, and superb flourishes. His intellectual
attainments as a rule are represented by a Middle School Pass Certifi-
cate, but occasionally he boasts of being a failed First Arts or even a
failed B.A. In the latter case his ambition is proportionately higher,
just as his value in the matrimonial market is enhanced. He is an

1904 SOME INDIAN PORTRAITS 289

indefatigable worker, and his desk has an attraction for him which
it possesses for no Englishman. He soon makes himself acquainted
with the rules of his department, and becomes a veritable walking
compendium of regulations, the terror of officers who have to submit
returns to his official superior, and the unfailing Mentor of the latter
in all that concerns the red-tapism of his department. His know-
ledge of the English language is not generally profound, but his
vocabulary is astonishingly wide, and he has a particular fancy for
long words, for uncommon wrords, and for words having two or more
meanings, which he usually contrives to use in an unconventional
sense scarcely sanctioned by Dr. Murray's New English Dictionary.
His style of epistolary correspondence, when clothed in an English
garb, presents a wonderful combination of pathos rising to sublimity,
and bathos descending to the most absurd comicality. It is a style
which has made the clerk or babu a wide-world celebrity, and which
perhaps finds its highest literary expression in a Biography of Mr.
Justice Onocool Mukerji, which was published at Calcutta a few
years ago. But the babu's knowledge of English and his magnilo-
quent style are merely some of his ' outside accomplishments.' The
real man is an official product ; he is made up of red tape, and when
he has run his earthly career, and his ashes have been collected, we
feel sure that his soul would rest in peace if they could be put away
in an official envelope, neatly tied with red tape, and sealed with the
Government of India seal in red sealing-wax, bearing an outside
inscription, written in a large official handwriting, ' To the memory
of Bindrabun Babu'

The Grasscutter may be taken to be a third type. His vocation
is to supply grass for his master's horse, which he cuts with a small
hand-scythe, and carries home on his head. He is the worst paid
servant in an Anglo-Indian's establishment, and he is usually in
possession of the most ready money. This may read paradoxical,
but it is nevertheless true. To say he is frugal is only to express a
half truth, for his frugality reaches a point which Hobson is reputed
to have attempted in regard to his horse, and failed to achieve. His
bodily sustenance is supplied by a single meal, which consists of a
piceworth of your horse's grain, followed by a copious drink of cold
water. That his liver and his spleen do not thrive under such a dietary
has been proved by many a post-mortem examination, but his purse
is largely increased by his self-denial. His savings are lent out to
other servants of the household at a rate averaging 20 per cent. ;
and thus, while his body becomes more and more emaciated, his ribs
so prominent that they seem to have no flesh covering, and his liver
assumes an alarming size, he rejoices to see his hoard of the shining
metal rapidly increasing. Is the poor creature then nothing but an
uninteresting, selfish miser, who loves his money more than himself ?
By no means. In reality it would be difficult to find a human being

290 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

in any part of the world more thoroughly unselfish. He is no miser,
and he does not love his money for its own sake. The truth is that
he is self-sacrificing for the sake of others, for the sake of a wife and
children he has left behind him in a distant home in Oude — for his
class are generally purbiahs, or men who come from the East — or for
parents or brothers or sisters who are dependent upon him for their
support. To them his savings are regularly remitted, which he
starves himself to acquire for their sakes. It is needless to add that
he does not live to an old age, but he is patient and uncomplaining ;
and when at last his body can no longer supply a habitation for his
soul, he passes away peacefully, no one perhaps knowing that he has
solved the mystery of humanity until the coachman or groom goes
to his hut to discover the cause of his non-appearance with his bundle
of grass, and finds that he has borne his final burden, and that his
spirit has fled from a body no longer able to give it shelter. Such is
the Indian grasscutter, and where is the land that can give a duplicate
of the type ?

Let us turn for our next example to the higher ranks of society,
to the polished courtier whose memory can recall the last flickering
gleams of an expiring empire anterior to the British, as in the case
of some still living in the Panjab — at Lahore and Delhi — for instance.
He belongs to what is now termed the old school, that is to say, a
school which was still Oriental in thought and language, and which
did not ape European customs and manners. Usually well versed
in Persian literature, and, if a Muhammadan, equally well versed in
Koranic scripture and tradition, he is always dignified, faultless in
manners, and, when he is not conversing with a high English official,
entertaining in conversation. He has always an appropriate apophthegm
worthy of a Rochefoucauld to illustrate any remark, and he seems
to carry a complete anthology of the Persian poets in his brain, from
which he quotes frequently and always aptly. He is unrivalled in
his dexterity of paying a compliment, and a faux pas is an offence
which can never be laid at his door. He is as skilful in letting you
know within ten minutes of his first introduction to you that he is
the humble descendant of a long line of illustrious ancestors, whose
merits you may be sure do not suffer at his hands, and a parenthetical
remark thrown in here and there testifies to the wisdom and loyalty
of a much revered father or of a universally respected grandfather.
The most trivial or commonplace remark you may happen to make
supplies the opportunity to your visitor to enlighten you as to his
family history. ' That reminds me,' he will begin, ' of a saying of
my lamented father, who, as you are doubtless aware ' (although he is
certain you never heard of him, and, for that matter, it may be that
the poor man had joined his forefathers without experiencing the

notoriety of fame), ' was a trusted adviser of Maharaja , or a man

who was constantly consulted in any political difficulty by Lord

1904 SOME INDIAN PORTRAITS 291

Lawrence, or Sir Henry Lawrence, or Nicholson,' or any other dis-
tinguished Englishman who had contributed to the making of history,
and he then rounds off this allusion with a more or less apt quotation,
which you may take for certain had never come from his father's
lips. A little later you venture on some casual observation about
the weather, and behold the grandfather, who had made the varia-
tions of weather a special study, and was renowned for his scientific
researches, is made to confirm what you have said. You smile,
perhaps, not so much at the grandfather's sagacity as at the deftness
of his son's son, and this is a sufficient indication to your visitor that
his ancestors have done their duty sufficiently on a first introduction,
and they are left to slumber in peace in their silent chambers during
the remainder of the conversation. Indeed, no one can be quicker
than he is in discerning that a particular topic of conversation has
gone far enough, and he turns to another with the easy gracefulness
of a trained diplomatist. The inflectional character of the language
he habitually employs — the Urdu, or Camp language — lends itself
readily to this use, for no other tongue, with the exception perhaps
of French, is so capable of being handled efficiently for the purposes
of finesse. We see this pushed to the highest point of vantage when
our Oriental friend is in the presence of a high English official. Reti-
cence has then to keep guard on the door of his lips, but the flowers
of flattery and the lances of veiled question and innuendo throw the
official frequently off his guard, and as his visitor retires at the end of
ten minutes, having learnt enough on the point he was interested in
to supply food for reflection, you may hear the baffled official exclaim ;
' Curse the fellow, he has got me to say more than I intended.'' The
picture above drawn is that of the native gentleman of the old school
as he ordinarily appears on the outer surface of his social relations
with Englishmen. But below that surface, and concealed by the
veneer of polished manners, you have a man with the soul of a true
gentleman, who would scorn to do a mean thing, who is grateful for
kindness, and who would think no sacrifice too great to help a friend
in distress. Let the Englishman gain his confidence, let him display
an interest in what concerns the moral or intellectual progress of
the natives of India, and no one will be more ready to acknowledge
his efforts, and to appreciate his public spirit, than the typical native
gentleman of the old school whom I have endeavoured to describe.
If we compare him with the product of a later school, permeated with
Western ideas and the outcome of our English educational system,
he will lose nothing by the comparison. He will simply remain
more distinctively the Oriental, softened perhaps as to many of his
former prejudices by the culture around him, but still Asiatic enough
to prefer the habits and customs of his forefathers to those of the
white foreigner, and if the literature of the West is a closed book to
him, he has at least been diligent in the study of his own, as rich in

292 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

beauty and wisdom, if deficient in scientific breadth and accuracy,
as that of Europe. In honour, truthfulness, and all else that goes
to make the gentleman, he is no whit behind his more learned com-
patriot, for he owes these virtues to Nature, which distributes them
with no partial hand to her worthy children.

The native gentlemen of a later school, in whom, as the writer
was once told by an ardent young Bengal Progressivist, we have to
look for the product of modern culture, in contradistinction, as he
put it, to the relics of barbarism represented by the survivors of the
older school, must be divided into two classes, if we would wish to
be just to them. There is the native gentleman who has derived
all the advantage within his reach from a thorough English education,
and who has still remained true to his racial instincts ; and there is
the other type who has undergone the same educational training,
but has become a transformed being, his faith broken, his manners
changed, his aspirations turned into a different channel, who is neither
native nor European, outcast by his own countrymen, and either
not admitted into or at least merely tolerated by English society,
a mere hybrid product of the forcing-house of our present educational
system. The former, it must be confessed, is not frequently met
with, and will probably become extinct in another generation. But
where he is found he is a man whom it is a privilege to know. His
education has cleared his vision and widened his understanding,
while his strength of character has enabled him to withstand the
temptation of being anything but what he is, and what he is proud
to be, a Hindu or a Muhammadan gentleman as the case may be.
He represents the transition stage between the old and the new order
of things, and as in the ordinary course of nature the former must
give place to the latter, he cannot unfortunately be regarded as a
permanent type of native character. He has already reached as it
were the vanishing-point at which the slightest forward movement
leaves nothing but the wreckage of the past behind it. He stands
like the Colossus of Rhodes with one foot on one shore, representing
the East with all its mystic lore and glorious tints of approaching
sunset, while with the other he seeks a foothold on the opposite shore,
representing the West with all its new learning and the dazzling
brightness of the rising sun heralding a new-born day. He manfully
bridges for the time being the gulf between the two streams of the
Past and the Present, but as that gulf widens with the increasing
waters of the stream of time, the alternatives are retreat or advance.
To retreat would be to surrender to the spirit of retrogression ; to
advance, to uphold the cause of progress and enlightenment ; and
who can doubt in such a contest to which side the voice of the rising
generation would be given ? Regretfully turning away, therefore,
from this first type of the new school, we experience something like
a shock when we come to consider the second. For the most part

1904 SOME INDIAN PORTRAITS 293

we find that it represents inordinate vanity, overweening self-con-
fidence, and the arrogant assumption that all the rest of the world
are fools ; the past which has its invaluable lessons is despised ; while
customs and habits which had been consecrated by the pious obser-
vance of centuries are regarded as ' relics of barbarism.' And if the
mind has been purged of its barbarism, the body must needs be clothed
in newer garments. The modest, tight-fitting, black-cloth coat, which
is always so becoming to a Bengali gentleman, is discarded for the
latest fashionable Bond Street morning coat, with its mighty tails
flopping behind like those of a Christy Minstrel's professional cover-
coat ; the graceful pagri is exchanged for that ugliest of human inven-
tions, the top-hat ; and the close-fitting trousers of white cloth or
dark tweed give place to a much looser pair of garments of a broad
check material, as if the victim of this new craze for European dress
were being decked out as a standing advertisement for Ogden's Guinea
Gold. If Burns's kind power would only give the native youths
who adopt this costume the ' giftie ' to see themselves as others see
them, it would be one of the greatest boons she could confer upon
them, for they would most certainly soon revert to their ' cast-aways,'
and thus save themselves much unnecessary ridicule. In criticising,
however, these vulnerable points in the make-up of the type we are
now considering, we must bear in mind that here also we are dealing
with a state of society in a transition stage, and it behoves us not
to be too rigorous in our fault finding. To a native youth who sees
Europe for the first time, it is only natural that his imagination should
be inflamed by the wondrous vista of what is to him a new world,
which now stands revealed to his astonished gaze. The sense of
novelty also bewitches him, and if, yielding to this sense, he exchanges
his own national costume for that of our country, let us not look
upon his act as a foolish display of personal vanity, but rather as a
delicate compliment to our own superior taste, and, as the strange-
ness of his transformation becomes more familiar to us, perhaps we
shall find less reason to ridicule him for the choice he has made. So
also in regard to the other side of his vanity, his overweening self-
confidence, and his assumption that he knows more than the rest
of the heads in all Europe combined, we need only to exercise some
patience and indulgence. Time will accomplish the rest. A few
years' experience of the world will disillusion him, and he will be
compelled to recognise the fact, patent already to everyone but him-
self, that he is neither a genius nor a scholar, that his voice when
declaiming loudest was vox et prceterea nihil, that the world can get
on very well without him, and that he is a very commonplace indi-
vidual whose role is to eke out a modest livelihood, and to teach his
children to avoid the extravagances of which he has been guilty
himself.
. No set of Indian cameos would be complete without some

294 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

reference to those yellow-legged l guardians of the public peace, the city
and rural constables. They constitute an important factor in our
administrative machinery, and be it said to their credit that, taken
as a whole, they are a very useful body of public servants. The office
of constable is not the peculiar privilege of any particular class or
sect, for it is open to all, and there is no lack of keenness to obtain
it. It is an office which inspires awe if not respect, for it is clothed
with the majesty of the law, and the law to those who know it not
is always the symbol of some mysterious authority, which is con-
nected in the popular mind with punishments and prisons. The
constable knows it, and he would be more than human if he did not
encourage the notion. His pay, indeed, is small, too small to keep
him from the temptations to which he is exposed, and it is made
still smaller by the many contributions which are officially levied
from him. But according to the unwritten code which is made up
of the traditions of his service, this salary has long since come to be
regarded by the force as a mere retaining fee, which is by no means
to be considered as representing his legitimate income. On the
contrary, it is expected to form a very small fraction of that income.
Such, at least, he is told by his comrades is the well-respected tradi-
tion of his service. He may be a Hindu, a Muhammadan, or a Sikh,
but whether he worships at the shrine of Siva, or bows with reverence
at the name of the prophet of Islam, or joins in the cry of Victory to
the Guru, his worst enemy must admit that his whole subsequent
career is regulated by unswerving fidelity to this tradition. It was
no doubt a similar tradition amongst the Jewish soldiers of the time
of John the Baptist, who were probably called upon to do many of
the duties that devolve upon the police under our Indian system,
which excited the indignation of that unsparing denouncer of evils,
and compelled him to exhort them to be ' content with their wages,
to do violence to no man, neither to accuse any falsely ' (Luke iii. 14).
Indeed, one might almost read the exhortation as if prophetically
intended to be addressed to the Indian constable of to-day. But
we fear the soldiers who listened to it paid as little heed to the Baptist's
words as the Indian constable would be disposed to give to them
if addressed to him by some pious missionary of the present time.
He would certainly think, if he did not actually say so, that the
exhortation showed little knowledge of worldly wisdom, and that it
was far easier to counsel contentment than to practise it when the
wages one receives are wholly inadequate to keep the wolf of starva-
tion from the door. From the underpaid constable's point of view,
therefore, it is with contentment and moderation as Rochefou-
cauld says of true love and apparitions, ' Every one talks of them,
but few persons have seen them.' Such virtues, he is rather inclined

1 Since the above was written the uniform, 1 believe, has been changed to one of a
Ttliaki colour.

1904 SOME INDIAN PORTRAITS 295

to believe, ' lose themselves in self-interest, as rivers lose themselves
in the sea.' And thus the moral obliquity of supplementing his salary
by what he would regard as voluntary gifts on the part of those who
desire his services, may not appear so manifest to him as it does to
his employers. In accepting such offerings the constable is only
yielding to a temptation which does not involve very great turpitude
in his eyes. In fact, as the saying goes, he is merely ' true to his salt,'
to the salt which imparts a relish to his labours, gives them a sweet
savour, and incites fresh zeal for the future. Those who wish to
enlist his good offices, or to conciliate him, or to induce him either
to see too much or too little, must contribute towards this salt, and
according to the measure of the contribution his friendly co-operation
may be relied upon. But for the man who is so dense or absurd as
to suppose that he can expect the constable to exert himself on his
behalf with anything like a zealous spirit without such a contribu-
tion, upon the ridiculous ground that as a taxpayer he has already
contributed towards the monthly retainer which the constable receives
from the public funds, the yellow-legged guardian of the public peace
has nothing but withering scorn and the most profound contempt.
It is a piece of ungentlemanly behaviour, of gross meanness to which
he is unaccustomed, and which he cannot be expected to tolerate.
The recollection of it is written on the tablets of his mind, and never
ceases to call for signal retribution. He may have to wait his oppor-
tunity, but in the fulness of time it is sure to come, and when it does,
the man who has incurred his wrath will have reason to regret that
in a foolish moment he did not recognise the sacred obligations of
tradition. The ' moral expiation,' as a French scientific lawyer 2
would perhaps call it, thus exacted by the constable would serve
its purpose for the future, and it would soon become known that it
was after all the best policy for all who had occasion to seek his help
to contribute with a generous hand to his salt. Can we wonder then
that, underpaid as the post of a constable is, it is an office which always
attracts many competitors ? Happily for the community at large,
the average intelligence of the constable class is distinctly low ; were
it higher, the danger would be greater. As it is, when he tries his
hand at any complicated plot he usually fails, and displays his own
clumsy handiwork. Temerity is his ruin, but a long course of successful
petty trickery often induces him to tread this dangerous path, which
eventually leads to detection and the prison door, until at length
he realises when it is too late the truth of the old Boeotian poet Hesiod's
famous lines, as rendered by Elton :

Still in the end shall justice wrong subdue :
This fools confess, from sore experience true.

Eossi, Traitt dit, Droit Ptnal, vol. iii. p. 100.

296 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

As we began with one phase of Indian village life, that represented
by the Banya, so we may conclude with another phase represented
by that of the farmer or agriculturist. The latter has not perhaps
any marked peculiarities which differentiate him from those who
carried on his pursuit in archaic times in other countries, but he is
a distinctly interesting character who cannot be omitted from any
album of Indian portraits. He is the same contented, easy-going,
apathetic, unthrifty creature as of old, who spends most of his time,
when he has neither crops to watch nor land to plough or sow, smoking
his hookah or conversing with any person who may chance to meet
him at the village chowpol, the Boeotian AS'O-^T;, or public resting-
place, thinking of nothing in particular, and thoroughly enjoying his
idleness, the very ideal to him of a peaceful life. Frugal in his habits,
devoid of ambition, the future does not trouble him, and all that
he demands of the present is sufficient food and raiment to keep
body and soul together. If the season happens to be a favourable one,
his farm yields him enough for the support of himself and his family,
and he needs no more ; if it turns out bad, he resorts to the Banya
already described and increases his load of debt, and to obtain money
he is ready to mortgage his land on any terms that are dictated to
him. If he has sons, some of them are sure to enter the army, which
until recent years was looked upon as the only other legitimate sphere
of employment ; but since education has spread under British influence,
it is not uncommon to find at least one of the sons fired with the
ambition to become an English scholar, and thereafter to acquire
fame and fortune as a pleader, a doctor, or a Government official.
If the farmer has no sons, but a daughter, he marries off the latter and
induces her husband to settle in the same village, to help him to look
after his land, on the promise of making him and his issue the ultimate
heirs to his estate. He and his class supply the true manhood of the
country, a peaceful and contented population, and a recruiting source
for our native army. But his want of resourcefulness, his apathy
and his indolence, bring him frequently into monetary troubles, and
it is with the laudable object of extricating him from these meshes
that the British Government has resorted to legislation in the Deckan
and in the Panjab, which practically deprives him of the power to
deal with even his own life-estate, and converts him into a modified
Ward of Court, a position which he is not likely to appreciate. The
problem how to respect his civil rights and yet to prevent his gradual
extinction is no doubt a difficult one, but legislation has never been
known to make a man moral, and it may be doubted whether it will
succeed in making him provident or a good manager of his estate.
What would probably meet the exigencies of the situation better
would be the creation of agricultural banks, of the kind formerly
proposed for the Deckan, but never introduced. Institutions of this
kind would enable the needy farmer to obtain money on easy terms,

1904 SOME INDIAN PORTRAITS 297

secure him against chicanery, and give him the means of tiding over the
difficulties of a bad year without involving him in a heavy burden
of debt which he can never hope to repay, as is generally the case
under the existing system of Banya loans. But to make any such
scheme a success there must be as little formalism about it as possible.
The Indian farmer hates trouble, and sooner than subject himself
to it he would prefer to borrow from the Banya in his village at an
extortionate rate of interest, which he is also sufficiently shrewd
enough to know the lender will never be able to recover from him,
owing to his limited resources, while his land is already well protected
by the revenue authorities against a forcible sale by mesne process
issuing from the Civil Courts. Apart from his want of providence,
his apathy and his idleness, the farmer as we still find him in the
East, no matter what his creed may be, is a right good fellow. Of
good physique, he holds himself like a free man ; he is hospitable to the
stranger ; as a respecter of ancient customs and usages he is generally
a law-abiding citizen, and he is tolerant, which a long residence in
a mixed community comprising men of different tribes and religions
has taught him to be. But he is quick-tempered, and when roused
is as ready to use his stick as any irate Irishman to brandish his
shillelagh. Broken heads do not give him much concern or excite his
sympathy, but he is ready to admit that they must involve a penal
consequence against those who cause them. He has no fixed standard
in regard to truth or falsehood, the use of which depends rather on
his individual ideas of expediency than of any dominating notion of
right or wrong. He has a certain sense of humour, though naturally
rustic of its kind, and an insatiable love for fairs and shows. He is
in short a son of the soil, simple in his habits and tastes, though scarcely
in the sense in which La Fontaine's nurse spoke of the miscalled French
Homer, ' that God will not have courage to damn him,' who loves
the free fresh air of his country life, and who knows no other guide
to teach him when to plough or when to reap but the stars, the
constellations, the sun and moon which look down upon him as they
have looked down upon and guided his ancestors in the past. And
finally, in his survival we have still before us a state of archaic society
which has enabled us to correct a misconception of the terms law and
sanction on the part of publicists who knew not Joseph.

It has been said by a recent writer in regard to Sicily that ' every-
where you are haunted by the ghosts of great men or the memories
of great events or of great and departed nations,' and that you feel
yourself to be ' a breathing man visiting, like Dante- or Hercules, the
realms of phantoms.' Well, India too has had her great men in rich
abundance, and her history is full of memories of great events. But
no one visiting that land has any such feeling of oppression. The
shadows of the past are ever tinged with the rays of the bright sun of
the living present, which has so much to deeply interest us, to attract

298 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

our sympathies, and to enlist our energies. It is the living present
we must study if we wish to know India, and to realise what a great
inheritance has fallen to the lot of the present generation of the British
race. Let no one say that India is only a Land of Regrets, a mere
place of temporary exile for the white man. To me, at all events, it
will always be a land associated with the happiest memories and of
ever-abiding interest, and I would fain express my hope of her future
destiny, under the aegis of the British Crown, in the words of the
Mantuan poet :

Dum juga mentis aper, fluvios dum piscis amabit,
Dumque thymo pascentur apes, dum rore cicadae,
Semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt.

W. H. RATTIGAN.

1904

WHAT IS THE USE OF GOLD
DISCOVERIES?

MANY years ago the late Lord Bramwell put to me the above ques-
tion, and we found that on a comparison of our views we were in a
large agreement as to the answer to be given to it. Some of the
circumstances of recent months have brought back the discussion to
my memory, and I have proposed the question from time to time to
familiar friends, but the answers I have elicited have been very far
away from what Lord Bramwell and myself agreed upon. It may be
said at once that we held the utility of gold discoveries to be of such
a mixed and doubtful character as to justify some feeling of regret
that they should ever be made ; whilst the friends to whom I have
recently bruited the question appear for the most part astonished
that it should be raised, and somewhat scornful of the temper that
could entertain a doubt as to the benefit mankind derive in the
opening up of richer deposits of gold. The opinion must, indeed, be
paradoxical which suggests that it may not be for the benefit of man-
kind that an object of universal human desire should be obtained
with less labour. We are accustomed to speak of the fundamental
principle of free trade — that it opens up the way for satisfying the
wants of men with the least expenditure of toil — as containing within
itself the complete and final proof of its excellence ; and yet here am
I, a convinced free trader of the most absolute type, questioning the
advantage of getting with less effort the gold all men desire. It
seems worth while to examine the matter afresh, and arrive, if we can,
at some exact statement of the truth about it.

There is one answer to the question of the use of gold discoveries,
very common in the streets and markets, which will be promptly set
aside by everyone who has mastered the primary elements of political
economy. Can anyone, it is asked, doubt of this utility who realises
the immense amount of labour that is called into activity by gold
discoveries ? Miners have to be fed and clothed ; mining machinery
is made and set up ; there is a great subsidiary employment of carriers
by sea and land ; industry and commerce both become vigorous, and
armies of labourers directly and indirectly find occupation and work.

299

300 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

This attractive picture cannot, however, be accepted as conclusive.
All that has been here attributed, and rightly attributed, to the
development of new goldfields would find an exact parallel in the
influence of a great war, and yet everybody must be conscious that
from the social and industrial point of view a great war, so far from
being beneficial, is a great loss to humanity. A war may be neces-
sary, may be justifiable, its result may be worth its cost, but apart
from this result all the labour spent upon it is loss, all the industry it
excites wasteful, and the community that has had to wage it ends by
being poorer than when it began. The employment of labour for
labour's sake is the idlest of all schemes for the betterment of labour ;
otherwise we might find an easy way to the improvement of the well-
being of our masses by constantly building ships and taking them
out to sea to be sunk, which, indeed, is one aspect of naval activity.
The use of gold discoveries must be proved by the use of the gold
when it is discovered, not by the quantity of labour expended in
bringing it to market. If it does not, in some sort, help to reproduce
the sustenance of labour, to keep in vigorous movement the great
circle of interchanges of products satisfying the ever-recurrent wants
of human lives, it must be pronounced as little entitled to the merit
of utility as if no result whatever had been forthcoming. We must
look, in a word, to the service of gold in the world for an answer to
the question I have propounded.

A somewhat fantastic suggestion may be thrown out as a means
of relieving ourselves from the confusion which enters into our thoughts
when we dwell upon the labour of getting gold as proof of the utility
of getting gold. Why not indulge in the theory of the discovery of
gold without labour ? Suppose a particular man had hit upon a huge
mass of hidden treasure, the secret of which was known only to him-
self, but out of which he could, at pleasure, place large stocks of
bullion to the improvement of his balance at his bankers'. In working
out such a conception we seem to find a way of facilitating the solu-
tion of the naked question, What is the use of gold discoveries ?
and if we added to the hypothesis thus stated the condition that the
man with the treasure should be one of a limited and isolated com-
munity— a dweller in a new kind of Treasure Island — within the borders
of which the effect of his discoveries would work and their course
could be traced, we should still further facilitate the segregation
of the question from confused and disturbing circumstances of
world-wide extent. After thus working out the problem in little, we
might lift up the barriers within which we had confined our specula-
tions, and perhaps come to see, without much difficulty, that the
movements we had tracked in an island were essentially the same as
the movements to be followed on the island of the globe. The lover
of variety may indulge in another fancy — to wit, that someone had
realised the dream of ages and discovered the ' philosopher's stone,' so

1304 THE USE OF GOLD DISCOVERIES 301

that under a strictly patented process he might transmute the baser
metals into gold, and thus command boundless wealth. What would
•be the use of the invention to the community of men ?

The happy possessor of the hidden store, the discoverer of the great
-secret, would be able to go forth among his fellows and command their
services or their goods with the certainty that whatever he wanted he
could get. There might be some haggling about terms, but in the
end his palace would be built, his chambers furnished to his desire,
and his banquets supplied with the choicest foods and the best brands.
He would secure a satiety of his wishes because those who served him
would have a well-founded confidence that they, too, could be served
in turn in exchange for the gold they had received from him. As
long as they could get their subordinated supplies, he would get the
satisfaction of his primary demands. What would be the situation
in the end ? If the organisation of the community had been at
starting one of dynamical equilibrium in which the round of produc-
tion and consumption had been steadily maintained with no great
superfluity on the one side or falling off on the other, the introduction
of the new demand for additional services or additional commodities
must have occasioned, more or less obviously, a diminution of the
services and commodities remaining for the rest of the society, or
else a calling into work of new recruits of production, who would find
a recompense for their toil in some allotment of the gold which the
new Midas was putting into circulation. In the absence of this last
enlistment of new producers, it would appear that the treasure-master
must get his wants supplied by a diminution in the supply of con-
sumable things and services distributed through the rest of the
community, the net result being that though more money was passing,
and each unit might find his coin receipts increasing, the money in
his purse could not command the same share as before of the satis-
factions of life. Even when we entertain the suggestion of newer
recruits being pressed into activity, we must still confess that the
absorption by the plutocrat of so much as he separates from the
common stock for the gratification of the wants of himself and of his
minions is balanced only by a dissemination of more money through-
out the community, which of itself adds nothing to the capacity of
production or the mass of products. If the gold of the treasure-master
could be made the basis of new industries, or of industries offering
ampler reward for toil than had been heretofore practised, the whole
stock produced might have been so enlarged as to yield enough to
satisfy the man of gold without trenching upon what remained to be
divided among the rest ; but it is the special characteristic of gold
that it is comparatively of the least value in the processes of produc-
tion and reproduction. It is of rare and occasional use in machinery.
It does not lead to the improvement of machines, or in any practical
way to their durability, or to the diminution of the labour of making

VOL. LVI— No. 330 X

302 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

them. So far as the metal passes into the arts, it serves almost
exclusively for purposes of adornment, and its chief employment, the
employment which is always open to possessors of it, is in the shape
of money stored and in circulation.

In my last sentences I may be said to have allowed myself to run
to the end before I had well surveyed the beginning, but this kind of
anticipation may enable the reader to go more easily over an argu-
ment prosaically conducted from circumstances more exactly corre-
sponding to the actual facts of life. Let us put aside, then, the notion
of a hidden treasure secretly found, and the other fancy of the dis-
covery of a philosopher's stone. Let us confine ourselves to the
hypothesis of an isolated community possessing, among the industries
that make up the circuit of its employments, that of gold-mining.
The gold-mines, we will assume, are worked under fairly steady con-
ditions, yielding annual results which are put upon the market and
converted into coin, or put to use in the arts and in the decoration
of life. The problem may be further simplified by supposing that the
addition thus made to the stock of coin in the community is just
sufficient to meet the annual wear and tear and loss of gold, and any
increasing demand that must be satisfied if the unit of coin in circu-
lation is to maintain a fairly steady relation in exchange for com-
modities and services which have not themselves undergone changes
affecting the extent and ease with which they may be respectively
rendered. A little reflection may lead us to the conclusion that this
state of things will be realised if, a certain number of mines being
kept continually working, the normal day's wage of a miner in a mine
just paying its way, or, in other words, on the margin of profitable
work, remains the same. This means that the share of gold of the
working miner — that is, the actual amount of gold assigned to him —
is fairly constant, and his real wages must correspond to his money
wages, since we have assumed that the mining industry maintains
the same relative position with other industries. All this is by way
of enabling us to realise the picture of an industrial community in a
fairly stable and yet healthy course of life. One more circumstance
may be imagined to give the wavering outline a more definite shape.
Assume that, in the condition of things we have pictured, the monthly
wage of the average miner, working at the margin of productive
mining, is one ounce of gold. What results would be produced if, in
the circumstances suggested, newer and richer deposits of gold were
hit upon, yielding bigger weights of gold both for the recompense of
the workman and the profit of the mine adventurer ? Assume, for a
time, that the whole produce of this added gold not only passes into
the currency, as the bulk of it does, but remains also as currency
and reserves of gold held through the community, putting aside,
therefore, any consideration of that comparatively small proportion
which is used up in the arts of life. The men who brought the gold

1904 THE USE OF GOLD DISCOVERIES 303

to the mints directly, or through their bankers, would have, as has
been already suggested, a great command in the markets of the com-
munity, and would be able to acquire not only the means of gratifying
their instant desires, but investments in funds or the abiding bases of
industry, so as to secure the enjoyment of permanent incomes. The
new demand would naturally excite an increase in the scale of prices
where it was working, and as the money passed from hand to hand
this increase would spread from commodity to commodity, and from
occupation to occupation. Much admirable work has been done in
tracing out the probable course of this movement, and, again, in
noting statistically its onward flow ; and science has been vindicated
by the attestation of its speculations in accomplished facts. The
names of Cairnes and of Jevons must be especially mentioned as
eminent respectively in this analysis and observation. I do not pur-
pose to follow on their track, but would rather reach forward to what
may, I think, be justifiably assumed would be the end ; and for the
sake of realising this in a more definite and praise shape, I would
assume, as the final result of richer discoveries, that the normal wage
of the working miner, working in mines just holding their own, had
become two ounces of gold per month. Now, as all the gold had been
used up in currency or in reserves, no lasting effect would be produced
in altering the ratio of productive effectiveness among the different
industries of the community. Temporary movements and temporary
excitement of particular occupations would doubtless have happened,
but in the end the order of the community would have resettled
itself in the form from which it started, wages and prices having just
doubled themselves all round, and what would remain as permanent
consequences of the change would be that the holders of fixed charges
and of fixed incomes would find themselves half as rich as before,
and the people who had had in their pockets or kept at their bankers
money and money claims would find that these had diminished to
half their value in buying, and the losses thus suffered would be
counterbalanced by the gains of permanent debtors — including national
debtors — and by the acquisitions of abiding sources of income by those
who took the earliest occasion of exchanging their newly acquired
gold for income-yielding properties. As between debtor and creditor,
it may be argued with much force that it is a benefit to the com-
munity that the money claims of creditors should diminish in real
value, and that the burden on debtors should be permanently
lightened. Creditors are fewer than debtors, and, as the diminution
in the real value of their property would be gradual, the loss would
not be severely felt at any moment, and as a generation passed away
the new generation that followed would, so to speak, be born into a
less commanding position. On the whole, I should agree that if
money must rise or fall in value, it is better for a community it should
fall ; but the ideal condition would be the maintenance of a value in

304 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

money undergoing the least possible change. If change must be, let
us have a change that favours the working multitude ; but the best
thing would be no change at all. As for that other range of conse-
quences, the installation of an enriched class who have got themselves
well nested whilst the process of rising prices was going on, and whose
position is counterbalanced by a general fall in the value of money
in circulation, I confess I can see no gain to the community in this
change which should make us regard it with any favour.

I have jumped from one condition of dynamic equilibrium to
another, the change being that the profitableness of the gold-mining
in the production of gold has just doubled, a miner getting twice the
former weight of gold in wages, and the adventurer getting twice his
former allotment ; and I have assumed that all the additional gold
produced has passed into the currency and reserves. On these
hypotheses it would seem that in the end prices would be doubled,
and the inert possessors of fixed money claims would find their com-
mand of things and services reduced to one-half. It is assumed that
additions to the currency would not of themselves affect the relative
efficiency of industry in its several occupations, and though there
might be temporary oscillations through the diversity of demands
made by these coming on the market with new supplies of gold, these
oscillations would pass away and the old order re-establish itself.
The mere multiplication of money would have no effect on the effici-
ency of industrial work. This is a difficulty with many people, and
it is worth while to examine a little more closely an argument adduced
by the other side. It is said that if more gold is produced in a country,
and passes through its mints and its banks into circulation, the im-
mediate effect is to increase the quantity of money on loan, to
diminish the rate of interest, and to develop industry which is waiting
for the advent of cheaper capital to grow larger or to come into exist-
once. That this is the transitory effect is true, but it is one of those
effects which are essentially transitory. The cheapness of the new money
depends upon the fact that prices do not at once respond to the
affluence of the new supplies, but as these rise the abundance of money
in the market in relation to the demand for it disappears, until, in
fact, that second state of dynamic equilibrium would be reached, when
prices in circulation should conform to the new affluence of the metal,
when, under the hypothesis of double productivity of mines, there
would be double prices and double money necessary to maintain the
same transactions. We come around to the same conclusion — that,
in the absence of independent causes of change in the efficiency of
industrial production, an increase in the currency produces only
temporary and transitory consequences. How far is this argument
modified by the consideration that all the new gold produced does
not pass into employment as money ? I answer — to a very slight
extent. In the first place, it is admitted by statisticians that only a

1904 THE USE OF GOLD DISCOVERIES 305

small proportion — a fourth seems to be a general estimate — passes
into the arts, and even of this small proportion a certain part is really
kept as a reserve, as much as if it were coin in a purse or a hoard in
the strong-rooms of a bank. Of the rest the greater part is used
exclusively for ornament. It pleases the eye, satisfies the sense of
possession, tickles the greed of man, but is of the smallest possible
use in facilitating any reproductive work, in altering to the advan-
tage of man the relation between human toil and the results of toil
required for human sustenance. I have heard it suggested that,
apart from pure ornament, the only use of gold is in dentistry ; but
perhaps this is a humorous exaggeration of the fact that it is of little
real service. As a metal, gold would probably be too heavy for
general employment, even if it became quite common. Miss Kilman-
segg's golden leg was a pretty whimsical fancy ; but when it is realised
that, as described by the poet, it would weigh some hundredweights,
the absurdity of the conception almost ceases to be tolerable.

For the sake of simplicity, I have imagined a small, self-contained
community, and an increase of the productivity of gold-mines within
it ; but the argument is really not changed if we take the world within
the range of our speculation. The processes of change would be slower,
and the effects would at least appear to be diminished as they were
removed from the original centres of disturbance. We may have to
figure to ourselves the new gold supplies being brought to one country
and passing from it from country to country, and from race to race,
in streams only checked by the growing rise of prices, and this rise
growing most slowly among dim multitudes in the East, less respon-
sive in thoughts and habits to the changes coming upon them. The
question, What is the use of gold discoveries ? might thus have to be
answered by a substitution of alert races for alert individuals, and of
slower millions of outsiders for the sluggish majority of the community
at home. The speculation would remain intrinsically the same. The
period of resettlement might be longer ; the gain of mankind at large
could not be rated higher ; the world's benefit would be no more real.
Perhaps, after all, the one advantage indirectly accruing from gold
discoveries, though this cannot be insisted upon with absolute cer-
tainty, is that they bustle people about the world and cause regions
to be settled earlier than they would otherwise be filled up. It is a
speculative point, but, in spite of high authority against me, I must
think that the attractions of gold led swarms to California that would
not otherwise have gone, and California has become, in later years,
a great source of supply of wheat, of fruit, and of wine. So the stream
of immigration into Australia and New Zealand, Avhich had before
been slow, became fuller and more rapid through gold discoveries, and
Australasia has developed into a great exporter of foods and of wool.
It is said, on the other side, that these great gifts to mankind would
have been quickly realised in any case, and that gold discoveries only

306 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

turned the more energetic and adventurous of our race on a wrong
scent ; and it must be observed that if these consequences are to be
reckoned to the good of gold, they are but accidental consequences,
since no one supposes that the gold-mines of Klondyke are the pre-
paration for a teeming agriculture in Alaska. But why waste words
on these doubtful issues, or, indeed, why raise the inquiry as to the
use of gold discoveries ? Mankind will run after them, even though
we could add, to a demonstration that gold was an illusory benefit
when found, a complete statistical proof that it cost more than it
was worth in the finding. This last proposition has been often asserted,
and though it may not be capable of being strictly tested, it is not
improbably true. Pat the total expenditure on gold-mining in Aus-
tralia against the total product, and the balance is an adverse one.
Is there any difficulty in believing this when we know that the industry
of gold-winning is practised year after year by speculative adven-
turers at Monte Carlo, although they all know that the bank beats
them, taken all together ? Men believe in their cleverness and their
luck, and like to run the chance. All the same, the inquiry Lord
Bramwell propounded, and which he and I talked over together, is
worth pursuing, were it only for the inquiry's sake ; and it is still
more worth pursuing if, when strictly conducted, it leads to a reversal
of the popular estimate of the world's gain through gold discoveries.
The exposure of a fallacy is always good, and is yet more good when
the fallacy has been submissively accepted as the basis of bad states-
manship and of a bad world policy.

LEONARD COURTNEY.

1904

PHYSICAL CONDITION
OF WORKING-CLASS CHILDREN.

FOR the past thirty years I have been very closely connected with the
work of the elementary schools in this country, first as a pupil teacher,
then as an assistant teacher, then as a head teacher, and finally as a
member of the London School Board. It will be seen, therefore,
that I have had exceptional opportunities of watching the problem
of the physical condition of the working-class children in our great
towns. Upon the whole matter I have arrived at two very distinct
conclusions. The first is that a sharp line may be drawn dividing the
working-class children into those who were never better cared for,
never better trained physically, and never better looked after gene-
rally than they are to-day ; and those, on the other hand, who, in the
matter of nutrition, clothing, housing, and so on, were never worse
off than they are to-day.

Speaking broadly, I should say that 80 per cent, of the working-
class children were never so well off as they are to-day. The influence
of thirty-three years of compulsory public education, the habits of
discipline formed in the schools, the physical training given in the
schools and in the organised games of the playgrounds and playing
fields, the elevating effect of the school system upon the home, the
greater pride which working-class parents, as a result of the effect
of the school system upon the homes, take in their children, par-
ticularly with regard to cleanliness, clothing, feeding, and so on — all
these things leave me perfectly convinced that four-fifths of the
working-class children, as I have said, are better off than ever they
were.

Now, on the other hand, there remain the 20 per cent, on the other
side of my sharp line. These are probably no worse off than they
were thirty years ago, though probably in the great cities the need
for better housing accommodation is more pressing now than it was
then. But, in a way, the great Education Act of 1870 was a social
lever which was inserted a little above the base of the social pyramid
and not absolutely at its bottom. The result has been to raise the
working-class social fabric above it, and, by contrast, to seem to

807

303 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

depress the condition of the ' submerged tenth.' What I mean is-
that there is a sharper contrast between the children of the very poor,,
the out-of-works, the thriftless, the drunken, and the indifferent oru
the one hand, and the steady industrious artisan on the other than
there was thirty years ago.

As I have said, roughly about 20 per cent, of the working-class
children are in the most hopeless condition with regard to food, clothing,
and housing. It seems to me, therefore, that if these also are to
become wise stewards of the British heritage we should concentrate
ourselves upon their estate. First of all, with regard to feeding. la
every big town the children of the slums habitually go to school
improperly fed. Many of them are not only improperly fed, but the
food they do get is far too little in quantity. In the hard winter
season, when the building trades are idle, many again go to school
either with no food at all, or having only staid their hunger in
the morning with a crust of dry bread. In sharp frosty weather it
is a common experience for teachers in the elementary schools of the
poorer parts of our great towns — I have myself often seen it — to find
children suddenly seized with vomiting. This is not so much caused
by the fact that the stomach is upset as that it has revolted against
the effect of the cold upon its empty condition. And not only is this
state of things true of the poorer parts of the big towns. It is true
also of many of the agricultural villages. Let a visitor to a village
elementary school look closely at the children. They are in many
cases flabby and pale. They need more nourishing food. A break-
fast of ' tea-kettle broth,' a bit of bread and margarine, a bit cf
bread and treacle, and some abominably poor tea — these form the
three meals daily.

To go back to the poorer parts of the urban areas, where no doubt
the problem is most acute, let me say that I have gone very closely
into this question of the feeding of the poorer children amongst the
working classes in London during the past ten years. The London
School Board, I may say, has during the last fifteen years convened
three special committees, of the last two of which I have been a member.
The first committee was convened in 1889. It came to the conclusion
that 43,588, or 12' 8 per cent, of the whole, of the London children came
to school habitually hungry, and that volunteer agencies existed to
an extent which enabled them to meet the needs of only half these
children. The second committee was convened, at my instance, in
1894. It did little more than arrange for the collection of reliable
and systematised statistics upon the problem. But the total effect
of the two committees was to develop and organise to a very substan-
tial extent volunteer agencies in which both the School Board members,
school managers, and Board School teachers have all played most
honourable parts for the purpose of alleviating the distress, particu-
larly in the winter season. ./.

1904 WOBKING-CLASS CHILDREN 309

The third committee was appointed in 1898. The following is the
reference : — ' That it be referred to the General Purposes Committee
to consider and report whether any, and what, inquiry can be made
before next winter as to the number of children attending public
elementary schools in London who are probably underfed, and how
far the present voluntary provision for school meals is, or is not,
effectual.' The majority of this committee, after a very careful
examination of the question, came to the vital conclusion that voluntary
effort alone is not sufficient to meet the needs of this problem. It there-
fore arrived at the following six extremely important proposals : —

(i.) It should be deemed to be part of the duty of any authority by law
responsible for the compulsory attendance of children at school to ascertain
what children, if any, come to school in a state unfit to get normal profit by
the school work — whether by reason of underfeeding, physical disability, or
otherwise — and that there should be the necessary inspection for that purpose.

(ii.) That where it is ascertained that children are sent to school ' underfed '
(in the sense defined above) it should be part of the duty of the authority to see
that they are provided, under proper conditions, with the necessary food, subject
to the provision contained in clause (vi.).

(iii.) That existing or future voluntary efforts to that end should be super-
vised by the authority.

(iv.) That in so far as such voluntary efforts fail to cover the ground, the
authority should have the power and the duty to supplement them.

(v.) That where dinners are provided it is desirable that they should be open
to all children, and should be paid for by tickets previously obtained, which
parents should pay for, unless they are reported by the Board's officers to be
unable by misfortune to find the money ; but in no case should any visible
distinction be made between paying and non-paying children.

(vi.) That where the Board's officers report that the underfed condition of
any child is due to the culpable neglect of a parent (whether by reason of
drunkenness or other gross misconduct), the Board should have the power and
the duty to prosecute the parent for cruelty ; and that, in case the offence is
persisted in, there should be power to deal with the child under the Industrial
Schools Acts.

I must point out that this definitely admits the principle of public
responsibility as a supplement to benevolent effort. A majority of
the School Board, I may remark, refused to adopt this principle ; and,
substantially, things remain to-day as they were prior to the calling
together of this third committee.

It will, of course, have been gathered that it is my very strong
view that the time has come when the Local Education Authorities
under the Education Act of 1902 should be empowered to supplement
the operations of benevolent societies. I am gratefully appreciative
of the improvement during recent years in the method and the exten-
sion of the area of the operations of private effort. But I repeat;
that I am convinced that the time has come for the community, as a
whole, to recognise some obligation in respect of the physical condition
of the children. I do not advocate what is technically known as

310 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

* free maintenance.' Parents who can should see that their children
are well clothed, well shod, and well fed ; and the great bulk of them
will, of course, continue to do this. (Nobody not practically acquainted
with the daily lives of the working classes can have any real apprecia-
tion of the sacrifices which parents make for their children.) Those
who can, and will not, should, in my opinion, be severely punished.
But the community must step in and prevent the child suffering. It
is a most short-sighted policy to allow our young to grow up ill-nour-
ished, and therefore ill-developed. It is grotesque to lavish money on
education for those who are unfit mentally and physically to receive
the education offered to them.

To come to a practical suggestion. Let us schedule the poorer
part of a great town containing, say, half a dozen elementary schools.
A school kitchen should be provided, under the direction of a public
official, for the schools in the area. ' Dinner coupons ' should be
procurable at a convenient public office, to be paid for or received
gratuitously by the parents, according to the necessities of the case.
There would, of course, be absolutely no difference between the style
of the coupon, whether purchased by the parent or received free.
Before setting out for school every morning the children would be
provided with their coupons by their parents, and would go down to
the dining-hall at midday. The cost of this system should, in my
opinion, be borne by voluntary contributions, supplemented by public
aid. This is the system which is in force in many Continental cities,
and which works with the most excellent results. By-and-by I should
hope that practically all the parents would avail themselves of these
midday meals for their children. It would mean a great economy
of time and money to them, and the meal provided would, in all prob-
ability, be a good deal more nutritious and satisfying to the children
than that at present prepared in the home. But this idea of a
communal meal is, of course, foreign to the English tradition, and
would be a matter of gradual development.

If such a scheme as I have herein roughly outlined were put into
general adoption, the charge upon the public purse would not, I
believe, be very considerable. (The Municipality of Paris provides
8,000,000 meals a year for 70,OOOZ., of which 45,OOOZ. comes from the
rates, 20,OOOZ. from sale of dinner coupons to parents, and the rest
from voluntary subscriptions.) Many of the parents of the well-to-do
artisan class would find it a matter of convenience and economy to
avail themselves of the communal system of feeding their children ;
and, so far as they are concerned, the thing would be self-supporting.
For the rest, the continuance of benevolent support would lighten the
burden upon the public purse.

I do not propose to weary the reader with any reflections upon
the pitiable condition of many of the children who attend our schools
at the present time. Neither do I put into contrast with this deplor-

1904 WORKING-CLASS CHILDREN 311

able condition the immense improvement in the general physique of
the children which must follow from the introduction of the system
here suggested. But I go further than this question of the underfed
condition of the children. I insist that it is equally essential to our
future prosperity as a nation to see that no child lacks warm clothing
and comfortable housing. I hold that the community, as a whole,
and not the benevolently disposed person only, has a direct duty in
this matter. I say, too, that the medical examination from time to
time of the children, especially with regard to the condition of their
eyes, and, indeed, their general physical state, is a matter of com-
munal obligation. In contrast to our laisser faire attitude towards
the children, I may direct attention to the final article in Volume II.
of the Special Reports on Educational Subjects issued by the Board of
Education, Whitehall. That article gives a description of what the people
of Brussels consider to be their duty to the children. From this re-
markable statement it will be seen that every school child is medically
examined once every ten days. Its eyes, teeth, ears, and general physi-
cal condition are overhauled. If it looks weak and puny they give it
doses of cod-liver oil or some suitable tonic. At midday it gets a
square meal, thanks to private benevolence assisted by communal
funds, and the greatest care is taken to see that no child goes ill-shod,
ill-clad, or ill-fed.

As a Christian and civilised community, I urge that we cannot
allow an appreciable section of our youth to slouch through lives
of suffering and destitution into rickety misshapen and very fre-
quently evil-minded adults. I cannot blame the social derelicts if
they ultimately become a ruinously heavy charge upon the public
purse as inmates of the public workhouses and gaols. Rather do I
blame the community whose happy-go-lucky lack of concern to-day
is building up for to-morrow a tremendous burden of financial cost
and social degradation — a burden which I am firmly convinced need
not in great part exist at all. All this sounds like rank Socialism —
a consideration which doesn't trouble me very much. But as a matter
of fact it is, in reality, first-class Imperialism.

T. J. MACNAMAKA.

312 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

GIFTS

OF the many foolish institutions which prevail in modern social life
iew are productive of more genuine discomfort than the custom of
making unnecessary presents, i.e. giving, not to supply other people's
wants, but merely because the donor is animated by friendly feelings —
or at all events wishes to look as if he were. The custom is one of
great antiquity, for we read in Tacitus that our early German ancestors
delighted in gifts ; though it is with a slight feeling of shame that
we read his next sentence, ' but they neither reckon up what they give
nor consider themselves under an obligation for what they take,' for
the average Englishman of to-day is certainly not unmindful of his
own generosity, and is as punctilious in repaying a gift as he is in
returning a blow. Surely it is time a protest was made against this
giving for the sake of giving — which is about as reasonable a practice
as talking for the sake of talking — for under the cloak of kindness
there has crept into the world one of the most irritating of social pests ;
arbitrary in its choice, for it does not let you give to whom you will ;
mercantile in its essence, for each man is bound both in his own eyes
and those of the donor to make a fitting return, and maddening in the
drain it makes on the intellect of the purchaser, who is not merely
harassed by his ignorance of the other person's tastes, but is genuinely
anxious to get the best show for his money.

Doubtless in theory it is a beautiful thing to give, and when one
is quite young it is a joy to receive, but the system of anniversary
gifts in vogue nowadays is the very antithesis of ' the quality of
Mercy,' it blesses neither him that gives nor him that takes ; certainly
not the donor, for whom, if he does the thing handsomely, a due
observance of birthdays, weddings, and other occasions to which
the idle fancy of man has attached the custom of giving, makes up
a formidable item in his yearly expenditure, as well as an untold
amount of suffering in the selection of an appropriate offering ; neither
can the receiver be congratulated on finding himself in possession of
one more useless article, which is generally quite different from what
he would himself have chosen, and yet leaves him the debtor of the
donor till it is repaid.

For, to be honest, we must admit that we have got down to a system

1904 GIFTS 313

of barter ; the man who makes no presents receives none ; if his soul
craves after them, he has but to cast his bread on his neighbour's
waters and it is sure to come back to him before many days. The
cost of his offering, too, will be duly taken into account, as may be
learnt from the remarks of any wife to any husband over the break-
fast table — ' Why, dear old Harry is going to be married ! We must
send .him something really good, John ; remember those charming
teaspoons he sent us.' Whereas had ' dear old Harry ' sent them
an earthenware teapot they would perhaps have loved him none the
less, but certainly would not have felt an equal necessity to give him
* something really good.'

From an ethical point of view the real objection to making
presents is that every gift constitutes an infringement of the liberty
of the subject. If the world really believed that it was more blessed
to give than to receive, the man who took presents without making
any would be looked on as a public benefactor ; the fact that he is re-
garded as a curmudgeon proves that the world looks on a gift as an
obligation. And yet, despite the ever-increasing difficulty of main-
taining one's freedom amid the responsibilities of daily life, we wantonly
add to our brother's burden by binding gifts upon his back. Ere
the hapless infant can repudiate its responsibilities in articulate speech,
godparents and friends of the family take advantage of its helplessness
to thrust upon it christening mugs, spoons and forks, and nest-eggs for
the savings bank. Thus started on his downward career the child grows
up to look on presents as his natural right, and to feel a strong sense of
injustice if the expected tip is not forthcoming. It is not till later on
that a truer morality begins to assert itself, and he feels uncomfortable
at the idea of receiving a present, so that often, while his lips are framed
to grateful words, his inner spirit is murmuring, ' Might have been
sold for two hundred pence and given to the poor ' ; not that this
reflection will at all prevent his trying to rid himself of his obligations
by transferring them, in the shape of fresh presents, to the rising gener-
ation. However, his friends, perceiving his attitude, grow more con-
siderate, and forbear to remind him by birthday gifts of his dwindling
span, though they take an ample vengeance, when he has passed beyond
all power of protest, by piling his bier with wreaths and crosses.

I once knew a man who had rendered a service to a lady not remark-
able for the sweetness of her disposition ; full of gratitude, and know-
ing his tastes to be peculiar, she begged him to tell her what present
she might make him as an acknowledgment of his kindness. With
early Roman simplicity he told her that he had already more books
than he could read, more clocks than he cared to wind, that knick-
knacks and ornaments were an abomination to him, and for return —
if any were needed — he asked for only such kindly thoughts as she
could spare from time to time.

' How very annoying ! ' quoth she. Being a businesslike woman

314 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug.

she preferred ready-money payments, and would infinitely rather
have spent ten pounds in cancelling her debt than feel bound, as she
did, for she was an honourable woman, to try and think well of her
creditor for the future. However, as he would none of her gifts, she
diligently ruled both her thoughts and her tongue, so far as he was
concerned, for a whole six months — a period unprecedented — at the
end of which time the man, to her great relief, gave her some ground
for offence, so that she felt herself entitled to resume her normal
attitude towards him. But the man, being one of those who believe
that thoughts are the only real things in the world, felt that for six
months, at all events, both he and she had been better for his refusal
to take her present.

For this is the pity of it, that gifts which should be the accom-
paniment of kindness are too often made the substitute for it. What
is the readiest way in which a ' self-respecting ' husband can atone
for some act of injustice or neglect done to his wife ? Lacking courage
to own himself in the wrong, fearful of losing his dignity by any act
of self-abasement, any acknowledgment of her even temporary superi-
ority, my lord struts into a shop and buys her a ring or a trinket on
his way home, feeling with a complaisant smile that, whatever his own
shortcomings, he has retrieved the situation. And so the pretty patch
is laid over the wound, both sides have maintained their dignity and
there has been no scene — and yet, does the better kind of woman
quite forget that the wound is there all the same ?

Of course, in giving, as in all else under Heaven, it is not the custom,
but the abuse of the custom, that is pernicious. Few things are more
delightful than to give to a friend what he has long wanted, but been
too busy or too poor to get for himself, especially if the gift be some-
thing which our own hands have made, for this, as Emerson says, is
to give a part of ourselves. And herein lies not the least blessing of
poverty. The rich man gives by putting his hand in his pocket ; in a
glow of after-lunch benevolence he strolls down Bond Street and looks
in a shop window for something pretty ; the gift will cost him nothing
but the trouble of selecting it, for he has all he wants and a balance
to be got rid of somehow — and so he gives. But the poor man can
only give by depriving himself of something ; every sovereign spent
in one way means retrenchment in another — a fact so obvious that
most decent people feel uncomfortable when they get presents from
those poorer than themselves — and so, often enough, the only gift the
poor man can offer is his service or the work of his hands ; and blessed
is he if he have skill enough to make anything which will please.

For presents, alas ! whether bought or made, do not always give
pleasure. People are very variously gifted in the matter of taste, as
a comparison of the interiors of any six consecutive houses will prove,
and the gift which the donor in his secret soul deems charming may
appear to the recipient an atrocity to be thrust into the farthest corner

1904 GIFTS 315

of the back drawing-room till the happy day when the clumsily plied
broom or duster shall shatter it out of existence. So fully conscious
are the benevolent of their own deficiencies of taste that they have
foisted upon the world a proverb of their own manufacture, forbidding
one to look a gift horse in the mouth ; under cover of which venerable
absurdity they feel secure from the resentment which their presents
are too often calculated to inspire. What house in the land has not
its sad list of such votive offerings ? Costly for the most part — for
money and taste are often in inverse ratio — but too often blatant,
glaring, hideous, an offence to the eye, an oppression to the spirit.
For, alack ! people will not give things of which they know the merits.
When a tinker gives kettles or a tailor clothes we are at least justified
in assuming that the kettles and the clothes are good of their kind,
but when the ordinary man tries, without special knowledge, to add
to your collection of prints or blue china, how thankful you feel after-
wards that he was not present when his gift arrived.

If the making of presents really were what its devotees assert it
to be — viz. a tangible proof of goodwill, no one ought to be anything
but pleased at receiving one ; and yet were I, in an outburst of bene-
volence, to send presents to all the people who live in my street, they
would probably think I had nefarious designs on their persons or
property, or, taking a more charitable view of the case, would enter-
tain grave doubts of my sanity. For they would recognise that
giving, like kissing, is perhaps a mark of goodwill, but is undoubtedly
and always a liberty, and that liberties may not be taken with strangers,
nor even always with one's intimates. Each man can generally
divide his world into two classes : those who are so near and dear to
him that there is no need for him to give them presents, since all that
he has is theirs for the asking, and those whom he knows so little
that a gift from him would arouse surprise or possibly resentment.
There are few people who do not fall naturally into one of these two
classes, unless, of course, one has allowed oneself to drift into a pro-
fligate habit of indiscriminate benevolence.

With regard to the things themselves, too, it is well to bear in mind
the maxim, ' Let the buyer beware ' ; for only a very limited number
of articles are looked on as appropriate offerings. In the matter of
food, for instance, any birds, beasts, or fishes which I have slain with
my own hand will be accepted by my neighbour as a proof of goodwill ;
but a leg of mutton or a sweetbread left at his house with my card
will almost certainly be taken as an insult. Chocolates and sweet-
meats are, of course, permissible, and even cakes and biscuits of the
more frivolous kind ; but it would be regarded as a gross breach of
decorum to offer a friend anything which could appease his hunger
or sustain his life. At Christmas time, if one may judge from the
shop windows, there is an extra licence in this respect, the national
conscience having probably gone so completely off its balance from

316 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug.

continual reading of the Christmas Carol, that to assail one's friends
with cheeses and turkeys is looked on as part of the orthodox Saturnalia.
But, with a few trifling exceptions, the rule holds good that a gift to
be wholly complimentary must be wholly useless, and that only a
person entirely devoid of decency will so far insult his friends as to
offer them any of the necessaries of life.

As a nation of shopkeepers we no doubt console ourselves for this
rather remarkable state of things by the reflection that, though the
system may tell hardly on giver and receiver, though legions of haggard
women may return home faint from an afternoon of Christmas shopping,
while husbands and fathers growl as they dive into their depleted
pockets, still, it is all ' good for trade ' ; for what would become of all
those shops which exist solely for the sale of the superfluous if the
present pestilential practice came to an end ? Yet, despite fiscal
controversies, there are still some old-fashioned people left who look
on trade as made for man and not man for trade ; who believe that to
enslave the human race to one of its own creations — be it tight-lacing,
trial by jury, matrimony, democratic government, or what not — is
hardly the way to promote its welfare. These people would suggest
that this same argument, ' good for trade,' would equally justify the
manufacture of loaded dice, fraudulent weights and measures, burglars'
outfits, and many another undesirable product of civilisation.

But of all foolish conventions, the silliest is that which forbids the
giving of money. Granted that I know you well enough, I may give
you anything up to a grand piano or a motor-car, and as a result
most people find themselves in possession of a small herd of white
elephants. But if, to save adding to this undesirable menagerie, I
give you the money direct, all the Englishman mantles in your cheek,
and, in a voice tremulous with passion, you ask whether I wish to insult
you. ' Would you pauperise me ? ' you indignantly exclaim, honest
soul ; not seeing that there is no practical difference between sending
you, say, the Encyclopaedia Britannica and writing you a cheque
for But it is not my business to advertise that truly great work.

It was a good rule that, laid down by the Master of old, * Give to
him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn
not away.' The latter precept might perhaps b3 amended by the
suggestion that without good security one should never lend more
than one is prepared to give, but the former is wholly admirable. To
know that one's friend wants a thing constitutes a claim in itself, and
if his need is so urgent that he stoops to ask, the claim becomes impera-
tive. But to mark seasons of the year and anniversaries of birthdays
or weddings by going into a fancy shop and selecting from the thousand
and one useless articles there displayed something to thrust into the
expectant maw of one's kinsfolk or acquaintance, who do nob want
anything in particular, but merely look for a present — surely this is
a poor way of showing one's goodwill ! But it is thus that the rubbish

1C04 GIFTS 317

piles up and the housemaid groans as she dusts it, while the owner finds
himself wondering at times why there should be so heavy a penalty
for arson.

Are my friends so bankrupt of ideas that they have no other means
of showing their goodwill than buying me something at a shop ! Is
not a kind word or even a cheery smile worth all the burdensome
knicknacks with which they can load me ? Periodically, too ! as if
love came in rhythmic spurts like a steam-pump. Nothing for eleven
months and th?n some horrid costly trinket at Christmas ! Why ?
Do you love me more on the 25th of December than the 25th of June
or any other month ? ' What nonsense ! Of course I djn't; but it
is Christmas ! ' Then, my dear lady, if your gift be due to Christmas
rather than to me, prithee give it to Santa Claus, or, better still, to
Dr. Barnardo, and don't make me the safety-valve for your chronic
outbursts of benevolence.

The rising generation has a bad lookout in this connection. Every
nursery is glutted with a perfect shopful of toys — dolls waxen, wooden t
china, rag ; monkeys, pigs, camels, drums, bricks, trains, soldiers,
musical boxes — there is no end of the rubbish. And in the middle
of it all sits the jaded two-year-old, like Koheleth in the midst of his
splendour, and, with eye roaming discontentedly over the piled-up
floor, murmurs out the infantile equivalent for Vanitas vanitatum. I
once knew a small boy who had ten tin soldiers, which made him entirely
happy, till an unwise old lady multiplied his stock twentyfold. After
two days of riotous enjoyment he began to see that his happiness had
been increased by the multiplication of his possessions, and from that
moment peace was at an end ; like the daughter of the horse-leech,
his cry was always ' Give, give,' and but for the fact that in a hasty
removal the whole of his cherished army was left behind, he would have
grown up a very discontented infant. As it was he began all over
again with bits of stick and reels of cotton, and that wonderful faculty
of ' make-believe,' which is at the bottom of all childish enjoyment,
and for which the modern toy, complete in every detail, affords no
scope. The natural child would rather have a shawl with two strings
tied round it for a neck and a waist than the most artistic, best-dressed
doll in the world — as all who have anything to do with children know
quite well ; yet, so fettered are they by the senseless custom of giving,
that they continue to deluge each other's offspring with more toys
than an infant school could grapple with.

With such an example at home it is little wonder that the school-
boy has adopted the evil custom of disturbing the normal relations
with his master by means of a testimonial at the end of term. It is
usually the worst boy in the form who originates the idea, probably
more with the design of mollifying the tyrant for the future than with
a lively sense of gratitude for his past attentions ; no one likes to
refuse — moral courage is not a strong~pointjwith the average school-
VOL. LVI — No. 330 Y

318 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Aug.

boy — and So their little pocket moneys go to swell Orbilius' stock of
superfluous inkstands, and divers small minds are profoundly impressed
with a sense of injustice when later on in the day there comes the usual
penalty for not knowing the eccentricities of the Irregular Verbs.

There is no need to refer to public subscriptions and testimonials,
for such things can hardly be said to come under the head of gifts at
all — any more than the benevolences of the Tudor sovereigns — being
rather the purchase-money paid by each man for the entrance of his
name on the subscription roll, since nine men out of ten will honestly
admit that their main anxiety is not to be outdone by their neighbours
and see their own names followed by a smaller figure — as though the
donation represented the sum at which a man valued himself — where-
fore they invariably want to know what their friends have given
before putting down their own sum. What a fine thing it would be
for the Empire if a like spirit of emulation could be roused over pay-
ment of the King's taxes !

If, then, as appears to be the case, giving is either an act of self-
indulgence or a tax imposed by convention on those who are not
strongminded enough to resist, is it not time for the formation of an
Anti-gift League, the members of which shall bind themselves to neither
give nor take unnecessary presents ? Doubtless it would require some
moral courage to join at first, for the world has so long confounded
gifts with goodwill that one who tries to dissociate the two will almost
certainly be termed niggardly by those who do not understand his
point of view ; but when it becomes apparent that the members of
the Lsague have at least their full share of that Will to Help the World,
which is the prime factor in progress, that they are not less but more
ready to give all that they have — their time, their money, their services
— to those who really need help, probably it will begin to dawn on even
the most mercantile tha1: there are better things in life than the giving
of gifts^

C. B. WHEELER,

1304

LAST MONTH

THE high temperature in the physical world, which made last month
30 great a contrast to most recent Julys, has been accompanied by a
corresponding increase of heat in politics. No great events occurred
during the month, and yet there has been a steady exacerbation of
political conditions which is in itself a serious and noteworthy symptom.
Patience has evidently reached its limits on both sides, and even
courtesy — the courtesy which wise men invariably show to their
political opponents — seems to be worn threadbare. I am not suffi-
ciently impartial to be able to decide whether the greater sinners in
this matter of common courtesy can be found among Unionists or
Liberals. Both are probably at fault, though I must confess that the
tone of certain eminent controversialists among my opponents sug-
gests neither the fine flower of good manners nor the tolerance of
those who fight for what they believe to be a winning cause. That
there is an equal degree of bitterness on both sides can hardly be dis-
puted. The House of Commons during last month provided us with
more than the average number of ' scenes,' and these scenes raged
round the most distinguished heads in the assembly. Even the
Speaker did not wholly escape from these explosions of wrath and
bitterness, whilst on one occasion the Prime Minister suffered from
something like a tornado of furious rage on the part of the Opposition.
It was not an edifying scene that men witnessed when the House
absolutely refused to allow the head of the Government to speak a
single audible word. But, edifying or not, it cannot be said that it
was unprovoked. Mr. Balfour himself is, in the opinion of his friends,
admirable and delightful in all the walks of life that he adorns. Most
of his opponents give him credit for being all this in every walk of
life but one. This, however, happens to be the particular walk in
which it is their lot to meet him. The brilliant astuteness in Parlia-
mentary strategy with which he is credited by his effusive admirers
in his own Party seems, as I have had occasion to remark before, to
his opponents to be nothing more than the adroitness of the dancer
on the tight-rope ; and their indignation is increased by the undoubted

319 Y2

820 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aog.

success with which his tricks are executed. I am well aware that
to the orthodox Ministerialist who takes his views day by day
from the Times, or one of the halfpenny organs of his Party, the
attitude of the majority of Liberals towards Mr. Balfour seems to be
the outcome of mere political spite and envy. It is inconceivable to
these gentlemen that the Prime Minister should ever have done any-
thing to deserve the criticisms and censures of his opponents, and
even whilst they are pouring their vitriolic sarcasms upon Lord Rose-
bery or Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, they are bursting with
indignation at the audacity of those who venture to disparage Mr.
Balfour. Fair play is a jewel, and, after all, even a Liberal politician
is entitled to claim it for himself. Writing from the Liberal point of
view, I venture to explain the reasons for the bitterness with which
most Liberals regard the recent performances — successful perform-
ances, I freely admit — of the Prime Minister. They are not angry
merely because he clings to office with an almost desperate tenacity,,
though they feel both anger and contempt when they consider the
means which he employs to keep himself in place. Their chief cause
of complaint against him is that he has employed, and is continuing
to employ, an authority that came to him in 1900 by something like
an accident, in order to do violence to the wishes of the country.
This charge is laughed to scorn by the Ministerial advocates in the
Press. They pour contempt upon the idea that the bye-elections,
unexampled as they are, furnish any real index to the opinions of the
nation, and they snort their ridicule at the notion that Mr. Balfour
has outrun the mandate of the present Government in his recent
efforts at legislation. Yet when a politician so deservedly and gene-
rally respected as Sir Edward Grey accuses the present Government
of having ' grossly deceived ' the country, one would think that
Mr. Balfour's friends would be better advised if they were to try to
defend him instead of sweeping past his accusers with an air of lofty
scorn.

What is it that lies at the root of the intense bitterness of the
Opposition towards the Government at the present moment ? It is
the fact that the majority which Ministers obtained in 1900, and
upon the strength of which they are now living, was obtained by
false pretences. The fact is, of course, denied by the Ministerialist
apologists, but in denying it they raise a clear issue which demands a
thorough investigation. No one can dispute the assertion that the
1900 Parliament was elected upon one issue alone. It was elected
upon the declaration, which unhappily proved to be unfounded, that
the war was at an end. Ministers appealed directly to the electors to
give them a majority in order to enable them to settle satisfactory
terms of peace. If this had been all, sensible and fair-minded Liberals,
though they must still have resented the gross injustice of the false-
hood which represented every Liberal as an enemy of his own country,

1504 LAST MONTH 321

.•and a friend of his country's enemies, would hardly have been in a
position to complain of the recent acts of the Administration. But
this was not all, and no amount of special pleading on the part of the
Ministerial advocates in the Press can alter the aspect of the crucial
fact of the 1900 election. This was the declaration, repeated more
than once by the two most important members of the Government in
the House of Commons— Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain— and
echoed eagerly by their whole herd of followers, that the issue before
the electors was confined to that raised by the war, and that all other
questions were specifically excluded. The words of Mr. Balfour and
Mr. Chamberlain, in which this position was set forth, have been
quoted so often that I need not quote them again here. They are so
clear and precise that if they had referred to any other question than
one of politics, the men who used them would not for a moment have
dreamed of attempting to repudiate their pledges. But they have
been repudiated, apparently on the ground that the standard of
honour in politics is not that which is acknowledged either in private
life or in ordinary business. Having obtained their majority by
means of a specific pledge, Ministers have, ever since, deliberately
disregarded that pledge, and have been content to plead the un-
doubted fact that they have a majority in the present House of
Commons as a justification for all their actions. When the terms of
peace in South Africa were at last settled, and not settled without
the active assistance of certain members of the Opposition, Mr. Bal-
f-our and his colleagues went on to carry out a programme of their
own without the smallest regard for the declarations they had made
when they appealed to the country in 1900. The Education Act was
certainly not before the electors in that year ; but this did not hinder
them from carrying it, in spite of the protests of some of their own
party, and notoriously in defiance of the wishes of a great body of
the electorate, many of whom had voted for them on the question of
the war. We are told, of course, by the Ministerial apologists, that
it is ridiculous to suppose that a Ministry is to be debarred from
introducing measures, in the value and virtue of which they believe,
merely because those measures were not put before the country at a
General Election. Up to a certain point this contention is unassail-
able ; but it can hardly be maintained in face of the fact that the
electors were expressly told by the chief members of the Administra-
tion that in voting, as they were urged to do, for Ministerial candi-
dates in the midst of a grave national crisis, they were voting for
them upon one issue, and upon one issue only. It is still more difficult
to maintain it when we remember that Liberal electors were appealed
to for their support on the clear understanding that by voting for
Ministerialists on the question of the war they would not be regarded
as abjuring any of their opinions on matters of domestic policy. Yet
Ministers have acted ever since they obtained a renewal of their

322 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug.

tenure of office as though the vote of 1900 was given to them as a vote
in favour of Tory principles in general.

This, I imagine, is what so cool and moderate a disputant as Sir
Edward Grey meant when he deliberately charged Ministers with
having deceived the country. It is this which has done more than>
anything else to create the almost unexampled bitterness that now
prevails in the political world, and that led to the painful scene in the
House last month when the Prime Minister was absolutely refused a
hearing by the Opposition, and was reduced to the painful humilia-
tion of having to sit down unheard. The Licensing Bill is, in many
respects, a more gross violation of the pledges given by Ministers ia
1900 than the Education Act. There is no question as to its not
having been before the electors in 1900. There is equally no question
as to its not having been in the mind of its author, the Prime Minister,
until the result of the Rye election warned him that his party was in
danger of losing one of its most valuable assets, the support of the
licensed victuallers and the brewers. It was brought in, as a matter
of fact, in order to redeem the promise which he made in a panic-
stricken moment, in replying to a deputation of those interested in the
drink traffic. If the Bill had merely fulfilled the promise then giver*
it would not have been so obnoxious as it was, not only to the Opposi-
tion, but to all who recognise the fact that our greatest social evil is
intemperance, and our worst national enemy the liquor monopoly.
Unfortunately, Mr. Balfour, having undertaken to touch the question)
raised by the action of magistrates who put the interests of the com-
munity before those of the licensed victuallers and their over-lords
the brewers, seized the opportunity of bringing in a Bill which not
merely dealt with a few cases of undoubted hardship, but sought to-
put the whole licensing system upon a new footing. Here again he
forgot altogether the conditions of the 1900 election, and the pledges
upon the strength of which he and his party had gained their majority.
He brought in a measure which in its original form would have been an
effectual bar to any real reform of the licensing system, probably
for a generation to come. He refused to listen to the appeals made
to him by the bishops and by many on his own side of the House to
modify his scheme so far as to enable the community, at some future
date, to reassert its full power of control over a traffic which every-
body recognises as furnishing one of the gravest social problems of
our time. It is not necessary to discuss here the details of the Bill,,
or the almost criminal recklessness with which it destroyed the greater
part of the power that the nation, through the magistracy, has hitherto-
possessed in dealing with licenses. The broad fact remains that it
gave the license-holders, or, rather, the brewers who hold them in
bond, something perilously like a practical freehold in their licenses.
It was hardly a party question which was thus raised. Though the
licensed victualler is proverbially conservative in opinion, there are

1904 LAST MONTH 323

many sincere friends of licensing reform on the Conservative benches.
The Church, though it has not taken the place which might have been
hoped for in the struggle against the evils of the present system, has
again and again attested its devotion to the cause of temperance.
There were many, therefore, in his own party, who objected to Mr.
Balfour's proposals, whilst the avowed temperance party in the
country was roused by them to a fury of indignation. When the
debates in Committee on the Bill began, a month ago, strenuous
efforts were made by the reformers on both sides of the House to
amend the obnoxious measure. There was nothing in the nature of
what is known as ' obstruction.' Even Mr. Balfour has felt con-
strained to acknowledge this. Yet before the Bill had been more than
a day or two in Committee the Prime Minister announced to the
House that he proposed to force it through by the most drastic of all
the weapons in the hands of the Government, that which is known as.
' closure by compartment.'

There is no more difficult question, and none which an opponent
of the Ministry of the day finds it harder to deal with, than that of
the abuse of the closure. Both sides have used it in turn, and I am
afraid it can hardly be denied that both have abused it. But the ordi-
nary closure is one thing, and closure by compartment another. The
classic instance pleaded by Mr. Balfour and his friends in defence of
his action regarding the Licensing Bill is that of the Home Rule Bill
of 1893, to which closure by compartment was, in the end, applied
by Mr. Gladstone. Yet no one who recalls the facts as to the Home
Rule Bill can fail to perceive that there is no analogy between it and
the case of the Licensing Bill. The House of Commons pressed
forward and carried the Home Rule Bill in obedience to a direct
mandate from the electors of the United Kingdom. Home Rule
was the question, the only question, that was placed before them in
1892, and Ministers and their supporters had behind them the voice
and the opinion of the nation. Who can pretend that this was the
case with the Licensing Bill ? Not only was it never spoken of or
thought of at the General Election of 1900, but, as I have shown, it
was one of those measures expressly excluded from consideration by
Mr. Balfour himself when he made his appeal to the electors in 1900.
The Home Rule Bill was opposed by methods of obstruction gross and
palpable, and carried to lengths never known before, nor was it until
more days had been spent in Committee upon it than hours had been
devoted to the Licensing Bill that Mr. Gladstone was constrained to
adopt the drastic remedy of closure by compartment. To profess
that his action afforded a fair precedent for that of Mr. Balfour last
month would be ridiculous. Yet it was on this precedent that Mr.
Balfour relied when he put a mechanical gag on the debates in Com-
mittee on the Licensing Bill, and succeeded in forcing it through that
stage without anything in the nature of adequate discussion. Men

324 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

have blamed the Opposition because, when he rose to move the applica-
tion of the gag, they refused to allow him to speak, and treated him
to such open contumely as has hardly fallen to the lot of a Prime
Minister before. For once his charm of manner and his dexterous
tactics availed him nothing ; and he succeeded in carrying his resolu-
tion only by the brute force of his majority — the khaki majority of
1900. I confess that I cannot bring myself to apologise for the
bitterness displayed by the Opposition on this occasion. Yet, so
strong is truth, even when crippled and gagged, that Mr. Balfour
found himself compelled to make one important and far-reaching
concession to the opponents of the measure whilst it was in Com-
mittee. This was the provision that at the end of seven years all new
licenses shall come to an end, and shall only be renewed on such terms
as the authorities may determine. For some regulation of this kind
temperance reformers, not of the fanatical class, have been striving
for years, and it is just possible that, in spite of the liquor trade and of
Mr. Balfour, a germ of good may be found to exist even in the Licensing
Bill of 1904. At any rate, it is clear that the licensed victuallers,
who received it in the first instance with acclamation, are beginning
to realise the fact that the chief benefits to be derived from it will be
reaped not by themselves but by the brewers who hold them in bond.
Whilst war, open and unrelenting, has been the state of things in
the political world as a whole, it can hardly be said that peace has
prevailed within the borders of the Ministerial camp. The deposition
of the Duke of Devonshire from his old place at the head of the Liberal
Unionist wing of the Ministerial party has been followed by the forma-
tion of a Unionist Free Trade Club, to which most of the ' men of light
and leading ' in the Party have somehow or other gravitated. In
succession to this has come in turn the conversion of the old Liberal-
Unionist Council into a branch of the Tariff Reform League, under
the presidency of Mr. Chamberlain. That gentleman, with uncon-
scious humour, has described his capture of the Party ' machine ' as
having transformed it from an oligarchy into a republic. Presumably
his use of the word oligarchy is meant as a sly hit at the Duke of
Devonshire, whose past services to the Unionist cause do not seem to
have left any lasting impression upon the men who profited by them,
and who is now treated with contumely by the writers and politicians
who were at his feet two years ago. Why the Liberal-Unionist Council
should have ceased to be an oligarchy, and should have become a
republic by the installation of Mr. Chamberlain as its president in
place of the Duke, it is not easy for an outsider to understand. The
' republic,' however, is clearly even more at the mercy of the Party
wire-pullers than the ' oligarchy,' and the proceedings on the 14th of
July, when the Liberal Unionists met to transfer their allegiance from
mere Unionism to Unionism plus the taxes upon food, furnished a
brilliant triumph for the dexterous manipulation of the machine.

1904 LAST MONTH 325

That same 14th of July had been looked forward to by many persons
as a day big with the fate of the Ministerial party. The new republic
had announced, through its organs in the Press, the fact that several
members of the Cabinet, including the Marquis of Lansdowne and
Lord Selborne, had given their adhesion to its principles, and Free
Traders not unnaturally asked if those who had remained faithful to
their cause within the Ministerial ranks were going to stand this.
Mr. Balfour has kept his party together and has succeeded in remaining
in office by the adoption of two ingenious devices — first, the promul-
gation by himself of a policy so nebulous that nobody could really
say what it meant ; and, secondly, the declaration by his official
spokesmen in the House of Commons that, whatever else they might:
think, Ministers were opposed to the taxing of food or raw materials.
The Liberal-Unionist Council had, however, adopted a policy which
included this desperate Protectionist device, and Lord Lansdowne
and Lord Selborne had not only accepted official positions in its ranks
with enthusiasm, but had conveyed to its members a warm message
of sympathy from the Prime Minister himself. In other days, when
British Governments were supposed not only to know, but to say
what they meant, and when sitting on the fence was the last accom-
plishment which men would have thought of attributing to a Premier,
the situation thus created would have been plain enough to every-
body. It would have been accepted universally as proof that the
Cabinet had been converted en masse to the policy of Mr. Chamberlain,
and that henceforth Protection, unadulterated and unashamed, was
the avowed policy of the Ministerial party. But in these days, when
we are invited by the tribune of Birmingham to ' think Imperially,'
we seem at the same time to have been deprived of the power of think-
ing clearly, and the Ministerialists are apparently prepared to treat
even the events of the 14th of July as though they were of no par-
ticular consequence, committing nobody to any definite policy. Even
Mr. Chamberlain's speech on the evening of the fateful day does not
seem to have advanced matters greatly. In the opinion of Liberals
it was a speech full of acrimonious clap-trap, in which all the stale
fallacies and exploded hypotheses of last year were repeated with
magnificent audacity, and the attention of the speaker's audience was
diverted from his weakness in argument by the bitterness of the
invective launched against his Liberal and Free Trade opponents.
Even the Conservative Press did not seem to be pleased with a rhe-
torical effort which did not carry the cause of the bread tax an inch
further forward, whilst it is reported that the distinctly bellicose
attitude of the new President of the Liberal-Unionist Council did not
impress his followers as it might have been expected to do. Yet with
one great achievement Mr. Chamberlain is to be credited. He has
undoubtedly captured the party machine in both its branches —
Unionist and purely Conservative — and there is nobody on this side

326 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

of the Atlantic who knows so well as he does how to work such a
machine for the purpose of securing his own ends. Fortunately,
however powerful machines may be, they have not in this country as
yet taken the place of the electorate at large, and if one may judge
by the bye-elections of last month, the member for West Birmingham
is as far as ever from having made any impression upon the great mass
of the electors. Still it would be a mistake for Free Traders to under-
rate the significance of what he has accomplished, thanks even more
to the weakness of Mr. Balfour and his colleagues in the Cabinet
than to his own energy and consummate ability. To all intents and
purposes he has secured command of the official Party platform, and
Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and the other convinced Free Traders who
have ' let " I dare not " wait upon " I would," ' have only themselves
to thank if their position in their old party has now been made still more
difficult than it was at midsummer last year. The leader of the Opposi-
tion has demanded a day for the discussion of a vote of censure on the
Government, because of its share in the proceedings of the Liberal-
Unionist Council, and Mr. Balfour, with a curious disregard for estab-
lished custom, has suggested that a day, or rather half a day, for the
debate may be found in the first week in August. Possibly Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman might have been better advised if he had left Mr.
Chamberlain and his new republic to the judgment of sensible Minis-
terialists. The time is evidently past when votes of censure are likely
to bring about any serious change in the political situation, whilst the
mortification of the ' free fooders ' on the Conservative benches, who
find themselves being swept against their own will towards the Niagara
of fiscal reform, ought not to need to be stimulated by a Party debate
and division. But in any case the internal condition of the Ministerial
party has certainly not been improved by the proceedings of the
reconstructed Liberal-Unionist Council.

So far as the Opposition is concerned there is comparatively little
to record in connection with the story of last month. Once again,
indeed, it has had to revise its opinion as to the probable date of the
General Election, and, as it firmly believes, of its return to power.
Last month Cabinet-making was the favourite amusement on both
sides of the House of Commons as well as in the Press, and amusing
to the verge of the grotesque were some of the attempts of our anony-
mous Warwicks. To-day the toys seem by common consent to have
been put aside for a more convenient season, for Mr. Balfour sits
tighter than ever on his precarious perch, and even the young lions
of Radicalism begin to realise the absurdity of their attempts to puff
their special favourites of the lobbies and the back benches into places
in a Cabinet that is certainly not yet in process of formation. The
only serious domestic event in the history of the Liberal party during
the month is the attempt that is being made in some quarters to
identify its policy and fortunes with those of Mr. Redmond and his

1904 LAST MONTH 327

party. It is even alleged by some ardent advocates of the Irish
cause that Unionist Free Traders who are prepared to break away
from the Ministerial party must not expect to be received into the
Liberal ranks unless they are prepared to declare themselves Home
Rulers. The notion is absurd from every point of view, and those
who promulgate it are clearly incapable of seeing things as they are.
Apart from the trifling fact that Mr. John Redmond has proclaimed
a jehad against Lord Rosebery and the whole body of Liberal Imperi-
alists, apart also from the circumstance that but for the consistent
help which this gentleman has given the Government upon the very
questions on which Liberals feel most strongly Mr. Balfour would
have been defeated some time ago, we have to reckon with the
undeniable fact that the next Parliament, with its assumed majority
of Liberals, will have work cut out for it which it must undertake as
soon as it gains power, and which will be enough and more than enough
to occupy its whole life-time. The writers who announce that Home
Rule must be the burning issue at the next General Election, and
who condemn as opportunists those who think otherwise, are them-
selves the worst of all opportunists. For the sake of gaining the
support of Mr. Redmond at the General Election they are prepared
not only to repel the Unionist Free Traders who desire to join hands
with them in the battle over the food tax, but to impose upon the
neck of the next Liberal Government the intolerable and degrading
yoke of an alliance with that Irish party which strenuously upholds
the Education Act, approves of the Licensing Bill, and cares nothing
about Free Trade. Opportunism of this narrow and mischievous
character is happily repudiated by the common sense of mankind.

Mr. Arnold-Forster's statement on the subject of Army reform,
which had been expected with great eagerness by the public at large,
has not made the impression upon the country which was anticipated.
This, however, is probably not the fault of the Secretary for War.
The scheme which he propounded, when he was at last allowed to
make his belated explanation to the House of Commons, was mani-
festly the result of a struggle in high quarters and a consequent com-
promise. Like all compromises, it is disappointing. It is not the
far-reaching, comprehensive, and statesman-like scheme which Mr.
Arnold-Forster's friends in both parties had hoped for. Broadly
stated, the plan he now propounds is one for dividing the Army into
two portions : one for service abroad, and the other for home defence.
The Imperial service army is to consist of men enlisted for nine years,
the home army of men enlisted for two. The home army is apparently
to provide a reserve, akin to that which served us so well during the
South African war. We are, however, left in the dark as to the
attractions which are to be employed in order to induce men to enlist
in either branch of the service. Nothing could have been more
deplorable than the description given of the present state of the Army

3-28 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug.

by the Secretary for War ; but he has not shown us how, under a
system of voluntary enlistment, that state is likely to improve, and
tie Government have resolutely set their face against anything in
the nature of conscription or compulsory service. The scheme,
therefore, seems to resolve itself into one for dividing the existing
army into these two portions, and for reducing the numbers of
the regular soldiers, the Militia, and the Volunteers. Mr. Arnold-
Forster did not hide the fact that there are differences of opinion in
high quarters — presumably the Cabinet and the War Office — as to
the merits of his proposals. For the present we know too little of
the details of his plan to be able to discuss it intelligently ; but it is
distinctly disappointing to those of us who had hoped that under the
new Secretary for War we might have seen the accomplishment of a
really great reform of our Army system. The fault is probably not
Mr. Arnold-Forster's, who has had to face difficulties hardly to be
exaggerated, but the result is none the less to be deplored.

One may pass over in silence such episodes of the month as the
withdrawal of the Aliens Bill after it had failed to meet the severe
and prolonged criticism to which it was subjected in the Grand Com-
mittee ; the grave difference of opinion between Sir Charles Eliot,
our late Resident in Uganda, and the Foreign Office, regarding which
we are not yet in possession of Sir Charles Eliot's side of the case ; and
the unfortunate action taken by Lord Dundonald after his dismissal
from the command of the local forces in Canada. Far more important
than any of the questions raised by these incidents have been those
connected with the progress of the war in the Far East. So far as
military operations are concerned we are still permitted to get nothing
more than occasional glimpses of what is going on in Manchuria. The
Japanese still exhibit an unrivalled skill in keeping the outside world
in the dark whilst they are working out their own destiny on the field
of battle. But we know enough to be aware that the course of events
continues to be uniformly unfavourable to Russia. Great strategical
advantages have been gained by the Japanese, both in the immediate
neighbourhood of Port Arthur and further north in the peninsula,
where the army of General Kuropatkin has clearly been placed in a
position of grave peril. Great battles have been fought in which the
advantage seems invariably to have rested with the Japanese, and in
which the losses of the Russians, at least, have been terrible. But
the ' fog of war ' still broods over the scene of the great campaign,
and until it has lifted the criticisms of outsiders are futile. Of closer
interest to ourselves has been the action of the Russians in the Red
Sea, where a cruiser of theirs, which passed through the Dardanelles
as a member of the volunteer fleet, and consequently a non-combatant,
has not only stopped several mail steamers, English and German, but
has actually seized one of the vessels of the P. and 0. fleet, the Malacca,
on the pretext that it was carrying contraband of war. There is no

1904 LAST MONTH 329

question as to the right of a belligerent to search a neutral vessel, and
to capture it, if there is fair reason to suppose that it is carrying con-
traband for the use of its enemy ; but the question of the Dardanelles
is one of extreme gravity, and if ships which are to all intents and
purposes men-of-war, and which ostentatiously assume that character
as soon as they reach open waters, are to be allowed by the Sultan
free passage through the Straits, the Treaty of Paris is defied, and this
country is placed in a serious predicament. Fortunately the firm
attitude taken up by our own Government and the wise prudence shown
by the authorities at St. Petersburg have sensibly abated the acute-
ness of a crisis which might readily have assumed a very serious
character. But remembering our obligations under our treaty with
Japan, it is impossible to doubt that a question of the greatest
gravity has arisen, and that the British Government will be com-
pelled to take decisive action in one direction or the other.

One non-political subject of great interest was raised during the
month by the influential deputation which waited upon the Prime
Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the purpose of
enlisting their sympathy on behalf of the movement for obtaining a
substantial grant from public funds for the old and new universities
of the country. Sympathy with that movement everybody pro-
fesses, for there is no one who pretends to deny the fact that the future
of our country depends more largely upon the training of our
children in the higher branches of scientific learning than even upon
the maintenance of our Fleet and our Army. The Prime Minister
himself declared, when receiving the deputation, that if he had been
out of office he would have been one of its members. No promises
were made by Ministers, but it may fairly be hoped that something
was done to arouse public attention and enlist the practical sympathy
of the Government in a movement which affects so closely the welfare
of the community.

WEMYSS REID.

330 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Au2.

LAST MONTH

II

FOR many weeks past I have been trying to discover the meaning of
the word ' mandate.' On referring to my usual authority on all questions
connected with the English language, Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, I
find mandate defined as ' precept ; charge ; commission, sent or
transmitted.' So far so good. My difficulty is that not one of these
terms seems applicable to the particular mandate with which I am
concerned. Every morning when I indulge in the interesting but not
exhilarating occupation of perusing the speeches delivered over-night
by Free Traders, Free Fooders, and all sorts and conditions of Liberals,
from Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman down to Mr. Swift McNeill,
I read with shame and sorrow that the Government has betrayed its
mandate, has brought discredit not only on its own character, but
on the good faith of British statesmanship, and has thereby inflicted
irreparable injury on the reputation of the Mother of Parliaments.
My compunction, however, at the alleged outrage perpetrated upon this
hypothetical mandate leaves me as ignorant as before of what a
mandate is. I ask myself who gave the mandate, who received the
mandate, and who has committed the unpardonable sin of disobeying
the mandate, and I still wait for a reply. All I can learn is that some-
body, name unknown, at some unspecified locality, has pledged some
person or persons, whose address is not forthcoming, to do or not to
do something whose purport is not capable of explanation.

In as far as I can offer any intelligible explanation of the outcry
raised against the Government of having violated a trust — described
by my old friend Mr. Lucy in his Cross Benches as ' a strictly defined
mandate,' whose definition he unfortunately omits to give — it would
be as follows. The constituencies were told in 1900 that ' every vote
given against the Government was a vote given for the Boers.' This
statement at the time it was made was manifestly true. The Liberal
electors were further informed that, if they returned an Unionist
majority, they were not thereby pledged in any way to support the
policy of the Government upon any other issue than that of the pro-
secution of the war. This statement also was literally true. The

1904 LAST MONTH 331

Liberals are in no way debarred from opposing any measure which
the Unionists may introduce by the fact that, in a few instances,
the Conservative majority may have been swollen by the reluctance of
some English Liberals to take any action hostile to the success of
Great Britain in our conflict with the Boer Republics.

From these two uncontrovertible statements, Lord Rosebery, Sir
William Harcourt, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman have extracted
the untenable conclusion that the Ministry entered into a solemn com-
pact with the British public, that the Parliament elected in 1900 should
either be dissolved as soon as the war was concluded, or that, if its
existence were further prolonged, it should not occupy itself with
any legislation to which the Liberals who voted for Unionists during
what is now denounced by the Opposition as the ' khaki craze '
might hypothetically take exception. Either contention is equally
absurd. When the war came to an end by the surrender of the Boers,
the duty of re-establishing order in the Transvaal and the Free State,
and of restoring, as far as there was a possibility of so doing, the
normal conditions of the Boer States before the outbreak of the war,
devolved as a matter of course upon the Government responsible for
the war. This duty has been fulfilled to a far greater extent than
anybody could have conceived possible. The task, however, is still
far from being accomplished ; and all friends of South Africa would
have grave cause of complaint if the Ministry, while still commanding
a powerful majority in both Houses, were to resign or to dissolve
Parliament in order to expedite the return to office of a new Admini-
stration, whose policy, in as far as I can judge from the utterances of
its anticipated leaders, would be to recall Lord Milner, to re-establish
forthwith popular self-government throughout the Transvaal and the
Free State, to conciliate the Boers, to alienate the sympathies of the loyal
colonists who fought side by side with our British forces, to dislocate
the whole mining industry, the staple industry not only of the Trans-
vaal but of British South Africa, by repealing the Chinese Immigra-
tion Act, and in accordance with the views propounded by Mr. John
Morley, Mr. Bryce, Mr. Courtney, and Mr. Bryn Roberts, to restore
the Boer supremacy which we have just overthrown by force of
arms.

So much for the contention that the retention of office by the
Ministry constitutes a breach of duty. The second contention, that
while they remain in office they are not justified in introducing any
legislation of which Liberals do not approve, is even more fatuous.
Nobody supposes that a Parliament can go on sitting month after
month and year after year doing nothing to justify the fact of its
existence. It is impossible under our Party system to draw any dis-
tinction between contentious and non-contentious business. I cannot
conceive a subject more exempt from political considerations than
the metric system. Yet if the Ministry had introduced a Bill for

332 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug.

modifying our weights and measures, it would, as we all know, have
infallibly been attacked by the Liberals. My own complaint against
the Government would be not that they have given us too much, but
too little, of contentious legislation. I cannot but think that the
question of the redistribution of seats might have been settled by
this time if the Ministry had had the courage to make use of their
overwhelming majority. The longer the removal of a flagrant elec-
toral abuse is adjourned the more difficult its execution must inevitably
become. I own, therefore, that the postponement of redistribution
till next Session seems to me to closely resemble its postponement
to the Greek calends.

l»* Personally I take very little interest in Church versus Chapel con-
troversies. I am not an enthusiast about education. I have lived
too much in countries where temperance is universal, and know their
morals too well, to believe that drink is the sole, or even the main,
cause of crime. I have no special partiality for aliens of any nationality,
but I doubt whether their legal exclusion from British territory would
not do more harm than good. Indeed, my creed is fairly well expressed
by Goldsmith's statement as to how small a part of the ills which
mortal men endure are such as laws can either cause or cure. This
confession of faith may damage me in the opinion of fanatics or ardent
reformers. But I think it qualifies me to express an opinion, which
will be that of most sensible men, with reference to the legislative measures
introduced by the Government during the Session now drawing to a
close. The Education Bill seems to me a reasonable compromise
between the views of denominational and undenominational education.
The measure for enforcing payment of school rates on recalcitrant passive
resisters is, in my judgment, demanded by the paramount necessity of
upholding the authority of the law. The permission granted to the
Transvaal to employ Chinese labour in the mines commends itself to
my mind on the general principle that the Colonies must be better
judges of local affairs than the Mother Country. The Licensing Bill
is, in my judgment, an equitable attempt to combine a large reduction
in the number of public-houses with the recognition of the right of
all publicans to compensation in the event of the trade which they
have carried on in conformity with the regulations of the law being
arbitrarily destroyed by the action of the State. Thus from my
point of view I hold that the measures for whose introduction the
Government are accused by the Opposition of having broken their
plighted faith will in the end commend themselves to the approval
of the British public.

I am confirmed in this view by the attitude taken up by the
Opposition in regard to the measures which have occupied, or been
supposed to occupy, the attention of Parliament during the Session.
No serious attempt has been made to meet the arguments by which
the Bills in question have been defended ; no better scheme has been

LAST MONTH 333

even suggested. The opponents of the Government have so far con-
tented themselves with raising side issues which have little or nothing
to do with the merits or demerits of the measures by which the
Ministry have endeavoured to settle various disputed issues which
call urgently for settlement. On the contrary, the whole efforts of
the Opposition have been devoted to rendering Ministerial legislation
impossible by introducing various contentions which had no bearing
on the intrinsic merits or defects of the measures submitted. Chinese
immigration has been held up to obloquy on the incompatible grounds
that it was prejudicial to the interests of British workmen. When
this cry collapsed the British elector was asked to believe that the
measure was unjust to the Chinese labourer as subjecting him to a
form of slavery. The little loaf cry having been worked till it was
worn out, the ' Chin, Chin, Chinaman ' argument has been adopted
by the Liberals as their battle-cry. It is unnecessary to multiply
illustrations of how the Liberals have sought to raise popular preju-
dices against the Government measures by the employment of inveC'
tive in lieu of argument. This system of dishonest and irrationa\
vituperation was carried to such a pitch during the late Chertsey
election that after the result was known the more serious organs of
the Liberal party felt it their duty to repudiate all responsibility for
the scurrilous lampoons issued by the local agents of the party,
with the view of inducing the electors to vote for the Liberal candi-
date. When the crusade of defamation proved to have been carried
too far, the Liberal party fell back upon the more effective process of
obstruction. Instructions were issued from the Liberal head- quarters
to protract and, if possible, to frustrate the passage of the measures
to which the Government stood committed. It was only when it
became obvious that the Opposition were obstructing for the sake of
obstruction pure and simple that the Government determined to resort
to the closure system. Yet, though the imposition of the closure was
merely the logical retort to the process of ' talking down ' legislation,
it was immediately held up to opprobrium by the very men to whom
its imposition was due, as a flagrant violation of Parliamentary
liberty, and as an unconstitutional attempt to prevent free dis-
cussion. To show the animosity with which the closure has been
resented, it may be well to quote a passage from a speech made by
so sensible and fair-minded a politician as Mr. Morley, who was put
forward by the Party to protest against what Liberals delight to call
the ' introduction of the guillotine ' :

I do not think (to quote Mr. Morley's words) that he (Mr. Balfour) will
differ from me, when I say that no object ought to be more dear to the legisla-
ture than that the people of the country should take an interest in the laws of
the country. But if you proceed to change the spirit and the method in which
the laws are made, depend upon it you will change the spirit in which the
people obey the laws, and revere the Parliament which makes them.

Vox. LVI— No. 330 2

334 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

Now this, if I may be permitted to say so, is arrant nonsense.
Popular reverence for the authority of the law is in danger, not from
the curtailment of Parliamentary debate, but from the teaching of
our latter-day Liberals that a citizen is justified in refusing to dis-
charge his duty as a ratepayer because he has a so-called ' conscientious
objection ' to the purposes for which the rate is to be applied. Again,
respect for Parliament is not diminished by showing that the minority
cannot override the will of the majority. It is impaired, in as far as
it can be impaired, by the disregard of common decency and Parliamen-
tary usage displayed when a number of English gentlemen refused to
grant a hearing to the Prime Minister of England, the Leader of the
House of Commons, and, I may add, the most courteous, the most
kindly, and the most conscientious of British Premiers.

It is, indeed, only since the reintroduction of the closure that the
House of Commons has recovered its claim to be considered either a
legislative or a deliberative assembly. So long as a considerable
body of members avail themselves of the latitude allowed by pre-
cedent in debate, as they have done during the last few weeks,
with the avowed object of rendering legislation an impossi-
bility, the power of closing a debate by the vote of the majority has
become an absolute necessity. There is no reason to suppose that
the Opposition will be more reticent or less prone to frivolous obstruc-
tion in next Session than they have shown themselves in the present
one. It would, therefore, conduce to the credit of Parliament if the
power of summary closure was made the rule and not the exception.
Public interest in the debates of the House of Commons has, as I have
before observed, fallen off greatly of late years, and even a ' Scene
in the House ' has ceased to be a drawing headline on newspaper
posters. I learn from the perusal of the Daily News that the British
public are burning with indignation at the suppression of free debate.
It may be so, but if it is so, the British public possesses a faculty of
concealing its indignation for which it has never hitherto been given
credit. As a matter of fact, what the British public likes and admires
is the display of strength. When the necessity arose for putting
down obstruction the Prime Minister had the opportunity of showing
that he had not lost the suave firmness of will and the sublime indiffer-
ence to personal attack which he had displayed as Secretary of State
for Ireland in the troubled days of Parnellism. The instinctive
respect for strength of character, so universal with our countrymen,
has rendered Mr. Balfour's position far stronger than it was in the
earlier days of the Session.

The most remarkable incident, however, of last month has been
the reappearance of Mr. Chamberlain as the leader of the Tariff
Keform movement. Since his return from Egypt I have con-
stantly been informed by my friends in the Liberal Press, and
notably by the Spectator and the Westminster Gazette, that the Fiscal

1904 LAST MONTH 335

controversy was at an end, that the result of the recent bye-
elections had knocked the last nail into the coffin of Protection, that
Mr. Chamberlain was fully alive to the collapse of his agitation, and
that he was looking out for a decent pretext to abandon his scheme
for the consolidation of the Empire by the introduction of Prefer-
ential tariffs between Great Britain and her Colonies. Mr. Cham-
berlain had but to show himself to disprove all this foolish twaddle.
Very shortly after his reappearance in Parliament he informed me
that his first step, as he had intended from the outset, would be
to secure the co-operation of the Unionists, as a party, in his policy
of Imperial consolidation by Preferential tariffs in favour of GUI
Colonial possessions. If he failed in securing this co-operation he
should feel that he had done his utmost and should abandon all further
efforts in the direction of tariff reform. If on the other hand, as he
hoped and believed, he succeeded in inducing the great majority of
the Unionists to adopt his policy as that of the Unionist party, he
should be content to leave the matter in the hands of the electorate.
If once, he added, one of the great political parties in the State has
committed itself to the policy of giving trade preferences to the Colonies,
the adoption of this policy is a mere question of time.

I do not vouch for the absolute verbal accuracy of the above state-
ment, but I can vouch for its general purport having been such as I
have given it. The substantial accuracy of the statement has been con-
firmed within a few weeks of its being made. Mr. Chamberlain has
already succeeded in winning to his side the open support of the
Unionists, with the exception of the few malcontent Liberal Unionists
who have followed the Duke of Devonshire in his virtual secession
from the Unionist party.

The formal campaign opened on the 5th of July, when a
dinner was given to the late Colonial Secretary by the Unionist
members of the House of Commons who ' sympathise with his policy
of Preferential trade within the Empire.' The speech in which the
guest of the evening narrated with characteristic frankness the process
of his gradual conversion from Free Trade to Protection, and defended
his contention that the maintenance of the British Empire demanded
the adoption of Preferential duties in favour of the Colonies, was one
of which not only the speaker but his countrymen, whether they agree
or disagree with his arguments, may be justly proud. Whatever else
it may have been, it was the speech of a patriot and a statesman.
Indeed, one who like myself can remember the somewhat parochial
tone of Mr. Chamberlain's earlier public utterances cannot but note
with surprise how advancing years, and the riper experience which
contact with public life brings with it, have enlarged his views of
politics and taught him, to use his own expression, ' to think Imperi-
ally.' But after all, under Party government votes are^more important
than speeches, and the real significance of this demonstration lies in

333 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Aug.

tlie fact that 200 Unionist members committed themselves to the
adoption of Preferential trade as being henceforward the policy of
their party. For obvious reasons members of the Ministry were not
present on this occasion ; but since then several of them have joined
the reconstituted Liberal Unionist Association, with the tacit approval
of their colleagues. It may be said that some 148 Unionist members
did not attend the meeting, and that therefore they may be assumed to
hesitate about committing themselves to Preferential duties. On the
other hand, it is still more obvious that these absentees have not yet
committed themselves as a body to open antagonism. Now that Pre-
ferential tariffs have been adopted by the majority of the Unionists
as the policy of the party, the minority have no choice except to abide
by the decision of the majority or to join the Liberals. In this con-
nection it may be well to recall the concluding words of Mr. Chamber-
lain's speech :

Believe me, gentlemen, with such a policy a.s this boldly adopted, boldly
defended in an appeal to the patriotism of our countrymen, be they rich or poor,
he they high or be they low, we shall find an inspiring confidence which will
arouse an enthusiasm which will always be denied to those who fear to give
effect even to their own convictions, who play for safety by sitting on the
fence.

I cannot but believe that this appeal to the weak-kneed Unionists
will cause them with few exceptions to enrol themselves as supporters
of Preferential duties. I am the more confident about this as I know
that the local agents of the party do not hesitate to inform their
representatives that they have little or no chance of winning a doubtful
or even a disputed seat unless they profess themselves openly to be
in favour of Mr. Chamberlain's policy.

The Liberal Union Club's fiasco enforces the weight of Mr. Cham-
berlain's advice to his fellow Unionists. This club, in as far as I can
learn, was established as a sort of refuge for Liberal Unionists, who
attached more value to their claim to be called Liberals than to their
pretension to be Unionists. Lord James of Hereford appears to have
been the presiding genius of the club. One hundred and seventy-two
members of the club were present at a meeting called to consider the
propriety of electing representatives to the new Liberal Unionist
Council. There were a number of Liberal Unionist peers present to
support Lord James — seven in all — of whom the only one whose
name says much to the outside world is Lord Avebury. There
were eight members of the House of Commons, of whom Mr. Parker
Smith was perhaps the best known. This gentleman had the good
sense to propose that the club should elect delegates to represent the
club in the reorganised association, which had actually survived the
withdrawal of the Duke of Devonshire and the disapproval of Lord
James. Thereupon the Hon. Arthur Elliot, who is, or was, the

1904 LAST MONTH 337

editor of the Edinburgh Review, the last surviving exponent of the
well-nigh extinct Whigs, moved as an amendment :

That the Liberal Union Club, having no confidence that the resources and
energies of the Club will not be used by the New Liberal Unionist Council to
promote the policy of the Tariff Reform League— a policy in no way connected
with the purpose for which the Liberal Union Club was founded — declines to
recognise the new Council as a fit exponent of the political principles of the
Liberal Unionist party.

Notwithstanding the supreme authority attaching to the utter-
ances of the recognised exponent of the orthodox Whig creed, and
the hereditary representative of the great Whig class which for a long
series of years monopolised the loaves and fishes of office whenever
the Liberals were in power, the Liberal Union Club decided by a
majority of 108 to 64 to send delegates to the Council. Thereupon
the minority, headed by Lord James of Hereford, resigned their
membership, and declined to associate any longer with Liberal
Unionists who had committed the unpardonable sin of preferring
Chamberlain to Cobden.

The occasion of this secession lay in the fact that at a previous
meeting of the Liberal Unionist Association Mr. Chamberlain had
proposed to widen the membership of the club, to make it repre-
sentative of the local Liberal associations throughout the country,
instead of being, as it has practically been hitherto, a sort of close
borough whose members were practically nominees of the Duke
of Devonshire. By a very large majority the delegates agreed
to adopt Mr. Chamberlain's scheme, and pledged themselves
implicitly, if not explicitly, to do their utmost to return represen-
tatives in favour of Tariff reform. It would be absurd to blame
Lord James and his fellow seceders for having had the courage of
their opinions. I am concerned only with their future action. I am
told they intend to start a sort of cave of their own under the name
of Free Trade Unionists, or something of the kind. The old saying
that you cannot serve two masters will hold true of these secessionists
from the Unionist camp. The logic of facts must draw them to
the Liberals. Already the Duke of Devonshire has given his grave
approval in the House of Lords to the vote of censure on the Unionist
Ministry which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman is to move in the
House of Commons. Necessity makes odd bedfellows.

Thus, practically, Mr. Chamberlain has won the first move in his
Tariff Keform campaign. During the coming autumn he will resume
his more arduous task of enlisting public opinion in the constituencies
on his side. Only a few years ago any man would have been laughed
at who had foretold that in the present year of grace two hundred
members of Parliament would be found ready to adopt a fiscaJ policy
not based upon the principles of Free Trade as propounded by Cobden.

338 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Aug.

Yet within twelve months the member for West Birmingham has
accomplished what was deemed beforehand an impossible achieve-
ment. It is encouraging to his friends and followers to discover that
all the spiteful chatter about his having lost faith in his Imperial
policy, about his health having given way, and about the decline of
his extraordinary faculty of addressing public audiences has proved
to be based on an utter delusion, if not on a wilful perversion of
the truth. Never have his powers as an organiser been more signal
than in the Jway in which he has won over the Liberal Unionists to
his side ; never has his power as an orator been more manifest than
in his public addresses. Few finer speeches, indeed, have ever been
delivered by a British statesman than that in which Mr. Chamberlain
pleaded ^the cause of the British Empire at the Hotel Cecil gathering.
Throughout last month the Opposition have been on the look out
for the offchance, to use a wrestling phrase, of giving the Govern-
ment a fall. On every occasion they have failed. There is nothing
discreditable in failure except when success is sought by discreditable
tactics. It is, to quote a saying of the late Lord Beaconsfield, the duty
of an Opposition to oppose. But it is not their duty to obstruct for
obstruction's sake. To waste the time of Parliament by irrelevant
discussion, to call for needless divisions, to move on any possible or
impossible pretext the adjournment of the debate, to talk against
time, and to raise points of order on grounds which were utterly
incapable of being even argued, were the tactics which the Liberals
have borrowed from their Nationalist allies. It is only fair, however,
to admit that Mr. Parnell and his followers had one justification for
their obstruction which the Liberals do not possess. It was the object
of the uncrowned king to prove that by obstruction he could discredit
the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and prove the necessity for
the repeal of the Union. The Liberals, however, have no such
excuse. They profess their respect for the supremacy of Parliament,
and yet they lose no opportunity of disparaging its authority. Their
last device for protracting the Session is almost comic in its deviation
from common sense. On the plea that two members of the Ministry
have joined the Executive of the Liberal Unionist Association, they
have moved a vote of censure upon the Government, and insist that
in accordance with Parliamentary usage a night should be set apart
for the discussion of this vote of censure. In as far as it is possible to
follow their contention, it is not that Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Alfred
Lyttelton and his colleagues have no right as Ministers of the Crown to
join an association devoted to the reform of 'our fiscal system, but that
the Prime Minister is morally bound to explain forthwith what the
views of himself and the Ministry are with respect to the campaign
in favour of Tariff Reform now being conducted by the late Minister
for the Colonies. It is difficult to understand how any clearer answer
could be given to this inquiry than is supplied by the facts that two

1904 LAST MONTH 339

distinguished members of the Ministry have joined the reconstructed
Liberal Unionist Association, of which Mr. Chamberlain has been
appointed President ; and that they have done so without any of
their colleagues expressing disapproval. Mr. Balfour has never made
any secret of the sympathy he entertains for Mr. Chamberlain's
Imperial ideas, but he has pledged himself to submit no issue to the
electorate at the next General Election other than that of the pro-
priety of imposing retaliatory duties upon countries which close their
own markets against British trade. Even Sir Henry Campbell-
Bannerman is intelligent enough to be aware that Mr. Balfour can
add nothing to the statement he has repeated time after time ; and
the only possible result of the impending debate must be to show that
Mr. Chamberlain's policy is more than ever the policy of His Majesty's
Government. Again, the all-night debate on the Finance Bill, when
the House of Commons was kept sitting, without rhyme or reason,
from 2 P.M. on Tuesday to 3.40 P.M. on Wednesday, had no practical
result beyond depriving the Premier of the pleasure of attending the
Guildhall Banquet in honour of Lord Curzon ; and with this doughty
achievement the Liberals must rest content.

After the turmoil of tall talk there is a certain sense of relief in
being brought face to face with the possibility of action. Before
these lines appear in print we shall know whether the seizure of the
Malacca is a mere brutumfulmen, or whether it is intended as a deliberate
outrage against England. It seems hardly credible that Russia,
after having sustained a series of disastrous defeats at the hands of
Japan, should be anxious to pick a quarrel with England. If not,
Russia will not hesitate to release the Peninsular and Oriental mail
boat without further delay. The despatch of Lord Lansdowne, if
correctly reported, can leave no doubt in the minds of the Czar and
his Ministers that England is not going ' to take it lying down.' This
despatch, too, has already been emphasised by the sending in haste
of British men-of-war to the waters of Port Said. It is, however, on
the cards that the Russian Government may be anxious to find some
colourable pretext for withdrawing from a position in the Far East
which she finds untenable with the forces at her disposal. Such a pretext
might be found in a war with England, the ally of Japan. If so, we
may be standing within a measurable distance of a maritime war.
For the present I can only express a hope that all Englishmen irre-
spective of their political bias will join in declaring that the flag of
England cannot be insulted with impunity. My hope, however, is,
I admit, stronger than my belief. The death of ex-President Kruger
recalls too vividly the days when Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
declined to support Mr. Chamberlain's proposal in respect of sending
reinforcements to Natal before war had been declared by the Trans-
vaal, and by his refusal encouraged President Kruger to declare
war. Absit omen.

340 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Aug. 1904

As I write these lines the memory comes back to my mind of the
many times during which I have seen ' Oom Paul ' sitting smoking
on the stoop of his dwelling at Pretoria. I can recall his heavy jowls,
his flabby cheeks, his small pig-like eyes, his shabby ash-stained black
suit, his general look of a Methodist minister who had somehow come
to grief. His habits — as the lady remarked about the schoolboy —
' were dirty, and manners he had none.' Yet with it all he bore himself
with a certain rude dignity. He may have been coarse and brutal, but
there must have been something lovable about the man from the
affection he earned, not only in his own family, but amongst his
intimate friends. I confess, however, that the sort of eulogies which
have been passed upon him since his death jar somewhat on my taste,
coming as they do from English lips and English hands. That the
Boers should admire Kruger I can understand. He was a Boer after
their own heart. De mortuis nil nisi bonum may be a sound saying ; but
I think it is followed too far if the name of hero is applied to a man
whose first thought was his own safety, who never went near a field
of battle, who ran away as soon as our troops approached Pretoria,
who left his wife to shift for herself, and who during his public career
amassed a huge fortune by dubious means, and hoarded this fortune
with the sordid tenacity of a born miser.

EDWARD DICEY.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake
to return unaccepted MSS.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTURY

AND AFTER

XX

No. CCCXXXI— SEPTEMBER 1904

HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR

A COMPLETE HISTORY

IN this and a following article an attempt will be made to furnish a
complete history of the course of events which led to the gigantic war
now being waged in the Far East. As I shall endeavour to show, it
was brought about solely by the action of Russia. I have sought to
make my narrative concise, but if it should strike the reader as being
here and there a trifle tedious, I must earnestly crave indulgence for
the sake of the important bearing which the events recorded have
had, and must continue to have, on the common interests of the
civilised world. As regards the thorough accuracy of the statements
herein made, I need only explain that they are based throughout
upon the numerous State papers of the Powers concerned, and that
my facts have one and all been gathered from these incontestable
sources of information.

It is scarcely necessary to reiterate how Russia deprived Japan of
her legitimate prize of war, the Liao-Tung Peninsula, in 1895, and
how, after the lapse of only a few years, she appropriated to herself

VOL. LVI— No. 331 A A

342 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

the most important and strategically valuable portion of that peninsula ;
nor is it essential that I should relate how, in doing this, Russia out-
witted England, and how the British Government was driven to exact
from China a lease of Wei-Hai-Wei in consequence as a set-off to
Russia's acquisition of Port Arthur and adjacent territory. It will
suffice to remember that the lease of Port Arthur to Russia as a naval
station was viewed by the British Government, and so declared in its
diplomatic correspondence, as a ' serious disturbance of and menace
to the balance of power in the Gulf of Pe-Chih-li,' and that as regards
Wei-Hai-Wei the step taken by England was considered by her as
having been forced upon her by the actions of Russia.

It is also perhaps needless to state that this acquisition of territory
at Port Arthur was a direct self-contradiction of the theory that
Russia had advanced, less than three years before, when she had
urged Japan to give up that region, on the plea that ' the possession
of the peninsula of Liao-Tung, claimed by Japan, would be a constant
menace to the capital of China, would at the same time render illusory
the independence of Korea, and would henceforth be a perpetual
obstacle to the permanent peace of the Far East.'

The agreement for the cession of the ' Kwantung Peninsula ' and
Port Arthur was first signed in Peking on the 27th of March, 1898,
and was afterwards supplemented by another agreement signed in
St. Petersburg on the 7th of May of the same year. On the day that
the first agreement was signed the Russian Government suddenly
made the following communication to the Powers :

In virtue of the Agreement signed on the 15th (27th) March in Peking by
the Bepresentatives of Russia and the members of the Tsung-li Yamen, as
respective Plenipotentiaries, Port Arthur and Talien-Wan, as well as the adjoining
territory, have been ceded by the Chinese Government for the use of Russia.

You are instructed to communicate the above to the Government to which
you are accredited, and to add that the above-mentioned ports and territory will
be occupied without delay by the forces of his Imperial Majesty, our august
Monarch, and that the Russian flag, together with the Chinese, will be hoisted
in them.

You can at the same time inform the Minister for Foreign Affairs that Port
Talien-Wan will be opened to foreign commerce, and that the ships of all friendly
nations will there meet with the most wide hospitality.

From the Official Messenger and the text of the supplementary
agreement, which subsequently came to the light, it was to be seen
that the agreements provided for the cession of Port Arthur and
Talien-Wan, as well as of the adjacent territory, for the use of Russia
during a term of twenty-five years, which might be prolonged in-
definitely by mutual arrangement, and for the construction of branches
of railways to connect the ports with the main Trans-Siberian Rail-
way. No vessels, whether warships or merchantmen, of any nations
but Russia and China were to be allowed access to Port Arthur ; no

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 343

subjects of other Powers were to be granted concessions for their
use in the 'neutral ground,' which included the territory forming
part of the Liao-Tung Peninsula to the north of the portion actually
leased to Russia, as far as Kai-chau on the north coast, and the
mouth of the Ta-Yang River — i.e. Takushan — on the south coast.
No ports on the seacoasts east or west of the neutral ground were to
be opened to the trade of other Powers, nor might any road or mining
concessions, industrial or mercantile privileges, be granted in the
neutral territory without Russia's consent first being obtained.

It is now an open secret that M. Hanotaux, at that time Foreign
Minister of France, advised the Russian Government not to make
Port Arthur a naval station, and that M. Witte, then the Finance
Minister of Russia, was somewhat of the same opinion ; but even the
trifling element of moderation thus counselled went unheeded, and
the Russian official organ, at the time that the Peking Agreement
was signed, was encouraged, on the other hand, to indulge in the
most extravagant utterances. Thus the Novoe Vremya wrote on the
6th of April, 1898, substantially as follows :

Russia has the right to carry a line of railway from Talien-Wan along the
western shore of the Liao-Tung peninsula to any point she may choose. The
construction of a line to the west is as necessary for us as the construction of
one to the east, along the northern shore of the Korean Gulf to the town of
Yi-ju on the river Yalu, whence a French company has obtained the right to
construct a line to the south on to Seoul. If the Russian Government do not
find it necessary to acquire the railway from Chemulpho to Seoul, constructed by
the American Morse and passing now into Japanese hands, it only shows our
conviction that we shall possess our own rail from Manchuria to the capital of
Korea. Such a line would be most advantageous to Japanese commerce and
interests, and the Japanese Government, who are doing all they can to promote
their trade, must choose between a risky game of political influence in Korea or
the sale of their product in Korea and Manchuria under the Russian flag and
protected by Russian bayonets. The construction of a Russian railway in
Manchuria must at last open the eyes of Japan to the advantage of an under-
standing with Russia, which might save her from a financial crash and be
advantageous to her southern population, which is compelled from poverty to
emigrate. Let Japan play the commercial, while Russia plays the political
role. . . . Common action between Russia and Japan might further hold
England back from her risky enterprises in the Gulf of Pe-Chih-li, which is the
natural sphere of Russian influence. England always wants some contribution
to her own advantage on every political step forward which Russia makes. If
England takes Wei-Hai-Wei, she will see Russia demanding extensions of
territory in Central Asia; the roles will be changed, and Russia will demand a
heavy percentage for every English acquisition. Such a step would undoubtedly
check the appetites of English politicians.

Again, the same paper went so far as to declare in the next issue
that the treaty of 1895 (Anglo-Russian) ought to be regarded as
being no longer in force.

There was, however, one thing worth noting — that was that,
according to the best authority accessible, this agreement contained

A A 2

844 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

some provisions by which Chinese sovereignty in the localities indi-
cated was guaranteed, and also that the railway concession therein
referred to was ' never to be used as a pretext for encroachment on
Chinese territory, nor to be allowed to interfere with Chinese authority
or interests.'

On the 1st of June, 1898, the Russian Charge a" Affaires intimated,
in the form of a circular to all his foreign colleagues at the Chinese
capital, that by Count Mouraviefl's order ' passports were obligatory
for Port Arthur and Talien-Wan,' which occasioned great con-
troversy, inasmuch as it was wholly inconsistent with the treaty
rights of other Powers for Russia to make such a stipulation ; but
she contrived, on one pretext and another, to evade the issue, and
the question was allowed to drag on without a complete settlement
being reached.

The anti-Christian movement in North China, otherwise the
Boxer troubles, of 1900 was a great turning-point in Far Eastern
affairs. In the presence of this tremendous upheaval the concerns of
Port Arthur and Talien-Wan waned almost into insignificance ; and
while these grave matters fell into comparative oblivion an excellent
opportunity was given to Russia of playing off her tricky diplomacy
and selfish efforts at aggrandisement to the detriment of other Powers.
True it may be that what she said and did may not always have
been intended to deceive, ab initio, but the results were the same.
The Boxer troubles began in the early part of the year named, and
by the beginning of June had assumed an alarming aspect. All the
Powers did their best to cope with the emergency, and sent ships
and landed marines to the fullest extent available. But from the
very nature of the locality, the distance away, and the limited numbers
of the forces at command, the measures taken were far from being
effective. Japan was the only Power that could efficiently cope with
the difficulty, and she was almost universally appealed to by public
opinion at large to cast in her lot with the Christian nations against
the Boxers by taking the foremost part in the measures designed for
their suppression.

On the 13th of June, therefore, Viscount Aoki, who was then
Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs, intimated through the British
Charge d? Affaires to the British Government that ' if the foreign naval
detachments which had actually been landed should be surrounded or
otherwise in danger, the Japanese Government would be ready to
send at once a considerable force to their relief if her Majesty's Govern-
ment concurred in such a course, but that otherwise his Government
did not intend to send soldiers,' similar intimations being given to
the representatives at Tokio of other great Powers interested.

This resolution of the Japanese Government was ascribable purely
to their consideration of the claims of a common humanity, and
beneath it were hidden no political or selfish motives or designs. The

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 845

prevailing sentiment in Japan was still more plainly set forth in the
statement of Mr. Matsui, Japanese Charge d' Affaires in London, to
Lord Salisbury on the 25th of June, when it was declared that, for
the despatch of a considerable force from Japan, ' some assurance
would be required that there was no objection on the part of other
Governments which have interests in the East.' Japan's unselfishness
was demonstrated, too, in Viscount Aoki's words to the British
Charge d* Affaires, when he modestly said that ' although Japan had
made great progress, she was not yet in a position to take an inde-
pendent line of action in so grave a crisis. It was imperative for her
to work in line with other Powers.'

Japan entered upon the difficult task assigned to her in this spirit,
and she acquitted herself, it is believed, thoroughly to the satisfaction
of the Western Powers. By Great Britain, at all events, a generous
acknowledgment of her services was conveyed in the following tele-
gram, despatched by Lord Salisbury to the British Charge dy Affaires
in Tokio on the completion of the operations undertaken for the
rescue of the Peking legations :

As her Majesty's Government specially pressed for the action of Japan in
sending forces to effect the relief of the Legations, I think you may, without
presumption, express to the Minister for Foreign Affairs their earnest admiration
of the gallantry and efficiency displayed by the Japanese forces in the present
operations, which contributed to the success of the expedition so very largely.
[August 25, 1900.]

But to take up again the thread of our argument. After Japan's
indication of her readiness to comply with the desire expressed that
she should send troops, diplomatic correspondence took place between
the Powers with much expedition, and there was found not one that
did not appreciate the expediency of the step to be taken by Japan,
though there was already a somewhat sinister tone perceptible in the
Russian despatch, sent to Japan about the 28th of June, wherein

this passage appeared :

.

We can only highly appreciate the sentiments expressed by Japan in present
circumstances, as also her view of Chinese affairs. We have no desire to hinder
her liberty of action, particularly after her expression of a firm intention to
conform her action to that of the other Powers.

On the 4th of July the Marquis of Salisbury telegraphed to Mr.
Whitehead, British Charge d' Affaires at Tokio, after repeating Admiral
Seymour's alarming telegram, as follows :

This telegram indicates a position of extreme gravity. You should com-
municate at once to Japanese Ministers. Japan is the only Power which can
send rapid reinforcements to Tien-tsin. No objection has been raised by any
European Power to this course.

Barely two days later, on the 6th of July, the British Government
reiterated its pressing request to Japan, and at the same time offered

346 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

financial aid, the Marquis of Salisbury telegraphing to Mr. Whitehead
thus :

Japan is the only Power which can act with any hope of success for the
urgent purpose of saving the Legations ; and, if they delay, heavy responsibility
must rest with them. We are prepared to furnish any financial assistance
which is necessary, in addition to our forces already on the spot.

With regard to this financial assistance Lord Salisbury explained
to Mr. Whitehead that the British Government was prepared to
undertake the responsibility because international negotiations would
only result in a fatal expenditure of time. On the same day Japan
signified her intention of despatching as rapidly as possible a con-
siderable force, sufficient, with those troops which she had already
sent, to bring her total up to twenty thousand men. But with regard
to financial aid, Japan did not, after all, desire it, as she considered
that the task that she was then undertaking was a purely voluntary
one for the common benefit of humanity, and, moreover, she stood
in no immediate need of such assistance.

About the middle of the month (July 1900) Russia submitted to
the great Powers, including"Japan, notes verbal embodying what she
was pleased to term ' fundamental principles.' The date on which
these notes reached the Powers was generally the 13th of July, or
thereabouts, and the purport was one and the same. In the case of
Japan, however, it bore the date of the 8th of July, and was handed
by the Russian Minister to Viscount Aoki only on the 20th of that
month. The English translation of the text given to Lord Salisbury
is appended in full, as the subject is of the highest importance :

On the llth June our Minister at Tokio informed us that the Japanese
Government had declared their readiness, in consideration of the perilous
situation at Peking, to send their troops to China, with a view to saving, con-
jointly with the other States, the representatives of the Powers who were
besieged in Peking, and to rescuing the foreigners resident in the Empire,
among whom are many Japanese subjects. Any co-operation, anything tending
to the attainment of the object indicated, could only meet with the most
sympathetic reception from all the Powers. Moreover, Japan being able,
thanks to geographical conditions, by the despatch of a considerable contingent
to facilitate essentially the task of the international detachments already at
Tien-tsin, we hastened to inform the Cabinet at Tokio that we saw no reason
to interfere with their liberty of action in this respect, especially as they have
expressed their firm resolution of acting in complete harmony with the other
Powers. The decision taken by the Japanese Government, under the above-
mentioned conditions, was a very natural one, in consideration of the danger
which menaced then- representatives at Peking, as well as their numerous
subjects resident in China ; but from our point of view the accomplishment of
this task could not confer the right to an independent solution of matters at
Peking, or other privileges, with the exception, perhaps, of a larger pecuniary
indemnity, should the Powers consider it necessary, later on, to demand one.

We received almost simultaneously a communication on this subject from
the Cabinet of London, which had reference, not to a spontaneous decision on
the part of the Cabinet at Tokio to participate in the collective action of the

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 347

Powers, but to a mission given by Europe to Japan to send considerable forces
to China, not only to save the Legations and the foreign subjects, but with a
view to the suppression of the insurrectionary movement provoked by the
Boxers and the re-establishment of order at Peking and Tien-tsin.

This way of putting the question might, in our opinion, to a certain extent
encroach on the fundamental principles which had already been accepted by the
majority of the Powers as the bases of their policy relative to events in China —
— that is to say, the maintenance of the union between the Powers ; the main-
tenance of the existing system of government in China; the exclusion of
anything which might lead to the partition of the Empire; finally, the
re-establishment by common effort of a legitimate central Power, itself capable
of assuring order and security to the country. The firm establishment and
strict observance of these fundamental principles are, in our opinion, absolutely
indispensable to the attainment of the chief object : the maintenance of a lasting
peace in the Far East.

The Imperial Government considers that, in view of the threatening events
in China, which concern the vital interests of the Powers, it is urgently necessary
to avoid any misunderstanding or omission which might have still more
dangerous consequences.

Broadly speaking, it appears to be true that the ' fundamental
principles ' enunciated by Russia were the nearest approach to the
ideas entertained at that time by the Powers in general, though none
of those Powers seems to have been able to shape any clear insight
as to the eventualities of the whole affair, save that not one of them
entertained any thought of partitioning out the Chinese Empire.
America had made public her views on this point early that month,
and Russia, on being consulted by China, had expressed her willing-
ness, so the Chinese Minister in London assured Lord Salisbury, to
guarantee the integrity of the Chinese Empire, though her underlying
intentions may, as we now can perceive, have been very different from
those on the surface. As to Great Britain, she was from the first, as
also were others of the Powers, firmly resolved upon the maintenance
of Chinese territorial integrity.

There were, however, two points in the above-quoted Russian
communication that specially invite comment. The first is that the
claim which she put forward that her ' fundamental principles ' had
already been accepted by a majority of the Powers was altogether
presumptuous and unwarrantable, for there had not then been any
formal exchange of views between the Powers on the subject. The
second point is that the British suggestion of an invitation to Japan
to send troops to China was interpreted by Russia as tending to
confer upon Japan some shadowy ' special rights ' or privileges. On
this latter point the statement made by Count Lamsdorff to the
German Ambassador, and also to the British, a few days previously,
had been much stronger, for he had spoken to the effect that there
were grave objections to the giving of a * mandate ' for independent
action to any one Power in the face of so grave a crisis. As a matter
of fact, there was not the slightest foundation for the insinuation
that such a mandate was either sought by Japan or proposed by

348 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

England ; and the British Government, at all events, was indisposed
to permit this wrongful suggestion to pass unchallenged. A brisk
interchange of diplomatic correspondence between the Powers ensued
on these two points, and in the end the incident was allowed to drop
on Count Lamsdorfl giving the following explanation, as reported by
the British Ambassador, viz. :

His Excellency (Count Lamsdorff) said that it was his wish to clear the
Eussian Government at once from the odious and entirely undeserved charge
that they had hesitated to accept Japan's assistance, and had thereby assumed
the grave responsibility of hindering the prompt relief of the Legations. This
charge had been insinuated in the Press and other quarters. His Excellency
admitted that in the message which I communicated to him no mention had
been made of any European mandate to Japan for independent action, and that
co-operation was indicated in the arguments used by me, but he said that at
Berlin your Lordship's question had been understood to imply an European
mandate, and that it was possible to so interpret the words used : ' an expedition
to restore order at Peking and Tien-tsin, if Japan is willing to undertake the
task.' Although the misunderstanding had been promptly cleared up, unjust
deductions had been drawn by the public Press, and it ought to have been made
quite clear by the instructions sent to the Eussian Minister at Tokio that all
available prompt assistance from Japan, equally with the Powers concerned in
meeting the common danger, would be gladly welcomed by Eussia.

As a result of this incident, however, Russia remained even more
solemnly pledged than ever to what she had declared to the world and
to what she herself termed the 'fundamental principles,' and Japan
proceeded promptly and whole-heartedly with the work asked of her, in
concert with the Occidental Powers. It should be a matter of no slight
interest to the reader to discover, as he will presently do, that the
propagator and disseminator of these sublime ' fundamental principles '
was the first to try to frustrate their useful application, and that it
was the Power against which an effort had been made to arouse and
foment distrust that proved to be honest and patient in the execution
of the task which it undertook to perform.

The siege of the Legations in Peking, and the narrative of the
expedition of the combined forces for their rescue, form a history
with which every one is now familiar, and there is scarcely any need
here to relate how Sir Claude MacDonald was placed in supreme
charge of the defences by his colleagues, how he gave to Lieutenant-
Colonel Shiba, a young Japanese officer, command of a most im-
portant point, or how Sir Claude subsequently commended this officer
for his skilful dispositions, and as having contested every inch of the
ground at the most critical moment, thereby gaining time for the
defences to be placed in thorough order, which was one direct cause
of the success ultimately achieved, and of the preservation of many
lives in a period of unexampled danger ; nor is it needful further to
allude to the splendid organisation of the international expeditionary
forces, and the conspicuous part that the Japanese played therein

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 349

during the advance to the Chinese capital. Suffice it to say that, as
a whole, the march to the succour of the beleaguered foreign residents,
and the final success and triumph over the forces of disorder and
fanaticism, were episodes in the world's history and efforts in the
cause of humanity which nought can ever efface, whilst at the same
time the complete concord and sincerity of all the nations engaged in
this glorious undertaking — save for the barbarity which was displayed
by the Russian troops, as was much commented upon at the time,
and also save for the one black shadow that at times intruded itself,
as will be shown hereafter — were at once unprecedented and beneficent.
The malign influence that began to make itself felt was due to
Russia's having, even at this early stage, begun to betray something
of her innate disposition to play an unworthy part ; for early in July
Russian troops had occupied the south bank of the Amur, opposite
Blagovestchensk, under the trifling pretence that the Chinese had
been guilty of some offence of which, in reality, the Russians had
been the cause by their own provocative behaviour. They had per-
petrated that appalling massacre of the Chinese before which the
whole civilised world stood aghast. It was on that occasion that —
as Count Tolstoi incidentally describes in his recent remarkable letter
— thousands of helpless men, women, and children were drowned or
slaughtered by the Russians in compliance with the Russian Com-
mander Gribsky's orders, he acting, as he declared, in consonance with
Imperial decree.

Though the contingent which Russia sent to take part in the
Peking Expedition was comparatively small, she despatched large
numbers — though less than one-third of the number she pretended
when she claimed compensation — of her troops into the three pro-
vinces of the Chinese Empire comprised under the head of Manchuria.
Early in August she occupied the treaty port of Newchwang, hoisted
the Russian flag, possessed herself of the Customs department, and
began to collect revenue for her own purposes — an intrusion for
which there was absolutely no justification — and she at the same
time seized the railway between Newchwang and the Great Wall, of
which more anon.

Russia's proceedings in Manchuria continued to be of this high-
handed and unscrupulous character, until at last, in September, they
had reached the pitch of celebrating a grand feast on the site of the
Chinese town of Sakalin, previously burned in July, and which they
had renamed Ilinsky, on the south bank of the Amur, in honour of
the ' relief,' as they chose to designate it, of Blagovestchensk. The
Novoe Vremya, in a telegram from that place, thus described this
indecent and blasphemous function :

To-day, on the Chinese bank of the Amur, on the ashes of Sakalin, a solemn
thanksgiving service in memory of the relief of this place by the Russian forces,
together with the ceremony of renaming the post Ilinsky, was held, in the

350 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Sept.

presence of the authorities, the army, the English officer, Bigham, and a large
crowd of people. The High Priest Konoploff said : ' Now is the Cross raised on
that bank of the Amur which yesterday was Chinese. Mouravieff foretold that
sooner or later this bank would be ours.' In a beautiful speech General Gribsky
congratulated the victorious troops. [September 7.]

Let us now see what Russia was doing all this time in the devious
paths of her diplomacy.

When, in July, the idea of concentrating the general command of
the international forces was mooted on the Continent, an idea which
crystallised into the determination to despatch the German general,
Count von Waldersee, to China, Russia, referring to the importance of
the ' ulterior military measures,' and expressing herself as averse to
the selection of a commander either on account of his seniority of
rank among the generals in command, or the greater size of the con-
tingent that he might control, invited the opinion of the interested
Powers. The trend of her lurking motive was sufficiently obvious,
and any effort on my part to expose it would now be superfluous.
When, moreover, further explanations were sought from Count Lams-
dorfl by Great Britain concerning the ' ulterior military measures '
that Russia appeared to have in mind, and as to the suggested scope
of the authority to be delegated to this generalissimo, the British
Ambassador was informed that the field of action of the international
forces might in practice be roughly denned as the province of Pe-
Chih-li, and that as regards other parts of China where dangers might
equally be present, it was clear that the direction of any necessary
military measures would have to be undertaken independently.
' For instance, Russia would have to undertake independent military
action in the North of China bordering on her own territory and on
her railway, and it was to be assumed that other Powers would act
similarly in the south and centre of China where their own territorial
and special interests were more immediately concerned.'

At a casual glance this proposal seemed to be very fair, but it
was not difficult to perceive the specious nature of the arrangement
that was veiled by these suggestions. Nevertheless, one thing was
certain — namely, that if independent action should be taken, no
matter in what part of China, it could not but be subject to the
restrictions involved in the application of the broad line of policy
which Russia had herself enunciated under the head of ' fundamental
principles,' and to which she stood committed in the eyes of all the
world.

On the 14th of August, 1900, the international forces entered
Peking, and the Legations were relieved. Eight days later, on the
22nd of the month, Sir Charles Scott, by the direction of Lord Salis-
bury, inquired of Count Lamsdorff about the affair at Newchwang,
concerning which certain information, implying Russian aggression,
had reached the British Government on the 20th. Count Lamsdorfi

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 351

at once replied that ' any steps taken could only be of a pro-
visional and temporary nature,' but at the same time he promised
to ' inquire what were the real facts of the case.' But with what
result ?

On the 28th of August, and during the next few days, identical
communications were addressed by Russia to all the interested Powers,
and the text of these despatches reads very like an attempt ' to kill
two birds with one stone.' It began with a repetition of the time-
honoured declaration that she remained faithful to the ' fundamental
principles ' which she had proposed to the Powers as a basis of common
action, and announced her intention strictly to adhere, in the future,
to the programme laid down therein. The despatch went on to
state that the occupation of Newchwang and the sending of troops
into Manchuria had been forced upon Russia by the progress of
events, such as the attack by the rebels on Russian troops at New-
chwang and the hostilities begun by the Chinese along the Russian
frontier, and had been dictated solely by the absolute necessity of
repelling the aggression of the Chinese rebels, and not in any way
with interested motives, ' which were absolutely foreign to the policy
of the Imperial Government.'

Directly the pacification of Manchuria was attained [the communication
continued], and the necessary measures had been taken to ensure the security ot
the railroad, Kussia would not fail to withdraw her troops from Chinese
territory, provided that such action did not meet with obstacles caused by the
proceedings of other Powers.

The communication then proceeded to state that in occupying
Peking the first and most important object — namely, the rescue of
the Legations and of the foreigners besieged in Peking — had been
attained. The second object — namely, that of rendering assistance to
China in the restoration of order and the re-establishment of regular
relations with the Powers — had been hindered by the absence of the
Chinese Court from Peking. In these circumstances the Russian
Government saw no reason for the Legation to remain in Peking, and
proposed to withdraw it to Tien-tsin, together with the Russian troops,
whose presence in Peking now became useless in view of the decision
taken not to exceed the limits of the task which, it was alleged, Russia
had undertaken at the beginning of the disorders.

This communication served mainly to augment on all sides the
growing suspicion regarding Russia's sincerity of purpose. It was all
very well for her to repeat, as she did so often, the avowal of her
* fundamental principles,' but the vital question was whether or not
she honestly intended herself to be bound by them. The phrase
' unless she is prevented by the action of other Powers,' which was
more than once employed, was one to engender a certain amount of
distrust. It could not receive any interpretation other than, as the

352 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

sequel proved, the truly justifiable one of being an artful provision
of a way of escape from the obligations of her pledges, for what other
Power could there be disposed to hinder Russia so long as her own
object should remain purely that of faithfully carrying out her own
promises ?

As to the proposal to withdraw her Legation as well as her troops —
which, by the way, she promptly did, without waiting for the other
Powers' concurrence — Peking had only a fortnight or so previously
been rescued from a terrible fate, and the views entertained by other
Governments were that there was still a great risk to be run in a too
speedy evacuation of the Chinese capital ; but Russia held to her
own course with great tenacity. Her attitude towards the restora-
tion of the Chinese Government, moreover, was almost inconsistent
with the principles to which she ostentatiously professed, in the
earlier part of the communication, to adhere, and in sober truth her
behaviour cannot be considered otherwise than as having purposely
protracted the unsettled state of things in Central China in order
that she might gain time for the establishment of a firm hold upon
Manchuria.

Diplomatic correspondence was, of course, entered upon with
alacrity, and I may here give the essence of the American reply to
Russia's communication, for it seems to have embodied precisely the
sentiments that were generally entertained among the Powers. It
expressed satisfaction with the reiterated declaration of Russia that
she entertained no design of territorial aggrandisement at China's
expense, and also that assurances were forthcoming about the occu-
pancy of Newchwang, which Russia had explained was merely inci-
dental to military steps, so that the Russian troops would be with-
drawn from the treaty port as soon as order should be re-established.
It referred to the important tasks yet remaining, such as the restora-
tion of order, the safety and general peace of China, and the pre-
servation of the Chinese territorial and administrative entity, protec-
tion of all rights guaranteed by treaty and international law to friendly
Powers, and the safeguard for the world underlying the principle of
equal and impartial trade with all parts of the Chinese Empire, and
it proceeded to state that these purposes could best be attained by
continuing the joint occupation of Peking. Next it laid stress upon
the importance of the Powers maintaining their concord, thus in-
directly expressing disapproval of Russia's attitude.

On the 29th of August, just after Russia had sent round the above-
mentioned communication to the Powers, Count LamsdorS, in a long
conversation with the British Ambassador, spoke most forcibly of the
Russian determination to adhere to the so-called ' fundamental
principles,' and went on to remark that ' it had been assumed that
Russia was taking advantage of the present crisis to extend her
territory and influence at the cost of China by permanently occupying

1904 HOW BUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAE 353

territory on the right bank of the Amur in Manchuria, and at New-
chwang, and by seizing control of the Customs and lines of railway
in which foreign capital was interested. This was entirely incorrect.
Russia had no such intention, and any places which she had been
obliged by the attack of Chinese rebels on her frontier to occupy
temporarily, she intended, when the status quo ante and order were
re-established, to restore to their former position.'
One may well be reminded of Ben Jonson's lines :

The dignity of truth is lost
With much protesting.

On the llth of September Sir Charles Scott announced, by Lord
Salisbury's direction, to Count Lamsdorff, that in the opinion of her
Majesty's Government the time when it would be expedient to with-
draw the British forces from Peking had not arrived. It would
appear that about this period public comment grew in intensity with
the deepening of the obscurity in which the Russian motives and designs
were enshrouded, and it was, we may fairly assume, with a wish to
allay this increasing uneasiness that Count Lamsdorff begged Sir Charles
Scott to make it clear to the British Government that the different
course Russia had decided upon was not in any way to be taken as
indicating the slightest intention of separating herself from the general
action of the Powers, and that she had chosen that course on her
part as she considered it desirable to have her troops as well as her
Minister as soon as possible in a position where communication with
their Government would be easy and rapid. He also asserted that
the Emperor (of Russia) was more firmly determined than ever to
continue in loyal co-operation with all the other Powers, and to
abide by his agreement with them as to common aim and direction,
and the Russian action and aims would be faithfully kept within the
limits of the statement made in Count Lamsdorff's own circular, and,
further, that there was nothing more foreign to the Emperor's mind
than to entertain the selfish aims or motives for his action with
which certain foreign newspapers had credited him.

When, on the 13th of September, the British Ambassador called
the attention of Count Lamsdorfi to the report of the celebration of
the so-called ' relief of Blagovestchensk,' described in a preceding
page, criticising it as contrary to the expressed views of Russia,
Count Lamsdorff begged the British representative to take no further
notice of that action on the part of a military commander, and went
on to confirm the assurances of the Russian Government's intention
not to make territorial acquisitions in China. He urged in explana-
tion of the proceedings at Blagovestchensk that distances were so
great and means of communication so few that it was not easy to
keep the authorities in distant parts of the Empire in touch with the
views of the Central Government.

354 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

Truly this was explanation a la Russe !

While discussions of this kind were taking place in St. Petersburg,
more audacious acts were continually being perpetrated in Manchuria
itself. On the 17th of August a code of rules and regulations was
published in the Amur Gazette, in the name of Lieut. -General Gribsky,
the Military Governor, by which the Manchu territory of the Trans-
Zeya, and the territory that had been occupied by the Russian troops
on the right bank of the Amur, were proclaimed as having passed
into the jurisdiction of the Russian authorities. The Chinese who
had quitted the river bank for the Trans-Zeya region were forbidden
to return, and their lands were appropriated to the exclusive use of
Russian colonists. All private individuals were absolutely forbidden
to settle in the former towns of Ai-gun and Sakalin — both on the
Manchurian side of the frontier — as also in their vicinity. The re-
establishment of these towns was interdicted, and the Chinese buildings
which had remained in them undemolished were to be devoted to the
warehousing of military stores and the quartering within their walls
of Russian troops.

Such being the case, it was surely not to be wondered at that in
some of the Continental organs it was declared that Russia had
annexed the conterminous Manchurian territories. An official denial
was published on the 1st of October, in the Messager Officiel, to the
effect that the report of the annexation was entirely devoid of founda-
tion. It is possible that some of the acts of the military authorities
had not obtained the full concurrence of the Foreign Office at St.
Petersburg, but the general trend of Russian policy was sufficiently
clear, and in the first week of October the whole of Manchuria was
in the possession of Russia, including the palace of Mukden and the
Ying-Kow terminus of the Shanhaikwan Railway, over which the
Russian flag was hoisted, not to speak of most public offices and all
telegraph wires and establishments.

It may be worth remembering that when the Russian troops
occupied Newchwang and hoisted the Russian flag at the Customs
flagstaff, the consuls of Great Britain, America, and Japan sent a
formal notice to the Russian authorities that it was presumed this
step had been taken as a temporary measure only, and was due to
military exigencies, and that they claimed the reservation of all
rights and privileges which their countries enjoyed. Admiral Alexeiefi
officially replied that the temporary administration which Russia was
about to establish there was in the interests of the foreign residents in
general, as well as the Russians, and that the rights and privileges
they had enjoyed in the settlement (Ying-Kow) would not be in-
fringed. The administration was established, but it was neither of a
temporary character nor dictated by considerations of military ex-
pediency. It did not cease until long after even a pretence of its
necessity could with decency be put forward — in fact, it was never

1904 HOW EUSSIA BEOUGHT ON WAE 355

relinquished until the end of July of this year, when military
considerations of another kind prompted its hurried evacuation.

In this connection it may not be inappropriate to recall briefly
some incidents illustrative of Russia's high-handed proceedings con-
cerning the Chinese railway joining Peking with Shanhaikwan and
Newchwang.

On the 8th of July, 1900, the Russians seized this railway at Tien-
tsin, and turned out Mr. Claude W. Kinder and his staff. Eight days
afterwards, on the 16th of July, at a Council of Admirals convened
on board H.B.M.S. Centurion at Taku at the instance of Admiral
Alexeiefi, it was decided by the majority that the railway between
Tongku and Tien-tsin should be managed and guarded by the Russians,
who were then in occupation, on condition that it should be given
over to the former administration as soon as military circumstances
would permit. It should not be forgotten that the construction of
the Peking and Newchwang line of railway was chiefly provided for
by British capital, and British interests were therefore largely involved
— the line is, indeed, with some exceptions, mortgaged to British
bondholders — and it is, moreover, a fact that Russia recognised this
at the very outset. The British Government, however, expressed to
the Russian Government its acquiescence in the above-mentioned
decision of the Council of Admirals on the ground that it was an
arrangement resorted to solely in compliance with the demands of
military exigency.

Previously to this the Russians had, on the 18th of June, occupied
that part of the foreign settlement in which are situated the railway
offices. Thence they removed and shipped to Port Arthur a quantity
of tools and appliances that were the property of the railway adminis-
tration, and, not content with having done this, they broke open the
safes, causing the loss of a considerable sum of money, and destroyed
the archives. Finally, on the 28th of the month, they set fire to the
offices, and the premises were entirely consumed in the flames.

Russia's next step was to claim the right herself to reconstruct
the railroad from Tien-tsin to Peking, declaring that the whole of the
line had been turned over to her by the above-mentioned Council of
Admirals. This was totally at variance with fact, as the minutes of
that meeting distinctly proved, for the action of Russia was expressly
limited to the section between Tien-tsin and Tongku. To prefer an
unjust claim and immediately to act upon it was the normal course
of procedure to be expected of the Russians, and accordingly we find
that they began forthwith to occupy various points on the route and
even to occupy the terminus at Peking the moment that the Chinese
capital was entered by the allied relieving forces on the 14th of August.
In short, as the British and Chinese Corporation justly complained,
the Russian occupation of the northern railway was progressing so
rapidly at that time and in such a manner as to give rise to the most

356 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Sept.

serious apprehensions that there was a design to make the line a per-
manent Russian possession.

When, on the 30th of August, the British troops occupied Feng-tai
railway station, and proceeded, in conjunction with the Japanese,
to repair the line between Feng-tai and Yang-tsun, the Russians
objected to this being done, and posted a detachment in front of
Feng-tai depot. Three weeks afterwards, on the 23rd of September,
they went so far as to tender a formal protest and request for the
withdrawal of the British forces on the ground that the entire line
had been handed over to the Russians, the Russian commander
assuring the British General, Sir A. Gaselee, that an Imperial (Russian)
decree had been received to ' construct ' the railway to Peking, and that
he, the Russian commander, had given orders accordingly.

The Russians' pretensions to a right to the whole line were simply
a sham, as already shown. Of course the English officer did not
yield to so transparent an artifice. On the contrary, he told the
Russian commander that Russia was in the wrong. The dispute
waxed warm, and the situation became acute, but in the beginning of
October Count von Waldersee, who had arrived on the scene shortly
before, took the matter up and decided that the construction and
control of the railway from Tongku should as far as Yang-tsun be
Russian, and from Yang-tsun onwards to Peking the line should be
worked by Germany with the assistance of other Powers, and thus
curtailed the Russian pretence ; but at the same time he suggested
that the section of railway between Tongku and Shanhaikwan
should also be handed over to the Russians. The British had good
reason to consider this suggestion as unjust.

As regards the practical repair and working of the line it had by
this time become quite clear that the object sought would be more
effectively attained by entrusting it to the former administration
under Mr. Kinder and his staff, and on the 6th of October the com-
manders of the British, American, and Japanese troops suggested this
to Count von Waldersee, but without effect. Previously to this, on the
30th of September, a British officer with eighteen men had occupied
Shanhaikwan Station and there hoisted the British flag. Two days
later, on the 2nd of October, a numerous body of Russian troops
went there, by land and sea, and refused to acknowledge any rights
but those of conquest, which they assumed, and laid claim to all the
railway from Tongku throughout to Newchwang, solely on these
grounds, as being Russian. On the 6th of October they occupied the
Ying-Kow terminus of the Chinese railway and hoisted over it the
Russian flag, fifty miles of railway material being simultaneously
seized and sent off to Port Arthur.

At home in England telegraphic reports had reached the Govern-
ment in quick succession from its diplomatic representative, general,
and admiral, and from many other sources, and as the acts thus com-

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 357

mitted by the Russians in the Far East were entirely at variance with
the assurances which had been given by the Russian Government,
and there could be no rights of conquest, the Marquis of Salisbury
took up the matter strongly and repeated protests were lodged at the
St. Petersburg Foreign Office by the British Embassy at his direction.
At the same time the attention of the German Government was also
called to the unfairness of Count von Waldersee's decision, he having
been led astray, as it seemed, by the exceeding astuteness of the
Russians.

The Russian replies were, as is usual, invidious and inconsistent all
through. But at last the false position which Russia had taken up
had to be relinquished, and she sought to discover a way of escape,
which she found in withdrawing her troops from Peking, and subse-
quently from Tien-tsin, as described in a previous page, and thus, on
the 13th of November, Count LamsdorfE was able to assure Sir Charles
(then Mr.) Hardinge, the British Charged' Affaires at St. Petersburg,
that

the section from Tongku to Shanhaikwan, on the one hand, and from Tongku
to Tien-tsin, on the other, were of special military importance to Russia only so
long as Russian troops remained to occupy the province of Pe-Chih-li. On the
30th of October, however, the Russian Emperor ordered a reduction of the
troops in Pe-Chih-li, and on their withdrawal from Peking to Tien-tsin the
Yangtsun- Peking section was placed at the disposal of Count von "Waldersee. On
the retirement of the Russian troops from the Pe-Chih-li province the whole line
from Yangtsun to Shanhaikwan would also be given over to the Field- Marshal.

As to the line joining Shanhaikwan with Newchwang, Count
LamsdorfE indulged in further procrastination on the pretext of the
economical and geographical gravity of the problems involved, and
declared that its complete restoration to its former owners could not
take place before all the outlays incurred in the re-establishment and
exploitation of the whole line between Peking and Newchwang had
been fully repaid to the Russian Government.

This claim to reimbursement was on the part of Russia wholly
unwarranted, because, as was demonstrated on the 23rd of November
by Lord Lansdowne, who had succeeded Lord Salisbury in the con-
duct of Great Britain's Foreign Affairs, Russia had no right to be
placed in a preferential position in regard to the repayment of
such outlays, inasmuch as all expeditionary expenses, including out-
lays of this description, were ultimately to be indemnified by China,
and, for another thing, Russia was not the only country that had
incurred expenditure of this nature, for the Japanese had in reality
themselves repaired a considerable length of the line, and when their
* railway battalion ' began work the Boxers were still in force in
the vicinity, and it was necessary to disperse them as they worked,
which resulted in the loss of an engineer officer and several non-
commissioned officers and men, and it put Japan to much expense

VOL. LVI— No. 331 B B

358 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

in many ways, for railway materials, being unobtainable on the
spot, had to be sent over from home. The British, and to some
extent the Germans, were also engaged in similar repair works. Hence
diplomatic negotiations were carried on with unabated vigour, but, as
Russia is not a country that is at all scrupulous in regard to the intro-
duction of side issues and fresh pretexts for delay when it suits her, it
is easy to understand that a long time elapsed before the matter was
settled.

Before the excitement relating to the ' Railway Incident ' above
described had hardly subsided there arose what was termed the ' Tien-
tsin Incident/ which was equally, if not more, serious in its character.

At the beginning of November 1900 the Russians seized land on
the left bank of the Pei-ho, extending from the railway station as far
as Messrs. Meyer's petroleum depot, and planted a number of Russian
flags and notice boards at different points, and on the 6th of that
month the Russian Acting Consul, M. Poppe, issued a circular to the
Consuls of the Powers notifying them that the land in question had
become the property of Russia by act of war. Comically enough,
the Belgian Consul, in imitation of his Russian colleague, next day
issued a notice to the Consular body which began by saying, ' In
accordance with instructions from his Belgian Majesty's Legation at
Peking I have this day occupied the territory situated, &c. &c.,' and
going on to describe its exact situation, which was contiguous to the
extensive area appropriated by Russia. The Russian circular was
one so truly audacious that I give its text in full :

His Excellency Lieutenant- General Linevitch, Commander-in- Chief of the
Russian expeditionary corps in Pe-Chih-li, instructs me to inform you that, as on
the 4th (17th) of June of this year the Imperial Chinese troops joined the rebels
in attacking the foreign concessions and the railway station occupied by Russian
troops, and as on the 10th (23rd) Russian reinforcements relieved these troops,
swept the left bank of the Pei-ho from above the railway station to beyond the
petroleum depot of Messrs. H. Meyer & Co., and occupied it by right of conquest,
having seized it by force of arms and at the cost of Russian blood spilt in order
to prevent the Chinese returning there and reopening fire on the Concessions,
his Excellency therefore considers the whole of this space, from above the
railway station to beyond the petroleum depot, as property of the Russian troops
from this day (10th (28rd) of June of this year) by act of war. Russian flags
have been planted and notices posted on boards placed at many points in this
territory, which has been occupied and patrolled under orders of the Russian
military authorities.

Consequently, his Excellency cannot and will not be able to recognise any
cession, unless with his special authorisation, of land included in this territory,
of which he has taken full and complete possession.

It is, of course, understood that all proprietary rights, duly registered in the
name of foreigners (other than Chinese) before the 4th (17th) of June of this
ypar, will be safeguarded.

The land claimed by Russia embraced practically the whole of the
left bank of the river opposite the foreign settlement, and was a mile

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 359

and a half in length, by 500 yards wide. In it was comprised a portion
belonging to the railway administration's property and others belonging
to the private property of some British firms, but the Russian flags
waved over all. Apart from that, the Russians' contention that they
had cleared the area by their own troops was one of which the accuracy
was most doubtful, for it was a well-known fact that when the Russians
were attacked by the Chinese near the railway station, the assistance
gallantly rendered by the Japanese troops went very far towards the
repulse of the assailants, and, indeed, saved the Russians from being
routed. In truth, it is believed that the fighting ability of Russian
troops was really measured by the Japanese on this occasion. In the
battle of the 23rd of June the international forces were collectively
engaged on a common footing, the British on that occasion playing
a very conspicuous part in effecting a clearance from the quarter in
question of the Chinese forces. Commander Cradock, in a memoran-
dum specially drawn up for the British authorities, in refutation of
the Russian pretensions, went so far, indeed, as to assert that ' on
the whole of the advance our (the British) left flank touched the river,
and the right was well extended towards the railway. No Russian or
German troops had anything whatever to do with clearing the left bank
of the river.' Besides, the Russians enjoyed no special right of conquest,
if there ever was such a right conferred upon the participators at large
by that campaign, inasmuch as in their occupation of that or any other
place the Russians could not but have been executing the tasks
assigned to them as part and parcel of that war which was in process
of being waged by the international relief forces in common. Again,
the Russians, a little later on, systematically removed vast quantities
of machinery and stores from the railway works at Tong-Shan to
Port Arthur and elsewhere for their own use, and they deprived the
Bridge Works Stores at Shanhaikwan of fifty thousand pounds' worth
of material, the premises being completely denuded of all portable pro-
perty. The Russians even took away the steam cranes and machinery
of every description, having, as an expert's report states, seized
' everything they could lay hands on.'

All these outrageous proceedings were, of course, stoutly challenged
not only by the British authorities and the interested individuals in
the East, who at every successive stage protested to the Russian
authorities, but by the British Government, who time after time
briskly remonstrated with the Russian Government. America also
contended that forcible appropriation under claim of conquest was
in conflict with the declared purposes of the Powers and disturbed
their harmonious action. On the 16th of November the Russian
Minister at Peking wrote to the American Minister that if the
communication of Mr. Poppe contained any expressions suggesting
any question of acquiring territory by conquest they had been cer-
tainly erroneously used by him, and that the object of the Russian

B B 2

360 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

military authorities had been to prevent the seizure of, and speculation
in, land by certain parties within the radius occupied by the Russian
troops for military purposes since the preceding June. What a groundless
insinuation ! At last, when the Russians were no longer able to sustain
their unjust designs, they endeavoured, as usual, by their craft and
subtleties to provide a loophole for escape. They procured from
Li Hung-Chang the cession — made public on the 6th of January, 1901,
in a circular from the Acting Russian Consul at Tien-tsin — of a piece
of land for a new Russian settlement which was practically identical
with the area that they had so audaciously invaded. True, the part
in which were the private premises of British firms was this time ex-
cluded, but in respect of that belonging to the railway administration
there was ambiguity ; as a matter of fact, in the Concession Agree-
ment, when it came to light, it was discovered that the exact delinea-
tion of the boundary had been left over for future arrangement.

Although England disdained to challenge the validity of the con-
cession, though she entertained some doubt as to the mode in which
it had been obtained, it was palpable that the ground already owned
by the railway administration could not suddenly be wrenched from
them in such a fashion, and that in fact the Agreement could not be
held to comprise those lands, so there immediately arose upon this
point a most serious controversy.

As to the machinery of all sorts and the stores and materials which
Russia took away from the railway, they were eventually restored to
the rightful owners, the Russians putting forward the extraordinary
plea that, as there were no workshops, no stores, and no materials to
the north of Shanhaikwan, it would be impossible to work this northern
section of the line after the southern section should have been handed
over to Count von Waldersee, and that therefore Russia had 'borrowed'
the plant and stocks in question ; but now that an arrangement
was made that the Russians might use the Shanhaikwan work-
shops for the working of the northern section, they restored the
borrowed materials to the parties to whom they belonged. The
memorandum of the Russian Government on the subject expressly
declared that they had restored everything, but the report of the
expert went to show that only a part of the whole was ever dis-
gorged, and that in a very badly damaged and scattered condition.

Early in 1901 the railway near Tien-tsin was handed over by Count
von Waldersee to the British contingent, which thereupon proceeded
to construct a siding in the common interest of the international
forces, beginning it on the 7th of March, on land which belonged to
the railway administration. The Russians made objection to this on
the basis that by the concession derived from Li Hung-Chang the
ground belonged to Russia. They also greatly impeded the transfer
of certain railway property at Tien-tsin, Tongku, and Shanhaikwan,
contrary to the terms of the railway convention entered into the pre-

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 361

ceding month at Count Waldersee's instance. On the 15th of March
the Russians placed sentries on the piece of land where the British were
making the siding, in order to prevent the work being continued, and
at the same time General Wogack, the Russian general, practically
demanded the withdrawal of the British sentries from the ground.
Naturally this sort of behaviour quickly brought matters to a crisis,
and Russia and Great Britain were on the verge of hostilities, so much
so that next day, on the 16th of March, the India Office telegraphed to
General Gaselee, giving him instructions, and added, ' In the meantime
do not use force except to repel aggression, and do not eject the Russian
sentries.' At the same time vigorous, but still conciliatory, protests
were lodged by the British Government at St. Petersburg, and in the
end an understanding was reached whereby the dispute about pro-
prietary rights was left for future settlement,1 and in the interval the
British as well as the Russian troops were required to evacuate the
plot of land in question. This arrangement was embodied in an
Agreement that on the 21st of March was signed in the presence of
Count von Waldersee by General Barrow, representing England, and
General Wogack, representing Russia — Count von Waldersee adding his
own signature to the document — whereby it was stipulated that both
the Russian and British guards should be simultaneously withdrawn
at 5 A.M. the next day.

The guards were duly withdrawn on both sides, but before the
day was out, to the genuine surprise of everybody, save perhaps the
Russians themselves, the Russian flags were replanted on the siding
itself, and work was recommenced by the Russian soldiers with such
energy that three days later, on the 25th of March, the British military
authorities had to telegraph home that ' the Russians are working on
the disputed ground at Tien-tsin in such a way as to render untenable
the British position.' Surely there could never be a more flagrant
instance of Russian insincerity and duplicity ! Protests were made,
of course, by the British Government to that of St. Petersburg, and
as a result the Russian flags gradually and grudgingly disappeared
from the property, the last of them being displaced on the 4th of
April following. Even while these high-handed proceedings were
taking place at Tien-tsin Count LamsdorfE actually ' expressed his
surprise ' — as he termed it — ' at the temporary measures taken by
the Russian authorities being regarded as in any way inconsistent
with the assurances given that Russia would not make any territorial
acquisitions in China.'

Whilst the ' Railway Incident ' above described was attracting the
attention of the Powers concerned, an Agreement was signed by Great
Britain and Germany, on the 16th of October, 1900, in which it was

1 The dispute was referred to a joint commission, who called upon Mr. Detring to
arbitrate on two points whereon the two commissioners were not agreed, and the whole
matter was recently settled mainly in favour of the British contention.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

mutually recognised that (a) it was a matter of joint and permanent
international interest that all Chinese ports on the rivers and littoral
should remain free and open for all nations, and the two Governments
undertook to uphold the dictum for all Chinese territory, as far as
they could exercise influence ; (6) the two Governments, on their
part, would not make use of existing complications to obtain any
territorial advantages, and would direct their policy towards main-
taining undiminished the territorial conditions of the Chinese Empire ;
(c) should another Power make use of that complication to obtain,
linder any form whatever, such territorial advantages, the two Govern-
ments reserved to themselves to come to a preliminary understanding
as to the steps to be taken for the protection of their own interests in
China ; and (d) other Powers would be invited to accept the principle
thus recorded.

Accordingly the Powers were invited, and Austria-Hungary,
France, Italy, Japan, Russia, and America all expressed in due course
their acceptance. In the case of Japan she specially asked the con-
tracting Powers what was to be the effect of expressing acceptance,
and having been told that an acceptor would stand in precisely the
same position as an original signatory, she forthwith announced her
acceptance in due form. It was plain, therefore, that other Powers
also which accepted, though they may not have put the question,
stood pari passu in the same position as the signatory Powers.

The best part of the joke, if I may be allowed to use this expres-
sion, lay in the situation in which Russia thus unexpectedly found
herself. When the Agreement was communicated to her for her
acceptance, the British representative in Russia was instructed by
the Marquis of Salisbury to state — should any complaint be made of
Russia not having previously been consulted — that the Russian
Government had given many assurances, but little attention had been
paid to the avowed policy of the Russian Government by its officers
on the spot, and that this was how England was deterred from making
a fuller communication.

The Russian Government, however, accepted the Agreement
without wincing, in a communication which, briefly, was as follows :

(a) The first part of the Agreement can be favourably entertained by Eussia,
as this stipulation does not in any way infringe the status quo established in
China by existing treaties.

(b) The second point corresponds all the more with the intentions of Kussia,
seeing that from the commencement of the present complications she was the
first to lay down the maintenance of the integrity of the Chinese Empire as a
fundamental principle of her policy.

(c) As regards the third point, relating to the eventuality of an infringement
of this fundamental principle, the Russian Government can only renew the
declaration that such an infringement would oblige Eussia to modify her
attitude according to circumstances.

When one reflects that, to judge from the then existent situation,

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 363

there was absolutely no Power but Russia herself that was in any
way likely to infringe the fundamental principle which she had enun-
ciated, her lofty acquiescence in and expressed readiness to adhere
strictly to the Anglo-German Agreement cannot but give rise to a
smile and a chuckle over the manifest intention she thus betrayed
of throwing dust in the eyes of Europe and America.

Russia's reckless and high-handed infractions of solemn pledges
and treaties have been in the preceding pages but partially laid bare
to the light of day, and unhappily there are still more serious counts
in the indictment that must be reserved for a future article. As I
shall have to show, the tenets upheld by Russian politicians, and
particularly as exemplified in their treatment of Far Eastern Ques-
tions, are nothing short of a peril to the world at large, for they
are of a character which must tend in time to sap the foundations
of diplomatic intercourse and constitute a permanent menace to the
peace of nations.

SUYEMATSU.

[To be concluded.]

364 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

THE COMING REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA

IN stating a confident opinion that an upheaval of the present
condition of affairs in the Empire of the Tsar is nearer than is
generally anticipated, I recognise the fact that it is incumbent
on me to show some solid reasons for the pessimistic (or should
I rather say optimistic ?) views which I hold on this subject. In
order to do this it is necessary to glance briefly at the social
conditions of the country, and to trace in outline the events which
have given rise to the present state of affairs.

That a nation consisting of more than a hundred million souls
can for ever be kept in a condition entirely at variance with the
destiny of the human race is obviously an impossibility. The
question which arises is, to what point can a system be carried
which imposes disabilities on those who live beneath it, which are
not consistent with the dignity and natural aspirations of the
human race ?

The answer is to be found in the ability of the people to appre-
ciate their condition, and therefore in education and enlightenment.
So long as a man does not realise that his lot is less desirable
than that of his neighbour, he does not greatly trouble himself
about it. He is downtrodden and wretched, and he supposes that
it is the normal condition of mankind, and he does not actively
resent it. But show him others more advantageously placed than
himself, and he will begin to long for a better condition, and to
strive to attain to it. That is the case with the Kussian nation.
For centuries the people have been kept in ignorance of their plight.
A rigid censorship of news from the outside world has hidden from
them the more favourable circumstances under which other nations
work out their destinies. This blinding of the eyes of the people
has been deliberately carried on for the purpose of upholding an
autocracy which assumes to itself a divine right, raising it above
the level of ordinary, failing human nature. This fantastic con-
ception of divine personality has become a part of the creed of a
Tsar of Russia. He no longer regards himself as a mere man, and
his subjects are instructed to look upon him as a demigod. It is a

1904 TEE COMING EEVOLUTION IN RUSSIA 365

position which requires an immense amount of upholding, and no
pains are spared to make it as impressive as possible.

It was Nicholas the First who instituted the rigid censorship
which still prevails in Russia. He foresaw the effects which the spread
of common knowledge would have upon the minds of his subjects. He
had his own ideas of civilisation, and the autocracy of the Tsar of
Russia was the keynote of his scheme. Therefore liberty of the
subject and freedom of conviction had to be suppressed.

Alexander the Second, more enlightened than his forbears,
granted a measure of emancipation to the lowest and most miserable
of his subjects. He liberated the serfs, but he still retained all the
forms of autocratic government; nor did he seek to educate his
people to receive the just right of humanity — liberty. Since the
reign of Alexander the Second neither of his successors has made
any attempt worth mentioning to prepare the nation to receive the
blessings of freedom. The perpetual cry is that Russia is not ready
for a constitution. But what steps have the Tsars of Russia ever
taken to prepare her for it ? And so long as the present ideals
actuate the Tsar and the bureaucratic class in "Russia, no steps
to educate the nation are likely to be taken ; and the old cry that
' the country is not ready for a constitution ' will be repeated
without end.

With the gradual spread of knowledge, which has taken place
in spite of the efforts of the censor's office, dissatisfaction with this
state of affairs was bound to come, and the first serious threatenings
of discontent were raised in the reign of Alexander the Second, about
1860, when the Nihilist movement may be said to have taken root.
In those days strange men and women in bizarre clothing, and with a
total disregard for the conventional usages of society, were seen per-
ambulating the streets or talking together in earnest groups. They
preached the overthrow of all social institutions, the establishment
of a freedom absolutely opposed to the social instincts of mankind,
and the removal of all undesirables who stood in the path of the
fulfilment of their ideals. Throughout the reign of Alexander the
Second they gained in numbers and strength; and in 1881 they
succeeded in assassinating the Tsar, who had always endeavoured by
conciliatory means to deal with the new movement within his
borders. Under Alexander the Third the Nihilists met with a very
different reception. They were ruthlessly suppressed, until, in spite
of an occasional outbreak, they appeared to be finally subdued. The
movement flickered out, but the flame had already kindled fires in
the hearts of many, and under various appellations societies^ were
formed to carry on the work which the Nihilists had begun. Year
by year these societies increased and multiplied, until they have
attained to a strength and importance which will be found'capable
of carrying all before them.

366 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

II

To-day the forces of revolution in Russia are organised — not all
into one body, it is true, for there are societies of moderates and
societies of extremists. There are those who would proceed by
' constitutional ' methods, and there are those who desire to resort to
anarchy. Some demand merely a curtailment of the autocratic
power of the Tsar, others still cry out for the overthrow of all
existing institutions and the whole fabric of society. Then, again,
there is a very large body of the population belonging to the
merchant guilds, which for its safety dare not belong to any revo-
lutionary society, but which, nevertheless, ardently desires revolution,
and only awaits a lead. But all these varying shades of opinion, as
represented by their numerous leagues and societies, are controlled
by one executive committee and brought into the great revolutionary
party in Russia.

This revolutionary organisation has branches all over the world,
and is international in its character. Included in its membership
are men of all ranks and of every degree. The professional element
and the universities are very largely represented. The majority of
the Russian students at foreign universities are to be counted
amongst the numbers of the Revolutionary party. In Russia itself
the members are legion. They are to be found in every walk of
life — officers and men of the army and navy, officials of the customs,
police, or censor's office, who draw a meagre pittance from the Tsar's
coffers. They are to be found in the palaces of the Tsar himself
and amongst his advisers too. Men with great names in Russia will
be found amongst the leaders of the Revolution — men of science,
doctors and chemists, and students without number. As for the
peasants, they are waiting to do what they are told, as they have
always done. At present they are taking their orders from the Tsar
and the popes of the Orthodox Church ; but they will take them
from anybody else when their minds are inflamed.

The revolutionary party has its hand upon the army, and therein
lies the essence of success. There are soldiers in Manchuria at this
moment who are pledged to make no Japanese widows. It is
astonishing how badly the Russian naval gunner lays his gun. I
have lately seen two letters, written by soldiers at the front, which go
far to account for the total lack of success of the Russian arms.
One speaks of men voluntarily surrendering to the Japanese, so that
they may not be called upon to fight for the Tsar. The other tells
a tale of a sudden retreat on the part of a company of Russian
soldiers at the moment when victory was in their grasp, and of the
officer in command, unable to stop the stampede of his men, blowing
out his brains.

1904 THE COMING REVOLUTION IN BUS SI A 367

The revolutionary party in Russia is ruled by an Executive
Committee of twelve men. The head of the Committee is a doctor,
who, to this day, holds a prominent post at one of the universities.
He is a very taciturn man of great abilities and brain power, but he
seldom speaks. Other members of the Committee are professors of
universities in Germany, near the Russian border. There are no
appointed times or places for the meetings of the Committee,
circumstances alone ruling the frequency and locality of their
deliberations. In the hand of the Executive Committee rest the
lives of the ministers and governors of the Empire. The removal of
M. de Plehve was due to their deliberations.

Each government in Russia has its revolutionary organisation
complete in detail, under the Executive Committee. Thus all the
elements of revolution are to hand and organised.

Some idea of the influence of the revolutionary party may be
obtained from the fact that on the day of the assassination of -M. de
Plehve the Tsar found on the table of his private room a sealed
letter addressed to him by the Executive Committee, which he
handed to the Minister of Justice for investigation. How was the
letter delivered ? Whose hand placed it on the Tsar's table ? The
secret police can avail nothing against the dreaded Committee.

Thus throughout all Russia the Revolutionists are awaiting
the signal from the Executive Committee to strike. The oppor-
tunity is not far to seek. The pressure on an already overstrained
nation caused by a devastating war; the misery entailed ; the shame
of defeat ; the restlessness of despair ; the exhaustion of the treasury ;
the discredit of the bureaucracy — surely all these things are working
for the forces of discontent. And that discontent is showing itself
in Russia is abundantly proved by recent events.

Restlessness is manifesting itself in many centres ; premature
riots, organised by irresponsible, hot-headed students, break out and
are suppressed by the Cossacks. But the great revolutionary party
in Russia is waiting the word from the Executive Committee.

Ill

The existence of the revolutionary movement in Russia is, of
course, known to the Tsar. To him must also be known the causes
that have set on foot this vast movement of protest against the existing
state of things in his empire. He must know something of the cha-
racters of the men whom he appoints as his ministers and governors.
So long as men of the stamp of Bobrikoff, De Plehve, Obolenski are
given posts as ministers or governors in the Empire, so long will
the forces of revolution continue to be increased in numbers and in
strength and in the justice of their cause. Be it remembered that

368 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

these men are appointed by the Tsar himself, without the necessity
of consultation with any advisers.

There was no one for the Tsar to consult when he appointed
Prince Obolenski Governor of Finland. Prince Obolenski, as Gover-
nor of Kherson, in the year of the great famine, 1891, ordered the
suppression of publications dealing with the distress in the district
and soliciting subscriptions for the starving peasants, and stopped
the work of the relief committees. It was Prince Obolenski who, as
Governor-General of Kharkoff, ordered the flogging of peasants, which
was carried out in his presence, and the execution of others, and
exasperated the people to such an extent that an attempt was made
on his life. I myself met him in Kharkoff a few years ago. I was
with him in his office when an officer entered and hurriedly com-
municated with him in an undertone. But it was in no undertone
that Obolenski answered him that the women should receive fifty
lashes apiece on the bare back.

There was no one for the Tsar to consult when entrusting the
office of Minister of the Interior to M. de Plehve, whose character
was too well known to need comment here.

There was no one for the Tsar to consult when he confirmed
M. Pobiedonostseff in his appointment as Procurator of the Holy
Synod. Yet he must have known the record of persecution and
bloodshed which the Procurator had compiled during the reigns of
his father and grandfather.

By the choice of his ministers the Tsar is strengthening the
hands of the revolutionary party.

Much has been written lately concerning Nicholas Alexandro-
vitch. He is represented as amiable and well-intentioned in one
quarter ; as weak and fickle in another ; as obstinate and hysterical
in a third. There is a certain amount of truth in each and all of
these descriptions. A good deal depends on his humour and the
time of day. In the morning he will arise, full of good intentions
and amiability. An interview with his chief adviser, the Procurator,
will entirely alter his outlook, and his good intentions will be con-
signed to the usual destination. An audience given to another
minister will bring out a fresh trait in his versatile nature. And so
on throughout the day.

I have been blamed for denouncing the Tsar in ' Russia as it
really is ' without regard for historical circumstances. It has been
pointed out to me that the evils which exist in Russia are the
creation of centuries. In that case, I reply, surely the time has
arrived for steps to be taken to eradicate some of the more glaring
evils. The state of a nation may be the inheritance of centuries ;
but the same cannot be said of the state of mind of any one individual
in the nation, especially if that individual has had all the advantages
that education, travel, and a world-wide field of vision can give. For

1904 THE COMING EEVOLUTION IN RUSSIA 389

Eussia we can only feel extreme pity. But for the man who is in
the possession of absolute power, and who, by a stroke of the pen,
could, but does not, make a beginning, at least, of a new and
happier era for his country, we must feel still more.

Confident in the divine right of his high calling, Nicholas
Alexandrovitch goes on his way, unheeding prudent counsels and the
voice of common sense, and grasping at shadows while the party of
revolution works steadily on. Would he but bring to an end the war
in which he has plunged his unhappy nation he might yet post-
pone the day of retribution. And Heaven seems at the present
moment to open for him a golden gateway to return to his best self,
in company with its latest messenger, his long-prayed-for son.

IV

But if not ? When the revolution is all over, and the nation has
emerged from the horrors of civil strife, strengthened, and purged of
the curse of absolute monarchy and bureaucratic tyranny — what then ?
I do not pretend to say what form of government will recommend itself
to the Executive Committee ; but there can be no doubt that it will
be constitutional, that the power of the Church will be broken,
that the bureaucracy will be abolished, that education will be
extended to the whole nation.

And what a future lies before Eussia ! There is no country in
the world with greater resources than she possesses, hidden in the
earth or behind the strong, broad brows of her people, for nowhere
are there men of greater brain capacity and physical powers than in
the huge, inert masses of humanity which constitute the population
of the Empire of the Tsar. In no country has there been such
profligate waste of splendid material, allowed to run to seed un-
cultivated. In no land are more treasures concealed which can te
had for the working. A vast future lies before her in the develop-
ment of her resources, mental and material. Who can say to what
heights Eussia may attain when liberty has entered into the life
of the nation ?

CARL JOUBERT.

370 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

THE EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATE AS
A EUROPEAN COLONY

IT is only in the last few years that the East Africa Protectorate has
been shown to contain large tracts suitable for European colonisation,
and though the fact may be said to be now established it is not gene-
rally realised. Our preconceived notions of an equatorial country
render it hard to believe that it can consist of grassy uplands with a
temperate, agreeable climate, and the eastern side of Africa has not
hitherto had great attractions for either our trade or our armies.
The northern portion of that side, or Italian Somaliland, is inde-
scribably dreary and repellent, and though south of the equator the
coast offers a strip of considerable fertility there lies immediately
behind it a belt of jungle a hundred miles or more in width, which
has long impeded all commerce and communication with the interior
(except the slave trade), and has been effectively pierced only by the
Uganda Railway, which has placed the high, cool plateaux of the
interior within easy reach of the ports.

But the coast and its immediate hinterland do not give a correct
general impression of the East African Protectorate, which may, for
practical purposes, be very roughly denned as lying between Lake
Victoria and the Indian Ocean, with some extension to the north.1
I know of no territory in the world which, within a comparatively
small compass, presents such surprising varieties of climate, character,
products, and population. It seems to be not one but many different
countries. The north-eastern district is inhabited by Somalis, and
presents the inhospitable appearance which seems to attract that
singular people, scrub and sand spreading in thorny, dusty desola-
tion on every side. The only known redeeming feature in this region
is the river Juba, whose banks are fertile and cultivated. South of
this come the provinces of Tanaland and Seyidie, where are found
indiarubber of good quality, and ornamental timber which is now
being put on the English market, besides such tropical products as

1 I would call attention to this definition, rough as it is, because a large portion of
this territory formerly belonged to Uganda, and was transferred to East Africa in
1902. The present Uganda Protectorate lies entirely to the west and north of the
Lake.

1904 THE EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATE 371

copra, simsim, &c. The soil has also been reported by experts to be
most favourable for cotton, and it is hoped that experiments now in
progress will end in the establishment of this industry on an extensive
scale. Towards the south of this fertile coast strip Hes Mombasa, the
principal port of the Protectorate and starting point of the Uganda
Railway. It is situated on an island which is separated from the
mainland by a narrow arm of the sea, and provided with two harbours,
one of which (Kilindini) is of great size and capacity. The European
quarter is built on high, open ground, which enjoys a perpetual sea
breeze, and considering that the town is in the tropics, and only a few
degrees south of the equator, it must be pronounced remarkably
healthy. The climate is, on the whole, far better than that of Calcutta
or Bombay ; in the cool season (June-October) it recalls Italy, and in
the hottest months (January-April) the temperature in the house
rarely reaches 90 degrees F.

The Uganda Railway, which starts from Mombasa and runs in a
north-westerly direction to Lake Victoria, passes first through a
cultivated belt of cocoanuts, bananas, and maize, and then enters the
jungle. For nearly two hundred miles the chief feature of the country
is a thick scrub, mainly composed of flat-topped acacias, but con-
taining here and there gorgeous flowering trees and shrubs. The soil
appears to be of extraordinary fertility, for the whole of this vegeta-
tion is supported by the somewhat irregular rainfall, and experiments
have shown that maize and other crops can be grown in extreme
luxuriance if there is an adequate water supply. Unfortunately the
rivers are few, but all indications point to the probability that a
large body of subterranean water must flow under this district to
the sea, and it is hoped that it may be tapped by boring welh, which
is now in contemplation. About a hundred miles from the coast
are the Teita Hills, masses of rock rising abruptly from the jungle,
and thickly populated. The climate on the summits is healthy and
agreeable, and the native cultivation very considerable. It should
be explained that, in this part of the world, the ordinary distribution
of cultivation is reversed ; the valleys are dry and barren (unless they
are flooded by torrential rains), whereas the mountain-tops are well
watered and fertile. This is partly due to the fact that African
streams have a tendency to dry up and disappear when they reach
the plains, so that the water supply is best and surest near the springs,
and also to the raids of the Masai, a race of warlike nomads who
formerly terrorised the whole of the level country and drove the
inhabitants into the fastnesses of the hills. All these hills are too
thickly populated to offer much opening for European colonisation,
but no doubt might become a good centre for producing cotton, fibre,
and indiarubber. An industrial mission, connected with the Church
Missionary Society, has been recently started, and promises to succeed.

After the Teita Hills the railway passes other ranges of a similar

372 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Sept.

character, but less well known. Near Makindu, about two hundred
miles from the coast, the jungle gives place to plains, at first dotted
with trees and then open, which extend for about a hundred miles as
far as Nairobi. For those who make the direct journey from the
coast during the night the change in climate and scenery is most
surprising. Towards the south the landscape is dominated by the
snowy mass of Kilimanjaro, and if the weather is propitious the
somewhat lower but still snow-covered peaks of Kenia may be seen
to the north. The most remarkable feature of these plains are the
enormous herds of game, which may be seen quite close to the line.
The district being a game reserve, where shooting is entirely forbidden,
the animals have lost all fear of the train and hardly trouble to move
as it passes. The largest herds are composed of zebra, hartebeest,
and gazelle, and ostriches may generally be seen. Lions, rhinoceros,
and giraffes, though not common, show themselves from time to time.
At the end of these plains lies Nairobi, a straggling settlement of
corrugated iron somewhat resembling a West American mining town.
Then the appearance of the country suddenly changes again, and the
railway passes over the Kikuyu Hills, a series of fertile ridges, now
covered with forests and now breaking into the most charming of
glades. There is a good deal of both native and European cultiva-
tion, for this is one of the few parts of East Africa where population
and labour are abundant. The district extends to Mount Kenia in
the north, and contains the best agricultural (as opposed to pastoral)
land in the Protectorate. It is bounded on the western side by a
steep descent, generally called the Escarpment, which goes abruptly
down to the great depression known as the Rift Valley. This is one
of the most remarkable features of East Africa ; it is a huge chasm,
thirty or forty miles in width, and two or three thousand feet lower
than the surrounding hills, though its floor is about six thousand feet
above the sea level. It contains several lakes and hardly extinct
volcanoes, which still give evidence of their activity by emitting jets
of steam, and strange clefts and fantastically shaped rocks rising out
of the green lawns testify to former convulsions. But now the aspect
of the valley is peaceful ; it affords most excellent grazing, and on a
fine day, or even in the grandeur of a storm, the views over Lakes
Naivasha, Nakuru, and Elmenteita are magnificent. East Africa is,
indeed, pre-eminently a country of striking views. The scenery of
its uplands has qualities peculiar to itself which I have not noticed
anywhere else. It is anything but tropical in character, and the
most noticeable effects, as seen from some high point of vantage,
depend on subtle harmonies of grey and green spread over vast spaces
of wind-swept plain and mountain, where the grassy slopes rise terrace
upon terrace, and the clear outlines of the jagged volcanoes guard
the lakes sunk deep in their rocky cups. And yet, clear though the
outlines are, the vast breadth and airiness of the vision bring a

1904 THE EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATE 373

certain feeling of transitoriness and unsubstantially. Veils of cloud
and mist obliterate or reveal in an instant whole panoramas, and one
feels very near those elemental forces which can destroy their handi-
work as easily as they created it. 4

On the other side of the Rift Valley is another plateau, called the
Mau, as much as 9,000 feet high, and strangely European in scenery.
Some parts recall a Scotch moor, and others the downs of Southern
England. Everywhere there is abundance of meadow land, diversified
with timber, and of water. Much the same features are found in the
districts of Nandi and Lumbwa, where, however, the climate is some-
what warmer, and in the great Gwas Ngisha plateau, which lies to the
north of the former district.

After reaching a height of about 8,000 feet the railway descends
to the comparatively low country (4,000 to 3,500 feet) round Lake
Victoria, and here again we are in a totally different region, which
seems thousands of miles distant from the plateau of the Mau, instead
of barely fifty. It is a low-lying, damp, tropical country, with a dense
population of peaceful and industrious natives, and also of mosquitoes.
It is, therefore, unsuitable for European colonisation, but a number
of Hindus have settled there and successfully cultivate cotton and
other tropical products.

Often as East Africa has been described I have given the above
account because experience has taught me that even those who are
best acquainted with foreign countries and foreign affairs have very
little knowledge of these districts for practical purposes. Of the
regions I have enumerated I would now ask the reader to concentrate
his attention on what may be conveniently termed the Highlands,
roughly defined as lying between the stations of Makindu and Fort
Ternan on the Uganda Railway, and extending to varying distances
on either side. The almost unanimous verdict of the numerous
Europeans from the south of the continent who have visited these
Highlands is that they are like South Africa, but much better. The
average temperature is about 65° F. in the cool season and 75° F.
in the hot weather. Local experience extending over about fifteen
years shows that Europeans can live there in health and bring
up healthy families. It is certain that European vegetables, fruits,
cereals, and coffee all thrive. Fibre plants, indiarubber (Landolphia),
and castor oil are indigenous ; timber is plentiful and excellent for all
local purposes. Like the coast timber it is now being introduced to
the European market. The grazing is pronounced by experts to be
very good. It would seem, therefore, that the whole district is
peculiarly suited for British colonisation, and is one of those assets
which the Empire cannot afford to neglect, but should cherish and
develop with the greatest attention.

We have done much of which we may be proud for the welfare
and development of these regions. The slave trade has been entirely

VOL, LVI— No. 331 C C

374 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Sept.

suppressed and intertribal wars are almost at an end. The Uganda
railway has opened up not only the countries through which it passes,
but also the mysterious sources of the Nile further west, and we are
able to form stupendous projects for regulating the water supply of
Egypt. But we have not hitherto utilised the advantages which
East Africa offers for agriculture, pasturage, and European residence.
The Foreign Office, by whom it has hitherto been ruled, fully recog-
nised that it has the qualities necessary for a British colony, and also
that it is most desirable to reduce the heavy, unremunerative expendi-
ture to which the African Protectorates at present give rise. All
that could be done by circulating information in pamphlets and
notices, and by sending an officer to South Africa specially charged to
encourage immigration, was done. But there was a lamentable
discrepancy between promise and performance. When, in response
to these invitations, colonists began to arrive in the last months of
1903 no attempt was made to facilitate their settlement. They
were not allowed — and rightly — to squat where they chose, but they
found it no easy matter to discover where they might go and where
they might not. The influx was sudden, and many of the difficulties
created were inevitable. The greatest, perhaps, was that the country
had not been surveyed, and that it proved harder than might have
been expected to engage a sufficient body of surveyors in anything
like reasonable time. But the necessary inconveniences of the situation
might have been largely diminished by an increase in the staff of the
Land Office and some provision for police, guides, road-making, and
other necessities. I was, however, instructed that no additional
expenditure could be incurred, and in consequence the European
immigrants were very dissatisfied with their reception. What was
needed was to obtain a clear idea of the extent, character, and value
of the land available, and then to decide the terms on which it could
be let or sold. But unfortunately, owing to the inadequacy of the
staff and the absence of information, this was not done. My object
in writing now is to urge that it should be done speedily and methodi-
cally. I myself have felt it my duty to resign, though most reluc-
tantly, my post as his Majesty's Commissioner, not because I shrank
from the difficulties of the position, but because I consider that the
instructions which I received obliged me to commit injustice. Those
instructions were, no doubt, due to imperfect information, but if one
insists on acting upon imperfect information good intentions are of
little value. I do not propose here to enter into personal explana-
tions, but, since my resignation was intimately connected with land
questions, I may briefly allude to the facts. The immediate cause
of it was that amidst difficult circumstances, when justice and policy
seemed alike to demand that every possible assistance and encourage-
ment should be shown to settlers, I received a telegram from Lord
Lansdowne ordering me to cancel two leases of about twenty square

1904 THE EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATE 375

miles for private sheep farms which were being arranged with Mr.
Chamberlain and Mr. Flemmer, two gentlemen from South Africa.
These are the names which figure principally in the discussion, but the
decision of the Secretary of State affected at least five or six other
farms for which leases were being drawn up, and perhaps many more,
the boundaries within which European settlement was forbidden
being somewhat vague. Lord Lansdowne made no pretence of con-
sulting me or inviting my opinions and arguments. He suddenly
intervened in a matter which, according to custom, would be left in
the hands of the local authorities, and telegraphed first to inquire what
leases were being given to Messrs. Chamberlain and Flemmer, and then
to say that he could not sanction the grant of the farms because he
was advised by persons in London that they were in the centre of the
grazing lands essential to the Masai, a most inaccurate expression, for
if the farms are in those grazing grounds at all it is quite certain that
they are at their extreme western edge and on the limits of the country
frequented by the tribe.

When I demurred to this order he telegraphed again that it was
absolutely necessary that I should inform Mr. Chamberlain and Mr.
Flemmer that they could not have their land and that I must make
this intimation at once. At first I thought that there was some grave
objection to these particular grants of which I was unaware, but it
was afterwards plainly stated that the only objection was that already
given — namely, that they interfere with native rights. Now, it might
be logical and just, though I do not think it would be correct or politic,
to maintain that no Europeans should be allowed to settle in a certain
area along the railway because it was reserved for natives, but Lord
Lansdowne had just directed me to give the East Africa Syndicate a
grant of 500 square miles in the same district, and really in the centre
of the grazing grounds used by the Masai.

It may be possible for some one sitting in an office in London out
of touch with East Africa, and dealing only with papers, to make
these arbitrary rulings and leave it to others to fight the matter out,
but it was not possible for an official in Africa, in touch with the
parties concerned and with the plain facts before everybody's eyes,
to defend or enforce those rulings with any appearance of consistency.
The leases were in process of negotiation ; the lessees had made
arrangements for winding up their affairs elsewhere and settling in
East Africa : they had probably a legal claim — certainly an over-
whelmingly strong moral claim — to the execution of the contract,
and the only reason for not executing it immediately was that it was
unexpectedly alleged to conflict with native rights. If I used that
argument I could be met with two rejoinders, both absolutely con-
clusive. Firstly, I had myself given the transaction my general
approval, and the local officers within whose competence the matter
was had stated that the leases, subject to certain conditions duly

c c 2

376 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Sept,

embodied in them, did not interfere with the rights of any natives.
By reversing this decision we should have broken our word and have
inspired distrust not only in Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Flemmer, but
in all appli cants for land. The second rejoinder is that the whole
argument about native rights collapses if the concession to the East
Africa Syndicate is granted ; for how can it be maintained that the
syndicate may acquire a freehold of 500 square miles without inter-
fering with native rights, but that if any one else holds even less than
a tenth of that amount it is an injustice to natives which will lead to
trouble ?

Such a contention, say Europeans in East Africa, can only be
made by those who are prejudiced in favour of the syndicate and against
other applicants : the invocation of native rights is a mere disguise
for other motives. To this rejoinder I had no reply. Therefore, as
I could not defend the position I was ordered to take up, and was-
given no opportunity of entering into argument or explanation with
Lord Lansdowne, I tendered my resignation, and I do not see what
other course was possible for anyone who wished to avoid accusations
of breaking faith and showing favouritism. If Lord Lansdowne's-
decision is maintained I think it can only give rise to a lawsuit in
which the Government will get the worst, but there are signs that it
probably will not be maintained.

But though my resignation was largely caused by the particular
cases of Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Flemmer there is nothing personal
or particular in the real issue at stake — namely, that the East Africa
Protectorate is suited to be a European colony, and that we should
endeavour to make it one. I can imagine no more important question
for a young country, and none on which it is more essential that there
should be complete agreement between the Commissioner in Africa
and his superiors in England. Theoretically Lord Lansdowne and
myself appear to be at one on this subject, the only difference in our
views being that he is in favour of giving a certain syndicate extensive
concessions which seem to me unprofitable as they stand, because
they entail no obligation to develop the country, but are rather of
the nature of options which can be taken up if the Protectorate is
made to progress by the efforts of other parties or be neglected if
prospects are bad. Practically, however, the result of his Lordship's
action was to retard and discourage European settlement. An im-
pression is undoubtedly prevalent in East Africa that except large
syndicates no Europeans are wanted, and that it is proposed to ad-
minister it as a series of native States rather than as an English colony.
On this last point it is desirable to give clear explanations, for the
idea of affording natives justice and protection is one which is rightly
dear to a large section of the British public, but the notion that there
is not room for both Europeans and natives in East Africa is quite
wrong. On the contrary, it may be safely asserted that there are few

1904 THE EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATE 377

countries in the world where European settlement will interfere with
native rights so little. It has been conjectured that the area of
the Protectorate is 350,000 square miles, and the population about
1,500,000, which gives about four persons to a square mile ; but in
a territory of which not even the boundaries are fixed all such statistics
must be very uncertain, and I would rather state the facts as follows.
Large districts, suitable for European colonisation, such as the plateaux
of Mau, Gwas Ngisha, and Laikipia, have no native inhabitants what-
ever. In other large districts, such as most of the Rift Valley, the
•Settima Range, and the whole of the country between Nairobi and
the coast (except the Teita district), one may meet natives now and
again as one marches day by day, but one is pretty sure not to meet
them every day, and one may go several days without seeing any.
The coast is a country for planters rather than settlers, but even
there the chief complaint is that the population is not sufficient to
supply labour.

There remain only two districts in which the population is fairly
•dense— namely, the Kavirondo country, on the east of Lake Victoria,
and the Kikuyu Range, running up from Nairobi to Mount Kenia.
Of these the first, though fertile, is, like the coast, not a white man's
country. Kikuyu certainly presents the problem of offering the best
agricultural land, but also the largest native population. It is here
that care and judgment are required in regulating European settle-
ment, but there is far more land than the natives require, as the most
casual inspection will show. They are willing enough to labour, and
the best solution is to retain them in villages on European estates,
the said villages remaining native property and being excluded from
the European's holding. When this is impracticable, reserves should
be created, and the natives either left where they happen to be or
moved to some place they may select. It may be mentioned that all
the Kikuyu people are only half settled, and constantly change the
site of their villages.

The question of native property, however, as far as it affects
European colonisation, has not arisen out of the problem presented
toy the Kikuyu, which really does offer difficulties, but out of the case
of the Masai, which appears to me a perfectly simple matter, com-
plicated only by perverse ingenuity. The Masai are a tribe of nomadic
raiders, and in many ways the most interesting race in East Africa.
They appear to be connected with the Dinka, Latuka, Bari, and
other Nilotic peoples, and to have come from the north. They were
formerly the terror of the whole country, and took tribute from all
travellers. The advent of Europeans, however, destroyed their power,
and a severe epidemic of small-pox greatly decreased their numbers.
Recourse to active operations was not necessary, for they soon adopted
a peaceful attitude. This was mainly due to the fact that on account
-of their Jiabitual raiding all the other natives are their enemies, and

378 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

were they to engage in a conflict with the Government every soul in
the country would be against them. The chiefs endeavour to keep
the young men quiet ; but raiding is not extinct, and never will be
as long as their present social system is maintained, according to
which the warriors reside in separate villages, not marrying, but
cohabiting with the immature unmarried girls, and recognising no
profession as worthy of a gentleman except war. To me, and I
think to most people who have the welfare of the natives at heart,
this seems a most abominable system, which we should discourage
as far as we safely can. Similar institutions among the people
of Taveta are gradually disappearing, thanks to the efforts of the
missionaries, and I have little doubt myself that if the Masai are
exposed to humanising influences they will settle down in villages
like ordinary natives. The Nandi, Lumbwa, and Njamusi, who were
all nomads formerly, have done so, and about Nairobi the Masai
themselves have shown a remarkable tendency to adopt fixed habita-
tions and decent clothing. The idea of the Foreign Office, however,
appears to be to make all the best land along the railway in the Rift
Valley a native reserve into which no Europeans are to be admitted
with the exception of the inevitable East Africa Syndicate. This
policy seems to me from every point of view disastrous. Financially
it must occasion great loss, for to build a railway at immense expense
through a country which is largely jungle, and then to exclude Euro-
peans from holding land or doing business along the most promising
part of the line, is a proceeding which can hardly be said to be com-
mercially advantageous, and could only be justified if there were
some very strong reason, such as the hostility of the natives, to support
it. But the Masai are not hostile to Europeans ; they are ready to
move if it is required, but I believe that they would be perfectly
friendly if Europeans settled among them. Politically the creation
of a reserve in the locality proposed is dangerous, for it creates a cause
of hostility between Europeans and the Masai which does not, and need
not, exist. It cannot be denied that many Europeans, especially South
Africans, have strong feelings of animosity against native races, and if
those who can utilise the advantages of the railway, and the enhanced
value it gives to the surrounding land, are excluded from that land,
and it is reserved for natives who do not appreciate those advantages,
and would rather see the railway removed, it is clear that a permanent
cause of racial jealousy, which is likely to find effective expression,
will be established. Further, this native reserve will be surrounded
by European estates belonging to the syndicate and others who will
construct roads across it in order to secure access to the railway.
Does anybody really suppose that a territory placed between a railway,
which is continually bringing up European elements, and a series of
European estates which require access to that railway will remain a
native reserve ? On the contrary it will most certainly pass into

1904 THE EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATE 379

the hands of Europeans ; but the transfer, which might be amicable
and bloodless, will probably be accompanied by violence, and certainly
by a feeling in the minds of the natives that we have failed to keep
our promises.

The proper course seems to me extremely simple. It is to ascer-
tain, as I was in the course of doing when I left the Protectorate,
what land is really necessary for the tribe and their flocks, neither of
which are numerically very large compared to the extent of ground
over which they straggle. Europeans should be allowed to take up
land which is not required. This settlement should be cautious at
first, but much land about Lakes Nakuru and Elmenteita, in the
Endabibi Plain and the Kedong Valley, might be colonised at once.
The rest should be settled gradually, and with a due regard for possible
troubles. Personally I believe that the Masai will raise no objection
to the presence of Europeans, but will gladly act as herdsmen and
farm servants, for a labour bureau recently opened at Naivasha
received numerous applications for employment. But if difficulties
occur, if the two races cannot live in harmony, then the Masai should
be removed to a reserve, not on the railway or in any place where
they will come into collision with Europeans, but at some distance.
They have expressed their willingness to do this if it is desired by the
Government, and probably the Laikipia plateau would be the best
locality.

I myself, however, deprecate the idea of a reserve if it can be
avoided, because I think our aim should be not to isolate natives,
but to civilise them by contact. To the best of my belief no one with
the interests of religion and philanthropy at heart has asked for a
reserve, and the only missionary who has paid special attention to the
Masai spoke to me strongly against the whole system of reserves and
isolation. The idea emanates rather from gentlemen with a taste for
sport and wild nature. Lord Hindlip was perfectly correct when,
in an article published in this Review some months ago, he said that
in certain circles in East Africa there is a strong prejudice against
European immigrants. The feeling is not unnatural : the beginnings
and even the ripe fruits of introduced civilisation are less picturesque
than the barbarism which they replace ; but if one wishes to preserve
the romance of savage life one should not build a railway and announce
that one wishes to make it pay its way.

For the above reasons I maintain that, as far as native rights
are concerned, the colonisation of East Africa by Europeans should
occasion no difficulties, and that we may promote the movement with
a good conscience.

The moment seems opportune to inquire what should be done
to assist and encourage this colonisation, since, after April next, the
territory will be administered by the Colonial Office, and changes
will probably occur.

380 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Sept.

Since one of the principal objects of Government must be to reduce
the very considerable expenditure incurred on behalf of the African
Protectorates it may seem unreasonable to begin by recommending
a more liberal budget, but no one who is acquainted with the details
of East African finance can fail to be struck by the want of propor-
tion between the expenditure on the Uganda Railway and on the rest
of the administration. The former has been lavish in the extreme,
the latter equally parsimonious ; up to 1901 about 5,000,0002. had
been spent on the railway, and about 750,0002. in all on the rest of
the Protectorate since its foundation in 1895. If one considers that
a railway can only pay if the country through which it passes is pro-
ductive and prosperous, the difference seems extreme. All the high
officials, to whom I have used this argument for years, have admitted
its force, but none of them has ever wrung from the Treasury the
extra funds desired ; so I suppose it must be admitted that they are
unobtainable. Nevertheless the need for some extra expenditure
sufficient to provide the country with adequate police, land officers,
surveyors, roads, and other such necessaries is great, and the return
certain. If more money cannot be provided I would suggest economy
in military expenditure. Instead of any decrease under this head
it is at present proposed to establish an extra reserve battalion in
the Protectorate, which is, in my opinion, entirely unnecessary. In
saying this I am not afraid of going against the advice of the military
authorities at home, for I believe they claim no local knowledge, and
judge the situation entirely by general military principles. That is
to say, they calculate that there are so many Europeans who may be
attacked by so many natives, and that, therefore, so many troops
are necessary to protect them. But local experience shows that
there is not the smallest reason to apprehend any combination of
natives against the white population, tribal enmity being strong and
no idea of unity existing. And if such a combination of natives against
Europeans were possible would it be safe to rely on a force which is
itself composed of African natives ? Clearly not. Further expendi-
ture on African troops appears to me, therefore, quite unnecessary.
I would form a volunteer corps of Europeans, decrease the troops,
and increase the police force, who are cheaper and quite capable of
doing most of the military work which has to be done. I have little
doubt that in this way an economy of 20,0002. or 30,0002. might be
made, which would go a long way towards covering the expenditure
indicated above.

Perhaps, however, the really greatest need of the Protectorate is
not more money but more local government. At present the govern-
ment is administered nominally by the Commissioner in his own name,
but really under very strict instructions from London. Legislation
is by ordinance, but except in cases of emergency no ordinances may
be published without reference home, which generally takes many

1904 THE EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATE 381

months. Nor does it follow that if a regulation is of exclusively local
importance and recommended by all the local authorities concerned
it will be passed. Some time ago regulations were drafted for licensing
boatmen at Mombasa, in order to put an end to the disorder and
violence which resulted from all sorts of natives being allowed to
take passengers to and from the steamers. It was proposed that the
licensed boatmen should wear blue jerseys, which would render them
recognisable, and which they would gladly have used. But in spite
of all arguments the Secretary of State said that he could not sanction
this proposal. Why, I have never been able to understand, for no
reason was given except that the measure was ' inexpedient.' I, living
on the spot as Commissioner, should never have ventured to dis-
pute the suggestions of the port officer and maritime authorities on
euch a detail of discipline, but neither arguments nor entreaty had
any effect on the inflexible omniscience of the Foreign Office. Natur-
ally the same sort of thing happens in matters of greater importance :
the opinions of the local authorities are frequently overruled ; very
frequently also elaborate ordinances, often much too elaborate for
the state of the country, are prepared at home without consulting
those on the spot, and are merely sent out for publication.

A further evil is that there is absolutely nothing in the nature of
a council, and even the local officials are somewhat out of touch with
the public. They are apt to think that they know best what the
unofficial world really wants, and the unofficial world is apt to ignore
the really serious difficulties which often prevent the execution of
what seem simple requests. Hence arises much discontent ; the
public are dissatisfied with the local officials, and the local officials
are dissatisfied with the officials in London. The remedy for all this
does not seem to me difficult. At present, of course, anything like
representative government is premature, but there is no reason why
there should not be a council to assist the Commissioner composed of
unofficial as well as of official members. Such a council exists next
door in German East Africa, where the European element is
certainly not stronger than in British territory. It is most desirable
that there should be officers on the council of general colonial
experience. Local experience is naturally indispensable and invalu-
able, but it is not sufficient to enable East African officials to deal
with the numerous problems created by European immigration, and
the staff should be strengthened by men who have some practical
knowledge of how such problems are dealt with in such Colonies as
South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. As long as no general
principle and no interest not represented on the council is involved
it ought to be possible to settle local affairs locally, and a report home
of the action taken should be sufficient. Whenever general questions
or wider interests are concerned the point must, of course, be referred
home, but except in some special case, such as a matter of Imperial

382 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

moment, I think the council should be consulted on all legislation
and its opinions not be rejected by the home authorities without good
reason. The main difficulty in the matter is no doubt the old one of
finance : regulations have a way of requiring funds for their execution.
East Africa has undergone a rather sudden transition in this respect.
Formerly the impossibility of communication necessitated the grant
of unusual powers of expenditure and an equally unusual leniency in
audit. Now the strict system in force in settled countries, which
requires not only accounts but forecasts of expenditure, has been
introduced. The Commissioner is obliged to send home in November
a detailed estimate of every item of the expenditure which will take
place in the twelve months beginning in the following April. When
once this estimate is approved he can only reallocate sums under
100L Such a system is really only feasible in a country which has
settled down in fixed conditions. It is not workable in an expanding
and changing country where a district unheard of twelve months
before may suddenly become a busy centre. It is not very easy to
propose any plan which will satisfy the needs of the Protectorate as
well as the just requirements of the Lords of the Treasury, but there
are precedents in East Africa for the appropriation of lump sums
to specified purposes, such as ' military reorganisation,' without any
allocation of details, and I think a sum of 20,OOOL or 30,OOOL should
be assigned in this way for expenditure on assisting European colonisa-
tion in a wide sense. Such assistance would include in the first instance
arrangements for survey and the creation of an adequate land office,
with a staff sufficient to cope with the applications for estates. It
need hardly be said that it is of the utmost importance to make sure
that applicants are able and ready to develop their land, and are not
obtaining it for merely speculative purposes with a view to selling it
on the first favourable opportunity. With this object it is necessary
to have proof that they have sufficient means, and to insert in the
lease conditions which shall neither be onerous nor allow land to be
locked up uselessly. All this requires the time and attention of a far
more considerable staff than is at present in existence.

Then it is undoubtedly necessary to construct more roads and
bridges. The whole of the Southern Mau, some twelve or fifteen
hundred square miles of grazing land and timber, is at present practi-
cally inaccessible. Immigrants are ready to go there when the way is
open, but one cannot expect to direct the stream to an uninhabited,
unmapped country, unless the Government makes some attempt to
establish communications and organisation. A certain number of
white police are also necessary. At present the force is composed
entirely of Africans and Indians, but it is evident that these cannot
deal with disorderly Europeans. Further, in allotting land it is
desirable to state clearly the principles on which it is allotted, and on
this subject there has been much uncertainty. A distinction may

1904 TEE EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATE 383

fairly be drawn between the earliest concessions given to attract and
encourage experiments in an unknown country and the normal grants
offered afterwards. In the former case I see no objection to holdings
of twenty, fifty, or a hundred thousand acres or to using the assistance
of syndicates to start ventures too arduous for private enterprise.
But when once the value of the land is known it is most desirable to
prevent it from being absorbed by a few capitalists. I believe it is
recognised as an evil in South Africa that so much property is owned
by a few syndicates, and I cannot agree with the policy which in
East Africa gives large tracts to one of these bodies on far more
favourable terms than private individuals can obtain. But in any
case the most important point is that the holders of large properties
should be obliged to develop and utilise them and not be able to lock
them up, as is unfortunately possible under some leases drafted in
London. As for the size of normal holdings to be granted now, it
appears that in the more accessible parts of the Protectorate 5,000
acres for grazing and 640 for agriculture is a fair average for good
land. In many places the distribution of water or the inferior quality
of the soil may necessitate much larger holdings — say, of 12,000 acres
— and those who are willing to go to the less accessible districts and
act as real pioneers may still be justly allowed estates of 25,000 acres or
more. But in dealing with all these questions the first necessity
appears to me to be the advice of those who have had experience
of land settlement elsewhere, and this has hitherto not been forth-
coming.

One point of detail which requires special attention is the game
regulations. The rules in force have attained their object of pre-
venting the destruction .of the large game which nature has so plenti-
fully bestowed on these regions, but they are not compatible with the
holding of private property by Europeans, and for preserving game
in the future it is clear we must depend on game reserves, in which
shooting is forbidden, rather than on elaborate regulations as to how
many animals may be killed. Fortunately the establishment of these
reserves is an easy matter, for the country where game is most abundant
is also that which is least in request for other purposes, such as the
Serengeti plains and the districts near the German frontier and Lake
Baringo. The present fee for a settler's licence (10Z.) is too high. It
has been vainly pointed out to the Foreign Office that settlers will
not pay it, and that the result of insisting on it is that nobody takes
out a licence and everybody poaches. The Government are powerless
to deal with the abuse, and both the game and the revenue suffer. If
the licence were reduced to about 31. it would probably be taken out
by most persons.

But apart from this the whole question requires consideration
by a committee who will weigh the interests of landowners as well as
of sportsmen, for the most innocent of large wild animals, such as

384 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

zebras, may do considerable damage on an estate. Yet a proprietor,
though provided with a licence, may kill only two.

I think that only immigrants of European race should be allowed
to settle in the Highlands, or, in other words, that Indians should not
be permitted to do so. It may be doubted whether any Indians
genuinely desire to settle in these districts, for the conditions of
climate and agriculture are not such as appeal to them. On the
other hand, they are undoubtedly most anxious to acquire land for
speculative purposes, and experience in Zanzibar, where much
property has been sold by impecunious Arabs, shows that it is not
to the advantage of a country that estates should pass into the
hands of non-resident Indian landlords. Also, the mixture of
Europeans and Africans is quite sufficient, and it is not advisable
to introduce a third element which may quarrel with both. There
seems, however, to be no objection to encouraging Indian settle-
ment on the coast and near Lake Victoria. The climate of these
districts is not good for Europeans, but it resembles many parts of
India, particularly Madras, and there are facilities for cultivation
with irrigation, such as Indians are accustomed to.

The mention of mixture of races reminds me of the project of
establishing a Jewish colony on the Gwas Ngisha plateau. This pro-
posal was made rather suddenly last year at a moment when the
prospects of the East Africa Protectorate seemed far from brilliant.
The completion of the Uganda Railway produced an exodus of work-
men and contractors which seriously affected trade, and there was
as yet no indication that Europeans were likely to immigrate to the
Protectorate in any numbers on their own account, and neither the
funds nor the organisation were forthcoming to arrange a scheme of
colonisation. It was understood, however, that very large sums would
be available for the establishment of a Jewish colony, and in these
circumstances I gave a very qualified assent to the project. My
hesitation did not arise from any anti-Semitic feeling, but from doubt
as to whether any beneficial result would be obtained. I do not
understand how the aspirations of the Zionists will be furthered by a
settlement in East Africa, which is neither in Palestine nor on the
road to it : the proposed colony would not be sufficiently large to
appreciably relieve the congested and suffering Jewish population of
some parts of Eastern Europe, and it is to my mind exceedingly
doubtful if the climate and agricultural life would be in any way
suitable to Israelites. However, as long as it was merely a question
of making an experiment in an isolated and unused part of Africa the
objections were not serious, but when the country began to attract
British immigrants who showed an inclination to settle all round the
proposed Jewish colony I considered that the scheme became dangerous
and deprecated its execution. It was tantamount to reproducing in
East Africa the very conditions which have caused so much distress

1904 THE EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATE 385

in Eastern Europe — that is to say, the existence of a compact mass of
Israelites, differing in language and customs from the surrounding
population, to whom they are likely to be superior in business capacity,
but inferior in fighting power. To my mind it is best to frankly
recognise that such conditions can never exist without danger to the
public peace.

Finally, a matter of importance, which demands most careful con-
sideration, is the coinage of the Protectorate. This at present consists
of rupees, annas, and pice, as in India, and it is proposed to replace it
by rupees with decimal subdivisions, as in Ceylon, which is certainly
a change for the better as far as it goes. When the proposal was first
made, about two years ago, it was reasonable enough, as the commercial
relations of the Protectorate seemed to be largely with India ; but,
as the discussion has been allowed to drag on, and as meanwhile the
European element has increased and relations with South Africa have
grown closer, I think that if any change is made the possible intro-
duction of British currency should again be considered.

C. ELIOT.

386 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Sept.

FREE THOUGHT IN
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

FREE THOUGHT, AS CONDEMNED BY THE LEADERS OP ANGLICAN

ORTHODOXY

DISCUSSION is now frequent among our clergy of all schools as to why
the habit of church-going is so generally on the decline in this country.
According to some of them, it is due to the fact that our services are
too dull ; according to others, that they are too ornate and theatrical ;
according to others, to the fact that we happen to have no good
preachers, or that the clergy are out of touch with social or political
problems, or that Sunday excursion trains, Sunday concerts, and
bicycles, are to a growing degree seducing an indifferent multitude,
who once would have gone to church for want of something better to
do. It hardly seems to have occurred to any of the numerous dis-
putants that the fact which alarms them may be due to a deeper and
far more obvious reason, and that laymen may perhaps be ceasing
to go to church because our Church services are impregnated with
assertions and implications, many of which they have come to doubt,
many of which they have come to deny, and some of which even the
most reverent of them have come to regard with ridicule.

Whether or how far this explanation is the true one is a question
which in plain language I propose to discuss here ; and in trying to
answer it I shall, instead of dealing directly with the state of opinion
which prevails amongst the laymen of the defaulting congregations,
examine the opinions openly expressed and taught by the most
thoughtful and highly educated of the Anglican clergy themselves.

Two incidents have lately occurred within the English Church
which make such an inquiry appropriate to the present moment.
Two distinguished clergymen have, on account of their published
opinions, incurred the formal censure of two scandalised bishops.
The clergymen I refer to are Canon Hensley Henson and Mr. Beeby :
the scandalised bishops are those of London and Worcester.

Now what is it precisely that these two clergymen have done ?

1904 FEEE THOUGHT IN THE CHUECH 387

They have merely ventured to apply to parts of the New Testament
those methods of scholarship, criticism, and ordinary common sense
which the Bishop of Worcester has been foremost in declaring that
we must apply to the Old ; and as the honest result of obeying both
the bishop's precept and his example, they have reached respectively
the two following conclusions. Mr. Beeby's conclusion is that the Virgin
Birth of Christ cannot be reasonably held on the strength of the Gospel
evidence for it. Canon Henson's conclusion is that the Gospel evidence
is equally worthless in respect of Christ's physical resurrection.

Both express themselves in the most guarded way that is possible
for them. Mr. Beeby declares that he believes as devoutly as any-
body that Christ in some sense was veritably God incarnate ; nor does
he even, so far as he himself is concerned, dismiss in so many words
the Virgin Birth as legendary. He maintains, however, that the
Gospel evidences for it can warrant nobody in demanding that any-
body else should accept it as an historical fact ; and he farther main-
tains that such an acceptance of it is altogether unnecessary to a full
belief in the essentials of Christian doctrine. He treats it in short as
a kind of pious opinion, which may still be suitably entertained by
those who like to retain it, but which has for the modern mind no
importance whatever.

The doctrine of the resurrection is treated by Canon Henson in a
way which is more conservative, and at the same time more frankly
revolutionary. He declares that he himself believes, and that no one
is a Christian who does not believe, in the personal resurrection of
Christ as a central and unquestionable fact ; but to believe in the
fact, he goes on to argue, is one thing, and to believe the account of
it as given in the Gospels is another. It is no exaggeration of Canon
Henson's views to say that, according to him, the Gospel account is
not only a tissue of legends, the details of which are quite imaginary,
but a tissue of legends which degrade a spiritual event by materialising
it. That the Gospel accounts are as a fact mere legends is apparent,
he says, if from nothing else, from their absolutely irreconcilable
character. The stories about the empty sepulchre contradict each
other in essential particulars. Still more contradictory are the stories
of Christ's subsequent reappearances. One account assigns them to
Galilee, another to the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Dr. Sanday, he
points out, has done his best to reconcile them ; but has failed to do
so even to his own satisfaction. In short, if tried by the tests of
common sense, the stories of a physical resurrection are individually
and collectively incredible. These stories, however, says Canon
Henson, are not the earliest accounts of the great event, but the
latest. The earliest account of it is that given by St. Paul, who
exhibits its nature in a very different light. St. Paul mentions the
appearance of Christ to himself as only one of a number of cognate
appearances vouchsafed to the apostles, and five hundred other

388 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Sept.

believers. St. Paul, however, contended with the utmost emphasis
that the risen body is not flesh and blood. The material body, so he
said, perishes ; it is the spiritual body that is quickened : and this,
which is true of the resurrection of ordinary men, is equally true of
the resurrection of Christ, which is the type of it. St. Paul's testimony
is earlier than that of the Gospels : that of the Gospels does but debase
and overcloud it. Is it possible, Canon Hen son continues, to suppose
that St. Paul believed, or had even heard of, the story of the empty
tomb, or looked on ' as worthy of credence ' such farther ' materialising
details ' as Christ's begging His disciples to note that He had ' flesh and
bones,' and that He, like them, was able to eat broiled fish ? The
answer must, says Canon Henson, ' certainly be that St. Paul believed
nothing of the kind.' The resurrection of Christ, His subsequent
reappearances, and His ascension, were all events that took place
on a non-material plane, and had, in an objective sense, no material
counterparts. He rose and ascended in the spirit; in the spirit He
reappeared to His disciples, just as He still does to those who are
worthy of seeing Him.

Here, then, we have within the limits of the English Church two
examples — specially striking from the manner in which they have
been obtruded on our notice — of the great fact that that modern
method of criticism, to the results of which everyone has abandoned
the beginning of Genesis with equanimity, does not, and cannot, limit
itself to those discredited chapters, but is steadily extending itself,
and is extending itself with allied results, to every part of the Scriptures
that deals with miraculous events — not excepting those which all the
Churches till yesterday accepted in their literal sense as absolutely
beyond question, and looked on as the sign and essence of the truth
of the Christian faith. Now, if the opinions of Mr. Beeby and Canon
Henson, which have so horrified their respective bishops, stood by
themselves, or if they merely represented opinions which a growing
number of our clergy are, for personal reasons, now coming to share,
they might not perhaps possess any very great significance. The
case is, however, the exact reverse of this. Not only do these opinions
not stand by themselves, but they do not represent any mental temper
or process which, in any serious sense, is peculiar to those who pro-
fess them. On the contrary, they represent conclusions, or at least the
kind of conclusions, to which every competent thinker finds himself —
as will appear presently — forced to come in proportion as, without
reserve, he applies to the matters in question a certain method of
reasoning, or assimilates the accepted results which others have reached
by means of it. We have to do with the results of a method, not of
the temerities of individuals.

What, therefore, Canon Henson and Mr. Beeby have done is to
raise in an acute form the two following questions : First, how far
will this method, if used without reservations, necessarily carry any

1904 FEES THOUGHT IN THE CHUECH 889

competent thinker who adopts it ? Secondly, if — as we have seen
to be actually the case — it is forcing those who adopt it to question or
repudiate doctrines which all traditional orthodoxy regards as essential
and fundamental, on what grounds, and by what argumentative
means, do the orthodox heads of the Church, such as the Bishops of
London and Worcester, propose to keep the application of it within
bounds ? Let us first see how far, as a matter of fact, the application
of it unrebuked has gone in our Church already, not only amongst
its liberal thinkers, but amongst the most conservative also. We
will deal merely with points of the first importance.

II

FREE THOUGHT AS PREVALENT THROUGHOUT THE CHURCH
OP ENGLAND GENERALLY WITH REGARD TO THE OLD TESTAMENT

Let us begin, then, with going back for a moment to the opening
chapters of Genesis, which the Bishop of Worcester notoriously admits
to be mythical. So far as these merely refer to cosmogony or ethnical
history, the admission, now so unanimous, that there is no historical
truth in them, need have no direct effect on any specially Christian
doctrine. These chapters, however, contain one incident at all
events — namely, the Fall of man, which lies at the root of all tradi-
tional orthodoxy ; and though orthodoxy allows us to suppose that
the snake and the apple were symbolical, it has always assumed that
they symbolise a definite historical fact, of the general nature of which
no doubt could be tolerated. This was the fact that the original
condition of man was happy and free from evil ; that from this con-
dition our first human ancestor fell ; and that all the evil that now
exists in the world is due to his having transmitted the consequences
of his fall to his descendants. As Cardinal Newman says, the whole
orthodox Christian scheme stands or falls with a belief in some great
' aboriginal catastrophe.' But what is the Church of England coming
to teach to-day ? As Mr. Beeby has pointed out, its clergy of all
schools have united to throw this old belief to the winds ; and how
general the movement has become he illustrates by reference to a
work recently issued by the Society for Promoting Christian Know-
ledge, and specially intended to meet the attacks of rationalism.
According to this manifesto, the Fall has nothing to do, in a literal
sense, with the disobedience of any primaeval ancestor. The child,
says the author, is born ' absolutely without consciousness of sin.'
The Fall comes when the faculty of conscience awakens. •' The Fall
means the struggle of the twofold nature of man.'

Let us next turn to the event which for all the Churches hitherto
has come next to the Fall in point both of time and of doctrinal import-
ance. For all the Churches hitherto, just as the fall of Adam formed

VOL. LVI— No. 331 D D

390 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

the historical beginning of all human evil, so did God's Covenant with
Abraham, as an actual historical event, inaugurate the scheme of
redemption by which human evil was to be remedied. The Bishop of
Worcester finds much ambiguous comfort in the thought that, unlike
Adam, Abraham was a real person ; but even the conservative scholars
who are the bishop's closest allies now openly confess that this
somewhat barren admission is the utmost that criticism will allow us ;
that the story of the patriarch's life has no biographical value ; and
that God's tautological covenants with him are as fabulous as the
snake and the apple.

Let us now glance briefly at the rest of the Old Testament, in so
far as it contains specific statements or elements which have formed
an essential part of orthodox Christianity hitherto. The most obvious
of these are the miracles of Hebrew history generally, from the talking
of Balaam's ass to the stoppage of the sun by Joshua. It doubtless
cannot be contended that all or any of these are in themselves essential
to the Christian faith ; but a general belief that the God of the chosen
people did perform a series of astonishing miracles for their benefit
has, by its implications, certainly formed hitherto an absolutely
essential part of the Christian view of history. How then are they
generally regarded in the Church of England to-day ? Our clergy,
encouraged by the Bishop of Worcester himself, are thrusting them,
one after another, into the background, and, if they do not deny them
in detail, are burying them under the broad assertion that in matters
relating to the order of nature and suspensions of it, ' the Bible reflects,
and does not rise above, the knowledge and ideas of the times in which
its various authors lived.' If this assertion does not imply an abandon-
ment of belief in the literal truth of these miracles as a whole, it is
difficult to impute to it any meaning at all.

But far more important than any change that has taken place in
the views of our clergy as to miracles of the kind just mentioned, is
the parallel change which has taken place in their views with regard
to the character of the Old Testament prophecies. The orthodox
idea of a prophecy was a foretelling of future events with such super-
natural accuracy that, though prior to its fulfilment its meaning
may have been vague and cryptic, it is seen when its fulfilment is
accomplished to have been true in its minutest particulars. This
applies more especially to the supposed prophecies as to Christ — such
as the bearing of a son by a virgin, the ' standing of a Redeemer on the
earth,' the burial in the rich man's sepulchre, and others equally
familiar.

But now Anglican scholarship, irrespective of parties, frankly
admits, as to these great classical passages, that the meaning tradi-
tionally imputed to them, on which so much has been built, is due to
a complete misunderstanding of what they meant in reality ; whilst
the Bishop of Worcester himself makes the yet more sweeping

1904 FEEE THOUGHT IN THE CHUECH 391

assertion that ' prophetic inspiration is consistent with erroneous
prediction.'

How completely such views as these revolutionise the conception
universally prevalent hitherto of the meaning of what has been called
pre-Christian Christianity, and the entire system of theology and
apologetic based on it, is a fact too obvious! to require emphasis here.
And now let us turn from the Old Testament to the New, and,
putting aside for the moment the views of Canon Henson and Mr.
Beeby, which orthodoxy still rejects, let us see what novel conclusions
it has reached and promulgated itself.

Ill

FREE THOUGHT AS EXEMPLIFIED BY THE LEADERS OF ANGLICAN
ORTHODOXY WITH REGARD TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

In dealing with these conclusions of current Anglican orthodoxy,
I shall appeal to two of its most distinguished and earnest represen-
tatives. One of them shall be the Bishop of Worcester, the other
shall be Dr. Sanday, a scholar almost equally famous, with whom the
bishop has publicly avowed himself to be in the closest sympathy.
We will therefore take the views of these two authorities together,
and see how far their treatment of the New Testament alters the
traditional view of the principal events narrated in it.

They both, then, start with admitting that the Gospels are full of
errors, and demand in various parts very unequal credence. The
accounts, for instance, of the circumstances in which Christ's dis-
courses were spoken were ' often nothing more than vague conjectures
of the Evangelists.' Inaccuracies of this kind are not in themselves
important ; but the errors of the Evangelists as historians are far
from ending here. ' Subjective visions ' are described by them as
objective occurrences: for example, says the Bishop of Worcester,
the appearance of the angel to Zacharias, which * was probably an
inward intimation represented to his imagination in the outward
form of an angel.' Similarly, Dr. Sanday declares that the ' incidents
of Christ's temptation are on the face of them not historical facts.'
Nor does he stop here. The ' casting out of devils '—-of which the
majority of Christ's miracles consisted — was not really a casting out
of devils at all. Christ Himself certainly imagined that it was so ;
but He imagined this in accordance with ' the ideas of the time,' the
assumption of these ideas * being part of His incarnate manhood ' ;
whilst as to the miracles of the loaves and His walking on the water,
whatever actual incidents may lie at the bottom of these, ' a nine-
teenth century observer would have given, had he been present, a
different account from that which has come down to us.' Again, says
the bishop, there are incidents in St. Matthew of another class, such

D D 2

392 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

as * the ass beside the colt,' ' the mingling of gall with the wine,' and
the ' thirty pieces of silver,' which were ' due to the influence of the
language of Zacharias and the Psalmist respectively.' Canon Henson
has mentioned most of the above points in his recent letter to the
Bishop of London, remarking by the way that the present Bishop of
Exeter has made equally short work with the gift of tongues at Pente-
cost, which cannot, he says, be accepted as meaning that the apostles
' received the more or less permanent power of preaching in foreign
languages.'

But the most important part of the matter is yet to come. I
called attention just now to Dr. Sanday's admission that the human
knowledge of Christ, Who believed that He was casting out devils
when He was really doing nothing of the kind, must have been limited
like the knowledge of His contemporaries. The Bishop of Worcester
elaborates this view of the case, with which he is in entire agreement,
and maintains that Christ spoke with superhuman knowledge only
about such spiritual matters as the moral character of God, and of
man's proper relation to Him. and neither did nor could speak other-
wise than in accordance with the ignorance of His time as to all ques-
tions connected with science and human history. Thus His accept-
ance of certain prophecies in the Old Testament in a sense different
from that which it is possible for a scholar to attribute to them, and
His evident but mistaken opinion that the establishment of His
Kingdom would be immediate, neither bind us to accept what scholar-
ship or experience have disproved, nor are, on the other hand, incon-
sistent with His truly divine character.

Now to most plain men it will seem that, when thus inter-
preted, the New Testament must bear to objective fact a position
indistinguishable from that borne by the Old, which, as the bishop
admits, begins with mere myths or legends, and then develops into
very inaccurate history, associated with a series of doubtful and negli-
gible prodigies and prophecies whose ' inspiration is consistent with
erroneous prediction.' But the Bishop of Worcester and his allies
repudiate this inference with indignation. It represents the precise
error which it is their special mission to combat. There is, says the
bishop, a perfectly obvious reason ' why what can be admitted in the
Old Testament cannot, without results disastrous to the Christian creed,
be admitted in the New.' This reason is that the Old Testament is
merely * a record of how God produced a need, or anticipation, or
ideal, whilst the New Testament records how as a fact He satisfied it.
The absolute coincidence of idea with fact i* vital in the realisation,
not in the preparation for it.' Such language may seem extraordinary
and indeed almost unintelligible, when we consider the manner in
which, as we have just seen, the New Testament is treated by the
bishop and his friends themselves. But he and they mean some-
thing by it, and that something is this. All the New Testament

1904 FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 393

miracles may be explained away as ' ideas not coincident with fact,'
four only being excepted, and placed on a different footing. These are
Christ's Virgin Birth, His Divinity, His Resurrection, and His Ascension.
Between these and all the others a sharp line is to be drawn. Let
us now consider the question of how the bishop and his friends draw it.

IV

HOW DO THE LEADERS OF ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY JUSTIFY THEIR
RETENTION OF CERTAIN MIRACLES, WHILST REJECTING THE
MAJORITY, ON CRITICAL AND OTHER GROUNDS ?

In the Bishop of Worcester's essay on Inspiration in Lux Mundi
he gives us the key to his own logical position, which is that of Dr.
San day also, and of the modern champions of orthodoxy in the Church
of England generally. The belief in the objective reality of these
four great miracles, which are for them the irreducible and distinctive
essence of Christianity, has, they say, no direct dependence on the
evidence of the Gospels whatsoever. Belief in them rests primarily —
to quote the Bishop of Worcester's words — on certain ' moral disposi-
tions, which predispose to belief, and make acceptable and credible
the thing to be believed.' Belief in the inspiration of Scripture is a
' superstructure ' raised upon, ' but is not among, the bases ' of this
prior belief. If we examine the matter more closely we shall see that,
according to the bishop, this prior belief starts with the moral con-
viction that Christ is God our Redeemer — which fact, as another
writer has said, is known to us directly as a kind of ' spiritual experi-
ence ' ; and from this fact we are logically led on to the others — that
His birth was miraculous, that He rose, and went back to Heaven.
It also appears that, according to the Bishop of Worcester, our belief
in the inspiration of the Scriptures, in which these events are recorded,
arises in the same way ; but though this belief is essential to the
Christian faith, and though the Bishop of Worcester will not allow it to
be tampered with, it simply means, he says, after all — what ? Nothing
more than ' such an acceptance of the Gospels, and the trustworthi-
ness of the other apostolic documents, as justifies the belief that our
Lord was actually born of the Virgin Mary, manifested as the Son of
God according to the spirit of holiness, crucified, raised again the
third day from the dead, and exalted to the right hand of the Father.'

Now it would be very easy to dismiss this argument with ridicule —
to urge, for example, that it is a mere argument in a circle. The
Gospels are true because they record the miracles ; the miracles are
true because they are recorded in the Gospels. But the bishop's
position generally is somewhat less absurd than it looks, and before
we criticise it we must try to understand it fairly. That religious
teachers, by their personal character and their doctrine, may produce

394 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

an instinctive belief that they are superhuman beings is a fact attested
by religions that have nothing to do with Christ. It is also a fact
that when such a belief has established itself, there has been among
the believers a widespread and natural propensity to associate the
superhuman being with various superhuman events — especially with
a superhuman birth ; and when once a belief in these events has been
established, to ascribe inspiration to the writings which record them
as actual facts. Nor need we, even if we adopt the Bishop of Wor-
cester's theory, regard the importance which he assigns to the inspira-
tion of the Scriptures as illogical. Faith and spiritual insight — such
is his obvious meaning — show us conclusively that such and such
events must have happened. The Scriptures show us how, as a matter
of fact, they did happen ; for they happened, if they happened at all,
in some definite way.

The bishop's position, then, is not theoretically unreasonable.
According to him, and all orthodox Christians, the unique characteristic
of the Christian faith is this — that while other religions, such as
Buddhism, have appealed to men's moral natures, and suggested
ideas and doctrines not unlike those of Christianity, these ideas have
been * coincident with ' no true miraculous facts ; but the Christian
religion represents ideas which, however like these in some ways,
differ from them specifically in one — that their historical coincidence
with miraculous fact is ' absolute.' If, then, starting with the assump-
tion that Christ's personal character conveys to the human heart a
conviction of His divine nature, we could also maintain that the
Gospels were true in every detail, the bishop's position would be
obviously consistent with itself. It would be even consistent with
itself if the Gospels were full of errors — as the bishop really admits
them to be — with regard to minor matters, so long as their evidence
was beyond the reach of criticism with regard to the four great
miracles which alone he declares to be essential. But here is the
point at which his whole case breaks down ; and no one in this country
has done more than he himself to prepare the ordinary Christian for
realising how completely it does so.

We have seen with what conscientious boldness, up to a certain
point, he discards, or is prepared to discard, the whole of the Gospel
miracles as due to the imagination, the superstition, or the defective
information of the Evangelists. If we take his admissions together
with those of Dr. Sanday, nearly every important marvel which was
supposed to mark Christ's divinity — the angelic appearances which
announced it, His typical acts of healing, the incidents of His tempta-
tion, His multiplication of the loaves, His walking on the water, His
transfiguration, His own prevision of the coming of His divine Kingdom,
the fulfilment of prophecy by the offering of gall mingled with wine —
are all reduced to ' ideas which are not coincident with facts.' We
should have, in short, a Christ as natural as the Christ of Renan if it

1904 FEEE THOUGHT IN THE CHUBCH 395

were not for the four miracles which our apologists refuse to abandon
— His Virgin Birth, His Godhead, His Resurrection, and His Ascension.
If, however, we apply to the Gospel accounts of these the same critical
method which the bishop has applied to the others, we shall find that
these four are incomparably the most unbelievable of all, and that
the Bishop of Worcester actually admits them to be so. He and his
friends are perfectly well aware that the Gospel accounts of the Resur-
rection and Ascension are hopelessly contradictory as they stand, and
that the Gospels unite in imputing human limitations to Christ which
force us to reconstruct our old ideas of His Godhead, and discriminate
sharply His divine from His human utterances. As it is impossible
here to take all the four miracles in detail, we will confine ourselves
to the bishop's vindication of one— namely, the Virgin Birth, of the
literal truth of which, and the Christian's obligation to believe in it,
he has in so marked a way exhibited himself as the special champion.
The reality of this miracle we may take as a test case. If the bishop
and his friends cannot establish this, they will certainly be unable to
establish that of the three others.

In this case, again, the bishop frankly admits that the Gospel
stories, as they stand, cannot possibly be accurate. Two of the
Evangelists omit the incident altogether, and the two who record
it — that is to say, Luke and Matthew — not only give it with widely
different details, but associate it with genealogies which nobody can
take seriously. Here, indeed, says the bishop, are great apparent
difficulties ; but they are apparent only — the Christian gets over them
easily. Let us see how the Christian, in the person of the bishop,
does so. No doubt, he says, the Virgin Birth of Christ was utterly
unknown to the apostles during the Lord's lifetime, nor did they
even suspect it till many years after His death. It was revealed to
them as a surprise by the Virgin in her old age. She told the story,
naturally, from her own point of view ; her hearers wrote it down,
and it is the basis of the account in Luke. The Virgin, however,
must certainly have had in her possession another account written
down already. This was a species of affidavit which, says the Bishop
of Worcester, it is only reasonable to suppose that Joseph had com-
mitted to paper, in justice to himself and her, and appended before
his death to a copy of the family pedigree. This is the version of the
story given in the Gospel of Matthew, though Matthew, says the
bishop, evidently ' worked it over in his predominant interest in the
fulfilment of prophecy.' As for the genealogies, we need not trouble
our heads about them. They were merely trees sketched out by our
Lord's relations, neither better nor worse than many that have issued
from the Heralds' College. There is only one other awkward fact to
be dealt with, and this is the silence of John with regard to so
stupendous an incident. If the Virgin had really revealed it, John
must have certainly been aware that she had done so ; and, mainly

396 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

preoccupied as he was with the Lord's divine nature, we might pardon-
ably think that, in this case, he would have at least made some
allusion to it. But, says the bishop, the answer to this is simple.
The Gospel of John was designed as a supplement to the others, not
as a substitute for them. The main purpose of it is to give ' his
personal testimony.' His Gospel ' must therefore have begun where
his personal experience began,' and of this the Virgin Birth naturally
formed no part. He could not, therefore, have included it ' con-
sistently with his main purpose.'

Such, in outline, is the Bishop of "Worcester's apology. Let us
now ask what is the value of it. We will begin with the argument
relative to St. John's Gospel. St. John, he says, could not have
included the Virgin Birth in it because he had bound himself to begin
with the beginning of his own experience. But what is the statement
with which he begins really ? The statement that Christ was the
Logos which existed before all worlds, and that nothing in the universe
was made except through His mystical agency. What have we to
do with any personal experience here ? How can it be maintained
that the Virgin Birth was more remote from his personal experience
than the primseval creation of the universe ? And if he included the
latter event, how could his purpose have bound him to exclude the
former ? Is it possible to regard such an argument as more than
solemn trifling ? And now let us turn to the elaborate and fantastic
suppositions which the bishop has been obliged to invoke in defence
of the actual narratives. Our shortest and best course will be to
judge them out of his own mouth. ' The historical evidence of our
Lord's birth of a virgin is,' he says, ' strong and cogent ; but,' he goes
on to admit, all his suppositions notwithstanding, ' it does not compel
belief. There are ways to dissolve its force.'

On what evidence, then, does the bishop really rely in order to
prove that the Virgin Birth was a fact, when he dismisses other
miracles, equally well attested, as fictitious ? He relies, as we have
seen, on a purely a priori argument. Accepting Christ's divinity as
attested by a spiritual experience, he argues that the body with
which the divinity was united must necessarily have been made of
' some new stuff of humanity,' and involved the ' miracle of a new
physical creation,' and that this required the substitution of God for
a human father, as the latter could not have avoided transmitting a
taint of sin.

Can the bishop really believe that to the ordinary intelligence of
to-day such arguments will seem anything better than the murmuring
of a man in a dream ? Can he believe that they will have the smallest
weight even with those clergy of his own communion against whose
doubts he directs it ? Mr. Beeby has already pointed out that the
bishop's doctrine as to ' the new stuff of humanity ' is itself a heresy
of a far more fatal kind than that which he has invented it to refute.

1904 FBEE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 397

' For if Christ,' says Mr. Beeby — and most Christians will agree with
him — ' be a new physical creation, He can, from the nature of the
case, be no example to ourselves ' ; whilst the bishop's argument
invites criticism also from clergymen and laymen alike of a kind
more destructive still. The bishop himself admits that our whole
conception of existence has been largely and rightly modified by
modern scientific knowledge. In especial, new lights have been
thrown by it on the processes of birth and heredity. It is impossible
to believe now, whatever may have been the case once, that the
imperfections which the ordinary child inherits come to it from the
father only, and that the mother has nothing to do with them. The
Roman Church has seen the force of this argument clearly, and has
consequently declared that, if birth from a virgin was essential to
the sinlessness of the offspring, the Virgin herself must have been
miraculously sinless also. If the bishop believed that, it would, of
course, be open to us to ask him why, if two human parents could
produce an immaculate woman, they might not also produce an
immaculate man ? But the doctrine of the immaculate conception is
no part of the bishop's creed. For him the Virgin was a mother with
Adam's taint in her veins ; and since it is the essence of his contention
that it addresses itself to the modern mind, and treats the birth of
Christ as a physiological fact, it is idle in these days to ask people to
believe that if human imperfection inheres in the nature of the mother,
she would not have transmitted to her offspring the old ' stuff of
humanity,' even though the agency of a human father were eliminated.
The bishop's argument, in fact, if tried by the very tests to which he
himself appeals, is for the modern mind not only not convincing but
meaningless. How meaningless it is is evidenced by a recent observa-
tion of another Anglican cleric — the Rev. W. R. Inge. ' We should
not,' says Mr. Inge curtly, ' now expect a priori that the Incarnate
Logos would be born without a human father.' Mr. Inge, however,
belongs to a school somewhat different from that of the bishop. We
will, therefore, appeal once more to the opinions of Dr. Sanday. What
has been the effect of the bishop's reasonings upon him — reasonings
which are his own also ? Let me call the reader's attention to the
following astounding sentence. We ought, says Dr. Sanday, to
regard the Virgin Birth ' as one of those hidden mysteries which,
whether or not God wills that we should believe them now, He has,
at all events, willed that men should believe in times past.' Is this
the language of a man who feels that there is any solidity in those
a priori arguments, coupled with ' predisposing moral dispositions '
which, according to both him and the bishop, are so far the sole
foundation of our faith that the evidence of the Gospels would have
no weight without them, but would, on the contrary, discredit what
they were once supposed to prove ? Is it not rather the language of
a man by nature passionately orthodox, who feels that the critical

398 THE NINETEENTH CENTUE7 Sept.

method is the Effreet which he has let out of the bottle, and is pushing
him step by step from the sanctuary which he has invoked it to
defend ?

FUTILITY OF THE DISTINCTION DKAWN BETWEEN THE MIRACLES RE-
TAINED AND REJECTED SUFFICIENT TO EXPLAIN THE ALIENATION
OF LAYMEN FROM THE ENGLISH CHURCH

And now let us consider the matter in a more general light — with
reference to the position not of our clergy only, but, as we did at
starting, to that of the laity also. How will the latter be affected by
such teachings on the part of the former as those which we have just-
been discussing ?

Let us put what these teachings come to in a more succinct form.
The novel and peculiar feature of them is that they shift the founda-
tions of belief from the external evidences of the Bible, and even those
of tradition, to some internal experience of the vitality of the Chris-
tian idea. Now, in one sense, and within limits, this procedure is
correct, and only emphasises a truth which has always been im-
plicitly recognised. If the personal character and many of the utter-
ances of Christ — the Sermon on the Mount, for instance — had not in
some special way appealed to the human heart, the idea of Christ's
divinity would never have formed and spread itself ; and if nothing
were left us but this idea, apprehended as ideally true, a religion
might still exist and dominate many minds which, with perfect
accuracy, might be called a species of Christianity. So far we may
agree with the Bishop of Worcester. But though such a religion
might, in a genuine sense, be Christian, there is one thing which it
would not be — it would certainly not be the religion of Christian
orthodoxy. Christian orthodoxy, as such, has for its distinctive
essence not a mere assent to the ideal truth of an idea, but the asser-
tion and belief that the idea, as a matter of history, embodied itself
at definite dates in certain miraculous events — events which, in the
Bishop of Worcester's phrase, were as ' absolutely coincident with
the idea ' as the Battle of Hastings was with the idea of the Norman
invasion.

Such being the case, then, the whole point here at issue is not
whether the Christian idea is subjectively true and valuable, and
leads the individual soul to a private union with God, but whether
the idea has signalised its unique verity by what the bishop calls
' a coincidence ' with a series of objective prodigies ; and the religion
of Christian orthodoxy, as distinguished from that of the Christian
spirit, depends, according to the bishop and the whole modern
Anglican school, on the question of whether objective evidence exists
sufficient to convince us that such prodigies actually occurred. The

1904 FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 399

discussion, moreover, is narrowed down by the admission that unless
they occurred substantially in the manner described in the Bible, it
is idle to suppose that they ever occurred at all.

Now, as everyone knows, and as the English Prayer-book testifies,
the series of prodigies which orthodoxy has thus represented as facts
is a long one. They were held to have begun with man's first appear-
ance on earth, and their continuity, and the vital connection between
the more important of them, have always been held hitherto to be
essential parts and evidences of God's supernatural dealings with the
human race. But modern Anglican thought, as represented by the
Bishop of Worcester, now discards a large number of these as entirely
wanting in the character which traditional orthodoxy has imputed to
them ; and it does so for one or other of two reasons — either that
the Biblical evidence for them has collapsed under modern criticism,
or that modern scientific knowledge has shown that they could not
be true. On these grounds the Bishop of Worcester enunciates views
which, if they are taken seriously, turn the whole of the miraculous
incidents of the Old Testament into myths, valuable — but valuable
only — because they convey to the imagination the fact that God,
before the coming of Christ, was producing a ' need, an ideal,' of
Him in a ' certain delimited race.'

The bishop, however, does this with an apparently light heart,
because he declares that a method which is applicable to the Old
Testament cannot for obvious reasons be possibly applicable to the
New. But how far is this principle verified by his own procedure ?
As we have seen, when he comes to the New Testament himself, most
of its miracles, once believed to be true, and celebrated still by his
Church every day in her services, fare no better than Adam and the
Old Testament prophecies. They, too, are brushed aside as legends
or misconceptions of fact, either because the evidences for them are
worthless or contradictory, or because they are inconsistent with
facts as we now know them. As has been said, he leaves only four
remaining ; and can any reasonable man believe that he has suc-
ceeded in showing that the evidence for these is any better than the
evidence for the rest ? We have examined the manner in which he
has attempted to defend one of them — namely, the Virgin Birth, and
we have noted his own confession that when all is said and done —
when all the fantastic suppositions about Joseph and his affidavit
have been made — the evidence, as it stands, ' does not compel belief ;
that there are ways to dissolve its force.' He would have spoken
far more consistently with his own express admissions had he said
that we can, if we give free rein to our fancies, arbitrarily invent
incidents which will save it from being self -condemned. In other
words — to repeat what has been said already — the Bishop of Worcester
in his defence of the Virgin Birth abandons his professed principles
of criticism altogether, and falls back 0n the mysticism of a vague

400 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Sept.

subjective certainty, which he vainly tries to invest with a quasi-
scientific force by arguing that the imperfections of offspring come
from the father only, and that consequently a sinless son could have
had but one human parent.

To the Bishop of Worcester himself these reasonings, no doubt,
seem valid. He is convinced beforehand, so he has to put no strain
on them. But how will they strike those whose faith is lost or
wavering — those for whose benefit alone he finds it necessary to urge
them ? What will such people think of an orthodoxy whose sole
foundation is a mysterious leap from an idea to a series of historical
facts ? Let us test the legitimacy of such a leap in the eyes of the
ordinary doubter by applying it to one case more. Let us apply it
to the miracle of the Ascension. A belief in this is, according to the
Bishop of Worcester, no less essential to the faith than a belief in the
Virgin Birth, and his argument is that the idea of a God descending
into a human body involves a departure from the earth no less unique
than His entrance. Now can anyone maintain that this subjective
inference, even though we may admit it to be a natural one, carries
with it a belief that Christ in human form visibly went up from the
earth's surface into the sky ? I said at starting that certain of the
miraculous events, solemnly asserted in the English liturgy to have
occurred, are now regarded by increasing numbers as ridiculous. I
have no wish to ofiend the devout feelings of anybody by adding
that of such events the Ascension is perhaps the chief. The bishop
attempts to defend the Virgin Birth by an appeal to scientific argu-
ment— to our modern knowledge as to heredity. Let us apply to the
idea of the Ascension knowledge of the same kind. The idea was at
one time equally sublime and natural, but its sublimity and its natural-
ness were altogether dependent on the old conception of a flat, im-
movable earth, overarched by a firmament on which was the local
habitation of the deity. What, however, is the case now ? The old
conception of earth and heaven is destroyed. A heaven that is
above, and an earth that is beneath, mean nothing to us ; and the
old doctrine of the Ascension consequently means nothing also. I am
mentioning merely what to every thinking man must be a platitude,
and what one of our most eminent preachers has, in even plainer
language, urged already from his pulpit in Westminster Abbey.
Instead of its being true, Archdeacon Wilberforce said, that a belief
in the Ascension is, for the modern mind, a certain or probable con-
sequence of a recognition of Christ's divinity, any actual going up of
His Body is not only incredible but nonsensical. * What is up in
Galilee,' he said, ' is down at the antipodes ; and the literal physical
departure of a body through trackless space ' is an event which the
devoutest thought can no longer entertain seriously. We need not
here consider the archdeacon's farther contention that the Ascension,
as described in the New Testament, was really an optical delusion

1904 FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 401

produced by Christ for the benefit of His ignorant followers, and that
what He veritably did was to vanish into the fourth dimension of
space. It is enough to observe that the negative part of his argu-
ment, which is absolutely unanswerable, effectually disposes of the
argument of the Bishop of Worcester from a priori ideas to the objec-
tive reality of one of his four essential miracles, and shows us that,
just as the evidence for the Virgin Birth does not ' compel belief ' in
the actual occurrence, so the very idea of an Ascension no longer
permits it. Into the Bishop of Worcester's and Dr. Sanday's treat-
ment of the divinity of Christ and His Resurrection we cannot, as I
have said already, inquire particularly here. It is enough to observe
that there are the germs in it of a far more destructive scepticism than
any which has openly expressed itself in the utterances either of
Mr. Beeby or of Canon Henson ; and though the bishop and his friends
may not draw from it its full logical consequences, the ordinary
public will inevitably in time do so.

I will, in conclusion, merely ask the Bishop of Worcester, and all
the thoughtful and scholarly clergy of the Church of England as well,
whether the conclusions which they have actually already reached
and admitted are not sufficient to account for a general decline in
church-going, without invoking the assistance of Sunday concerts or
bicycles, or too many candles on one altar, or too few on another ?
Whatever nice distinctions may be drawn by clerical experts between
the mass of unbelievable miracles and a privileged minority of four,
they are certain to be quite disregarded by the plain common sense
of laymen. If Dr. Sanday or the bishop were to begin his services
by convincing the mass of his congregation that the prophecies were
' erroneous predictions,' that their fulfilment was imagined by the
Evangelists, that the miraculous incidents of Christ's temptation were
mythical, that Christ thought He was casting out devils when He
was not, and that half of His utterances were the utterances of a man
as ignorant as His contemporaries, the mass of the congregation
would at once doubt or reject the stories of the miraculous birth, of
the empty tomb, the two men in white apparel, and the Body that
ascended into a cloud from a spot which it is impossible to determine.
In any case, a multitude of miracles which the clergy themselves
actually tell us to reject are asserted with ceaseless iteration through-
out the whole English liturgy. And if the truth of these assertions is
openly denied in our chancels, can the occupants of the chancels
wonder at the increasing emptiness of our naves ? Some laymen,
no doubt, may still, in spite of everything, find in our Church worship
the consolation of a spiritual atmosphere ; but to most it will be
increasingly repulsive to take part in a service which involves at
every moment a solemn profession of beliefs, the truth of which both
they and the clergy deny.

W. H. MALLOCK.

402 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

THE DIFFICULTY
OF PREACHING SERMONS

FEW things are more curious than the attitude of ordinary Church-
going men and women towards sermons. They criticise sermons and
complain of them, they insist upon the poverty and foolishness of
them, they declaim against them as doing little good, and sometimes
as doing positive harm. Yet if anything is certain in the religious
life of Protestant England, it is that a sermon possesses a strangely
attractive influence upon the minds and spirits of the very persons
who abuse it. ' There are perhaps few institutions in modern life,'
says Professor Mahafiy in his essay on The Decay of Modern Preaching,
' more universally accepted, and at the same time decried, than that
of preaching.' The orthodox soul feels at times that something is
wanting even to a musical service in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's,
unless a sermon forms part of it. Perhaps the truth is that, if the
world does not like sermons, yet somehow it seems to like disliking
them.

Criticism, even unjust criticism, is not a bad thing for most people.
Certainly it is not a bad thing for the clergy. Outside the Church
they meet objection and opposition, but within it they are autocrats.
It is their perilous prerogative to address in church men and women,
who are often their intellectual superiors, upon the highest of all
themes, without any fear of contradiction. It can hardly be a matter
of surprise that, if no one overtly disagrees with their arguments or
conclusions, they should come to look upon disagreement as unreason-
able. But many a congregation avenges itself for the enforced silence
which prevails during the sermon by vigorous animadversion upon it
when it is finished. The people who sit under the preacher within
the church not infrequently sit upon him in the churchyard.

Yet it is possible that Christian laymen would be more lenient
critics of sermons, if they realised how hard a thing it is to preach.
Good speaking is rare enough, but good preaching is, and must be,
rarer. For if the sermon be regarded merely as a mode of human
oratory, it is of all modes the one which makes the largest demand
upon the intellectual and spiritual faculties of the orator.

One reason is that, however many sermons are preached, their

1904 DIFFICULTY OF PREACHING SERMONS 403

subject is practically the same ; it may be treated in many ways and
in many manners, but it is one. ' The old, old story,' beautiful and
sacred as it is in itself, lacks and cannot but lack the special interest
of novelty. What a preacher says, and must say, to-day, has been
said by thousands of lips in thousands of ways during nineteen cen-
turies. When a statesman addresses a public audience it is generally
in his power to communicate fresh information, or to originate criti-
cism upon information lately given, or to conduct an argument about
it, to start a policy, or set it out in a new light, or recommend it by
new arguments, or urge new reasons against it. There is an air of
expectation and excitement in the looks of men as they enter a hall
to listen to a speech at a time of strong political feeling ; they are
eager to know what a particular statesman will tell them about the
topic of the hour. But the theme of a sermon is already familiar ;
that it is important, august, and sublime is perfectly true — omnia
magna quce dicimus, as Augustine says — but it is not novel. All that
the most original of preachers can aspire to do is to shed a little fresh
light upon well-known and well-worn truths.

No doubt there have been times when the Gospel came to men as
something new. It was so, of course, in Apostolic days. It has
been so when an age of religious enthusiasm has succeeded an age of
religious indifference. Luther, and the other great Reformers, arrested
attention as much by the novelty as by the fervour of their convictions.
Wesley and Whitefield, in the era of the Methodist revival, enjoyed
the advantage of preaching the terrors of the Law and the promises
of the Gospel to people who welcomed the message as something
strange and startling, something which they had never heard before
or had wholly forgotten and felt to come upon their minds and con-
sciences as a revelation. For the preaching of conversion to souls
which have lost the thought of God always suggests and often effects
a novel experience. It is told of Louis the Fourteenth that one day
he asked the poet Boileau what kind of preacher was a certain ecclesi-
astic whom all the Parisian world at the time was running after.
Boileau replied, ' Votre Majeste sait qu'on court toujours a la nouveaute,
c'est un predicateur qui preche 1'Evangile.'

But this is a state of things happily rare ; it occurs only now
and then in the crises of the Church. For the most part men and
women are not surprised by the novelty, but rather wearied by the
familiarity of the preacher's message. Yet he must preach, and
must preach every Sunday ; and, however weary or languid he
may be, must try to preach as though his whole heart were in his
sermon.

But that every ordained clergyman should preach sermons was
not at all the idea of the primitive Church. It seems that the first
regular preachers were the bishops. They could, and they alone
ordinarily did, preach ; but it was in their power to confer the privilege

404 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

or impose the duty of preaching upon others. Thus Augustine,
although he himself argues that it was the proper office of the bishop
to preach, was, as his biographer relates, the first presbyter of the
African Church who delivered a sermon in the presence of the bishop.
Jerome stood up for the rights of presbyters to preach ; it was ' a very
bad custom,' he said, ' in certain churches,' that the right of preaching
should be denied them. Deacons, however, were never allowed to
preach except in rare and special circumstances. But it is related by
the ecclesiastical historian Eusebius that Origen was invited as a
layman by Alexander, the Bishop of Jerusalem, to preach before him.
If so, Origen, who was often an innovator, may be regarded as the
prototype of licensed lay preachers.

But whatever may have been the nature and number of the excep-
tions in primitive or even in mediaeval times, preaching did not become
the regular function of all ordained ministers until the Reformation.
It was then that bishops, priests, deacons, pastors, ministers, all
alike began to preach, and to preach with almost equal frequency ;
preaching in fact became everybody's business.

The Reformation introduced many ecclesiastical changes, and
among them a change in the use of the pulpit. It invested preaching
with a new importance. The pulpit took the place of the altar.
Every clergyman and minister of religion became a preacher. The
office of preaching, which in the Roman Church was and is more or
less limited to certain orders of preachers, was usurped by the clergy
generally. To preach became the one thing, or the chief thing, which
the clergy could do for their people, as the one thing, or the chief
thing, had been in the old days to offer sacrifice. It follows that
clergy of very various gifts and attainments have been expected
from Sunday to Sunday to deliver sermons of their own composition
upon the great verities of the Gospel. But where everybody preaches
there will be many bad preachers ; where sermons are many even
good sermons will lose their flavour. In the interests then of the
clergy, no less than of the laity, it would be well to diminish the number
of the sermons. Not the most richly endowed of human beings could
preach well as often as the most ordinary clergyman is, in modern
times, expected to preach. It was a favourite saying of Bishop
Andrewes that he who preached twice in a week ' prated once.' How
hard then is the fate of a vicar or curate, infinitely below Bishop
Andrewes in learning, facility, and experience, if he has to preach
three or four sermons a week, or, as I have known, eight or ten sermons
in Holy Week ! Such a multiplication of sermons is not only a burden
upon preachers and hearers alike, but it falsifies the idea of public
worship ; for the true end of worship is not preaching but devotion.
The worshipper who is never happy at divine service without a sermon
has not yet adequately learnt what worship is. It is possible to
pray at all times, but it is not possible to preach often. The tacit

1904 DIFFICULTY OF PEE ACHING SERMONS 405

understanding which binds the clergy to frequent preaching renders
the difficult office of the pulpit doubly difficult.

For it' must be remembered that preaching is speaking without
certain helps which are generally conceded to secular oratory. I do
not say that preaching could or ought to avail itself of these helps,
but only that, because it lacks them, it is more difficult. It is the
difficulty of preaching which is my subject.

There is no doubt that a good many sermons are dreadfully dull.
But it is an element in the difficulty of preaching that clergymen, in
preparing and delivering their sermons, are practically debarred from
adopting some accepted oratorical means. Thus the use of humour
in a sermon is almost unknown within the Church of England. Non-
conformist preachers like the late Mr. Spurgeon have sometimes
employed humour in their sermons with striking effect. When he
preached (if the story is true) upon the Martyrs' Memorial at Oxford,
and asked where it was possible to find martyrs at the present day,
and suggested that, if the bishops and clergy of the Church of England
were the martyrs, they would be sure to burn well, they were so dry,
he resorted to a device which might or might not be allowed and
approved by his own congregation, but would certainly grate upon
the critical taste of Churchmen. ' To be amusing in the pulpit is a
great crime,' says Professor Mahaffy, who seems to regret that it is
not open to preachers to appeal to ' that peculiar human faculty, the
faculty of laughter.' But the use of humour in sermons is a dangerous
weapon. It is more likely to create offence than to excite piety, and
the clergy of the Church of England have wisely agreed to forego it.
For where one orator possesses the subtle tact of knowing when to
raise a laugh and how to check it in his congregation, and of employing
merriment in such a way as to leave no sense of incongruity or irre-
verence behind it, it is probable that ten men in the exercise of humour
will do harm rather than good, and will destroy or diminish the moving
power of their own exhortations. There have, however, been times
when the clergy of the Church of England have not scrupled to insert
humorous passages in their sermons. If it were necessary to specify
a humorous preacher, although his humour was of a coarser grain
than would be allowed to any preacher in the present day, I think I
should mention Dr. South. It will be enough to cite one instance of
his humorous style. In a sermon which he preached at Westminster
Abbey on the 22nd of February, 1684, from Proverbs xvi. 33—' The
lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord' —
he dwelt upon ' those vast and stupendious encreases of fortune that
have followed the small despicable beginnings of some things and
persons.' Then he continued in the following strain :

Who that had lookt upon Agathocles first handling the Clay and making
Pots under his Father, and afterwards turning Robber, could have thought that
from such a condition he should come to be King of Sicily ? Who that had seen
VOL. LVI— No. 331 E E

406 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Sept.

Masaniello a poor Fisherman, with his Bed Cap and his Angle, could have
reckon'd it possible to see such a pitiful thing within a week after shining in his
Cloth of Gold, and with a word or a nod absolutely commanding the whole City
of Naples ? And who that had beheld such a Bankrupt beggarly fellow as
Cromwell first entering Parliament House with a threadbare torn Cloak, and a
greasy hat (and perhaps neither of them paid for), could have suspected that in the
space of so few years he should, by the murder of one king and the banishment
of another, ascend the Throne, be invested in the Eoyal Robes and want nothing
of the state of the King but the change of his Hat into a Crown ?

King Charles the Second was an auditor of that sermon ; he burst
out laughing as he listened to it and said, turning to Lord Rochester,
' Ods fish, Lory, jour Chaplain must bs a Bishop ; therefore put me
in mind of him at the next death.' But he himself was the next to
die, and South never became a bishop. Such humour is as much out of
date as out of taste ; it is rather a warning than an example to preachers,
and few critics of sermons will be found to regret that modern preachers
have ceased to be humorists of the school of Dr. South.

Again, the art of preaching, difficult as it is in itself, is made still
more difficult by the unbroken silence in which congregations listen
to sermons. Time was when sermons, like speeches, were subject to
interruption, as Chrysostom's were, for example, at Constantinople,
and the interruption, if it was disturbing, was enlivening. There is,
indeed, a story that Chrysostom once preached a sermon against the
practice of applauding preachers by clapping of hands and stamping
of feet, and that his congregation received even that sermon with
applause. But piety, or perhaps decorum, has long since forbidden
the expression of approval or dissent in churches. It would be
thought a strange thing that anyone listening to a sermon should cry
* Hear, hear ' or ' No, no.' Such ejaculations are wholly undesirable ;
they are fatal to reverence. But the absence of them enhances the
difficulty of preaching. For when an audience gives no visible or
audible sign of emotion, how can a speaker tell what the effect of his
words is, or whether they have any effect at all ? The secular speaker
knows more or less if he is in touch with his hearers, but a preacher
never knows. For half an hour or perhaps three-quarters of an hour he
addresses an audience which seems to be utterly apathetic or indifferent.
It is true, indeed, that a preacher who reads his sermon from a manu-
script is less dependent upon the sympathy of the congregation than
he who preaches, as the phrase is, ex tempore. But all preachers, and
extemporaneous preachers most of all, would sometimes be thankful
if their sermons could evoke at least some sign of sympathy, or even
of dissent. They could not, indeed, or would not, use the interruption
as political orators use it, for quick rejoinder or repartee ; but it would
suggest something that they ought to say but had not thought of
saying, it would help them to make their meaning more lucid and
more persuasive ; at all events it would give them time to take breath.
So essential to oratory are regular breathing-spaces, that in theatres

1904 DIFFICULTY OF PREACHING SERMONS 407

it has often been found necessary to organise applause. The explana-
tion of the claque in French theatres is that actors cannot speak their
parts with comfort unless they know that at stated intervals they
will get opportunities of recovering themselves by a brief pause.
Such opportunities political orators create for themselves. But to
speak for considerable length without eliciting a single sign of favour
or disfavour, and so to speak as not to weary a critical audience, is
one of the hardest oratorical tasks which could be imposed upon
anybody, and it is imposed every week upon the clergy.

Sermons, too, like speeches, if adapted to the public taste, must
vary greatly at different times. The sermons of one nation are dis-
tasteful or displeasing to another. No English congregation would
have listened to such sermons as used to be popular in the Presby-
terian churches of Scotland. There is, indeed, a story told of a dis-
senting preacher named Lobb in the seventeenth century who, when
South went to hear him, ' being mounted up in the pulpit and naming
his text, made nothing of splitting it up into twenty-six divisions,
upon which separately he very carefully undertook to expatiate in
their order. Thereupon the doctor rose up, and jogging the friend
who bore him company, said : " Let us go home and fetch our gowns
and slippers, for I find this man will make night work of it." ' But
Mr. Lobb himself was humane in the pulpit as compared to a certain
Mr. Thomas Boston, to whose sermons Sir Archibald Geikie has lately
drawn attention in his fascinating Scottish Reminiscences. Mr.
Thomas Boston, who wrote a book called Primitice et UUima, was
minister of the Gospel at Ettrick. In a sermon on ' Fear and Hope,
Objects of the Divine Complacency,' from the text Psalm cxlvii. 11 —
* The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear Him and in those that
hope in His mercy' — Mr. Boston, 'after an introduction in four sections,
deduced six doctrines, each sub-divided into from three to eight heads ;
but the last doctrine required another sermon which contained " a
practical improvement of the whole," arranged under eighty-six heads.
A sermon on Matthew xi. 28 was sub-divided into seventy-six
heads ' ; on this text, indeed, Mr. Boston preached four such sermons.
It is more than doubtful whether any brains or hearts south of the
Tweed could have stood the strain of such discourses. But a Scotch
preacher, not in the present degenerate age, has been known to preach
from five to six hours at a stretch, and sometimes, when one preacher
had finished his sermon another would begin, and there would be a
succession of preachers delivering sermon upon sermon, until the
unhappy congregations were kept listening to ' the Word ' for as many
as ten hours without a break. No sermons ever preached in England
can compare with these. It is told, however, to the credit of an
English congregation, that Bishop Burnet once preached with an
hour-glass at his side, and, when the sands in the hour-glass had run
out, he was requested to turn it upside down and preach another

E E 2

408 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Sept.

hour. And there may be at the present time a certain interest attach-
ing to a contemporary account of one of the fast-days connected with
the framing of the Westminster Confession of Faith. ' After Dr.
Twisse had begun with a brief prayer, Mr. Marshall prayed large
two hours most divinely. . . . After, Mr. Arrowsmith preached an hour,
then a psalm ; thereafter, Mr. Vines prayed near two hours, and Mr.
Palmer preached an hour, and Mr. Seaman prayed near two hours,
then a psalm. After, Mr. Henderson brought them to a short, sweet
conference of the heat confessed in the assembly, and other seen
faults, to be remedied,' and the conveniency to preach against all sects,
especially Anabaptists and Antinomians.'

But upon the whole the judgment of modern times is not unreason-
ably adverse to long sermons. Life is short ; but many things in it,
and sermons among them, are apt to be too long. Life is busy, too,
nowadays ; I do not think any religious service should exceed an
hour and a half, or any sermon should exceed half an hour. As a
rule, sermons gain point and power by compression. It is a wise
saying of St. Francois de Sales : ' Plus vous direz, moins on retiendra.
Moins vous direz, plus on profitera. ... A force de charger la memoire
d'un auditeur on la demolit : comme Ton esteint les lampes quand
on y met trop d'huyle ; on suffoque les plantes quand on les arrose
desmesurement. Quand un discours est trop long, la fin fait oublier
le milieu, et le milieu le commencement.'

But it is not only in regard to the length of sermons that the public
taste has undergone a change. If I may specify four celebrated
preachers of the Church of England — Bishop Andrewes, Bishop
Jeremy Taylor, Dr. South, and Bishop Butler — it is safe to say that
there is not one of them whose sermons would be appreciated or
perhaps tolerated at the present day. Let me take as an example
the sermons of Jeremy Taylor. Bishop Heber has passed a sound
criticism upon them in the preface to his edition of the works of Jeremy
Taylor. It will be enough to quote the following remarks :

It may still more excite our wonder that such sermons as these should have
been addressed to any but an audience exclusively academical. A University
alone and a University of no ordinary erudition appears the fit theatre for dis-
courses crowded as these are with quotations from the classics and the Fathers,
with allusions to the most recondite topics of moral and natural philosophy,
with illustrations drawn from all the arts and sciences, and from history ancient
and modern, clothed in language rich and harmonious indeed beyond all con-
temporary writers, but abounding in words of foreign extraction and in unusual
applications of those which are of native origin.

Nor should I have hesitated to conclude that most of Taylor's sermons had
been really composed and intended only for an academical audience, had not the
author himself informed us, in his title page and in his dedication to Lord
Carbery, that they were preached at Golden Grove to the family and domestics
of his patron, or at most to a few gentlemen and ladies of that secluded neigh-
bourhood, and to as many of the peasantry on the estate as could understand
English.

1904 DIFFICULTY OF PEE ACHING SEBMONS 409

Autres temps, autres mceurs, as Voltaire says. But it is difficult
to believe that any congregation in the seventeenth century, and
least of all a rural congregation, can have listened with pleasure or
patience to the sermons on Christ's Advent to Judgment, or The
Return of Prayers, or the Flesh and the Spirit, or the House of Feasting,
or the Marriage Ring.

Yet if the character of preaching varies with the times, it is not
perhaps impossible to lay down some general rules for the composition
and delivery of sermons. Archbishop Magee, in a lecture on the art
of preaching, divided preachers into three classes, viz. : (1) preachers
you can't listen to ; (2) preachers you can listen to ; (3) preachers
you can't help listening to. But although these three classes may
exist in all ages, it does not follow that the same persons would always
compose the same class. Preachers vary as much in their manners
as in their gifts ; and whatever is natural to a preacher is generally
best for him, so long as what is natural is not understood to be what
is easy. A great preacher, like a great orator, is a law to himself ;
but for most preachers the only true freedom is the freedom of walking
at large within certain broad definite limits.

It seems to me as clear as any just rule can be that a preacher
ought to write out his sermons. That there are preachers who can
dispense with the use of manuscript in the pulpit does not upset this
rule, but rather enforces it. Fluency or facility is a peculiar snare to
preachers, and above all to young preachers. For if a man is never
at a loss for a word, if he can address a congregation at great length
without any fear of breaking down, he is of all men the one who most
needs the sobering discipline of committing his thoughts to paper.
I have never known a preacher, not the most eloquent or the most
powerful, who would not, as it seemed to me, have preached better
if he would have taken the trouble to write out his sermon. Extem-
pore preaching is apt to be, like long preaching, a form of conceit. It
is essential that the preacher should say what he means to say and
not something else. It is better to preach too little than too much.
But the literary composition of sermons is the best safeguard against
prolixity, as it is perhaps the best guarantee of orthodoxy. The rule
of Cicero about oratory is still more applicable to preaching : ' Caput
est quod, ut vere dicam, minime facimus (est enim magni laboris,
quern plerique fugimus) quam plurimum scribere.'

The writing of sermons was the rule of the primitive Church.
Origen is said to have set the example of extemporaneous preaching ;
but he did not begin it until he was past sixty years of age, and even
then it was taken to indicate his wonderful knowledge of the Scriptures.
His sermons were reported by ra^vypdc^oi, or shorthand writers.
Augustine, too, sometimes preached without preparation, as on one
occasion when the wrong psalm was given out in Divine Worship,
and he laid aside his prepared sermon and preached upon the psalm

410 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

which had been read. But extemporaneous preaching may mean two
separate things, either that the preacher delivers unprepared sermons,
or that he delivers sermons without the use of manuscript. Of the
former practice it is only possible to say with Archbishop Magee, that
' unprepared preaching is like schism, either a necessity or a sin.'
But even to preach a sermon which has not been largely or entirely
written out is, as it seems to me, at least in a young preacher, to forget
the seriousness of preaching.

A sermon is so solemn a thing that not only every passage of it
but every statement — I might almost say every sentence — demands
careful consideration. It is so easy to overstate the argument, or to
understate it, or to misrepresent truth by some partial ill-conceived
expression, or to fall into heresy, or to say a little more or a little less
than is suitable to the occasion or the circumstances.

How many a preacher who speaks on the spur of the moment
wanders from his subject or becomes involved in it, or contradicts or
refutes himself, or gets into a muddle with his matter, or, as has been
said, has made an end of his sermon and does not know it ! Scrupu-
lous exact composition — such as Pope prescribes in his criticism of

' copious Dryden,' who

wanted or forgot
The last and greatest art, the art to blot —

is the only means by which a sermon, alike in its style, its character,
and its length, can do such justice as the preacher is capable of doing
to his high theme. It is my opinion that no sermon should repre-
sent less than six, or if possible eight hours' work ; many sermons
should represent more. A preacher who possesses the fatal power of
droning on with unfinished sentences and undeveloped arguments,
to the weariness and misery of his audience, is one of the worst enemies
of the pulpit, and, I am afraid, one of the worst enemies of the Church.
It were well for him to lay to heart South's trenchant phrase, 'How
men should thus come to make a salvation of an immortal soul with
such a slight extempore business, I cannot understand, and would
gladly know upon whose example they ground that way of preaching.'

No doubt rules are less strictly applicable to preachers who have
long been occupied in the anxious and arduous duty of saving souls,
than to such preachers as are immature and inexperienced. Bossuet
was wont to say : ' My sermon is finished, all that remains for me to
do is to find the words.' Yet there can hardly be too much pains
spent upon the composition of a sermon. If a clergyman preaches
easily, he may feel sure that he preaches badly. Rather should he
spend a quarter of an hour in elaborating his sermon for every minute
that he takes to deliver it.

But while the duty of careful preparation is incumbent upon all
preachers, it does not seem that any absolute rule can be laid down
for the delivery of sermons. There is no such evident gain in reading

1904 DIFFICULTY OF PREACHING SERMONS 411

a sermon as in writing it. Eeading adds little, perhaps nothing, to
the precision of statement ; but it may detract something from
the energy of effect. The following words are Cardinal Newman's :
' I think it is no extravagance to say that a very inferior sermon
delivered without a book answers the purpose for which all sermons
are delivered more perfectly than one of great merit, if it be written
and read.' Most people know Mrs. Oliphant's story of Edward Irving,
how, in the critical hour when he was preaching his first sermon
before a Scotch congregation at Annan, he happened, by some
incautious movement, to upset the Bible in front of him and sent the
manuscript of his sermon, which had lain hidden in its pages, fluttering
on to the precentor's desk beneath. A rustle of excitement ran through
the Church as the congregation waited to see what the neophyte would
do in such trying circumstances. But in a moment he bent his massive
figure over the pulpit, grasped the manuscript as it lay, crushed it up
in his hand, thrust it into his pocket, and went on preaching as fluently
as before. ' There does not exist,' she adds, ' a congregation in
Scotland which this act would not have taken by storm. His success
was triumphant. To criticise a man so visibly independent of " the
paper " would have been presumption indeed.'

The habit of reading a sermon from manuscript may be tolerable
before a cultivated congregation, it may be actually preferable in a
large cathedral, where the preacher, if he is to be audible, needs all
his thought for the delivery, rather than for the phraseology of his
discourse ; but there are congregations, especially such as are
illiterate, which can scarcely be brought to believe in a sermon that
is read and not spoken. Bishop Phillips Brooks, in his Lectures on
Preaching, tells a quaint story of a backwoodsman in Virginia, who
paid a bishop of the Episcopal Church the rough compliment of
remarking that ' he liked him ; he was the first one he ever saw of
those petticoat fellows who could shoot without a rest.'

It does not indeed follow that a sermon should be committed to
memory. Ancient orators were in the habit of learning their speeches
by heart. French and Italian preachers often learn their sermons by
heart to-day. But upon the whole memory holds a less distinct
and decided place in modern oratory than in ancient. It was
generally assumed in classical treatises upon Rhetoric that some
more or less artificial means by which a speaker could retain the
thread of his subject in his mind were essential to oratory. But
modern English speakers or preachers dislike the habit of learning
or trying to learn their addresses by heart, if only because when they
depend upon memory for their words, their memory may fail them,
and then they are wholly at a loss. Scarcely any position is more
painful or more dreadful than when a preacher who has committed
his sermon to memory finds in the pulpit that it has wholly van-
ished from him. It was the fear of such a catastrophe which led

412 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Sept.

Bourdaloue — le predicateur des rois et le roi des predicateurs, as he was
called — to preach with his eyes closed. Preachers less eminent than
Bourdaloue have not seldom depended upon prompting. But the
English feeling for simplicity or straightforwardness does not approve
the presence of a prompter standing half hidden with a manuscript
in his hands somewhere on the staircase of the pulpit behind the
preacher's back.

Perhaps there is no better way of preaching than that which was
advocated by Fenelon in the second of his well-known dialogues. It
has been recommended and illustrated by famous preachers, e.g. by
Dupanloup in France and Magee in England. It is that a preacher
should write out his sermon in full, or almost in full, and read it over
a good many times until its thoughts, and in some degree its words,
have stamped themselves on his mind, and then deliver it without
the aid of manuscript, or at least with no other aid than a few
heads, inscribed upon a sheet of notepaper, as a means of saving him
from any failure of memory. He should feel that no preliminary
study can be too great for the solemn task of preaching. But if every-
thing is prepared and nothing left to the inspiration of the moment,
sermons are apt to seem lifeless and heartless. The late Mr. Spurgeon,
in his Lectures to my Students, pokes fun at the preachers who, after
imploring the Holy Spirit to prompt their utterances, would be seen
slipping their hands behind their backs to draw out a carefully elabor-
ated manuscript from their coat-tails. But where the sermon is
written out and yet not verbally committed to memory, it is possible
to unite in some degrees the qualities of thoughtfulness and liveliness,
of reflection and emotion, of the responsibility which will not give to
God what has not caused the preacher a strenuous effort, and of reliance
upon the divine assistance promised, in the hour of speaking, to the
witnesses for Christ.

There may well be, and sometimes is, an excess of art in sermons.
For if the art is ostentatious it is fatal. Even a studied elocution is
apt to leave a disagreeable impression, as though the preacher were
thinking of something else than his high and solemn message. For
where rules of oratorical delivery have been formally taught and
carefully learnt, sermons may indeed be artistic ; but they lose the
quality which is better than art, and it is just that quality which
makes the sermon real. A sermon may owe much to the preacher's
skill in composing or delivering it, but the soul of the sermon is not
there. The supreme quality of all sermons is the ethical. As Bishop
Dupanloup says in his Ministry of Preaching, ' Nothing is more essential
to the preaching of the Word of God than a certain character of eleva-
tion.' Even in secular teaching personality counts for much. The
printing press has not altogether supplanted the platform or the desk.
It is still true, as Socrates used to say, that books cannot answer
questions, and living teachers can. It is probably the feeling for

personality which has led congregations by a sure instinct to dislike
and almost distrust the practice, which seems at first sight eminently
reasonable, of clergymen preaching sermons other than their own. It
is because the speaker or the lecturer can put himself en rapport with
his audience, can feel their pulses, as it were, and suit their tempers,
because he can impress upon them the indefinable effect of his own
character, that oral teaching remains as great a force as ever. But
in sermons personality is everything. It is not so much what the
preacher says as what he is that makes his sermon. Personality,
it is true, may affect preaching in more ways than one. A village
priest, let me suppose, has lived many years among his people ; his
home is theirs, his interests are theirs ; he has baptised the children
of the village and seen them grow up, he has married them, and
some of them he has laid in the grave ; there is not a family whose
history he does not know, there is not a cottage within whose walls
he is not a welcome and frequent visitor ; he has shared his people's
hopes and fears, their joys and sorrows ; he has been the recipient of
their confidences, he is their neighbour, their adviser, their friend ;
he has exemplified in his rectory or vicarage what Coleridge calls
' the one idyll of English life.' How is it possible that they should
distinguish his sermon from his life ? It comes to them fraught with
a thousand memories of kindness and sympathy and help in hours of
need. Such a man's life is his sermon ; his sermon is his life. When
he enters the pulpit the congregation who listen to him care not to
ask if he is eloquent or forcible in his preaching. It is enough that
he is their well-known, long-tried pastor, and his sermons are stamped
with the indelible impression of his ministry. Because this is so, it
would undoubtedly prove a loss to take away the right of preaching
from the parochial clergy and confine it to certain preaching orders.
Whether these clergy preach well or ill, nobody can preach to their
congregations so well as they.

But where a preacher delivers a single sermon or a series of sermons
to a congregation which he has seldom or never seen before, and may
not see again, the case is different. The qualities required to impress
his sermon upon men's hearts are not such as issue from associa-
tion or recollection ; they are personal qualities exhibited in the
moment of preaching, they are independent of his life and labour in
the past. Such a preacher will need many gifts, but above all intensity
and sympathy. He must speak with living reality, not as one who
is smooth or careless or self-centred, but as though his words came
surging from his soul ; he must preach, in Baxter's emphatic phrase,

As never sure to preach again,
And as a dying man to dying men.

For far above all style or expression or oratorical skill stands the
effect of the preacher himself upon his audience. The great Massillon,

414 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

it is said, when he began to preach, gave the impression of being utterly
unable to refrain any longer from uttering the truth which filled his
soul and burst like living flame from his lips.

It is an interesting question, and like most questions of high
interest, difficult to answer, whether the pulpit is, or can ever be again,
as potent a force as it used to be upon the thought and character of
Christendom. There are not a few observers who hold that the great
days of preaching are past. They argue, not without reason, that
many agencies — books, magazines, newspapers, lectures, addresses
upon social and moral questions — occupy to a large extent the old
established place of the pulpit. It must, I think, be admitted, that
the sphere of preaching can no more be made, as it once was, nearly
co-extensive with human interests. Yet preachers like Newman,
Robertson, and Spurgeon have exercised a powerful influence within
the nineteenth century, and it arose primarily and principally, although
not entirely, from the use which they made of the pulpit.

It seems to me that the preacher of to-day will do his work best
if he pays regard to the necessary limitations which modern life imposes
upon his office. The effect of his preaching may be as strong as ever,
but it will be felt within narrower bounds.

For except where the congregation is uneducated (and uneducated
congregations are becoming happily few) he cannot now speak from
any vantage-ground of superiority. He is not like a master instructing
his pupils, but like a friend persuading his equals. He cannot be sure
that his hearers will accept what he says because he says it. He
cannot assume the old conditions of thought and temper, patience,
and docility, the sense of respect, the willingness to learn, the con-
viction of sin, the unclouded faith in God and Christ, which might
once be supposed to exist everywhere. And as this is so, he will
always, unless indeed in condemning overt sin, avoid anything like
an arbitrary, dictatorial tone. He will refrain from laying down the
law in unmeasured terms. Even in censuring what is wrong, he will
associate himself, as it were, with his hearers ; he will not always say
' you,' but rather ' we.' He will claim for himself the privilege of
offering counsel upon the highest subjects, and that only as one
whose profession has led him to study them exclusively or specially,
and to meditate and reflect upon them, and to form conclusions which
are in his eyes so vitally and profoundly true that he could not rest
satisfied if he did not give them utterance. For after all it is
not to assert any unique virtue in the clerical office, if it be
taken for granted that, as men who have studied and practised medi-
cine all their lives are the best authorities upon the art of healing, and
men who have been brought up from boyhood in the ways of business,
upon commerce, so the clergy, from their study of religion and their
intimacy with the discipline of souls, if not also from their per-
sonal character, may often prove not the least competent teachers in

matters of faith and conduct. And in these matters, if rhetoric is, as
Aristotle defined it, the art of persuasion, it is spiritual persuasiveness
which will be the highest attribute of preaching.

It must be remembered that the pulpit is not now and will appar-
ently not again become the only or the chief organ of teaching upon
theology. When nobody could read the Bible outside the church it
was necessary that people should go to church in order to read it.
When nobody could hear moral and spiritual truths except in church,
it was in the church that everybody heard them. But the church
no longer enjoys a monopoly of these subjects. A certain office, then,
which once belonged to the pulpit, is now discharged, and perhaps
more suitably discharged, by other agencies. For the delivery of
sermons does not at the time allow sufficient leisure for the reflective-
ness which theological controversy demands. Where religious topics
are discussed everywhere, not only in literature but in conversation, the
hortatory character of the pulpit may remain what it was, but some-
thing of its instructive character must depart from it. I believe the
preacher of to-day will be wise if he keeps his pulpit, as far as possible,
clear of controversy. There is as much good sense as ever in Mr.
Simeon's saying that ' the servant of the Lord must not strive,' even
in the pulpit. For then Christian men and women will find in church
a tranquil spiritual atmosphere which cannot be equally found else-
where, and the effect of it will be edifying and sanctifying.

But there are two kinds of controversial preaching which are open
to particular objection.

It cannot but be a grave mistake if the preacher makes use of his
pulpit to enunciate frequently before a mixed congregation the extreme
theories of Biblical criticism. Such theories may be true or untrue, and I
have no need here to pronounce a verdict against them ; but they lack
the quality of edification which is proper to the pulpit. The preacher's
office is not to destroy faith, but to fortify it. Attacks upon the
Word of God, and upon accepted and established interpretations of
it, upon the creeds and ordinances of the Church, have their due
place, but that place is surely not the House of God. All such teaching
as is given from the pulpit should be in fact and in intention con-
structive. The preacher who sends away his congregation with a
wounded or weakened faith not only mistakes the nature but in some
sense violates the sanctity of the pulpit. For the office of the pulpit
is not to pull down but to build up, not to show men how little to
believe but how much, to afford them something of grace, of helpful-
ness, of corroboration, to make them good soldiers and servants of
Jesus Christ. The highest triumph of preaching lies not in instructed
intellects, but in converted and consecrated souls.

Still worse, however, than the introduction of criticism is the
introduction of politics into sermons. That religion must affect
political life, as it affects all life, is perfectly true ; but the pulpit is

416 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

not the platform, it is degraded if it is converted into a platform, as
the minister of religion is degraded if he becomes a political demagogue.
And the almost certain result of political preaching is not the elevation
oft politics, but the secularisation of the Gospel.

The preacher of to-day will follow most closely in his Master's
footsteps if it is written upon his conscience that Jesus Christ, in
His ministry upon earth, sought not to save souls by effecting political
or social reforms, but to effect such reforms, even if slowly and pain-
fully, by saving souls. For this reason he will allow nothing to inter-
fere with the spirituality of his preaching.

Preachers have too much forgotten the Divine example. They
have attenuated the force of their preaching by enlarging its scope,
they have regarded every high topic, if only it could be coloured with
religion, as suited to the pulpit. That was not the way of the
Christ. It has been brought as a charge against Him that His range
of interests was confined. Art, science, literature, politics, He left
alone. It would have been better to have learnt from Him that
nothing is the true and vital matter of a sermon except what tends
to the saving or strengthening of souls.

It is not a little remarkable that, wherever preaching in modern
times has produced a powerful, energetic effect upon society, the
preacher, like Wesley, like Luther, like Chrysostom, like St. Paul,
in other ages of Christian history, has made his appeal to the intrinsic
spirituality of human nature.

The need, then, of the day is that preaching, at least to cultivated
congregations, should become not perhaps less intellectual, but more
spiritual. After all, it is the spiritual side of man's nature that affords a
reason for preaching, as for all religious worship. For it is this side
which is capable of Divine things, and religion alone can satisfy its
demand. But herein lies the supreme quality of the preacher's office. He
speaks as an ambassador for God, he is charged with a message which
he did not originate and which he may not ignore or impair. It is
his responsible duty to hold up before his congregation a moral standard
far above his own possible attainment. The dignity of his message
is too often the censure of his own life. And however earnestly and
assiduously he tries to lift himself to the level of the truths which -he
proclaims, he cannot but be conscious that they escape and transcend
his actual practice and rise above the earthly sphere in which he
moves into the serene and sacred atmosphere which lies around the
throne of God.

The preacher will be subdued, then, by the feeling of his own un-
worthiness. Not less subduing to his intimate consciousness will be
his appreciation of the contrast between the vast amount of preaching
in the Christian world and the actual or apparent poverty of its results.
It has been calculated that 100,000 sermons are preached in the
United Kingdom every Sunday. But if he asks himself how great is

1904 DIFFICULTY OF PREACHING SERMONS 417

the result of all this effort, he knows not what answer he can give.
It may well be that after years of preaching he feels that he has
preached almost in vain. He cannot tell the name of any one person,
man or woman, who has been moved by any sermon of his to any
single definite act of renunciation or generosity or nobleness or faith.
I may be permitted, then, in concluding this essay, to quote a moving
story not without its encouragement and consolation. I take it from
Twells's Colloquies on Preaching :

A friend of mine (he says), a layman, was in the company of a very eminent
preacher, then in the decline of life. My friend had happened to remark what
comfort it must be to him to think of all the good he had done by his gift of
eloquence. The eyes of the old man filled with tears, and he said, ' You little
know ; you little know ! If I ever turned one heart from the ways of disobedi-
ence to the wisdom of the just, God has withheld the assurance from me. I
have been admired and flattered and run after, but how gladly I would forget
all that to be told of a single soul I have been instrumental in saving 1 ' The
eminent preacher entered into his rest. There was a great funeral, many
pressed around the grave who had ofttimes hung entranced upon his lips. My
friend was there ; and by his side was a stranger, who was so deeply moved
that, when all was over, my friend said to him, ' You knew him, I suppose ? '
' Knew him,' was the reply, ' No, I never spoke to him, but I owe to him my
soul.'

It has been my object to show that preaching is a difficult task,
difficult in its moral and spiritual exigencies as well as in its demands
upon the intellect, and that it deserves more sympathy than criticism.
Clergymen and ministers may not all feel alike about it. But to me
there is known at least one preacher who looks upon the delivery of
sermons as the most exacting duty of all the clerical life, who has
preached many sermons, but never one that he would not, if it had
not been laid upon him by his profession, have thankfully been spared,
who has hoped almost against hope that the seed cast upon the waters
he may find again though after many days, and whose prayer is that
the office, which he has felt to be so great a burden, if only it be executed
with a due sense of its responsibility, may in some degree be accepted
by man and not wholly rejected by God.

J. E. C. WELLDON.

418 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

WRITING in the July, 1902, number of this Review on British and
American shipping, in connection with the then recently formed
Morgan Combine, the present writer pointed out that the method
of maritime progression followed by America might compel us to
reimpose such portion of the old Navigation Laws as would close our
register and our coasting trade to foreign vessels.

British vessels are even now debarred from the trade along the enormous
double coast lines of the United States, and between these lines and the new
oversea Federal possessions. America has a perfect right so to debar us if she
pleases, but we retain our equal right to debar her vessels from our coasting and
colonial trade if we find it necessary. It is open to us to refuse advantages to the
ships of any power which refuses equal advantages to our own vessels. It is as
practicable to countervail subsidies on ships as bounties on sugar. And it is
certainly necessary to prevent our own flag from being used as a cover for
foreign vessels attacking our own trade.

Since these words were written the Americans have converted
their colonial trade into coasting trade to be reserved for their own
flag, and, besides running their steamers under the British flag regularly
in our colonial trade, have recently proposed (during the Atlantic
rate war) to put their steamers on the coasting trade of the United
Kingdom. And they have remitted to a Commission of Congress to
investigate and recommend what legislative steps should be taken
to replace the American flag in the international carrying trade of the
oceans.

As the Marquis of Graham aptly remarks in the August number
of this Review, it seems strange that when we abolished the old
Navigation Laws we should have failed to recognise the enormous
power for negotiation we possess in our shipping. Mr. Gladstone,
however, perceived it when, in the course of the debates on the
measure for the repeal of these laws, he pointed out how America would
obtain the advantage if we left her with the reservation of her coasting
trade while admitting her to our colonial trade. ' In days of old,'
as Lord Graham says, ' the reservation of coastal trade to national
keels was well recognised as one of the most powerful and promising

1904 EEVIVAL OF NAVIGATION LAWS 419

arguments for use in demanding an open market.' It is the purpose
of this article to consider whether these days should not be renewed.

It is as true now as it has always been that our national existence
depends upon our maritime prosperity. But the truth is now even
more pertinent than it ever was, in view of the fact that America is
rapidly building up one of the greatest war navies in the world, which
she is conscious cannot be effectively maintained without a commercial
navy to feed it and be protected by it. Attention to this subject is
recalled by much that Sir John Macdonell says in his important article
on ' International Questions and the Present War,' in the July, 1904,
number of this Review :

For some years the development of maritime international law proceeded
along one line. The supremacy of the navy of this country was either taken
for granted, as natural in view of its possessions and dependence for food upon
foreign supplies, or the day when this supremacy was to be overthrown was
regarded as distant and uncertain. The other chief States of the world, possess-
ing great armies, were resigned, for a time at least, to England's predominance
at sea.

Some of them are no longer so resigned, and the question of belli-
gerent rights, on which Sir John Macdonell commented, becomes
enlarged and complicated by the diffusion of maritime commerce.
And how far maritime commerce has been and will be affected by the
extension of the American domain to oversea territories, and by the
construction of the Panama Canal, it is imperative for us as a mari-
time nation to attentively note. The ' plain man ' has not yet realised
how every acquisition by the United States of territory and pre-
dominant power, outside the continental limits of the Federal Union,
means a direct barrier in the way of British shipping and commerce,
by annexing and closing up oversea territory hitherto free. It is no
argument to say that the amount of foreign tonnage at present engaged
in British coasting and colonial trade is small. It is certainly not
large, but every year it is becoming larger. Thus, by Lloyd's latest
returns, the foreign tonnage in the coasting trade of the United
Kingdom increased from 378,108 tons in 1901 to 481,531 tons in 1903 ;
and last year 988 foreign vessels of 967,224 tons entered and cleared
from ports in the United Kingdom with cargo for British possessions.
If, however, to the declared foreign tonnage we add the actual foreign
tonnage which we inconsistently allow to be run under the British
flag, we shall find a much more imposing and menacing total. And
the cold, clear truth remains, that the one nation which has the
greatest ambition and is making the most strenuous efforts to rival
us on the ocean and in the trade with our own possessions is the one
nation which shuts us out from the largest amount of coasting trade.

Let us, then, first observe the effect of the absorption by the
United States of a number of oversea territories in the great American
fiscal union — territories which had formerly their own tariffs and

420 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

customs, and now are part and parcel of the American protective
system. The new oversea possessions of the United States are Puerto
Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, and the Samoan Islands. Cuba
is now an independent though protected Republic, and the reci-
procity treaty between it and the United States was ratified in last
Congress.

Puerto Rico was one of the spoils of the war with Spain. It was
ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Peace of December, 1898,
and civil government was established by law on the island on the 1st
of May, 1900. It is one of the West Indian Islands, about 450 miles from
Cuba, 75 miles from Hayti, and 1,400 miles from New York. It has
an area of about 3,000 square miles, and in 1900, when it entered
upon a new political existence, its population was 953,243. Up to
that time the principal source of revenue was the Customs, but the
new law of Congress provided that

whenever the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Eico shall have enacted and put
into operation a system of local taxation to meet the necessities of the Govern-
ment of Puerto Eico, and shall by resolution duly passed so notify the President,
he shall make proclamation, and thereafter all tariff duties on merchandise and
articles going into Puerto Eico from the United States, or coming into the
United States from Puerto Eico, shall cease, and from and after such date all
such merchandise and articles shall be entered at the several ports of entry free
of duty.

In any case, these duties were to cease by the 1st of March, 1902,
and in the interim the Legislative Assembly had to devise a new
system of taxation to meet the necessities of the Government, in place
of the Customs revenue derived from American goods, and Puerto
Rico was by Act of Congress specially exempted from the internal
revenue laws of the United States, so as to allow the adoption of an
insular excise system. Agriculture is now the principal source of
wealth to Puerto Rico, and the three most important staples of the
island are coffee, sugar, and tobacco. These, with some tropical fruits,
provide its exports. In effect, coffee forms more than half the exports
of Puerto Rico, and the imports formerly about equalled the exports
in value. In 1900 about 97 per cent, of the whole trade of the island
was conducted by American vessels, and in that year not a single
vessel cleared from the island for the United Kingdom. Formerly,
nearly all the trade between the American continent and the West
Indies was carried on under the British flag. It is now restricted to
American bottoms by the law which reserves all the coasting trade of
the United States to American-built and] American-owned vessels.
The British Consular Report for 1900 contains this passage :

With the year began also the introduction of the United States Navigation
Laws, which, treating Puerto Eico as a portion of the States, prohibit alien
bottoms from carrying cargo between American ports. It is anticipated that
this will, with the assistance of the new tariff, have the effect of extinguishing

1904 EEVIVAL OF NAVIGATION LAWS 421

the steady trade in fish and lumber which gave regular employment to the Nova
Scotian small craft, and which in the year ended the 30th of June, 1898, amounted
to 29,333 tons. Nova Scotia requires for herself but a limited supply of Puerto
Eican produce, and her vessels being deprived of their former freights home-
ward via the United States, her trade with the island will dimmish down to her
positive requirements.

The Hawaii (or Sandwich) Islands form a group of eight distinct
islands, of which seven have a population registered in 1896 as 109,020,
of whom 39,504 were Hawaiians, 2,266 Americans, 15,191 Portuguese,
and the rest Japanese, Chinese, etc. The area of the group is 6,449
square miles, and the islands are separated by channels varying from
six to sixty miles in width. These islands are wholly dependent on
agriculture, as they have no other industry and no other resources.
The main produce is sugar, which employs most of the capital and
labour of the islands, and forms the bulk of the exports. The resolu-
tion for annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States, in
response to the petition of the Government of the Republic of Hawaii,
was passed by Congress in July 1898. It provided that ' the existing
treaties of the Hawaiian Islands with foreign nations shall forthwith
cease and determine, being replaced by such treaties as may exist,
or may be hereafter concluded, between the United States and such
foreign nations.' And by the Act for the government of Hawaii
passed by Congress in April 1900 it was provided ' that the Con-
stitution and all the laws of the United States which are not locally
inapplicable shall have the same force and effect within the said
territory as elsewhere in the United States.' Also ' that the Terri-
tory of Hawaii shall comprise a Customs district of the United States,
with ports of entry and delivery at Honolulu, Hilo, Mahukina, and
Kabului.' Between the date of annexation and June, 1902, the
Customs records of interchanges are incomplete and involved. But
in 1901 there was a large increase in the imports from the United
States, of which some portion was lost in 1902 owing to the great
activity of the American home trade in that year. We have lost all
the trade we once had with Hawaii in sugar machinery, coals, dry
goods, iron and steel, etc. ; and as the islands are now part of the
territory of the United States, our vessels are debarred from carrying
cargo for them to and from America.

Hawaii was a gift of peace to the United States. Puerto Rico
and the Philippines were the spoils of war, and the latter have not been
an unmixed blessing. The group of the Philippine Islands contains
some 73,345,415 acres of land, a large portion of which is extremely
fertile and naturally irrigated. The chief products are hemp (Manila),
tobacco, and sugar ; but the mineral resources are extensive. Large
deposits of copper are known ; coal is found in eight or nine of the
islands ; gold has been discovered in many places ; iron exists ; the
timber wealth is enormous, in vast forests of dyewood trees, of gum

VOL. LVI— No. 331 F F

422 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

trees, and of rubber and gutta-percha. Cotton used to be grown
before the tobacco monopoly discouraged other cultivation, and
tobacco is, next to hemp, the most important crop. Writing after
the annexation, the British Consul at Manila said that British interests
in the Philippines are much larger than is supposed at home. There
are about twenty British firms in Manila, several of them of long
standing, and two of the three banking establishments are British.
The largest exporting and importing firms are British, as are also the
chief engineering works, ship-repairing works, etc. The only railway
in the islands belongs to a British company, and British interests in
the Philippines run into millions.

After the annexation the shipments of Manila hemp to Great
Britain declined from 2,051,9842. in 1901 to 1,546,8692. in 1902, while
those to the United States increased from 500,5972. to 1,512,8032.
The shipments of sugar to Great Britain declined from 38,6652. in 1901
to nothing in 1902, while those to the United States increased from
19,4732. to 61,1152. The enormous increase in the exports to the
United States is attributed by Consul Firth, in a report to our Foreign
Office, dated the 21st of May, 1903, to the fact that by Act of Congress,
March 1902, all articles the growth and produce of the Philippines
admitted into the United States free of duty are now eligible for a
return of the export duty imposed in the Philippines, provided they
be shipped to the United States direct, and proof be submitted of their
importation and consumption there. Thus, Manila hemp, which
constitutes about 75 per cent, of the total exports, when shipped
direct to the United States receives a return of about 12. 11s. 2d.
per ton, being an export duty levied in the Philippines that ship-
ments to the United Kingdom have to pay in full. In consequence,
large quantities of Manila hemp which used to go to the United
Kingdom for distribution elsewhere, now go to the United States — a
significant diversion of traffic.

In the Blue Book, Cd. 1761, is the following reference to tariffs :

Puerto Rico and Hawaii are treated as territories of the United States of
America for Customs purposes, i.e. trade between them and the United States
is free from Custom House duties. Philippine goods are admitted into the
United States on payment of 75 per cent, of the rates fixed by the United
States tariff, and any export duty levied in the Philippines is refunded on im-
portation into America. On the other hand, goods from the United States
pay the full Philippine tariff on admission into the Philippines.

— for the present.

The importance of the shipping question may be briefly shown.
At present the bulk of the carrying trade of the Philippines is con-
ducted under the British flag. That is to say, over 75 per cent, of
the exports and about 60 per cent, of the imports are carried in British
vessels, including practically all the trade with the United States.
German and Spanish vessels carry most of the remainder, American

1904 EEVIVAL OF NAVIGATION LAWS 423

tonnage having as yet only about 2 per cent, of the carrying trade.
There are three British lines to one Japanese line between Manila
and Hong Kong, and there is a German line between Manila and
Singapore. The insular coasting trade, on the other hand, is practi-
cally all done under the American flag. After 1906, that flag will
also monopolise the whole of the carrying to and from the Philippines
and the United States, as we shall presently see.

Cuba is not a territorial possession of the United States, but is
now an independent Republic, independent only by will of, and under
the protection of, the United States. By the Reciprocity Treaty
between the two countries, which was finally ratified on the 7th of
December, and came into operation on the 27th of December, 1903,
British interests are more affected by the intervention of the United
States than in any other of the insular territories. The American
eye always turned to Cuba with longing. John Quincy Adams,
when Secretary of State, declared that

there are laws of political as well as of physical gravitation. As an apple,
when severed by the tempest from its native tree, cannot choose but fall to the
ground, so Cuba, when forcibly disjoined from its unnatural connection with
Spain, and incapable of self-support, can gravitate only towards the North
American Union, which by the same law of Nature cannot cast her off from its
bosom.

In 1859, a Committee of the Senate, reporting on a Bill for nego-
tiating for the acquisition of Cuba, said there were only three possible
alternatives in regard to its future : possession by a European power,
independence, or annexation to the United States. The first would
not be permitted, the second could only be nominal, and as for the
third, it would be beneficial if not effected by war. There has been
war, followed by quasi-independence, and the position now is that
Cuba constitutes a political entity, which the American Senate Com-
mittee aforetime declared could never be permanent. Those who
know the Cubans have little faith in their ability to govern them-
selves.

When President Roosevelt succeeded the late President McKinley
at the White House, one of his earliest declarations was to the effect
that ' Reciprocity is the handmaid of Protection.' He has succeeded
in making Reciprocity a sort of limited partner with Protection by
means of the treaty with Cuba. The year 1903 was, indeed, a memor-
able one for the most assertive American President of our time. He
has, in defiance of the principles of his party, practically created
a new Republic in Central America out of a seceder from the Republic
of Colombia. He has ensured the construction of the long-talked-
of Isthmian Canal as an American enterprise, in territory practi-
cally under the Federal rule, and certainly under the Federal control.
And he has completed a reciprocal arrangement with the Republic
of Cuba, which will place it commercially in the hands of the United

424 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

States, and which will lead up in its financial result to the political
absorption of that island by the American Union.

The island of Cuba comprises an area of 28,000,000 acres, and
the census of 1899 showed a population of 1,572,797. It is divided
into six provinces. Three of them — Havana, Matanzas, and Santa
Clara — are highly cultivated, and produce the sugar and tobacco
for which the island is famous. One of them, Puerto Principe, is
mainly given up to the grazing of cattle. And in another, Santiago
de Cuba, are deposits of hematite iron ore, which are turning out
much more valuable than was formerly supposed. The native
whites form about 58 per cent., and the native coloured people about
32 per cent., of the population, the rest being foreign whites and
Chinese. Since it was freed from the domination of Spain by the
help of the United States — a war in which Mr. Koosevelt himself
took an active part, as the leader of the Rough Riders — Cuba has
become a separate State, and as such has negotiated a commercial
treaty with the United States, but has made no commercial treaty
with Great Britain. This is why we are now at a disadvantage.

The treaty between the United States of America and the new
Republic of Cuba was declared in the preamble to be ' inspired by the
desire to strengthen the bonds of friendship between both countries,'
and to have ' the object of facilitating their commercial relations
by improving the conditions of mercantile traffic between the two
nations.' The first Article declares that

while the present treaty shall remain in force all articles or merchandise
which are the products of the soil or industry of the United States which are
now imported into the Eepublic of Cuba free of duty, and all articles or mer-
chandise which are the products of the soil or industry of the Eepublic of Cuba
which are now imported into the United States free of duty, shall continue to be
admitted into the respective countries free of duty.

But that does not mean very much, as the duty-free commodities
in both countries are few and of small commercial importance. This
clause merely stereotypes the existing practice. The Chambers of
Commerce of Liverpool, London, Manchester, Birmingham, Wolver-
hampton, Bury, Bradford, Glasgow, and Belfast, urged Lord Lansdowne
to claim most-favoured-nation treatment in Cuba, because the Reci-
procity Treaty practically closes Cuba to British trade. It also
closes Cuba to British Indian trade, and it is closing the United States
market to the British "West Indies. America has joined with us in
maintaining, or at all events proclaiming, the * open door ' in China,
and shares in the benefits of the Anglo-Japanese treaty ; yet she
presents us with a shut door in Cuba. All the Cuban sugar now
goes to the United States, just when we should be glad to see it coming
over here in competition with Continental beet sugar. Cuba produces
four times as much sugar as the British West Indies, and these
islands are now shut out of the American market, which saved

1904 EEVIVAL OF NAVIGATION LAWS 425

them from extinction under the pressure of bounty-fed beet. By
the treaty America now obtains a preference of 40 per cent, on all the
rice hereafter imported from her planters. This alone means the
loss of a considerable trade to British India.

There is nothing expressed in the treaty to give American shipping
a preference over British in Cuban ports ; l but the tendency is to a
decrease in the proportion of British tonnage there. In 1902, of
156 vessels entering the port of Havana, thirty-five were British,
ninety-six American, nine South American, eight Cuban, and eight
belonging to other countries. In 1902, British vessels carried 2,076,657?.
of the declared value of imports, and 1,161,449Z. of the declared
value of Cuban exports. The effect of the Reciprocity Treaty will
be to diminish these proportions very materially, though at first
there was a rush of British ships to carry away the stock of sugar
which had been accumulating in Cuba pending the ratification of the
treaty.

Senator Frye was the coadjutor of the late Senator Hanna in the
last Ship Subsidy Bill. Here is one of his recent utterances :

Witness these figures : Great Britain pays in postal subsidies, in Admiralty
subventions, and in retainers for sailors, a little over 6,000,000 dollars per
annum; France pays in Admiralty subventions, retainers for sailors, bounty
construction, and postal subsidies, over 7,000,000 dollars per annum ; Germany,
commencing but lately to reach out into the markets of the world, pays over
2,000,000 dollars ; Austria-Hungary pays 1,724,000 dollars ; Spain paid to one
single line 1,629,000 dollars; Japan paid 3,492,000 dollars, and the United
States paid 998,000 dollars. Are we to submit to this humiliating and wretched
condition of things ? There is one reason beyond pride in country which I wish
to suggest. These nations have paid these postal subsidies for the purpose of
establishing mail lines from their great commercial ports to the commercial
ports of the world. For what purpose ? For purposes of trade and nothing
else. Trade cannot precede the mail. The mail must precede the trade, and
they pay annually over 25,000,000 dollars for postal subsidies for one single
purpose, and that is to put themselves in position to dispose of their surplus
products in the markets of the world. There is not a nation on this earth that
needs markets for surplus products more than does the United States of
America. Its increase of product is growing year by year. Suppose a market
is not found for this increased product ; suppose the country finds itself with a
surplus on hand which it cannot sell. Then comes stagnation, capital without
profit and wage-workers without pay. Is there any one who for a single
moment would dream that it is profitable for us, in endeavouring to find those
markets, to secure them through our enemies in trade ? Is there any merchant
who would for a moment think of hiring the commercial agent of a rival house
to find markets for his goods ? Is there any one who doubts that an American
ship, commanded by intelligent, active, earnest, interested American officers, is
a better instrument for the distribution of our products abroad, and for the find-
ing of those markets, than a German ship, officered by Germans, Germany being
the dangerous rival of the United States in all this business for the next twenty-
five years ? What can we do ? In my opinion there is only one way in which

1 This is an omission which a number of the American newspapers are clamouring
to have repaired by a supplementary treaty.

426 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

anything can be accomplished, and that is by paying out of the treasury of the
United States annually a sum of money which shall be equal to the difference
between operating and carrying on of trade in foreign ships and carrying it on
in our own. It has been done for every other industry, it should be done for
shipping. For almost a quarter of a century I have been trying to solve the
problem of restoring this mercantile navy of ours in the oceans of the world.
I have taken more interest in it than in any other subject, and I have per.
haps given it more thought and more care than I have given to all other subjects.
I know of no way but one, and that is by national aid.

We need not stop to correct Senator Frye's error in supposing
that British shipping in general owes anything whatever to the sub-
ventions paid for carrying mails and providing reserve cruisers for
the Admiralty. And we need not stop to wrestle with the amazing
idea that the mail services make trade, not trade the mail services.
We cite the passage because it reflects so clearly the set of feeling
among the shipping reformers in America, and it indicates so clearly
the form of State aid they want to ensure.

The most direct attempts which America has yet made to re-create
a merchant marine are associated with the last session of Congress,
which passed two Bills reserving the Philippines trade, and the carrying
of naval and military stores, exclusively to American ships, which
assumed the protectorate of the new Republic of Panama and autho-
rised the construction of the canal there as a Federal enterprise,
and which authorised the appointment of a Commission to devise
means for the direct encouragement of American shipping. The
most flagrant act was undoubtedly the bringing of the Philippines
under the coastal laws of the United States.

It is some time since Senator Elkins, whose Shipping Bill in a
former Congress was regarded as a direct blow at British shipping,
said :

There are two reasons why we should keep the Philippines. The first is,
that they are harder to give away than to retain. The second is, that if Germany
and England and other countries want them, they are good enough for the
United States. The great struggle for the future will be for territory. All the
foreign powers want territory in order to extend their markets. We want
territory for the same reason. We need these islands in the future as an outlet
for our people ; while for the present they will become our home market. We
need them as an incentive for the increase of our shipping and for the building
up of our navy, until our flag is seen once more on all seas. We need them
because they mean so much to the Pacific slope, a section which is deserving of
as much encouragement and attention as the Atlantic coast.

But under the Treaty of Paris with Spain, Spanish vessels have
a right to enter Philippine ports on the same terms as American
vessels up to the year 1909, and we had official assurances that British
shipping would be treated not less favourably than Spanish shipping.
An Act of Congress dated the 8th of March, 1902, prescribed that
foreign vessels may enter United States ports from the Philippines

1904 REVIVAL OF NAVIGATION LAWS 427

on payment of the usual tonnage dues payable by vessels coming
from foreign countries, up to the 1st of July, 1904. Secretary Hay
wrote to the British Ambassador at Washington, in reply to interro-
gations, that the principle to be followed with regard to the Philip-
pines was expressed in Annex 2 to Protocol 16 of the Treaty of Peace.
That Annex runs thus :

The declaration that the policy of the United States in the Philippines will
be that of an open door to the world's commerce necessarily implies that the
offer to place Spanish vessels and merchandise on the same footing as American
is not intended to be exclusive. But the offer to give Spain that privilege for a
term of years is intended to secure it to her for a certain period by special treaty
stipulation, whatever might be at any time the general policy of the United
States.

From all this it was reasonable to suppose, and was supposed both
by the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade, that British shipping
would not be treated less favourably than Spanish shipping, and that,
therefore, there would be no reservation under the coastal laws before,
at any rate, April 1909. Nevertheless, Congress in April last adopted
and made law the Bill introduced by Senator Frye ' to regulate shipping
in trade between ports of the United States and ports or places in
the Philippine Archipelago, and for other purposes.' The following
is a summary of its provisions :

Section 1. From the 1st of July, 1906, no merchandise, except Army and
Navy stores, may be transported by sea between ports of the United States and
ports or places in the Philippines, either directly or via a foreign port, and whether
for the whole voyage or only a part thereof, except in vessels of the United States,
under penalty of forfeiture of the merchandise. This does not prevent the sail-
ing of foreign vessels between the respective ports, provided no cargo is carried
between the United States and the Philippines. They may have cargo between
two other places, or between a foreign port and either the United States or the
Philippines, but such must be manifested accordingly, and not have been
unloaded.

Section 2. From the same date, no passengers shall be carried by a foreign
vessel between the United States and the Philippines, directly or indirectly ;
penalty 200 dollars per passenger.

Section 3. Sections 1 and 2 not to apply (at present) to traffic between
Philippine ports, inter se.

Section 4. Nor to voyages begun before the 1st of July, 1906.

Section 5. Nor to vessels owned by the United States.

Section 6. The same tonnage taxes, on and after the passing of this Act, to
apply to vessels corning into the United States from the Philippines as apply to
vessels from foreign countries, provided that until the 1st of July, 1906, the pro-
visions restricting trade between the United States and Philippines to vessels of
the United States shall not be applicable to foreign vessels engaged in trade
between those places, and the Philippine Commission shall be empowered to
issue licences to vessels now engaged in the lighterage or harbour work, or to
vessels or other craft built in the United States or in the Philippines, and owned
by citizens of either.

Section 7. The Act not to impair privileges granted to Spanish ships and
merchandise by the Treaty of Paris of the 10th of December, 1898, ratified on
the llth of April, 1899.

428 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

Section 8. The Department of Commerce and Labour to issue regulations
from time to time for the enforcement of this Act ; the Navigation Laws of the
United States in regard to vessels arriving in the Philippines to continue to be
administered by the officials in the islands.

This Act, then, revokes the Act of 1902, and reserves the Philip-
pines under the coastal laws of the United States on and after the
1st of July 1906. It is, as Lord]Landsowne has pointed out to the
American Government, inconsistent with the declarations made
when peace was arranged between the United States and Spain, but
as an Act of Congress it stands law unless amended before July of
1906. Even if amended, the door will be open only until 1909,
when the American coastal laws will in any case come into effect.

What, then, we are now faced with is an American policy of bring-
ing oversea long-distance colonial trade under the exclusive reserva-
tion of the coastal laws, designed for the American continental coasts
only. Under this policy the United States will have no boundaries-
No w, however open to objection was the law which declared that
a voyage from New York to San Francisco round Cape Horn was
a * coasting voyage,' to be engaged in only by vessels on the American
register, it had at least the sanction of custom, for this voyage has
always been exclusively in American hands. But the extension of
that law to Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines — and hypo-
thetically to Cuba — is to transfer forcibly to America a large amount
of shipping trade which she never before had, and which British ship-
owners have industriously cultivated. These possessions are not part
of America, and the trade captured by the sudden application of the
Navigation Laws never was American.

Not only that. A Bill was introduced into Congress just before
the adjournment, and will be reintroduced when the Houses reassemble,
to bring under these same coastal laws the traffic between the United
States and the zone of the Panama Canal, on both shores, during
the whole term of the construction of the waterway. The object
is to secure exclusively for American vessels the carriage of the whole
material of construction, and the passenger traffic relating to it, as
well as the provision of the material. What intention may be beyond
this proposal we will not discuss just now. The canal zone extends
ten miles on each side of the waterway, and as leased in perpetuity
to America it will always be under American control. Therefore,
one is not surprised to learn that at a meeting of the American Cabinet
on the 24th of June last, plans formulated by the Secretary of War for
postal and tariff systems in the Panama Canal zone were approved,
and were formally transmitted to the chairman of the Isthmian Canal
Commission. The tariff regulations have the effect of applying the
Dingley rates to all importations into the canal zone from any country,
except the United States or the insular possessions of the United
States. Goods entering the zone from ports of the United States

1904 EEVIVAL OF NAVIGATION LAWS 429

will be free of duty, and goods entering from the insular possessions
of the United States will be admitted on the same terms as at the
ports of the United States. There is nothing in the order regarding
goods imported from the canal zone to the United States, but it is
believed that the law officers of the Treasury will hold that under
the decisions of the Supreme Court in the insular cases such goods
are entitled to free admission, in the absence of any legislation by
Congress imposing a duty upon them.

Lord Muskerry, in the House of Lords, recently called the atten-
tion of his Majesty's Government to the practice of other maritime
countries reserving what is termed their coastwise trade to vessels
of their own nationality, and asked what had been the nature of the
representations of his Majesty's Government to the United States
Government respecting the application to the Philippine Islands
of the coastwise laws of the United States, and whether the United
States Government had as yet forwarded any definite reply to the
representations. The Marquis of Lansdowne said the subject was
of the utmost importance, but Lord Muskerry did not meet the point
at issue. As to the Philippines, the restrictions imposed by the Bill
passed by Congress have been objected to by Sir Mortimer Durand,
and the matter is the subject of ' discussion ' with the American
Government. As to coastal laws generally

It is obvious (Lord Lansdowne said) that if we were to exclude foreigners
from access to our coasting trade altogether we should find ourselves liable to
reprisals at the hands of those countries which do at present admit us. That
would be a serious matter.

But no one suggests such a course.
Lord Lansdowne also said :

Out of the seven Powers which do a large amount of coasting trade, four —
Germany, Holland, Denmark, and Portugal — admit our vessels freely to their
coasting trade. France does the same, with the exception of Algerian trade,
which is specially reserved. There are only two considerable Powers — Eussia
and the United States — which exclude us altogether. It is necessary to bear in
mind when you speak of the possibility of retaliatory action on these Powers
that they are, as it happens, the very Powers which make less use of our coasting
trade, and can consequently afford the smallest margin for reprisals of the kind.

This brings us to the point. America does not at present take
much part in our coasting trade, but she takes a very considerable
part in our inter-imperial trade, by vessels under her own flag,
by American- owned vessels under the British flag, and by foreign
vessels under long time-charters. It is quite open to her to turn
the entire fleet of the Morgan Combine into the coasting trade of
the United Kingdom, and into the trade between the United Kingdom
and Australia and South Africa and Canada ; but it is not open to
the Cunard and Allan fleets to engage in the coasting trade of the
United States, or in the trade between the United States and Puerto

430 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

Kico, Hawaii, and (after 1906) the Philippines. And America is now
bent on creating, by bounty in some form, a great American merchant
navy, equipped for all trades, at the very time when she is drawing
larger and more widely separated areas under the reservation of her
coastal laws. No serious-minded person has ever proposed, as Lord
Lansdowne seems to have assumed, that the whole coasting and
intercommunication of the British Empire should be closed against
the ships of all foreign countries. What is proposed, what is indeed
rapidly becoming imperative, is that we should close our coasting
and colonial trades against the shipping of all countries which exclude
our shipping from their equivalent trades ; but only so long as they
exclude us. This portion of the Navigation Laws should be revived,
not for the purpose of Protection on our part, but to enable us by
reservation to promote a general policy of reciprocity in shipping.

It is worth recalling what the Cecil Select Committee had to say
about the inter-imperial coasting trade. Their recommendation was
that

means should be taken to obtain the removal of foreign laws and regulations
which exclude the British shipowners from the trades appropriated by various
foreign Powers to their own shipping as ' coasting trade,' and that, if need be,
regulations for the admission of foreign vessels to the British and colonial trade
of this Empire should be used with the object of securing reciprocal advantages
for British shipowners abroad.

The reservation by foreign nations of their coasting trades to
their own ships is practically a form of subsidy, and that is a measure
of Protection. But for our part we have to consider that the mari-
time industry is absolutely our most important industry, because
upon it depends not only the prestige but even the very existence
of the Empire. It is quite certain that but for our resources in mercan-
tile marine we could not have retained our position in South Africa.
It was our power on the sea that prevented us from being swept into
it. This, therefore, is a matter which we must regard from a broader
point of view than that of the schools. We cannot submit to suffer
any loss in shipping because the Cobdenites, for example, should
say it would violate our economic policy if we resist.

The position, as stated by the Cecil Committee, is this : While
the British coasting trade is absolutely open to them as to the vessels
of all nations, the United States reserve, as a coasting voyage restricted
to vessels of their own flag, the voyage from New York to San Fran-
cisco, and the voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu. France reserves
the trade between French ports and Algeria ; and Russia reserves
to its own flag the trade between the Baltic and the Black Sea, and
between all Russian ports in Europe and Eastern Asia.

These restrictions undoubtedly affect British trade to a considerable
extent, even if they have kept American, French, and Russian vessels
from competing with us in international trade. There is no more

1904 EEVIVAL OF NAVIGATION LAWS 431

reason why American vessels should be allowed to trade when they
please between Liverpool and Melbourne, or between London and
Calcutta, than that British vessels should be allowed to trade between
New York and San Francisco, or between San Francisco and Honolulu.
We have submitted to the injustice hitherto because there have been
too few American vessels in ocean trade to make it serious, but the
position is altered now by the expansion of American territory and
the development of American maritime commerce.

There is, however, no need for prohibition. At the last Con-
ference of Colonial Premiers in London the subject of Imperial
coasting trade was fully discussed, in the light of certain Treaties of
Commerce and Navigation submitted by the President of the Board
of Trade. And the Conference came to this resolution :

That it is desirable that the attention of the Governments of the Colonies
and the United Kingdom should be called to the present state of the navigation
laws in the Empire and in other countries, and to the advisability of refusing
the privileges of coastwise trade, including trade between the Mother Country
and its Colonies and Possessions, and between one Colony or Possession and
another, to countries in which the corresponding trade is confined to ships of
their own nationality, and also to the laws affecting shipping, with a view of
seeing whether any other steps should be taken to promote Imperial trade in
British vessels.

The recommendation of the Colonial Premiers was only for inquiry
and consideration of the matter, while that of the Select Committee
on Shipping Subsidies was that ' means should be taken ' to establish
reciprocity in coasting trade relations — not, of course, the entire
exclusion of foreign vessels from the Imperial or even the British
coasting trade, but equality of conditions. The coasting trade of
every nation which seeks to enter our coasting trade should be open
to our vessels, and all vessels entering into the carrying trade of the
British Empire should come under the regulations as to con-
struction, loading, equipment, and manning which British vessels
have to comply with.

As to this, the Report of the Select Committee is not very con-
clusive. It says :

The idea naturally occurs, what would be the effect of reserving to all British
ships the Imperial coasting trade within the British Empire ? Several witnesses
spoke in favour of it, one of the most emphatic being resident in Australia.
Some of these views were subject to the qualification that reciprocal advantages
should be given to those countries whose coastwise trade is open to British
shipping. One or two other witnesses were not prepared to express a definite
opinion, and looked upon reciprocity with suspicion. Another condemned the
reservation of the coasting trade on the ground of high policy.

The objection on the ground of high policy is based on the fear
of retaliation by the nations whose vessels we might exclude from
our coasting trade, or inter-imperial carrying trade. But these
nations could only retaliate by excluding our vessels from their own

432 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

coasting trade, and this they do already — America and Russia abso-
lutely, and France partially.

When giving evidence before the Cecil Committee, Sir Robert
Gifien urged the desirability of excluding foreign subsidised ships
from the coasting trade of the British Empire. Confronted by Colonel
Ropner with the statement that the tonnage of foreign vessels trading
between British ports is only 9 per cent., Sir Robert was questioned,
and answered thus :

278. Then if we confined our coastwise trade to vessels under the British flag
only, all we could gain would probably be the 9 per cent, carried now in foreign
vessels, would it not ? (Ans.) My point in making the suggestion was not on a
question of gain to ourselves, it was more a question of making it difficult for the
foreigner in that particular thing to come into competition with our ships ; but even
10 per cent., supposing we were to gain it all, would be a considerable addition
to the shipowners interested in these particular trades. . . . 282. It is generally
supposed by a section of shipowners that all we could gain by our proposed
coastwise legislation would be the 9 per cent, which is now carried in foreign
vessels, and that there is a great danger of foreign countries making reprisals,
that they might take much more from us than we could possibly gain by any
such legislation. What do you say as to that ? ( Ans.) There is always that danger
to be considered in any measure of that kind that we may adopt ; but if you find
that under the present system your shipping is exposed to very great dangers,
and that relatively it is not holding its own quite as it used to do, then you must
face difficulties and dangers on every side in order to maintain your own ship-
ping. 283. May I take it generally that you are of opinion that foreign nations
are already doing their very worst as far as our shipping is concerned, and that
we cannot lose anything by this proposed legislation of restricting the British
trade between British Colonies and the Mother Country to the British flag ?
(Ans.) I am quite sure, so far as the proposal I have made is concerned, that
foreign countries are already doing what I am suggesting we ought to do. They
have no cause of complaint whatever.

Sir Robert Gifien might here have been more emphatic. The
reservation would only be against those countries which adopt reserva-
tion, and which, therefore, have no reprisals to make. And there
is another highly important consideration in this connection. The
reservation of our coasting trade might have little appreciable effect
on our shipping to begin with, but it would have a very material
effect if it prevented the creation and multiplication of subsidised
merchant navies. If America knew that we were resolved to revive
a portion of the old Navigation Laws if we are shut out of her coasting
and colonial trade, she would certainly not vote State money for the
building and sailing of ocean steamers.

Has, then, the time not come when the British nation must make
up its mind with regard to its greatest industry ? Are we, or are we
not, to leave that industry open to the fleets of all nations, while any
of them debar our vessels from any part of their domestic or colonial
trades ? Are we to be content to allow other nations to cut into our
colonial carrying trade to what extent they like, while they deprive
us of trade we have won by long endeavour ?

BENJAMIN TAYLOR.

1904

THE AMERICAN WOMAN

AN ANAL YSfS

IN the course of an article contributed to this Review l some months
ago, and dealing with the influences and effects of commercialism, I
had occasion to comment upon the remarkable development taken
by the American woman, which seemed to me to be extremely signifi-
cant. My remarks, however, have been so universally misunderstood
in the United States, and in some cases so oddly wrested from their
simple meaning, that I have thought it desirable to explain more fully
the position I intended to take up. This has involved a more intricate
and intimate treatment of the subject than was possible in my former
article.

Controversies have battled about the position and status of woman,
probably ever since the sexes were conscious of each other. That
war of the sexes which the conditions of their severance involve has
been responsible for the readjustment of their relations from time to
time. But the whole tendency of life and experience has been to
emphasise the position and claims of man. The old fable which
relates how woman was stolen from the ribs of man may be taken to
convey the traditional inferiority of woman, a theory which had its
origin in epochs beyond historical reach. It is quite true that among
certain races the matriarchal principle of society holds, and seemingly
holds successfully ; but the matriarchal system has undoubtedly arisen
by the way, through the operation of local forces, needs, or superstitions,
and by the direct abdication of man from his original rule and domina-
tion. That rule followed naturally and inevitably from his physical
superiority. The foundations of feminine nature are as simple and
as easily traced as those of the male nature. They take their rise in
physical facts, and are responsible for all the moral and mental pro-
perties appertaining to the sex. Both sexes are united by obedience,
or subjection, to two ultimate laws, the law of self -protection and the
law of reproduction ; but in their obedience, or subservience even, to
these primal instincts they manifest the differences that separate
them. The divergence of the woman in physical structure from the

1 Nineteenth Century and After, November 1903.

433

434 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

man implies, as cannot be too loudly reiterated, a mental and moral
divergence. The supposed mysteries surrounding her sex are seen
to be not mysteries but logical results in the light of those basal demar-
cations, and when man shrinks in wonder from the complexity of his
partner, it is only because he has not the key to see how simple and
inevitable is her nature. Woman is unintelligible only because she
is not ' undeveloped man but diverse.' With the understanding of
her physical differentiation man may proceed comfortably to explore
her secrets.

This article does not propose to enter into an elaborate disquisition
on the nature of woman, but merely after indicating the sexual dis-
tinctions to examine their application to the civilisation of the United
States. The broad characteristic of the female sex is the inferiority
of physique which it necessarily derives from its enforced functions.
This inferiority is partly muscular, but mainly nervous. The muscular
deficiency entails exemption from the more onerous forms of bodily
labour. From primitive savagery to the civilisation of the West this
exemption has prevailed, for though the savage keeps his wives at
manual labour in the fields he reserves for himself the violent hazards
of war and the chase. As civilisation mounted, it is obvious that this
exemption increased, until it has now reached under certain conditions
its climax of absolute relief for the woman. The nervous constitu-
tion of woman is responsible for the larger part of her character.
Her functions create an emotionalism which is intermittent, violent,
irrational, and often unselfish. But this, so to speak, is mere staccato
in her ; it is not her normal mood, which goes to an ordinary andante.
By the laws of her descent and heritage she must preen herself and
decorate for her master ; hence she has gathered an inordinate vanity,
or at least the capacity for it. She loves jewels and colours, and she
delights in such gifts as the man who has chosen her may offer at her
altar. By these is she not discovered to her rivals as the chosen
woman ? Vanity baffled and vanity triumphant are jointly responsible
for most of her acts and sentiments. Jealousy to her is less what a man
understands by jealousy than that same baffled vanity. In conse-
quence of this dual control, wherein she swings, she has developed a
defective taste. That is to say, her taste has been perverted by her
appreciation of the gifts of man as tributes to her beauty. A man
will take a thing to eat or wear or use somehow, because, whether it
be bad or good, he likes it. A woman's possessions are rather the
fruit of her vanity than her taste. She acquires things not because
she likes them or needs them, but because they represent self-esteem,
gratification, the humiliation of rivals. When you have learned how
greatly woman hinges on her vanity, you have then to reckon with
that emotionalism of which I have spoken. It is, at its extremes,
sudden, abrupt, precipitous, and blind. Consequently it may commit
woman to the most heroic of sacrifices ; and it may also plunge her in

1904 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 435

shame. She may fight for her own hand or for another's with equal
madness and lack of scruple. Thus in that wavering and changeable
sea of dimples may arise in a moment devastating storms. Woman's
passion is ever a bolt from the blue.

This constitution, which here has of necessity been but lightly
sketched, is fundamental. The savage woman conforms to it only in
a less degree than her civilised sister. Civilisation has added the
elegances, the disguises, the trappings. With civilisation have come a
higher specialisation and a more lively sense of decoration. The
centuries of evolution have poured a wealth of detail on the original
facts. Woman now is infinitely more complex than she was in the
camps of the barbarians, but it is only in her secondary and tertiary
characteristics. The primary characters remain unchanged ; and it is
only necessary to follow the workings of those a little way to appreciate
all the derivatives. Civilisation has achieved a very elaborate woman,
but the elaboration is unimportant from the point of view of science.
It is decorative ; the structure endures ; the heart of modern woman
is the heart of her savage ancestress dressed and adorned and furnished.

This permanence of muliebrity serves to indicate the requirements
of natural law. Woman may not depart from it to any considerable
extent without impairing her position and nullifying her functions.
There may be, and are, variations from it ; there may be no violation
of it. We must walk in mute correspondence with Nature, if we are
to succeed in life, whether individual or national. And it seems to
me that it is precisely here that the danger to American civilisation
arises. I have endeavoured to indicate the main features of
woman's nature, which I prefer to sum up in the word ' muliebrity.'
This muliebrity, with its decorative modifications, is essential to the
wellbeing of mankind. The American woman is lapsing from it.
There is the sequence of my argument. The conclusion may be easily
drawn, and constitutes the peril of national life in America. I am not
saying that the danger does not exist to some extent in other countries
— in Great Britain, for example — but it is most conspicuous in the
United States, where, therefore, it invites study.

Upon the threshold one is met with the blunt statement that
there is no such creature as the American woman. This has been
the way in which many of the critics of my former paper met my
argument. But is this so ? The United States were originally
settled by three separate races, Anglo-Saxon, French, and Dutch.
Of these the Anglo-Saxons predominated in numbers and influence,
and to-day the English stock is uppermost. Immigration, however,
has materially altered the balance of population. The Anglo-Saxon
element has dwindled, its congener, the German, has remained station-
ary, while the so-called Latin element (which is represented mainly
by Italians) has largely increased. We are dealing, however, not
with the prospects of nationality lying before America a generation

436 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

hence, but rather with the American of to-day, who is the product
of forces in operation during the last fifty years. The diversity of
races is one of the singular features in the United States, but a no
less singular feature is the remarkable genius for assimilating that
diversity. The poor exile of Erin, the Teuton from Westphalia or
Frankfort, the native of Christiania, and the rude peasant from the
Apennine provinces, all pass into the huge maw of America, and are
digested. Their children, retaining maybe the tie of language, are
born Americans. This is notorious. All facts quoted by American
writers themselves go to prove that the migrating races converge,
comparatively rapidly, on a uniformity, which marks a national
character. America is a wonderful unifying machine. Under differ-
ences of creed and custom, and even of tongue and race, there is
achieved a common national platform with characteristic and abiding
qualities. This is manifestly due to the climatic and social conditions
of the great Republic, but to what extent each of these factors is
responsible it is impossible to say. Nevertheless, the influence of one
or the other or both is so marked that already a certain physical type
is being developed in both sexes, and we might claim with some
justice not only that the American woman exists, but that she has also
a characteristic physiognomy.

If we may then assume, as I think cannot be denied, that the
potent conditions of the United States have already moulded American
types, and that the American woman is almost as national in her
individuality as, say, the German woman or Englishwoman, we may
be permitted to attempt to define her with some care.

She is of necessity the creature of her environment, which has
modified the characters of blood and strain most materially. As close
an observer as Dr. Emil Reich declares that the affinities of the Ameri-
can with his English cousin are far fewer than with any other European.
This is, like many of Dr. Reich's statements, exaggerated, for the
pleasant paradox is ever waving a tempting finger to him. But the
statement has a sufficient basis of truth. The American has diverged,
even in the brief space of time during which he has occupied the
continent, very far from the stock of which he came. In physique
he is altered ; in habit of mind, in his outlook, in his temperament, he
has suffered a radical change. The American woman is marked by a
greater susceptibility of nerves than her English sister, a departure
which we must refer very largely to the climatic conditions, though
these are not the sole factors in that evolution, as will presently
appear. The well-known American restlessness of mind and body
flows directly from that imperfect equilibrium of the nerves, and that
characteristic again gives rise to many secondary properties which
help to compose the full nature of the American woman. For the
change in the nervous balance is probably the key to that nature.
Nor does it, as I have said, arise wholly from geographical conditions.

1904 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 437

The social conditions have had an important effect upon woman in
America. The United States cover a large tract of country, thinly
peopled, and slowly reclaimable for the use and benefit of man. The
country, being new, and thus deliberately brought under the plough,
has had to feel its way. Traditions and canons imported overseas
from England, Holland, France, warred in the new theatre. And
there were many traditions which, if I may use an Irishism, had to be
made. The people of the United States have had to build up a civilisa-
tion of their own, suitable to the needs of their own country. They
have had to make their conventions as they went along. A thousand
years have not given their authority to manners and morals across
the Atlantic. To break through traditions in the Old World is a long,
black business ; it is but the affair of a few minutes in America. There
is no general body of conventional opinions current in the United
States, and thrust upon women for their acceptance. Outside the
preservation of certain moral scruples the sex is free, and rejoices in
its freedom. The result of this is that the enlarged liberty of the sex
still further enlarges the opportunities of neurosis. It is an inter-
esting question as to whether a body of conventions will eventually
be fastened upon American women, and, if so, whether they will
accept them with that conservatism which characterises the sex in
every other country. Women have always been the drag on evolution
in every age and clime ; and American women, who are to-day avowedly
in the front of ' progress ' (which is by no means identical with evolu-
tion), may subsequently find themselves the victims of their own
conventions. The development of the American woman is so un-
trammelled to-day that it is not possible to guess at what the future has
in store for her. She is a most interesting and astonishing experiment.
I have touched upon some of the factors which have moulded the
character of the American woman. But, of course, the list is not
complete. The open turmoil of commercial life in the United States
must affect the conditions under which families exist, and thrive or
starve. This great malstrom is obviously another factor. To that
must be added the rapid accumulations of wealth in the hands of new-
comers. The freedom of conditions renders possible the eruption of
fortunes on a scale that has no parallel in Europe ; and in a country
where the poor man is a millionaire to-morrow, and the millionaire a
pauper the next day, it is impossible that the same nervous balance
can be maintained as exists in the more temperate and more equable
sphere of the Old World. The tendency towards that unstable
equilibrium, which is evidenced in the success of every form of quackery
in the United States, is enhanced by the isolation of the country.
The estranging Atlantic removes the New World from the coterie of
the Old ; and this banishment has mainly contributed to American
self-consciousness, to what directly issues from that — American swagger.
The American is * on his own,' and regards Europe from afar with
VOL. LVI— No. 331 G G

488 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

jealous eyes. He belongs to another school. In completing my list
of factors in the divergence I will content myself with two others —
the one, the attitude of the American man to the American woman, on
which I animadverted in my former article ; the other, the system of
education under which American women are brought up. That
education emphasises the forces in favour of freedom, and an American
college girl is probably the most independent and confident creature on
earth.

These considerations should enable us to get a glimpse of the
American woman in her essence, with her defects and her virtues, and
to understand how she is compiled. She emerges to the sight a creature
of over-sensible nerves, who by her immense liberties has become
assertive and dominant, and has broken definitely from the tradi-
tional trammels of her sex. You have only to follow this character
into one department of life or another to see how it would work out
in the circumstances. Its set is towards strenuousness in business
or in pleasure, in religion or in dissipation. It does not recognise a
mean ; it offends daily against the old Greek artistic canon, fjurjSsv
ajav. It adopts new religions and new fashions ; there is nothing
so extravagant but will make an appeal to it. The mondaine of New
York and Newport will run after new dukes and buy new jewels. The
sober wife of the sober New England farmer will sit under new pastors
and buy new drugs. This is the country of Brigham Young, of Dowie,
of the prophet Harris, of Shakers, of Christian scientists, of the Aga-
pemone. Americans may be disposed to take these fads and impostors
as mere signs of vivacious blood, working to eccentricity, as showing
that their nation is ' live.' They show nothing of the sort ; they are
rather the pimples that speak to an ill condition of blood. It is that
want of nervous balance of which I have spoken — the saner nervous
balance of the Old World.

And in her outlook on pleasure, as in her face towards the more
serious elements of life, the American woman still betrays that weak-
ness of her nature. She has perfected the cult of pleasure as no living
being in all the history of the world. A certain common bond unites
the drab woman on her farm and the belle of Fifth Avenue. The one
has little part or lot in the distractions of life, the other is swallowed
up by them ; but in the bosom of each, as Stevenson has finely said in
another connection, the same hands pluck and pull them. The one
in her vanities, the other in her duties — both move to the nervous
strings of the racial spirit. It has been objected that criticism which
is aimed at the voluptuary woman in America can only be fairly
directed against a single class, and that a small class. This is a
mistake ; for it is the spirit abroad among American women which
the critic calls in question, and that spirit is visible in all classes of
real Americanised women, whether in the daughter of the millionaire
or in the factory hand. It is the spirit of independence, which finds

1904 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 439

its logical issue in cold selfishness. The factory girls refuse to be
married and take up the burdens of maternity ; they put their savings
upon their backs and ' have a good time.' The careful researches
of Mrs. and Miss Van Vorst have demonstrated this fact beyond
question. That rupture with the ancient and traditional sphere of
woman is to be observed in all American classes. Woman has arisen,
insurgent, and denies her proper sphere. Her constitutional rest-
lessness has driven her to abdicate those functions which alone excuse,
or explain, her existence. In this year of grace 1904, at a Woman's
Congress in Berlin, the world has been informed by an American
woman that ' the female element is the central and older element,
the male, the later and younger,' and that ' with the beginning of the
woman's movement an era will be inaugurated which will bring about
the end of male rule.' It is satisfactory to learn, also, that Mrs.
Perkins, the lady in question, stated that it was not the intention of
women, when they came to their own, to act towards the male sex as
do the bees towards their unhappy drones ! These are but extra-
vagances symptomatic of the general disease. The nervous equili-
brium is gone, and woman has fallen from her throne. It may seem
odd to make such a statement when the American woman is enthroned
at the moment higher than her more dependent sisters of Occidental
Europe. But the world is divided into three parts — the East, the
West, and America ; and the riddle of the last is more difficult than
that of the other two. Enthronisation is the reward of that race of
women who fulfil the requirements of nature. Do American women ?
The typical American woman is proverbially careless of the male
of her race. We can see it in the pronouncements of Mrs. Perkins,
as we may see it in the informing work published by Mrs. and Miss
Van Vorst. We Europeans see it every day in the case of our American
visitors. The American woman is set on getting the best she can for
her money, or her father's money, or it may be her husband's. She
rides over man rough-shod. ' I guess you're an Englishman. I
don't like Englishmen,' said a young American beauty to Sir Philip
Burne-Jones in some such words. ' We Americans are accustomed
to have the men at our feet,' said an American lady to me. ' We
wouldn't take up the position your women do for anything.' It is
the era of the woman's revenge, and apparently she is getting it. But
in the result it is achieved by a demoralisation of sex, even by a de-
bauch of sex. Muliebrity has been carried to its full limits in Europe ;
in America it has already begun to decline. The American woman,
desiccated as she tends to become by her circumstances, retains the
outward signs and rites of muliebrity, more particularly as I shall have
to specify later. The fulness and richness of blood she should possess
are dwindled. She has the shadows of those feminine qualities which
we have seen pass through woman universally, and lacks the sub-
stance from which they are derived. She clothes herself in gay

o o 2

440 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

raiment, and her bill for jewellery is long. She is a handsome clothes-
horse. But we can see this secondary product of Nature, this by-
product, as it were, emerging in that view we spoke of, brilliant in
her attainments, bright in her beauty, but wanting that affinity with
the elemental, with the animal, which alone can maintain a race
healthy. President Roosevelt has drawn attention to the falling
birth-rate in a country which is not over-populated, as is the case
with older lands like Great Britain or France. The doctrine of the
superiority of women, or its analogue, the dominance of woman (it
matters not which), has resulted in a breach of the laws of maternity.
Evasion of child-birth follows, and will follow the passage of woman's
rights and the higher feminism. Events and facts have proved
this beyond dispute. And even on the threshold of this great and
delicate question is one stayed by the consciousness that the American
woman has aimed the first great blow at the reign of Love. We know
not what lies on the knees of the gods, nor is it possible to map the
course of future events. It may be that the last state of this man
shall be better than the first. But, so far as the eye of man can carry
now, American civilisation, by the overthrow of Love and its potency,
will have inaugurated a new era fraught with portentous issues.
American woman stands self-confessed as cold of heart and cool of
head. ' They never lose their heads and rarely their hearts,' says
Mrs. George Cornwallis-West, who has the best opportunity of knowing.
If that be so, then American civilisation is on the eve of a momentous
change, a change which is infinitely more important than that revolu-
tion which founded the Great Republic in the eighteenth century.

Let me explain more clearly, for a good deal hinges on this. The
new era, if it be fulfilled in all its promise, will mark the third of three
great epochs. In the first the relations of the sexes were regulated
by force rather than choice. The primitive woman stands by while
her lovers fight each other, and goes off peacefully with the victor.
Nay, there is even stronger evidence of the absence of all sentiment
from those savage minds, whose alliances, indeed, are comparable for
the most part only with the mating of animals, to which they are
cognate. For it is well known that in many tribes the widow becomes
the complacent bride of the man who has killed her husband. This
constitutes the era of force, of mere animal feeling, for in that stage
man is but imperfectly removed from the brute creation. But among
the noblest achievements of evolution has been the investment of this
animal passion with sentiment, which marks the second era of the
marital condition. In that era both sexes are more affected by a tie
of sentiment which is imposed upon the merely physical. Love is
an edifice of sentiment upon a foundation of desire ; but among the
animals and in the lowest era nothing more than the foundations are
visible — the building is not begun. At the same time it is well to
recognise the fact that the foundations are essential, and that no

1904 THE AMERICAN WOMAN 441

building can exist without them. The fear is lest the attenuation of
feeling, as evidenced among American women, may not be sapping
the necessary foundations. Coldness of heart is not a virtue, but a
defect. The whole building will topple over if the foundations be
insecure or faulty. Having emerged from mere barbarism into an
age of sentiment, are we to complete the cycle by passing into a stage
where considerations of personal ambition, or vanity, or greed, or
something material, rule the sexual relations ? We are, it would
appear, on the threshold of the third era, in which love is to be abolished,
or rather to be faded into a sentiment so thin that it would not be
recognisable of our sturdy fathers. That stage of the cycle surely
must spell decline, diminution . . . death.

But it has yet to be proved that this stage is necessary. Person-
ally I believe it is not, and that the conditions of life which are pro-
ducing it in the United States, and to a lesser degree in England, are
merely accidental — curves in a greater curve, variations by the way,
which do not affect the ultimate goal of evolution. The conditions of
our existence on this globe compel us to keep close to certain first
principles or perish. Nature must always reign, despite the cynics.
You may expel her, as Juvenal says, with a pitchfork, and she comes
back. The conservation of the family is necessary, or the race dies
out ; the earth becomes extinct as a place of human habitation, given
over to the reign of wild life that has not learned to commit suicide
by refinement. The fundamental laws by reason of which we exist
and have climbed to our comparatively high place in the scheme of
evolution, by reason of which we are enthroned among living things,
involve the ascendency of man and the maternity of woman. These
two principles are being seriously undermined in the United States
to-day. I may be met with the retort that the rule of woman which
is engrossing the land is quite compatible with those essential con-
ditions of life to which I have referred, since in healthy primitive
tribes matriarchy exists and nourishes. To this one must reply that
a matriarchal system is perfectly intelligible, given certain develop-
ments, but that matriarchal rule is only possible in a race where
fecundity is recognised as desirable. It is because of fecundity that
matriarchy exists. Whereas in America the power of the woman is
increasing in proportion to her denial and refusal of the obligations
•of her sex.

The gradual desiccation of her nature must eventually leave its
•outward impress on the American woman, because of the great law of
correlated variation. But so far the visible signs and tokens of the
change are few ; her physical excellences are marked, and in some
ways superior to those of her European sisters. The conditions I
have been considering have evolved, along with the defects of blood,
a singular grace of flesh and charm of style. The flower is fragile,
but it is exquisite. Under the influences of that electric climate, and

442 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

in those free circumstances, the American woman has attained an
etherealisation of structure and a bodily symmetry which are almost
unrivalled, and which compare in many cases most favourably with
robuster types. The Venus of Milo is rare in America, which has
evolved an individual and distinctive Venus of its own. Beauty is
not one, but many and diverse. But it is hardly so much her superi-
ority of physical charm that has attracted so many Europeans to the
American woman, as her nimble intellectual equipment and her
enlarged sense of companionship. She is above all adaptable, and
fits into her place deftly, gracefully, and with no diffidence. She
knows not shamefacedness ; she has regal claims, and believes in her-
self and her destiny. If her fidelity is derived from the coldness of
her nature, she owes her advancement largely to her zest for living,
Her range is wide — wider than that of her sisters in the Old World ;
but her sympathies are not so deep. She is flawless superficially, and
catches the wandering eye, as a butterfly, a bright patch of colour,
something assertive and arresting in the sunshine. Her curiosity is
insatiable, and her interest in life is that of a gourmet in his food.
She has an inordinate capacity for enjoyment, and does not excuse
it. The puritanism of that part of her ancestry which is New England
has long since passed out of the ascetic phase ; she reconciles to hei
conscience large latitudes of self-indulgence. The consequence is that
she is in effect a fascinating figure on the horizon of the twentieth
century. But one wonders what is behind that figure, and what it
portends. Is it really the beginning of a new era, not only for woman,
but for man ?

The solution of the problem is in the hands of Time. The currents-
of evolution sweep on, but flow where they list. To solve the riddle
would be to approach immortal knowledge, to understand those
things-in-themselves of which Plato wrote, to attain to a comprehen-
sion of the Absolute. Macaulay, in one of his most celebrated essays,
has remarked wisely that the cure fci the excesses of liberty is con-
tinued liberty. This may be applicable to the American woman.
Her unbounded licence, which is in part the cause of her excesses,
may find its own remedy. She may set up in time those conventions
which are necessary to a proper pursuit of life, and if so, the conven-
tions will be all the better for being evolved from modern conditions.
Most of the European conventions are stale, out of date, and hampering.
Still, that does not touch the deeper and bigger question of her depar-
ture from primitive laws. But that, too, may be soluble in the course
of time. Meanwhile these notes merely record the impressions of one
whose interest has been engaged by perhaps the most striking develop-
ment of modern society. They do not presume to offer a solution.

H. B. MARRIOTT-WATSON.

1904

MY FRIEND THE FELLAH

SINCE the days when the Pharaohs wrote their tragedies across the
face of the world, the patient, unsophisticated fellah has tilled the
soil of the green Egyptian Fan, forgivingly forgetful of the hardships
of his lot in his glow of thankfulness to Providence for the blessings
of the Nile and the North Wind. The poor peasant is indeed beholden
to all-begetting Father Nile, the creator and perpetuator of Egypt,
who saps and forces his sinuous way to the delta by mountain, papyrus
marshes (sudd), and desert, through regions of unsurpassable wild-
ness and barren desolation.

It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream.

Likewise is he grateful to the North Wind, whose breath makes
navigation possible against the prevailing southward currents of the
noble river, and renders summer field labour tolerable by tempering
the ardour of the scorching sun.

The higher Nilus swells,

The more it promises : as it ebbs the seedsman
Upon the slime and ooze scatters his gram,
And shortly comes to harvest.

Day by day and year by year this seedsman, as Shakespeare makes
Antony name him, with his body in the sun and his feet either in the
water or upon the wide-spread carpet of fertilising Nile mud — the
slime and ooze — has worked under a varying series of hard task-
masters. From time immemorial he has bowed his head, without
fear and without hope, to rulers of a different race from his own, and
never, until the last twenty years, has my friend the fellah lived under
a government anxious to promote his interests, to maintain his rights,
to protect him from injustice, and to make the wealth of the soil
fully accessible to him. So conservative is he that he has ploughed
and reaped for centuries with practically the same pattern of primi-
tive implements as were used by his forebears when the Armed Shep-
herd King, the then ruling Pharaoh,1 set Joseph over all the land of

1 Pharaoh signifies literally ' great house ' or ' palace,' and the vogue of calling a
line of rulers after their dwelling-place still lingers in the twentieth century, the

443

444 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

Egypt. Since the Pharaonic epoch the fellah has altered little ; as
he was in his adversity, so is he in the time of prosperity — patient,
law-abiding, fairly industrious, good-humoured, and healthy ; sus-
picious of the motives of those in authority over him ; always prone to
lengthy gossip ; excitable at times and quarrelsome, but in general
his disputes are very short-lived and rarely end in blows, though
accompanied while they last by violently threatening gesticulations.
To no other peasantry can the saying ' His bark is worse than his
bite ' be so aptly applied as to the Egyptian fellah. He has a quite
extraordinary disregard for time ; and if he is called on to take a railway
journey he makes no inquiries as to hours of departure, but goes to
the station, squats down, and waits for the train, showing no concern,
however protracted the delay. For he has a saying that ' Precipita-
tion is from Satan, but patience is the key of contentment.' His
unwavering constancy to old habits, ideas, and traditions is at the
root of his lack of initiative ; the spirit of progress is not in him, and
his race will probably never develop any theory or conceit. Yet he
is by no means devoid of the sense persistently and perversely qualified
as * common,' and the fellah's communings with nature make him
chary of putting great faith in modern catchwords. For example,
he cannot believe that ' Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ' contains a
practical philosophy when he sees that nature's paramount law is
subordination, and that the great Mother has made nothing equal.
Born, perchance, of this daily intercourse with nature is his freedom
from unbelief, for those intimately acquainted with her marvellous
ways have no place in their souls for the canker-worm bred of incre-
dulity and scepticism. No tiller of the soil can doubt the truth of the
Resurrection, * for that which thou sowest is not quickened except
it die.' Perhaps, also, his familiarity with the miracles of creation
tends to account for the fellah's total lack of astonishment at man's
achievements ; and doubtless some hereditary memories of similar
wonders accomplished aforetime further help to explain the sober,
matter-of-fact way in which he views the completion of those marvel-
lous engineering feats, the Maritime Canal and the Nile Reservoir.
He wonders not at the Suez Canal, for he credits Sesostris, famous
in legend, with having originated the idea of joining the two inland
seas (which were then both known as ' the Very Green,' and not as the
' Blue Midland ' and the ' Red ' Seas) ; and did not Necho, the lame
Pharaoh mentioned in the Bible, complete his sweet- water canal, in
spite of the Egyptian oracle's prediction that to connect the Nile
and the Red Sea would but benefit strangers ?

Nor does the fellah marvel at the Assouan and Assiout Dams,
for the natural depression to the south-west of the Fayoum was
utilised nearly forty centuries ago for water-storage. The inter-
Sultans of Turkey, the Suzerains of Egypt, being known as ' the Porte,' or ' gate of
the palace.'

1904 MY FEIEND THE FELLAH 445

pretation of Pharaoh's dreams by Joseph,2 who in the years of plenty
' gathered corn as the sand of the sea ' as provision against the years
of famine, is susceptible of the curious explanation that Joseph thus
foretold the necessity of laying up food in the cities as he intended
during seven years to reduce the water supply, and consequently
stint the crops, by tapping the Nile to fill the vast Fayoum Reservoir.
This explanation may be but an Oriental myth, yet it is significant
that, according to the Koran, Joseph predicted, after the seven years'
famine, * a year wherein men shall have plenty of water ; ' and to
this day the canal connecting the Nile with the Fayoum depression,
which for years did serve as Egypt's great storage basin, is called
Joseph's River.

I have known the fellah since 1874, and when describing in 1901
what British administration had done for Egypt I wrote : * Regu-
larity, rectitude, and reform have superseded the corvee, the courbash,
and the corruption of Ismail's reign, and the rebellion, rapacity, and
ruin of the time of Arabi.' It is not my present purpose to dwell
on his past troubles : I aim rather at painting a word-picture of the
more prosperous Egyptian peasant of to-day. It is sufficient for us
to bear in mind that he is now no longer pounced upon in season and
out of season by foreign money-lenders — the Koran forbids Moslems
to practise usury — and by Government tax-gatherers, nor suddenly
seized for military slavery in the Soudan, nor summoned to bear
the grievous burden of forced labour ; that justice is now brought
within his reach, that he to-day gets his fair share of water, and that,
the fury of high Niles being under control, the former devastating
inundations and terrible famines are but phantoms of a cruel past.

To-day the large proportion of the fellaheen are small proprietors,
working, maybe, some twenty days each month for neighbouring
farmers, or employed as overseers by large landowners, but living, in
part at least, on the produce of their own plots or fields. Few in this
restless twentieth century are likely to envy the peasant his hum-
drum life, and to see the barometer always at ' fair ' would deprive
them of their privilege and resource of grumbling at the weather ;
yet my friend the fellah has this great advantage over the go-ahead,
feverish moilers and toilers of modern cities — he is happy, peaceful,
and contented. If his means are scant, his wants are few. Sunshine
and fresh air, enough to eat, and no hard winters to dread — with
these things he is satisfied. His humble home is but a hovel built of
unbaked bricks such as Pharaoh's taskmasters commanded the
Israelites to make without straw. The sun-dried bricks are cemented
together with mud, and the rude walls commonly plastered over with

2 Joseph, called in his youth the Dreamer, was known in Egypt as Psothom
Phanech, the Eevealer of Secrets, and was the first person to whom the title Nazer
was applied. He was then ' separate from his brethren,' and the word has ever since
denoted a particular sort of separation and devotedness to God.

446 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

the unsightly, and at times unsavoury, flat round cakes of poor
man's fuel — cattle-dung kneaded with chopped straw. A shape-
less collection of these windowless, dirty-brown, flat-roofed cabins
forms a village, which, in order to be a few feet above the irrigated
fields, is built upon an eminence, generally an ancient rubbish-heap.
Near the village is usually to be found a palm grove, or at least a group
of these graceful feathery-headed princes of the vegetable kingdom,
by which, indeed, the peasant sets great store, for on the fruit of the
date-palm he lives for many months in each year — the kernels are
ground for his camel, the timber serves in the construction of his
home, the soft bark is converted into ropes and rigging for his boat,
and the leaves into baskets and fans.

When the labours of the day are over, my friend the fellah plods
his homeward way, skirting water-channels on which the lotus rests
lazily, or toiling through irrigated fields and standing crops of yellow-
flowering cotton, of maize with its feathery bloom, or of barley,
wheat, clover, or beans, according to the season and rotation of crops.
And the village, this cluster of mud-brick hovels, assumes, in the
soft light of eventide, an enchanted aesthetic aspect, making, with its
background of palms or tamarisks, the white dome or graceful tapering
minaret of its mosque, and its solid-looking pigeon towers (often
quaintly constructed of oval earthen pots), a calmly restful picture.
Gradually its outlines will grow more distinct ; swallows will wheel
around the returning labourer, and perchance a kingfisher flop, or
a rat dart, into the stream ; strings of uncouth yet stately camels or
quick-stepping diminutive donkeys will be met, and the tall lateen
sails of Nile boats will be seen, to all appearance, uncannily gliding
through the standing crops ; while to the tired pedestrian even the
harsh creaking of the old-time native waterwheels will sound not
unmusical, and maybe he will hear the welcome tones of the blind
muezzin's vesper call to prayer. Still nearer home he may cross the
path of simply but picturesquely clothed girls, with huge earthen
jars poised gracefully on their heads, wending their way to fetch
water, as did ' Rebekah with her pitcher upon her shoulder.' Nude
toddling babies and scantily clothed children, one or two perhaps
leading or mounted on amphibious antediluvian-looking buffaloes,
will contest his passage, as will scavenging dogs, the models of all
that is despicable and detestable to the Arab mind, lean stray fowls,
and browsing goats with frisking kids. If he meets a local bey or
the village mayor, he gracefully salutes by reaching his hand to the
ground and then touching forehead, lips, and breast, signifying by
these gestures his humility, single-mindedness, truth, and loyalty.
When he at last reaches his small door, over which is set a china tile
or some other object conferring immunity from the evil eye,^he will
stoop low to enter the principal living-room, where so much space is
sacrificed to his wife's gaudily painted wooden chest and to the flat-

1904 M7 FRIEND THE FELLAH 447

topped brick stove which serves as an oven by day and a bedplace
by night. As often as not he will partake of his simple evening meal
squatting in the open. With his fingers he breaks his coarse round
flat cakes of bread, and dips each morsel into a sauce piquante
called dukkah, composed of salt, pepper, mint, or cummin seed,
coriander seed, sesame, and chick peas. His favourite beans, which
have been slowly boiled for hours, he eats with linseed oil or butter,
and he but seldom indulges in animal food. Dates or water-melons
serve as dessert, and draughts of Nile water, kept cool in the greyish-
looking porous native water-bottles, are his wholesome beverage.
Though as a rule the fellah retires early to rest, he does not disdain
amusement, but delights in any simple entertainment — which, what-
ever its nature, he calls a ' fantasia ' — and enjoys weird music played
on rudely constructed drums and tambourines, hautboys, viols, lutes,
mandolines, and dulcimers. Sandys, the traveller, wrote in 1615 :
' Then put they on him a white turbant ; and so returned with drums
and hoboys.' He also loves to listen to the lively and dramatic-
mannered professional reciter, who, on a raised seat in front of the
village coffee-shop, narrates from memory romances and love tales
not always fit for ears polite. Yet in the absence of these stray
excitements, or of the still rarer treat of singing or dancing girls, the
fellah is quite content to play draughts, backgammon, or kindred
games with pebbles or cowries, or to indulge in his love of talking.
And he talks well. Over five hundred years ago the Cairo naturalist,
Demiri, said with truth that ' wisdom hath alighted on three things —
the brain of the Franks, the hands of the Chinese, and the tongue of
the Arabs.' Europe has adopted many games from the East, and
even some of their names in a corrupted form. In chess, for instance,
' check mate ' is almost literally ' the shah, or sheikh, is dead (mat),1
and ' rook ' comes from rukn, the Arabic word signifying a corner, the
piece's correct position.

As in his food, so with his raiment he is quite simple. A pair of
drawers or a loin-cloth, a long wide-sleeved cotton gown or tunic
reaching from the neck to the ankle, and on his head a red cloth
tarboosh or brown felt cap, with underneath, for cleanliness, a white
cotton skull-cap. Round his tarboosh he wraps a long piece of cotton
or muslin and so forms a turban, which varies in colour from the
customary white to a deep black olive green, each colour having a
significance. Turbans are held in great respect, and gossips tell of a
holy and learned man who, when he fell from his camphor-white ass,
his turban rolling ignobly in the road, received no succour from the
bystanders, they being concerned but to rescue his sacred green
turban from the dust.

Though the schoolmaster is abroad, the faith of my friend the
fellah is as childlike as that of his remote ancestors, who regarded the
hawk as an emblem of divinity, the ibis as sacred because its food

448 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Sept.

consisted chiefly of small frogs, and it thus helped to ward off a re-
currence of the loathsome plague from which Egypt suffered when
* Aaron stretched forth his hand over the streams, over the rivers, and
over the ponds, and brought up frogs into the houses, the bedchambers,
the ovens, and the kneading-troughs ; ' who revered the civet cat
and mummified it after death, in that it destroyed the young of many
noxious reptiles and devoured crocodile's eggs ; and who worshipped
also the strong bull Apis (as the representative of the moon), the
patient ox, and the ram.

And this simple faith enters largely, in the form of superstition,
into his daily life. The mentally afflicted are greatly respected as
being under the special protection of Heaven, and one often sees harm-
less lunatics begging from village to village in almost a state of nudity,
the absence of garments being thought consistent with the sanctity
and purity of mind attributed to these unfortunates. For the physi-
cally sick a common remedy is to suspend round the neck a paper on
which is written a text from the Koran, it being the fellah's belief
that these saphies, or charms, possess efficacy for the body as well
as for the soul, and in consequence they are as highly esteemed by
the superstitious peasant as are the prayer-thongs or phylacteries by
so many Hebrews.

But if his faith and superstitions have remained the same, his
religion has radically changed, and the new creed is summed up by
his declaration, repeated very many times each day, ' There is no
God but the true God, and Mohammed is His Prophet.' Islam means
* submission to the service of God,' and its chief precepts are prayer,
almsgiving, fasting, and commemorative festivals (including the
pilgrimage to Mecca). And the fellah does submit to Allah, and
does carry out the four points relating to the practice of his religion.
Oh ! what a purified, pleasant place the world would be were profess-
ing Christians to follow the poor Moslem's example and act up to the
standard set before them ! His day of rest is El Gooma'a (Friday),
the sixth day, on which God * created man in His own image : ' the
first man was named Adam, which signifies * one that is red,' he
being formed out of red or virgin earth. On a Friday, also, Adam
died. The Egyptian day begins in the evening, sunset being twelve
o'clock ; and five times a day — at sunset, nightfall, daybreak, noon,
and three hours after noon — does my friend the fellah prostrate 3 him-
self and pray to ' Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, the Living,
the Steadfast ; He who slumbereth not nor sleeps.' He is taught that
' the key of Paradise,' as prayer is called, will not be efficacious if

8 The direction of prayer (Kibleh) is towards Mecca, and the principal postures
assumed are (1) standing with open hands raised, the thumbs touching the ears ;
(2) standing, the left hand folded within the right and the eyes downcast ; (3) stand-
ing, with inclined head and body, the hands open upon the knees; (4) kneeling, with
hands, still open, upon the ground, and forehead and nose touching the earth
(5) kneeling, but sitting upon the heels, with hands upon thighs.

1904 MY FRIEND THE FELLAH 449

used by a person in a state of uncleanness, so he never prays without
preparatory ablutions. And where he prays he ' puts off his shoes,'
as Moses was commanded to do when he talked with God. Alms-
giving in the form of tithe, which is the basis of the Moslem fiscal
system, is the second duty enjoined on the faithful by the ritual and
moral law ; and the third is fasting, ' the gate of religion,' scrupulously
observed during the thirty days of Ramadan, the month of Abstinence,
when genii are said to be confined, and in which Mohammed received
the first revelation of the Koran, ' that which ought to be read.'
From two hours before sunrise until the going down of the sun does
the fellah abstain from eating, drinking, and smoking ; and when this
ninth month falls in summer the fast is so severe that I have known
cases where it has indirectly proved fatal to men in failing health.

But the crowning duty of the Moslem's life is to obey the command
to perform the pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
If he is too poor to undertake the journey he is assisted by well-to-do
co-religionists who, prevented from going themselves, are enjoined
to help their poorer brethren so to do; for every Moslem to ensure
Paradise must perform the haj (pilgrimage) in person or by proxy.
With cheerful resignation does the fellah bear the hardships of the
distasteful journey and the exactions of crimps, sharpers, and Turkish
officials,' tenaciously bent on making the sevenfold circuit of the
Ka'abah, a sanctuary containing the Black Stone (which the pilgrim
kisses), reputed to have fallen from heaven in the days of Adam ;
on drinking the salt-bitter waters of the holy well Zem-Zem ; and
on making sacrifice in the valley of Moona at the foot of Mount Arafat.
If time and route permit he also visits the reputed tomb of Eve, just
outside the walls of Jeddah. Should he live through the cholera and
pestilence which so often break out in the annually congested pilgrim
area, he will return to his village home to be invested by his wonder-
ing neighbours with a transient halo of sanctity ; and, with a subdued
pride, he will show his relatives and friends his jealously closed tin
vessel of holy water, his tiny piece of the great Sanctuary's covering,
and, maybe, even a cake of the dust from Mohammed's tomb at
Medina. And over his humble door, in token of having performed
the holy journey, and as a charm to ensure long life, he will hang a
twig of the mitre-shaped aloe, which thus suspended without soil
and water will often live for years, and sometimes even blossom.

It may be his kismet, to reach home but to die, in which case he
will obey the call resignedly, firmly assured that having performed the
pilgrimage he will be rewarded in Paradise by a share of the houris,
by hearing the songs of the angel Israfil, and by beholding, morning
and evening, the face of Allah.

Of 'the two angels deputed to take account of a man's behaviour '
during life, Mohammedans have a tradition that good actions are
written down at once, ten times, but that the angel who records ill

450 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

actions is enjoined to ' forbear setting it down for seven hours ;
peradventure he may pray, or may ask pardon.'

In The Golden Legend Longfellow has beautifully rendered in verse
this comforting thought :

There are two angels, that attend unseen
Each one of us, and in great books record
Our good and evil deeds. He who writes down
The good ones, after every action closes
His volume and ascends with it to God.
The other keeps his dreadful day-book open
Till sunset, that we may repent ; which doing,
The record of the action fades away,
And leaves a line of white across the page.

Two flat perfectly blank stones, one surmounted by the carving
of a turban, will find place in an upright position at the head and the
foot of the poor pilgrim's grave, and they are intended to carry, inscribed
thereon, the messages of the Recording Angels. But should it be
written of my friend the fellah that Sleep's twin sister Death shall
* reap the bearded grain ' while he is yet journeying to or from his
pilgrimage, then, if proper grave linen be not forthcoming, the volu-
minous folds of his turban will serve as his winding sheet. Moham-
medans speak always of their dead as ' those on whom Allah has had
mercy,' and we may believe that He mil show compassion on our
friend the fellah on the Sixth Day, El Gooma'a, or ' the Assembly,'
the day prophesied for the Resurrection, ' when the trumpet shall be
sounded, and they whose balances shall be heavy with good works
shall be happy, but they whose balances shall be light are those who
shall lose their souls ' (Al Koran, chap, xxiii.).

WALTER F. MI£VILLE.

1904

COLLEY GIBBERS < APOLOGY*

THE man who wrote this book — this Apology for his Life, as he
called it — may be accounted, if not one of the great figures in the
history of our actors, at least one of the most conspicuous ; the most
lively, irrepressible, and good-humoured of those who as actor, author,
and manager have served the theatre. For over forty of the eighty-
six years of his life Colley Gibber was a busy actor ; for more than
twenty of these years a successful manager ; and during that time
the author of some thirty comedies, tragedies, farces, adaptations, and
pastoral interludes, all more or less successful ; he was, moreover, for
the last twenty-seven years of his life one of the worst of our many
indifferent Poets Laureate — a record which for activity, for quantity
if not quality of work, may stand alongside with those of Shake-
speare and Grarrick. Pert, foppish, vain, and affected, loving the
society of persons of quality, light in his morals, Colley Gibber was at
the same time an honest, hard-working actor, proud of his calling,
conscious of the abuses to which the theatre of his day was subject,
and doing his best, when occasion offered, to mend them ; a straight-
forward and fair-dealing manager, a shrewd and sensible man of the
world, a good-humoured but dangerous adversary, as Pope and
Fielding found to their cost ; above all, not a dull man, as Pope,
goaded to madness by the merited, if indecorous, retort that Gibber
made to the poet's insult, would have had posterity believe when he
deposed Theobald to make Gibber the hero of the Dunciad.

Of Gibber's dramatic works not one, if we except his adaptation
of Richard III,, now rarely played, holds the stage in the present
day. His comedies were written to please the taste of his time and
often to furnish himself with the kind of parts in which the public
delighted to see him : these were light, comic characters, chiefly of
the order of fops, ' coxcombs and men of fashion,' old and young.
In his playing of these parts, in dress, deportment, and manner, he
was a model to the beaux of his day. He would have loved to have
been accepted as a tragedian in spite of his weak voice and insig-
nificant appearance, but he was wise enough to recognise wherein his
real excellence lay, and when he did essay tragedy, to content him-
self with such characters as Kichard the Third and lago, in which

451

452 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

there was less call for harmony of voice and majesty of bearing than
in the Hamlets and Othellos. A further reason he gives us for his
choice of these parts — and his reasons in this instance smack some-
what of excuses — is that your villains are generally ' better written,
thicker sown with sensible reflections, and come so much nearer to
common life and nature than characters of admiration, as vice is
more the practice of mankind than virtue.' Be this as it may, there
seems little doubt that Justice Shallow, in which he would appear to
have been inimitable, and not lago or Richard, would have been
Shakespeare's measure of Gibber's quality as a player.

As a poet, and as laureate, Gibber was the laughing-stock of his
contemporaries : it pleased his vanity to think his Odes superior to
those of Pindar, but it is hardly too much to say that in the twenty-
seven years during which he composed lyrics, he did not write one
good line. In literature he lives by his Apology, and by his Apology
alone. Though its style is often incorrect and affected, and he
makes at times curiously simple blunders, it has, what no style is of
any value if it lack, character. The reader will find in its pages no
little wit, no little knowledge of human nature, the ripe experience
of a life spent in humouring successfully the whims and tempers of
artistic colleagues, quaint and happy turns of expression, much
lively description, a good deal of self-revelation, and the healthy
active spirit of the busy tireless man to whom Horace Walpole, on
meeting him when he had already passed his eighty years, exclaimed,
' I am glad, sir, to see you looking so well.' ' Egad, sir,' replied the
veteran, ' at eighty-four it is well for a man that he can look at all.'

Gibber went on the stage in the year 1690, being then nineteen
years of age. His father was a sculptor of some note ; his mother
belonged to an old Rutlandshire family, her grandfather, Sir Anthony
Colley, having ruined himself in the cause of King Charles the First.
His father had hoped to make a parson or a soldier of Colley, but
for various reasons these plans miscarried, to the secret joy of
the son, who had entered the theatre only to be at once possessed
with that strange and invincible fascination it exercises alike over the
capable and the incapable.

To be an actor instead of a clergyman or a soldier was, in the
seventeenth century, no small sacrifice to make in the cause of
dramatic art. Gibber sets forth very fairly the advantages and
disadvantages of the profession in his own day, and tells one or two
anecdotes of the ill-repute in which the theatre was then held. He
cites a moving tale of a lady of real title whose ' female indiscretions
had occasioned her family to abandon her.' The unfortunate lady,
anxious to make an honest penny of what beauty she had left,
wanted to go on the stage. Her family, hearing of this, advised the
managers of the theatre not to engage her, and they, unwilling ' to
make an honourable family their unnecessary enemies,' felt con-

1904 COLLEY GIBBER'S 'APOLOGY' 453

strained to decline her services. Gibber laments over the hard case
of the lady, who found herself denied by prejudice the means of
earning an honest living. And he is no doubt just in his reflection.
At the same time it seems doubtful whether the modern stage is to
be congratulated upon the fact, that recruits of this kind will in our
own day find little difficulty in swelling at any time the ranks of the
incompetent.

A more serious instance of the ignominious treatment to which
actors were liable to be subjected is that of Mr. William Smith, a
barrister turned actor, a man of high moral character and very
popular with people of rank. A gentleman having grossly insulted
Smith behind the scenes, was dismissed the Court by King James
the Second, who was a great admirer of the actor. The courtly
gentleman revenged himself upon the player by having him so
soundly hooted at his next appearance, that Smith withdrew for a
time from the stage ; but the actor showed his gratitude to the King
by joining his army as a volunteer on the landing of William of
Orange.

Certainly Smith's experience, coupled with other stories of the
insolence that characterised the attitude of many so-called gentlemen
in the playhouse, arouses indignation in the mind of any man ; but
at the same time we must remember that there were good reasons
in 1690 why the stage should be regarded by respectable persons
with some disfavour, and actors should find it difficult to uphold
their right to common consideration. In the first place, the gross
indecency of the plays performed — an indecency which in 1698 in-
spired Jeremy Collier's extravagant denunciation of the theatre —
degraded the actor's occupation ; and, in the second place, the
familiarity that existed between the actor and his audience seriously
diminished the independence of the artist. The very conditions
under which he acted, the wings crowded with gentlemen who had
the run of the stage-door — ' those buzzing mosquitoes who took their
stand where they might best elbow the actor and come in for their
share of the auditor's attention ' ; the audience often noisy and
intractable, such conditions as these were hardly calculated to
inspire respect for the art of the player. Again, the kind of happy
family feeling that naturally sprang up between actors and audience
when two theatres at most were sufficient for the needs of no doubt a
very limited number of playgoers, had its inconveniences. A modest
expression coming from the mouth of some admirable artist of more
or less doubtful reputation, was apt to provoke ' fleers from the
witlings of the pit.' As a consequence of the sensitiveness provoked
by such impertinences, Gibber gives an instance — indeed, an extra-
ordinary instance — of an actress who, conscious that beauty was not
her strong point, desired that the warmth of some lines she had to
speak emphasising her personal beauty might be abated ; but he

VOL. LVI— No. 331 H H

454 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

adds, ' in this discretion she was alone, few others were afraid of
undeserving the finest things that could be said of them.' One
actress, a Mrs. Rogers, justly proud of her virtue, was in the habit
of announcing it to the public ; in an epilogue to an obscure play in
which she acted a part of impregnable chastity, she bespoke the
favour of the ladies in the audience by protesting that, in honour of
their goodness and virtue, she would dedicate her unblemished life

to their example :

I'll copy you ;

At your own virtue's shrine my vows I'll pay,
Study to live the character I play.

That in her subsequent career she forgot her vow, only shows how
much wiser Mrs. Rogers would have been to have let the subject alone.

If the treatment accorded to the actors in Gibber's day was
often familiar and impertinent, that of authors was far worse.
Gibber, himself be it remembered a popular author, complains
bitterly of the severity and impatience of the audiences in their
reception of a new play. ' The vivacity of our modern critics is
of late grown so riotous that an unsuccessful author has no more
mercy shown him than a notorious cheat in a pillory ; every fool,
the lowest member of the mob, becomes a wit, and will have a
fling at him. They come now to a new play like hounds to a car-
case, and are all in a full cry, sometimes for an hour together,
before the curtain rises, to throw it amongst them. ... In a word,'
he concludes, ' this new race of critics seem to me like the lion-
whelps in the Tower, who are so boisterously gamesome at their
meals, that they dash down the bowls of milk brought for their own
breakfast.' We must be thankful indeed that to-day the bowls of
milk are at least quietly consumed before the young lions pass
judgment on their fare.

Whilst Gibber enumerates those peculiar disadvantages attaching
to the calling of an actor in the late years of the seventeenth
century, he sets against them certain compensations. Apart from
the pleasure derived from the exercise of an art in which, as he
quaintly phrases it, 'to excel requires as ample endowments of
nature as any one profession (that of holy institution excepted),' he
notices the fact that if an actor excel in his profession, he will be
received among people of condition with a social distinction to which
he would never have attained had he followed the most profitable
pursuits of trade ; and he cites Betterton, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Nance
Oldfield and others as instances of those thus distinguished. Let
us suppose, he adds, that these men had been eminent mercers and
the women famous milliners ; can we imagine that merely as such,
though endowed with the same natural understanding, they would
have been called into the same honourable parties of conversation
in which, he affirms, these actors and actresses were capable of

1904 COLLEY GIBBERS 'APOLOGY'

455

sustaining their part with spirit and variety, though the stage were
never the subject of discussion ? Gibber here touches very happily
on one of the principal causes of the vulgar resentment cherished by
the mercers and milliners of different ages against a calling which
religious prejudice has taught them to despise, but which they find
to their astonishment encouraged and courted by their social supe-
riors— a confusion of ideas that in dull capacities aggravates rather
than allays resentment.

He takes, too, an opportunity of administering — almost con-
temporaneously with Voltaire— a well-deserved rebuke to the Roman
Catholic Church for its treatment of actors, which was in his day one
of the least charitable and amiable features of that religion. He
hits the nail on the head, as Gibber often does, when he remarks
that in many countries where the Papal religion prevails, the holy
policy, though it allows not an actor Christian burial, is so conscious
of the usefulness of his art, that it will frequently take in the assist-
ance of the theatre to recommend sacred history to the more pathetic
regard of the people. How then, he asks, can they refuse an actor
Christian burial when they admit his profession to serve the solemn
purposes of religion ? How far, he asks, is such inhumanity short
of that famous painter's who, to make his crucifix a masterpiece of
nature, stabbed the innocent hireling from whose body he drew it,
and having heightened the holy portrait with his victim's last
agonies of life, sent the picture to serve as the consecrated ornament
of an altar? Never was a cruel prejudice more thoroughly and
trenchantly exposed. Happily such prejudice is for the most part
a thing of the past, and there are now few religious bodies of any
denomination that will not gladly accept the gladly-given services
of actors and actresses in support of their charitable undertakings.

But, even since Gibber wrote, traces of such prejudice, though in
a more obscure form, are to be met with. A recent writer, I believe
a Roman Catholic, in an historical monograph on Robespierre, an
admirable and picturesque, if at times histrionic biography, misses
no opportunity of insulting a profession of which he in all probability
knows nothing, and allows his prejudice — at least, so it appears — to
betray him into the most singular inaccuracy. The violent and
eccentric conduct of Tallien, the conventionalist and contemporary
of Robespierre, he constantly appears to explain and justify by the
fact that he was a comedian, an actor. I should very much like to
know what evidence he can produce that Tallien was ever an actor.
Is he not thinking of Collot d'Herbois ? And if Tallien were an
actor and did flourish a dagger at Robespierre in the Convention, a
piece of ' actor's foolery,' as he describes it, what, pray, of Edmund
Burke and the Birmingham dagger he flourished in the House of
Commons ? If this gentleman means to imply that Tallien was an
actor — and it certainly reads as if he did — then he is incorrect ; if

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456 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

he means that his conduct in flourishing a dagger in the Convention,
in shedding blood in Bordeaux, in lounging in drawing-rooms and
posing as a southern voluptuary was the conduct of an actor, then
he is not only incorrect but unjust and offensive into the bargain.

When the actor has recovered from his astonishment at such
gratuitous flouts, Gibber opportunely reminds him that we actors can
claim a canonised saint in the Roman Martyrology, one Masculas,
master of interludes, put to death by Grenseric the Vandal, with
great torment and reproach, for confession of the truth ; from which
and other instances, such as the fact that some ten noted actors
took up arms for King Charles the First when the Civil War shut
the theatres, Gibber concludes that ' there have been players of
worthy principles as to religion, loyalty and other virtues ; and if
the major part of them fall under a different character, it is the
general unhappiness of mankind that the most are the worst.' One
would hardly dwell on facts of this kind, were it not for the amazing
ignorance that is at the bottom of the dregs of prejudice that still
survive against the theatre, and that one sees so egregiously dis-
played whenever some newspaper, reverting to a topic that always
' draws,' opens its columns to the lucubrations of the descendants of
the dismal Prynne and the intemperate Collier. Colley Gibber
should always at such seasons be referred to as a wholesome antidote
to the doldrums and megrims of those who can neither find nor
permit satisfaction in what he very justly describes as 'the most
rational scheme that human wit can form to dissipate with innocence
the cares of life, to allure even the turbulent or ill-disposed from
worse meditations, and to give the leisure hours of business and
virtue an instructive recreation.'

For twenty years Gibber remained a salaried actor, playing for
the most part at Drury Lane under the management of Christopher
Rich. He commenced work at a salary of ten shillings a week,
which just before he went into management had risen to the then
considerable sum of 51. a week. This with his benefit brought
him in some 1621. for the year 1708-1709, the largest sum made
by any actor in the company that year being 259L, earned by the
popular and industrious Wilks, who added to his playing the duties
of stage-manager. The story of Gibber's first salary is interesting.
Hanging about the wings waiting for employment Master Colley, as
he was called by his familiars, was sent on to the stage in the part
of a messenger charged to deliver his message to the great actor,
Thomas Betterton, perhaps the noblest figure in the recorded annals
of our players, a man whose pre-eminent artistic and moral excel-
lence made him in his day the unquestioned leader of his profession,
and won the respect and admiration of such various beholders as
Steele, Pope and Gibber. If his artistic genius was surpassed by
Garrick and Kean, they neither of them could inspire that personal

1904 COLLEY GIBBER'S 'APOLOGY' 457

affection and regard that the generous, simple nature of Betterton
extorted from his contemporaries. To this commanding actor
entered Master Colley with his message, but so appalled was he
to find himself in the presence of the great tragedian, that he
forgot entirely message and everything. Betterton, annoyed at his
confusion, asked his name. ' Master Colley ! ' replied the prompter.
' Then forfeit him ! ' ' But,' urged the prompter, ' he has no salary.'
' No,' replied Betterton, ' then put him down ten shillings a week,
and forfeit five ! ' This ten shillings, so pleasantly earned by Gibber,
was shortly after raised to twenty on the recommendation of Con-
greve, the author, and then to thirty shillings on the secession of
Betterton and other of Mr. Rich's discontented actors.

It was little wonder that actors who could afford to quarrel soon
quitted a theatre of which Mr. Christopher Rich was the chief
director. Gibber's sketch of this seventeenth-century manager is
one of his happiest. The great art of Mr. Rich as a manager seems
to have been to do his actors out of as much of their salary as he
conveniently could. He was as sly a tyrant, says Gibber, as ever
was at the head of a theatre ; for he gave the actors more liberty
and fewer days' pay than any of his predecessors ; he would laugh
with them over a bottle and bite them in their bargains. He would
judge the merit of a leading actor by his ability to keep the other
actors quiet when they had gone six weeks without any salary. He
was always promising his actors what he was pleased to term
' arrears,' but in fifteen years Gibber declares he never received
more than nine days' of them. The actors in Rich's day were paid
by shares of the profits, ten going to the management, ten to the
actors ; but Rich so contrived it — he had been a lawyer — that ' the
actors were limited sharers of loss, and he the sole proprietor of
profits.' Much criticism is expended on our actor-managers of
to-day, but it is only fair to record in their favour that it was not
until Gibber, Wilks and Doggett, three actors, took over Drury Lane
in 1710 and entered on their twenty years of successful management,
that a theatre was once again honestly and decently administered.
It is with justifiable pride that Gibber tells us that in the twenty
years of his management he never had a creditor that had occasion
to come twice for his bill, ' that every Monday morning discharged
us of all demands before we took a shilling for our own use : we
never asked any actor, nor were desired by them to sign any written
agreement whatsoever.' As he truly says, ' Our being actors our-
selves was an advantage to our government, which all former
managers who were only idle gentlemen wanted.'

Among the many reforms introduced by Gibber was the closing
of the stage-door to the idle gentlemen who were accustomed to
haunt the wings of the theatre and elbow the actor during his
performance ; and in this regard he shrewdly touches on the in-

458 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

advisability of actors making themselves cheap, and allowing the
curious to penetrate the mystery that should to some extent shroud
the practice of their calling — a mystery which it is, alas ! to-day
almost impossible to preserve. ' In admitting these gentlemen
behind the scenes,' says Gibber, ' we too often showed them the
wrong side of our tapestry, and many a tolerable actor was the less
valued when it was known what ordinary stuff he was made of.'

Gibber and his colleagues had their share of good fortune. It is
not often that the author of a successful play foregoes his fees, yet
such was the case with Addison when he presented Cato, free of
encumbrance, to the managers of Drury Lane. Cato was perhaps
the greatest triumph of the Gibber management. Its production
was the occasion of intense excitement, both in the literary and
political world. Pope wrote a prologue for it, Grarth an epilogue ;
Swift came to the rehearsals, and not being accustomed to the ways
of rehearsal, was very much astonished to hear the ' drab that acts
Cato's daughter ' stopping in the midst of a passionate part to call
out to the prompter, ' What's next ? ' By the term ' drab ' Swift is
describing the brilliant Mrs. Oldfield, from whom, said Horace
Walpole, no bad judge, women of the first rank might have learnt
behaviour, and whose morality was sufficiently respectable to allow
of her interment in Westminster Abbey. Had Swift been versed in
the conditions of an art the ignorance of which seems to many a
literary critic the highest qualification for depreciating the art itself,
he might have known that imperfection at rehearsal is sometimes
the privilege of genius and no criterion of the achievement of the
first night. It must be indeed a warped or unthinking prejudice
that makes Pope incarnate dulness in the person of the lively Gibber,
and Swift style the elegant and accomplished Mrs. Oldfield a drab.

But to-day, whatever the fate of our actors, our actresses seem
to me to be in no danger of such rude depreciation as Swift treated
them to in the person of Mrs. Oldfield ; no ' drabs ' from the Dean
are likely to affront them ; they must rather be on their guard lest
they be lured to ruin by the subtle flattery of specious wooers. My
friend Mr. Walkley, the accomplished critic of the Times, most
subtle and most specious, openly courts their favours at the Royal
Institution and the Playgoers' Club ; he tells these ladies that while
we actors are something rather less than men, impaired citizens —
in the words of Henley, neither masters of our fates nor captains of
our souls — like, as I venture to think, the barrister and the novelist,
dealers in emotions not our own, states of feeling, portrayals of
characters not our own ; our actresses, on the other hand, are some-
thing more than women : the practice of their art induces a sublima-
tion of their sex until they pass to something beyond it, whether in
the direction of greater masculinity or some more ethereal class of
being, whether they put on the wings of angels or develop the thews

1904 COLLEY GIBBER'S 'APOLOGY' 459

of men, I have never quite been able to understand. But in any
case I would venture to warn these ladies against this apparently
artless wooer. Beware this gay and debonair suitor ! Beware lest
he be merely piping you on to ruin, lest when you fall at his feet
prostrate with praise, worshipping this unexpected deliverer, he turn
upon you, and with the vftpis of the young Greek, the 'insou-
ciance ' of the flippant Gaul, spurn your advances, and show you
that, in becoming more than women, you have been transformed
into some unattractive and unnatural cross between a G-orgon and a
mermaid. I, for my part, mistrust these dulcet attempts to lure our
damsels from the fold. We actors must stand together, lest our
women be torn from our unmanly arms and handed over to the more
virile protection of full citizens, complete masters of their fate,
perfect captains of their souls.

The first performance of Cato under Gibber's management was
wildly successful. Addison, nervous and excited, sat in a box with
Berkeley, the philosopher, fortifying his spirits with burgundy and
champagne. Political feeling had been stirred by rumours of the
play being a covert attack on the Tory G-overnment; but that
seemed only to make the approval of the audience the more
unanimous ; for the Whigs applauded vociferously what they con-
sidered a Whig play, whilst the Tories applauded no less vociferously
to show that it was not. Lord Bolingbroke, then Secretary of State,
called Booth, who played Cato, into his box and presented him with
fifty guineas for his honest opposition to a perpetual dictator, other-
wise the Whig Duke of Marlborough ; whereupon the Whigs vowed
that they also would get up a subscription of fifty guineas to present
to Booth, to show their appreciation of his services to the Whig
dramatist, Addison; but history does not relate whether the
fortunate tragedian ever received this second dole ; he may well have
been content with the first. The play on its first production ran for
thirty-five nights, an unexampled record in those days. This long
run was followed by a visit of the actors to Oxford, and in this
connection Gibber sheds a pleasing light on his managerial ways.
It had been the custom for the actors when at Oxford to play twice
a day, and, as in those days there were no half salaries for matinees,
they consequently received double pay. But on this occasion, as the
Oxford theatre had been enlarged and the London season so success-
ful, the managers, anxious to keep their players fresh and make the
visit pleasant and profitable to the rest of their society, whilst only
giving one performance in the day, paid the actors the usual double
salary. And they were no losers by their generosity. The visit was
both pleasant and profitable ; the three performances of Cato were
witnessed by overflowing audiences. Gibber's criticism of the re-
spective quality of the London and the Oxford audiences is instructive.
'A great deal,' he writes, 'of that false, flashy wit and forced

460 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sepfc.

humour which had been the delight of our metropolitan multitude,
was only rated there (at Oxford) at its bare intrinsic value.' Here,
he tells us, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson inspired as deep a reverence
as the Ethics of Aristotle ; and therefore we may gather from his
account that whilst Cato was received with enthusiasm, the up-to-
date fashionable London comedies, some of them no doubt Gibber's
own, fell rather flat. Such was the Oxford of 1713. In the Oxford
of 1904, whilst we have no doubt that Shakespeare and Ben Jonson
still inspire the same reverence as the Ethics of Aristotle, our only
fear is lest that reverence become an awful regard, too solemn to
brook the rough intrusion of dramatic representation.

This was a great year, this 1713, to Gibber, Wilks and Doggett ;
at the end of the season, when all expenses had been paid, they
found themselves the proud possessors of 1,5001. apiece. They left
Oxford honoured with the thanks of the Vice-Chancellor for the
decency and order observed by their company, an honour of which
they showed their appreciation by contributing fifty pounds to the
repair of St. Mary's Church.

Prosperous as were the years of Gibber's management, he did not
escape the trials and anxieties inseparable from such a situation.
The authors of bad plays were a great thorn in his side ; he com-
plains of their persecution, and their indignation against the actors
for rejecting the abortive piles of poetry that they sought to twist
into the likeness of a play. Who are these actors, the indignant
playwrights would exclaim, to judge of their merit ? To which Gibber
retorts by asking these gentlemen how they can suppose that actors
can have risen to any excellence in their calling without feeling or
understanding the value of such productions? Would you have
reduced them, he asks, to the mere mimicry of parrots and monkeys
that can only prate and play tricks without reflection ? And he
concludes by asking these gentlemen authors the very pertinent
question : if neither Dryden nor Congreve, Steele nor Addison com-
plained of the actors' incapacity to judge a play, who will believe
that the slights you have met with are undeserved or particular ?
We can hardly wonder at Gibber's pointed resentment against these
gentlemen when we recall the fact that it was the usual custom of
the unsuccessful author of his day to publish his play, after its
failure, with a preface in which the actors of it were roundly abused
and charged with its want of success. What Gibber says of his own
day is equally applicable to the present time. I have often known
actors abused by obscure and unsuccessful authors ; but it is very
rarely that the author of distinction finds fault publicly with his
players, even if he have cause. Both author and actor are too
well aware that the balance of failure and success will, in the long
run, generally hang fairly evenly between the two of them ; that
they are both working in most cases for a common end, and that

1904 COLLEY CIBBEB'S 'APOLOGY' 461

recrimination coming from either side is not only undignified and
useless, but is bound to be frequently ill-considered and unjust.

Gibber narrates a pleasing anecdote of one of these fine-gentlemen
would-be authors who, on the second night of the performance of his
poor play, came swaggering in fine full-bottomed periwig into the
lobby of the theatre with a lady of condition on his arm, and called
out to the box-keeper to direct him to his seats. ' Sir,' replied Mr.
Trott, the then box-keeper, ' we have dismissed the audience, there
was not company enough to pay candles ! ' In which ' mortal
astonishment,' adds Gibber, we may leave the worthy gentleman.

Another source of constant trouble to the assiduous Colley were
his partners in management, and of these most especially Mr.
Kobert Wilks, their leading actor. Wilks, a man of gentle birth,
holding, before he went on the stage, a post in the office of the
Irish Secretary at Dublin, out of which his successor made some
50,000£., was an accomplished actor, indefatigable in his passion for
work, but of a hasty and difficult temper. When, on the death^of
Mountford, the famous light comedian, murdered by Lord Mohun,
he came to London in the hope of being his successor, he found that
place already filled by one George Powell, son of an actor, himself
an able but rough and uncultivated player, of loose life and
intemperate habits. The story of the dethroning of Powell by
Wilks, who certainly, in the opinion of the critics of the day, had
over his rival the inestimable advantage in comedy of being able to
appear a gentleman, is the old story of the two apprentices. Though
Powell had a better voice, a better ear for speaking than Wilks, as
excellent and tenacious a memory, and greater assurance, through
an unheedful confidence, an over-indulgence in Nantz brandy, and
perpetual impecuniosity, he was soon outstripped by his industrious
competitor, but not before the spectacle of his intemperance had
cured Barton Booth (then a young man) of a love of drink which
might have robbed the stage of a remarkably fine actor. It is
related of poor Powell that being in constant apprehension of
sheriffs' officers, he would walk the streets carrying a sheathed
sword in his hand, and if he sighted from afar a bailiff, would call
out, « Get on the other side of the way, you dog ! ' to which the
bailiff would politely reply, ' We do not want you now, Mr. Powell.'
Such a man could not hope to stand long against the assiduous
Mr. Wilks, whose passion for work seems almost unequalled in the
history of the stage. Gibber tells us how on one occasion Wilks
had prevailed on an author to cut out of his part a long and crabbed
speech which he found it difficult to master. The author consented,
but Wilks, thinking it an indignity to his memory that anything
should be considered too hard for it, went home and made himself
perfect in the speech, though well knowing it was never to be
spoken on the stage. Such perseverance, added to a charming and

462 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

sympathetic personality, enabled Wilks to follow, though at a
distance, in the steps of Betterton. ' To beseech gracefully/ writes
Steele in the Tatler, ' to approach respectfully, to pity, to mourn, to
love, are the places wherein Wilks may be made to shine with the
utmost beauty.'

Such was Wilks as an actor, but as manager, if we may believe
Gibber, he was a perpetual trial to his colleagues. His temper was
impossible ; his jealousy, like that of many artists, ever wakeful ; his
greed for parts insatiable. No amount of money could compensate
him for a bad part ; the great success of the revival of The Tempest
only disgusted him, because it condemned him to go on playing the
indifferent role of Ferdinand. If he ever gave up one of his parts it
was only to appear magnanimous, and by surrendering it to some raw
young actor to be the more regretted in it. In accordance with such
a plan, he, on one occasion, surrendered the part of Macduff, in which
he had won enthusiastic praise, to a young recruit to the company, one
Charles Williams, contenting himself with what was then considered
the less effective part of Macbeth. Booth, his fellow-manager and
rival tragedian, was to play Banquo, but, hearing of Wilks's change
of characters and suspecting the real motive, he went to Williams and
asked him to give him Macduff in exchange for Banquo. Williams
readily consented, but no sooner did the news reach Wilks that Booth
was likely to be his successor in Macduff than he immediately gave
up his projected appearance as Macbeth and resumed his old part.

But Gibber gives a yet more amusing instance of the difficult
temper of his colleague. Wilks, it appears, was in the habit of con-
stantly complaining that he was overworked — a drudge, in fact ; that
he needed rest and repose. At length Gibber and Booth, weary of
these protestations, determined to try their value. They were about
to revive Vanbrugh's comedy of The Provoked Wife. Here seemed
an excellent opportunity for testing the alleged fatigue of Wilks.
After the play, which had been in some degree revised since its
original production, had been read to the company, Gibber turned to
Wilks. Says Gibber, the part of ' Constant ' in this play being a
character of less action than he, Wilks, had generally appeared in,
this seemed a fitting occasion for him to ease himself by giving it to
another; — here Wilks looked grave — that as the love scenes, sug-
gested Gibber, were rather serious than gay, the part might sit very
well on Booth; — down dropped Wilks's brow, furled were his features —
that if, continued Gibber, they were never to revive a play without him,
what would they do if he were indisposed ? — here Wilks pretended
to stir the fire — that for one, urged Gibber, in Wilks's position it was
unprofitable trouble to play so unimportant a part. At this point,
says Gibber, the pill began to gripe him. Wilks, bursting into a
passion, charged his colleagues with a desire to ruin him with the
public, and flinging the part on the table, sat knocking his heel on

1904 COLLEY GIBBER'S 'APOLOGY' 463

the floor. Booth, to calm him down, said he quite saw his point ;
that, after all, acting was the most wholesome exercise in the world —
in fact, it always gave him, Booth, a good stomach. At this point
Mrs. Oldfield, who was to play the opposite part to Wilks's
' Constant,' began to titter behind her fan. The titter seemed to
suggest to Wilks a sudden way out of his embarrassment. He
turned to Mrs. Oldfield, and said that if she would choose her own
' Constant ' he would readily give it up to whomsoever she might
select. Whereupon Mrs. Oldfield jumped to her feet, took Gibber
by the shoulder, with her usual frankness called them all a parcel of
fools to make such a rout about nothing, and insisted on Wilks
sticking to the part. Thus, by help of a woman's ready wit, ended
happily a very quaint and amusing scene ; but Wilks had been made
to see that his fellow-managers understood the proper value of his
complaints.

Gibber, in spite of their disagreements and the frequent trouble
and offence caused by Wilks's irascible disposition, acknowledges its
service as a rod by which to keep in order the hired actors, and
prevent slackness and carelessness entering into the performances.
The sharp authority exercised by Wilks on the stage made the
dreaming idleness and jolly negligence of rehearsal, which had
grown up under Powell's casual supervision, things unknown while
Gibber and Wilks were managers of Drury Lane. Even the great
Betterton, from his gentle, easy temper, had proved himself incap-
able of keeping order among his players ; so that we may consider
Mr. Wilks well worth that extra 50£. a year paid him by his
colleagues nominally for writing out the playbills, really for keeping
order and preserving discipline behind the scenes.

In another of his managerial troubles Gibber touches us very
nearly. We are accustomed to think to-day that never was the
legitimate drama in so parlous a condition, never did the more
serious forms of dramatic entertainment have so hard a struggle for
life ; to mention only musical comedy, the most powerful rival of
the legitimate drama in the affection of the public, here we have a
highly delightful species of theatrical fare spread before the public
with a skill, a luxury, a distinction that have never before been
bestowed on it ; artists of the highest quality are engaged in its
service; nothing is spared to render it attractive, and ample has
been, and is, the reward of those who have lavished so much pains
on its adornment. And, in addition to this attractive competitor, we
have on the one side the opera, now an annual institution ; on the
other, music halls and circuses flourishing in popular favour.
Certainly the conditions are difficult, more difficult than ever
before ; the legitimate drama has to battle bravely to keep its head
above the waters of public taste. But when we read Gibber's
Apology we are inclined to ask, Was it not ever thus ? Had not

464 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

the purveyors of the drama pure and simple ever the same contest
with the natural tendency of busy men to fly to forms of entertain-
ment that offer a few hours of thoughtless enjoyment, the natural
tendency of the crowd to the more frivolous forms of relaxation ?
Though the struggle may be more intense now that men lead more
rapid, strenuous lives, and consequently require in a greater measure
light and mentally restful entertainment, may we not to-day take
some consolation from the fact that it is no new struggle we are
watching, no peculiar affliction of our own generation, that the
successful exponents of serious drama in the past had to fight the
same battle, to hold up their heads against the same competing
forces, different in style, but similar in kind ? Gibber would have us
believe such a struggle is as old as the days of Terence, who in one
of his prologues reproves the Roman audience of his day for their
fondness for the ' funambuli,' or rope-dancers. It is certainly as old
as Horace. With Colley Gibber the wail of the injured manager and
dramatist is continuous throughout the pages of the Apology,
whilst we find Dryden, Pope, Steele, and later Dr. Johnson com-
plaining constantly of the degradation of the drama by the intro-
duction of singers, dancers, puppets and elephants on a stage that
should in their opinion be reserved for the productions of pure
tragedy and comedy. Gibber reproaches Sir William Davenant with
being the first manager to try to combat the success of a rival
company of actors more popular than his own, by resorting to the
production of dramatic operas, versions of The Tempest and
Macbeth decked out in expensive 'scenes and habits, lightened by
the efforts of the best singers and dancers ; and, says Gibber, it was
little wonder that these frivolous spectacles grew too hard for sense
and simple nature, when it is considered how many more people
there are that can see and hear than think and judge. Later,
Betterton is rebuked for having brought over three famous French
dancers, ' mimics and tumblers,' and we find an angry dramatist
exclaiming in a prologue

Must Shakespeare, Fletcher, and laborious Ben
Be left for Scaramouch and Harlequin ?

Anon, Italian opera steals in, in the person of one Valentini, a
true and sensible singer, according to Gibber, but 'of a throat too weak
to sustain those melodious warblings for which the fairer sex have
since idolised his successors.' Horror upon horror accumulates when
Rich, always anxious, as Gibber admits, to please the majority, medi-
tates the introduction on to his stage of a phenomenally large
elephant, and is only deterred from the outrage by the bricklayer's
assurance that if he takes down any part of the wall to admit the
beast, the elephant will assuredly bring down the house. Cheated of
his elephant, Rich fell back on some rope-dancers. This was too

1904 COLLEY GIBBER'S 'APOLOGY1 465

much for Gibber, then a member of Eich's company. On the first
night of the rope-dancers' performance the indignant actor stepped
down into the pit and told those sitting near him that he hoped they
would excuse him if he declined any longer to appear on a stage
brought so low as it was by that night's disgraceful entertainment ;
and he tells us the audience took the player's protest in good part
and Eich was obliged shortly after to get rid of his rope-dancers.

From all quarters, it would appear, the actors of the eighteenth
century received sympathy in a predicament of this kind. Gibber
relates how a nobleman, indignant at the attention an opera was
receiving at one of the theatres, told Gibber that it was shameful to
take part of the actors' bread from them to support the silly diversion of
people of quality. One can hardly help contrasting with the utter-
ance of this nobleman that of the Viscount in Martin Chuzzlewit.
' What's the good of Shakespeare, Pip ? ' he asks. ' I never read him.
What the devil is it all about, Pip ? There's a lot of feet in Shake-
speare's verse, but there ain't any legs worth mentioning in
Shakespeare's plays, are there, Pip ? Juliet, Desdemona, Lady
Macbeth, and all the rest of 'em, whatever their names are, might
as well have no legs at all, for anything the audience know about it,
Pip. . . . I'll tell you what it is. What the people call dramatic
poetry is a collection of sermons. Do I go to the theatre to be
lectured ? No, Pip. If I wanted that, I'd go to church. What's
the legitimate object of the drama, Pip ? Human nature. What
are legs ? Human nature. Then let us have plenty of leg pieces,
Pip, and I'll stand by you, my buck ! ' As to which of these two
noblemen is to be regarded as voicing the true sentiments of the
majority of their order at the present day towards the relative merits
of serious and light entertainment, we cannot pause to determine ;
let us express a passing hope that the Viscount has not got it all his
own way.

But Nemesis in the shape of managerial necessity was to overtake
Gibber, and bring him to his knees for his affronts to the singers
and dancers. When he had been manager of Drury Lane for some
time, he found himself obliged, from the accustomed lack of
sufficiently good plays, to fight a rival theatre by resorting to
these same singers and dancers whom he had roundly censured, to
all the arts and graces of pantomime of all things. The Loves of
Mars and Venus was the first of these crutches, as he calls them,
to which he was driven for support ; thence swiftly declining, we
find him producing Harlequin Sorcerer, in which Harlequin is
hatched on the stage from a huge egg, and so incurring the castiga-
tion of his enemy, Pope, who, alluding to this entertainment and its
scenic triumphs, writes in the Dunciad :

The forests dance, the rivers upward rise,
"Whales sport in woods, and dolphins in the skies ;

466 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

And last, to give the whole creation grace,
Lo I one vast Egg produces human race I

And again :

But lo 1 to dark encounter in mid air

New wizards rise : here Booth, and Gibber there :

Booth in his cloudy tabernacle shrin'd,

On grinning Dragons Gibber mounts the wind.

Gibber was much too shrewd and honest not to be conscious of
his guilt in this respect, and confess his error in making use of
fooleries he had condemned. And he seeks to excuse himself by
drawing a parallel between his own conduct and that of King
Henry the Fourth of France in adopting the Roman Catholic
religion to suit the exigencies of his political situation. ' I was still
in my heart,' he writes, ' as much on the side of truth and sense as
the French King, but with this difference, that I had leave to quit
them when they could not support me ; for what equivalent could
I have found for falling a martyr to them ? ' And he goes on in a
pleasant spirit to justify his vanity in venturing to compare his
conduct with that of so great a man as Henry the Fourth. ' What
I want of the King's grandeur, Nature has amply supplied to me in
vanity, a pleasure which neither the pertness of wit nor the gravity
of wisdom will ever persuade me to part with. . . . Vanity is of all
complexions, the growth of every clime and capacity ; authors of all
ages have had a tincture of it ; and yet you read Horace, Montaigne,
and Sir William Temple with pleasure. Nor am I sure, if it were
curable by precept, that mankind would be mended by it. Could
vanity be eradicated from our nature, I am afraid that the reward
of most human virtues would not be found in this world. And
happy is he who has no greater sin to answer for in the next ! '

With this pleasing admission of a fault which, confessed, loses
half its mischief, let us leave old Cibber. Over his sketches,
brilliant many of them, of his brother actors, over his quarrel with
Pope, over the many incidents of his varied, busy life that he
narrates with such unfailing spirit, such a humorous appreciation
of the realities of things, of the good and ill in human character,
I have no time to linger ; I can only advise those who read these
lines to turn to the book itself, which will very pleasantly while away
a leisure hour. Cibber has something to say to us to-day after two
hundred years have gone by, because his book is" written from the
inside of the theatre, not from without ; not by one ignorant of
actors, unsympathetic with their art, but by a successful actor,
manager and author, a man who, whatever his faults of character,
at least loved and respected his profession, upheld its dignity,
reformed its abuses, and paid his way as an honest man ; one of the
best as he was one of the first of actor managers. Gibber's Apology

1904 COLLEY GIBBERS 'APOLOG7' 467

is the shrewd reply of the practical man of the world to the pedants
and theorists who, sitting in their studies, would fain conduct from
their desks the business of the theatre. And it is the best reply to
those who would have us believe that the actor is a strange,
peculiar being, something rather less than a man, but possibly more
than a monkey, an impaired, unmanly citizen. Gibber's actors and
actresses as he pictures them for us in his book are on the whole
as good specimens of ordinary men and women as we are likely to
meet with in any other society of his day ; and they are the same
now. There are of course and have been actors and actors, as there
are varied specimens of every class ; actors, like Betterton, great
worthy men ; like Scum Goodman, who, in addition to being an
actor, was a cheat, a highwayman, a traitor, and a would-be
murderer; the Addisons and the Savages, the Johnsons and the
Boyces of our calling ; but in their essential characteristics no
different from other men, neither better nor worse.

The prejudice against the actor is dying ; but, like any prejudice
that has religion to support it, it is dying hard. A prejudice that
can cite pulpit justification for uncharitable conduct is — such is the
inconsistency of human nature — strangely hard to kill ; any oppor-
tunity that a Chadband can enjoy of looking down on and anathema*
tising one not too obviously his inferior, will be ever welcome to
crawling minds. But that such a prejudice is anything but one of
those many unsightly masks by which in past ages human weakness
has hidden the face of true religion I refuse to believe. And the
religion of the future will wonder at those who have shuddered and
held up their hands at what Gibber has well described as ' the most
rational scheme that human wit could form to dissipate with inno-
cence the cares of life,' and will consider the man who has devoted
his life to such a cause no mean citizen, no unworthy servant to the
public good.

Of course we actors must not look to all men for sympathy, nor
expect it from them. As some men of high ability, of refined taste
in many things, are deaf to the charms of music ; it has no appeal
to them, the sense of it is lacking in their natures ; so are there
men of culture and attainment, men of genius like Rousseau, to
whom the art of acting makes no appeal, who have no sympathy
with the actor's work. Such men have, no doubt, at different times
been called on to write about the theatre, and that they should write
with little sympathy is all that we can expect ; nor should we resent
what we cannot correct. But we have at least the right to ask that
such a want of sympathy should be the strongest reason for making
any man pause and consider before he proclaims himself to be the
constant witness or judge of what, if it be true that to act unmans a
man, must be a degrading spectacle, before he even suggests, how-
ever ingeniously, against any section of his fellow-men that in

468 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

comparison with himself, in comparison with those who watch and
enjoy their achievements, they are impaired and unmanly citizens.
In all times and ages since the theatre has been established, and
never more so than at the present day, the actor, to succeed and
hold his own, to encounter the difficulties, the chances, the, at
times, cruel anxieties of his calling, has required, shall I say, a
greater mastery of his fate, a higher captaincy of soul, than many
another man is called on to exercise whose work is done in more
peaceful and secure surroundings ; and when I look around on the
careers of those who are to-day at the head of my profession, I feel
that, whatever the varieties of their artistic achievement, to reach
the positions to which they have attained they have had to exercise
those same qualities of endurance, pluck, determination, and self-
control that we look for in all men who have made their mark, in
however modest a sphere, on the history of their time.

H. B. IRVING.

1904

THE PINNACLE OF PROSPERITY

A NOTE OF INTERROGATION

* GREAT BEITAIN is standing on the topmost pinnacle of prosperity *
was a phrase very current amongst a set of writers on the fiscal ques-
tion about this time last year. It is not so current this year, though
there are still congratulations, in a subdued key now, over each
monthly statement of the increase of our imports. The object of
the present little paper is to question whether the phrase ever really
embodied the true interpretation of the facts of the case. To this
end let us glance for a moment at a few of the most salient facts,
known to everybody in a vague kind of way, but probably not yet
grasped in all their bearings by anybody, for they constitute a problem
of the utmost complexity the solution of which would tax the capa-
cities of a Commission of Experts. But there are certain points which
anyone without claiming to be an expert can appreciate directly.
For instance, there is no difficulty in ascertaining that during the
last five years there has been an increase on average of nearly a
hundred millions sterling a year in our combined Imperial and Local
Government expenditures compared with the average expenditures
from the same sources during the five preceding years — and be it
remembered that those five preceding years were considered profusely
and dangerously extravagant by economists. Massing the figures,
we find that the expenditure from these two sources in the last five
years has been 1,412 millions, against 933 millions in the previous five
years and 780 millions in the five years before that. This increase
is altogether abnormal, partly owing to the South African war, and
we ought always to be on guard in presence of abnormal symptoms.
The bulk of this vast excess of expenditure has gone through the
pockets of British workmen, British contractors, and British employes.
It has necessarily come out of one set of pockets and gone into another
set, but the transfer created great activity in trade, and some of the
contributing pockets have been foreign pockets. A Government,
especially in war time, is a prodigious spendthrift, and municipalities
are always liberal paymasters, with their borrowed funds and with
the ratepayers' money, so that the wages and profits earned have been
much above the average. No wonder that the eating, the drinking,
VOL. LVI— No 331 469 I I

470 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

the dress, and the amusement in every section of our~people, from
Belgravia and Tyburnia to the Whitechapel Road, are all on an
unprecedented scale. No wonder that the income-tax returns have
gone up by leaps and bounds. There is one little item in these
returns that throws a flood of light on the general situation. The
salaries of Government, corporation, and public company officials
brought under the review of the Inland Revenue Department for the
purposes of the income-tax have increased from sixty millions up to
eighty millions in the last five years (a much greater ratio of increase
than is to be found in the incomes from business concerns, professions,
and employment under Schedule D), and this is an exceedingly
instructive and characteristic instance of what is going on generally
in this country. Personal services are in the ascendant. Then the
war expenditure, of course, stimulated enormously the trade in war-
like materials at all the producing centres, such as Sheffield, Birming-
ham, the Clyde, and the Tees. This was the case, too, in the clothing
departments, so that the textile manufactories benefited also. The
coal trade was working at full pressure. Government charters kept
the shipping profitably employed. Every artisan's and every shop-
keeper's craft, from the highest to the lowest, was bound to receive an
impetus from this rushing stream of payments, and we have seen the
effects in the extraordinary expansion of our home trade and in the
great increase in our imports of food and commodities. These imports
for the last five years have averaged 520 millions a year, against
a yearly average of 438 millions in the five preceding years, and this
increase is proclaimed as one of the principal evidences of our
unparalleled prosperity.

Now if there be a direct relation of cause and effect between this
excess of expenditure (by our Imperial and Local Governments) and
the increase of our imports, and if the increase of our imports is to be
taken as the sure criterion of prosperity, then it would seem to follow
as a logical consequence that the greater the Governments' expendi-
tures are the more prosperous we must be.

But if we look into the items of these expenditures it is impossible
to maintain that the bigger they are the better, for the reason that
a very large portion of them constitutes a great lock-up of capital ;
and no country, however rich, can continue to lavish money in this
way without becoming seriously pinched and ultimately gravely
embarrassed.

The truth is that these imposing figures of imports, exports, railway
revenues, income-tax returns, Post Office earnings, bank clearings,
Excise and Customs duties, tell us really very little as to our pro-
sperity, because we first require to ascertain the origin of the motive
power that has set all the wheels of trade rolling at this
accelerated pace. If the proceeds of loans, taxes, and rates have
been lavished on unproductive expenditure, then the figures rather

1904 THE PINNACLE OF PROSPERITY 471

point to future adversity (although at first sight they may appear to
indicate present prosperity), because there is a point in this sort of
expenditure at which the delicate sensitive machinery of the financial
engine will be so severely strained that it will be thrown out of gear.

Already there are ominous signs of creaking in the little wheel
of credit which keeps all the big wheels of production and trans-
portation turning. Discount rates vary from day to day in a feverish
way. Lombard Street has given notice to the municipalities that
they are no longer welcome borrowers. The Colonies, too, are warned
off. Any money that we are now finding for our colonies or for Japan
and China is not actually our own money, but Continental money. And
here we put our finger on the really dangerous spot. Great Britain
for the first time in recent history has become, during the last six or
seven years, a nation borrowing on a considerable scale from other
countries, as well as being a nation lending to other countries.

This is a fateful sign of our excessive extravagance. Our own
liquid capital has been too much locked up in armaments and over-
building of all sorts at home and in our colonies ; it has been con-
sumed in eating, drinking, dress, and amusements ; whilst with the
exception of coal it is difficult to point to any great article the pro-
duction of which has grown in the last five years in anything like the
same ratio as our expenditure has grown. For instance, there has
not been any increase in our agricultural production or in the produc-
tion of our textile and iron industries (our three greatest industries),
sufficient to account for ' phenomenal prosperity.' Hence this note
of interrogation, What part has borrowing played in producing a
simulated prosperity ?

And here we may learn something from the experience of our
neighbours if we look at Germany slowly recovering, by liquidation,
from an over-borrowed position, or if we look across the Atlantic ;
and in both these instances extraordinary prosperity was proclaimed
three or four years ago, and the claim seemed to be fully warranted
by the figures. To-day we know how much of it was simulated pro-
sperity due to over-borrowing.

In two articles in this Review (January and August) last year I
drew attention to the increase of borrowing all over the world, and
particularly in the United States. During the last seven years the
banks there have increased their loans by nearly seven hundred
million pounds sterling, or at the rate of a hundred millions per year.
This excessive borrowing has thrown the financial machinery so much
out of gear that the condition of trade at the present moment is very
unsatisfactory after the great boom three or four years ago. But,
notwithstanding the monstrous over- capitalisation of new companies,
the expenditure of the borrowed money has mainly been of a reproduc-
tive character — as it was also in Germany. There has consequently
been a gigantic increase in the production of iron, steel, cotton

1 1 2

472 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

manufactures, and all other kinds of manufactures, whilst the develop-
ment of an exceedingly rich new country has been going on apace with
immense additions to real wealth in the increased cotton, corn, and
other crops, and in the output of minerals. The trade accounts to
the 30th of June show a very large increase during the last twelve
months in the exports of manufactures, as was naturally to be antici-
pated, and the total volume of trade is a record notwithstanding a
great decrease in the exports of grain. The financial position is still
radically unsound, and the cure will be difficult ; but time, the land,
and the quickly growing population by immigration may enable the
difficulties to be surmounted. But Germany and Great Britain are
not in the position of the United States as wealth producers, and
consequently they cannot run riot in borrowing, in a like degree, with
equal impunity. There is no reason, however, why normal prosperity
should not be regained, in our own case, as it has been regained to a
certain extent in Germany by liquidating an over-borrowed position,
although it is to be feared that there must be a good deal of suSering
in the process. The reaction from profuse expenditure is always
trying, but in these islands we have extraordinary advantages in the
soil, in mineral wealth, and in our unique geographical position for
trade, and the British workman, with his inherited capacities, is still
the best workman in the world when he chooses to put out his full
strength. We have seen also, in the White Star steamship accounts,
published the other day, what British captains of industry can do
when they put their whole minds and energies into their business,
and when they refrain from borrowing. There is no reason, therefore,
why we should not have a reasonable measure of prosperity in the
future, under rational conditions of expenditure. Our danger at the
moment lies in deceiving ourselves by not analysing our position.
We do not quite know where we are in the matter of our reserves, and
the true significance of the relations between our imports and our
exports requires elucidation. We trust too much to a hasty glance at
bare figures which are sometimes very deceptive. Reasons have been
given above for doubting whether the large imports really testify
to the legitimate spending powers of our people, and in regard to
exports we have to distinguish between goods sold for cash to France
or Germany, for instance, and goods sold on credit to South Africa and
Australia. We also want to know whether our cotton manufactures
(made from the American staple) have left anything but losses for
the past three years.

Then our banking reserve is the most important consideration
of all.

Events are moving very rapidly in the Far East, and we cannot
evade the necessity of taking account of certain eventualities that may
arise. It is the part of every self-respecting nation always to maintain
itself in such a position as to be able to view the prospects of

1904 THE PINNACLE OF PROSPERITY 473

war without dismay, and to that end every nation ought to con-
sider carefully where it stands. We have a strong and, let us hope, a
very efficient Navy, and we may count upon the moral support of the
United States in the Far East. But how shall we stand financially ?
Where would our money market be to-day if large amounts of
Continental funds were to be suddenly withdrawn from London ?
No navy and no army could help us in this case. Twenty-four hours
might work immense mischief, for we live and move and have our
being in an edifice of credit — a vast superstructure poised on a very
narrow basis, like a pyramid standing on its apex. It is quite true
that in a week's time we can always replenish our stock of gold by
sales in New York of our American securities — but time may be of
the essence of the contract, and the Bank of England's stock of
gold is too small. The stability of our money market ought, there-
fore, to be our pre-eminent care. Yet scarcely anyone in England
now gives a serious thought to finance. The House of Commons
which ought to guard the purse has abnegated its functions. Out-
side experts sound notes of warning from time to time, but no real
attention is paid to them. Mr. Inglis Palgrave has written weightily
on the subject, and Mr. Rozenraad, for instance, told the Institute of
Bankers last April that

this question of England's indebtedness to France, Austria, and other countries
ought to be brought constantly before the minds of the English banking world.
Every English acceptance discounted outside the country created a liability for
Great Britain, a claim on Great Britain, which might have to be liquidated at a
time when markets were under the influence of political complications or of
unexpected events.

Since these words were spoken England's indebtedness to the
Continent has increased rather than diminished, if we may judge
by the accounts in the daily papers of the renewal of English
bills by France and the investment of Continental money in our
Exchequer bills. How is it, and why is it, that we have created this
unpleasant liability for ourselves ? The only answer is, by an ex-
travagant expenditure and by our unwillingness to look facts in the
face. We cannot permanently increase our reserves so long as our
imports continue to exceed our exports on the existing scale,
although, of course, if the rate of interest is higher in London than in
the other great centres, more money will be sent here on temporary
loan if political conditions remain normal. But what we want is not
to borrow more, but to convert ourselves again into being a creditor
nation on current account as well as on capital account. For the
last seven years (1898-1904) the average excess of our imports over
our exports has been something over 178 millions a year (compared
with 140 millions, the average of the seven preceding years), and if
we assume that the invisible exports are 178 millions a year, there

474 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

has obviously been no opportunity for increasing our reserves. We
had high hopes a year ago that a National Inquest would enlighten
our understanding of these complex questions, but as a matter of fact
we know to-day very little more on the subject than we knew before.
We are still groping in the dark at a time when we ought to have
all the light that the ripest financial experience can throw on the
great problems that are immediately in front of us.

Is there any more practicable means to that end than the appoint-
ment of a Royal Commission to inquire into all the ramifications of the
position ?

J. W. CROSS.

1904

THE POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL
SITUATION IN AUSTRALIA

THE political situation at the hour in Australia generally, and Victoria
particularly, is of more than ordinary interest, and the issues involved
are of a kind that has not been met with hitherto in any Parliament ;
and although the population affected is comparatively small and the
area relatively large, the principles involved are identical with those
struggling for ascendency in Europe and America.

Numerous speakers and writers have referred to Australia as ' the
paradise of the workman,' and quoted cases which have helped to
create an impression in some quarters that already the standard of
life of the workers generally in Australia is such that there is little or
no room for dissatisfaction with the prevailing economic conditions.

If this were so it would be difficult to account for the social unrest
that undoubtedly shows itself pretty plainly and finds at the time
its chief expression in the political activities of the workers, who are
battling vigorously to return to the Federal and State Parliaments
an increasing number of direct Labour representatives.

The industrial disputes, too, are fought quite as bitterly as in
other countries, a notable instance being that of the Gippsland (Victoria)
coal-miners, where the men of the Outtrim, Jumbunna, and Korrum-
burra coal-mines, some 1,300 in number, stubbornly resisted for
seventy weeks the conditions the employers sought to impose, and
have now yielded when actual starvation has compelled them ; and
this week a number of them who have been entirely peaceful and
law-abiding all through the dispute, are leaving Victoria by boats for
other States — viz. New South Wales, Western Australia, and New
Zealand ; some of them deeming it expedient to change their names
to run less risk of being black-listed by the Employers' Federation.
The unemployed assemble several days during each week and hold
meetings in the usual style, calling upon the authorities to provide
means for work, &c., it being alleged that in Melbourne alone there
are between five and six thousand out of employment — a statement
which can easily be believed seeing that this represents 5 per cent.
of the male workers ; whilst the trade union statistics show that in

475

476 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Sept.

several trades 15 per cent, more correctly represents the true state oi
affairs.

The Amalgamated Engineers at the present time have 18 per cent,
of their members in Victoria in receipt of Society benefits ; New
South Wales being quite as bad. Nor is gold-mining in Victoria any
better, as is shown by the conditions obtaining in and around the
city of Ballarat. It is authoritatively stated that in Ballarat, East
and West, there are about one thousand six hundred miners employed ;
of these about six hundred receive 7s. Gd. per shift of eight hours, or
21. 5s. a week, and the thousand who work as ' tributers,' and usually
put in six days a week, average about 12s. 6d. per week per man.
This seems almost unbelievable, and but that I have had many
opportunities of mixing up with the men themselves and talking
the matter over in its various phases, I should doubt its accuracy.
As regards farm workers, wages range from 6s. to 18s. a week and food,
but for harvest hands about 6s. a day is paid.

Many skilled workers are badly organised, and wages are propor-
tionately low, many connected with the agricultural-implement
making receiving not more than from 30s. to 40s. a week.

As regards furniture- making in Victoria, in spite of trade unionism
and a wages board stipulating the conditions for all at the trade,
Chinamen included, this trade is now monopolised by the Chinamen,
and white men are literally compelled to leave the State, there being
no work for them. Of the 740 men now engaged in furniture-making
in Melbourne and district, 110 are Europeans and 630 are Chinese.
During the last twelve months the secretary of the Furniture Trades
Union, at the Trades Hall, Melbourne, states that he has issued eighty-
nine members' clearances — i.e. that number of members has left the
State because there was not the slightest prospect of their being able
to obtain employment. A large proportion of these men are now in
New Zealand.

To indicate the stage of development as regards street transit in
Melbourne the trams may be instanced, which are run by cable system
and are in the hands of a private company, the almost universal
charge being 3d. In a very few instances, where the State railways
compete, penny fares for short stages prevail, and on some lines
passengers may purchase a dozen tickets for 2s. ; but over a very
large portion of Melbourne the minimum price is 2s. 9d. per dozen
tickets.

This is in marked contrast to Sydney, where the street cars are on
the electric overhead system and are owned and controlled by the
State, and where penny stages are generally prevalent. The Sydney
trams are one of the best-paying assets of New South Wales.

As bearing upon the social conditions and the relationship between
employers and workers, it is stated that the Melbourne tramway
employes dare not, as they value their situations, be identified with

1904 THE SITUATION IN AUSTRALIA 477

any labour union, the most rigid espionage on the part of the company
being carried out. The same applies to the employes of the Melbourne
Gas Company, who have no industrial organisation, and dare not
form one, because of the known hostility thereto of the company
directors.

These facts will serve to dispel any idea that the prevailing indus-
trial and social conditions leave nothing to be desired from the workers'
standpoint.

But to give the points which tell on one side and not to give others
would create a wrong impression, and therefore it is necessary to say
that, speaking generally, and more particularly for shop or stores
assistants and for many mechanics, the standard of living is higher
than in England. For practically all stores assistants to leave work
at six in the evening or a little later, to work late one evening in the
week only, and for all to have a half -holiday once a week is a distinct
advance upon the conditions in Britain. Mechanics generally do not
work more than forty-eight hours a week, and the rates of pay are
distinctly higher than in Britain. Taking mechanics' wages as
ranging in London from 36s. to 50s. a week, a fair comparison here
would be for similar men in Melbourne from 45s. to 65s. a week, but
this higher figure is obtained for an hour less work per day. Of course
there is a difference in purchasing power, and especially as regards
refreshments. The customary drinks of the workman in London,
costing l^d., 2d., and 3d. per glass, in Melbourne can only be had for
3d. and 6d. respectively, whilst in many country towns the minimum
price is 6d. A felt hat costing 6s. Qd. at home, in Melbourne costs
10s. Qd. ; but this difference does not prevail all round, my own
estimate being that a typical mechanic will receive 15s. per week
more in Victoria than in Britain, and one-half of this 15s. will be
absorbed in increased expenditure, leaving a solid margin of 7s. 6d.
a week to the good for one hour's work per day less. As counter-
acting this, again, the periods of unemployment appear to be longer on
the average in Australia than in the Old Country.

As regards working hours, there is no Eight Hours Law generally
prevalent in any of the Australasian States, and never has been ; and in
Victoria at present, taking all workers, there are quite as many work-
ing more than eight hours per day as there are working eight hours or
less.

The real reason for the instituting of the eight hours day in Victoria
by the workers in the building trades in 1856 appears to have been
because it was found to be so much more exhausting to work under
the heat of the Australian sun than it had been in a European climate,
and the demand for the eight hours work-day has been advocated in
Australia chiefly on those grounds. It is only in recent years that
the demand for reduced working hours has been put forward as a
sound economic method of absorbing the unemployed dislodged from

478 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

their occupations by the march of invention, and also as a means to
enable the worker to share more equitably in the ever-increasing
product of labour.

Having regard to the greatly increased productivity of labour,
the West Australian Labour party is now vigorously advocating a
seven hours work-day, and when one speaker at the Victorian eight
hour celebration claimed that there were stronger reasons to be
advanced now in favour of a six hours work-day than there were in
1856 in favour of an eight hours day, the statement was received
with vociferous applause.

At the forty-eighth celebration of the eight hour day in Melbourne,
which took place on the 25th of April of this year, circumstances
transpired which added special interest to the event. The occasion was
one of more than ordinary interest, as the chief speaker was the Hon.
J. C. Watson, M.H.R., who only two days before had been sent for
by the Governor-General and charged with the responsibility of forming
a Ministry ; two days later Mr. Watson assumed office as Prime
Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia, all his Ministerial
colleagues (save one), with himself, being pledged members of the
Labour party.

The political Labour parties of the various Australian States date
from the year 1890, when, after the termination of the Australian
maritime strike, which affected the whole of Australia and New
Zealand, and which ended by the defeat of the workmen, forthwith
the trade unionists and others resolved to take political action on
independent lines. With the advent of Federation and a Common-
wealth Parliament, in January 1900, Labour men were ready to contest
a number of the electorates, and succeeded in returning fourteen
pledged Labour members to the House of Representatives out of a
total of seventy-five, each State contributing a share in the following
order : New South Wales six, Queensland three, Victoria two, West
Australia one, South Australia one, Tasmania one.

To the Senate, consisting of a total of thirty-six members, nine
pledged Labour men were returned as follows : Queensland four,
West Australia two, Victoria one, South Australia one, Tasmania
one, New South Wales none.

That the Labour members worked effectively and assiduously
even their strongest opponents frankly admit. That their behaviour
in and out of Parliament could not have been displeasing to a larger
number than those who had returned them may be concluded from
the fact that when the first Parliament expired by effluxion of time,
and the election for the second Parliament took place in December
1903, the straight-out Labour men in the House of Representatives
were increased from fourteen to twenty-three ; New South Wales
sending seven, Queensland six, West Australia four, Victoria three,
South Australia two, and Tasmania one.

1904 THE SITUATION IN AUSTRALIA 479

In the Senate the Labour party increased their numbers from nine
in the first Parliament to fourteen in the second — viz. from Queens-
land five, West Australia four, South Australia three, Victoria one,
Tasmania one, and New South Wales none.

As Queensland's total number of members in the House of Repre-
sentatives is nine, and six of these are pledged Labour members, it
will be seen that Labour has a slight preponderance of power in the
second Chamber as far as this State goes ; whilst in the Senate, where
the total number of members for each State is six, the Queensland
Labour men have five out of the six seats, or, combining the two
Houses, the Queensland contingent thereto totals fifteen, and of these
eleven are Labour men.

It may be well to explain that each of the six Federated States
returns six Senators ; whilst the number returned to the House of
Representatives is based upon population, New South Wales return-
ing twenty-six, Victoria twenty-three, Queensland nine, South Aus-
tralia seven, West Australia five, and Tasmania five.

The franchise for both Houses being adult suffrage, much specula-
tion took place as to how the women would vote, or whether they
would vote at all. The result has shown that the women were quite
as keen to exercise their vote as the men, and, as might naturally
have been expected, whilst independence of spirit was shown, and the
right to do exactly as they pleased was freely claimed and acted upon,
each class voted in the main as did the men folk in the same class ;
and although quite a number of workmen were concerned as to whether
the Churches would succeed in detaching and diverting the votes of
many women in a manner unfavourable to the Labour policy, all such
were perfectly satisfied when the results were declared.

The women did not vote at the first Federal election, and to most
of them it was an entirely new experience, and naturally there was a
small percentage of odd cases ; but over the whole Commonwealth
the lively interest shown by the women and the all-round efficiency
that characterised them at the polling-booths commanded the most
hearty admiration of the sterner sex. During the election campaign
great amusement was caused by the wrigglings of those candidates
who for many years had opposed woman suffrage, but on this occasion
were taxing their brains as to how to secure the votes of the women.
Their sudden discovery that after all women would probably impart
a healthy tone to matters political, and that there really was no valid
reason as to why the right of citizenship should be exclusively held
by one sex when the everyday interests of both sexes were directly
affected thereby, &c. : this in face of the most determined opposi-
tion to the women's claim all through their political careers until
they were beaten, relieved the monotony of many a meeting when
women themselves, or men on their behalf, insisted upon reminding
such candidates of their previous attitude on this subject.

480 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

Not that the election proceedings were by any means dull, for all
over the Commonwealth the fight was very keen between the growing
forces of Labour and the ever-active forces of Capitalism. All the
principal papers declared the contest was between Socialism and
Anti-Socialism, and for months prior to the election a systematic
onslaught had been made by the various sections of the plutocracy
on the Labour parties, who in turn were unceasing in the advocacy
of their cause.

Very few, if any, of the Labour candidates disavowed Socialism,
but only a minority amongst them clearly and pleasurably declared
in favour of Socialism ; their real attitude being that of Independent
Labour candidates, but not necessarily Socialists. The programme
of the Federal Labour party, or the ' Fighting Platform,' as it is termed,
consists of the following comparatively mild proposals :

(1) The Maintenance of a White Australia.

(2) Compulsory Arbitration.

(3) Old Age Pensions.

(4) Nationalisation of Monopolies.

(5) Citizen Defence Force.

(6) Restriction of Public Borrowing.

(7) Navigation Laws.

The nationalisation of monopolies being the nearest approach to
Socialism, much, of course, depends upon what are considered to be
monopolies. It will probably surprise many to hear that the only
industry definitely decided upon as being in the monopolistic stage
ready for nationalisation is the tobacco industry. This trade being
already practically in the hands of a syndicate, and all competition
destroyed, it certainly is in a stage of development worthy of special
attention. But allowing for a decided disposition to nationalise the
tobacco trade, a moderately advanced English worker will wonder
what there is in the programme submitted to cause consternation.
The matter of compulsory industrial arbitration excites the greatest
interest throughout the whole of Australia. The capitalists are bitterly
opposed to it, and the workers are very earnest in demanding it. The
capitalists vehemently declare that to bring such matters as the
adjustment of wages and working hours, and the regulation of appren-
tices and improvers in the respective trades under the control of a
court of law is an unwarrantable interference with the established
rights of an employer to control his own business in his own way ;
that such interference will result in a general set-back to manufac-
turers by unduly handicapping them in the competitive struggle ; and
that if the workers had good sense they would never consent to forego
their liberty to make their own individual arrangements ; and they
point to the workmen of England and America who have shown
* their wisdom ' by voting down with overwhelming majorities the

1904 THE SITUATION IN AUSTRALIA 481

question of compulsory arbitration whenever the matter has been
discussed. To which the workers in effect reply : That the unwarrant-
able interference argument is the old contention of every set of em-
ployers used in every country against the introduction and extension
of the Factory and Workshops Acts ; that the world at large has
already gone beyond the stage of leaving industrial affairs to the sole
control of the capitalists ; and that the statement that manufacturing
industry will be checked, if not destroyed, is also part of the old bogy
tales used on thousands of occasions whenever the State insisted upon
reasonable ventilation of factories, &c., fencing of machinery, stipula-
tion of working time, or raising the age when children may commence
work. Instead of these capitalistic prophecies coming true, they
have been falsified in every country, and the workers have best working
conditions and enjoy the highest standard of life in those trades that
have the greatest amount of State regulation ; that as regards the
liberty they enjoy under the present system it is more imaginary than
real ; and in any case they take their stand as citizens and declare that
the interests of the community should be the first consideration
under all circumstances, and neither a section of capitalists nor workers
should be allowed to dislocate industrial affairs regardless of the con-
venience of the general community.

As to the working practicability of compulsory arbitration, New
Zealand's nine years' experience shows the advantage of the com-
pulsory system as against any other plan existent. In New Zealand
96 per cent, of the cases dealt with (and practically all industrial
cases are dealt with under the Act) have proved to be thoroughly
satisfactory to both sides, and manufactures have developed much
more rapidly during the period that the Industrial Arbitration Act
has been operative than ever before. It is also the case that the New
Zealanders have called for and obtained amendments to the Act,
making it applicable to an ever-increasing number of occupations,
until now all may make use of the Act who ' do any skilled or unskilled
manual or clerical work for hire or reward.'

As this subject is still being actively discussed in and out of Parlia-
ment, and especially as the subject is receiving attention in Britain,
it should be mentioned that although statements have frequently
been made by responsible speakers on the capitalist side that the
New Zealand Act has proved unworkable, and that, whereas it had
originally applied ' to any industry,' the farmers particularly organised
to obtain a modification of the Act so that it should not apply to
them, the absolute facts of the case are that the term ' in any
industry ' was used by the framers of the Act, intending thereby to
cover all workers, but in 1899 a case was brought before the Arbitra-
tion Court by the Grocers' Assistants of Christchurch, and the decision
thereon was delivered by Mr. Justice Edwards — the then judge of
the Arbitration Court — that the Court had no jurisdiction, because

482 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

shopmen were not engaged in an ' industry,' but were merely occupied
in distribution. He considered that ' industry ' meant labour engaged
in manufacturing, and did not include the work of those engaged in
distribution. Subsequently Justice Edwards was superseded by
Judge Martin as President of the Court, and when the Carters Union
applied to be brought under the Act Judge Martin ruled that they
were not engaged in an ' industry,' but were only distributors. These
decisions caused much dissatisfaction, as they ruled out shop-assistants,
carters, sailors, engine-drivers, and others the Act was intended to
cover. This resulted in a demand on the part of the skilled trades
to have the words ' in any industry ' removed, and replaced by others
sufficiently explicit, that there should be no room for fantastic rulings
of the Presidents. The Government consented, the three words were
eliminated by an amending Act of 1901, since which time the Act
may be invoked by any union of persons who ' do any skilled or
unskilled manual or clerical work for hire or reward ' ; and, as a
prominent New Zealand official has stated, ' There could be a union
of Under-Secretaries of Departments, or of Ministers of the Crown,
for that matter, since we certainly all " work for hire or reward."

Thus it was the workers themselves who insisted upon the elimina-
tion of the words ' in any industry,' not to narrow the application of
the Act, but to extend it, and place it beyond the power of the judge
to narrow its scope.

New South Wales has had an Industrial Arbitration Act in opera-
tion for upwards of three years, and, allowing for initial difficulties, it
has operated most beneficially, and the workers are practically unani-
mous in its favour.

A number of the Victorian capitalists are now declaring enthusias-
tically in favour of a scheme of voluntary arbitration, but unfortunately
for them this has been tried in South Australia. The South Australian
Conciliation Act is admitted to be an excellent piece of work as far as
machinery goes ; but lacking ' compulsion,' it has been utterly ineffec-
tive, only four cases being brought under it in eight years, because
one of these four, the ' Tanners and Curriers ' dispute, proved the
weakness of the Act, and it is for all practical purposes a dead letter.
The workers of South Australia have declared in favour of a com-
pulsory Act.

When the Australian employers point to the success of the English
system the workers here naturally inquire what has been the actual
result of the proceedings under the Conciliation (Trades Disputes)
Act, 1896, as issued by the Board of Trade, the last of which reports
shows that during the two years which it covers forty-one cases have
been dealt with as against forty-six in the two preceding years, the
yearly average for the seven years since the passing of the Act being
twenty-two.

During the same period there has been a total of 4,155 trade dis-

1904 THE SITUATION IN AUSTRALIA 483

putes ; the proportion dealt with under the Act (154) being about
3i per cent. ; but taking the number settled under the Act during the
seven years (total forty-seven), the proportion is a little over 1 per
cent. So it would appear that compulsory arbitration as a means of
efficiently and fairly settling industrial disputes is very far ahead of
any other system.

Reverting to the Federal Parliament of Australia, the Deakin
Ministry were endeavouring to carry through Parliament a Concilia-
tion and Arbitration Bill for the settlement of disputes ' extending
beyond the limits of any one State, but does not include a dispute
relating to employment in the public service of the Commonwealth,
or of a State.' This the Labour party determined to alter by the
omission of the words, ' but does not include,' with a view to insert
in lieu thereof the words ' and includes.' The mover of this amend-
ment was Mr. Andrew Fisher, representing the electorate of Wide
Bay, Queensland. In winding up the debate prior to the vote being
taken Mr. Fisher said :

I desire to protect the States Parliaments against the Civil Servants by
transferring the powers which are at present vested in them to a judicial body
which will have ample opportunity to investigate every grievance which may
come before it. Believing as I do in State Socialism, and holding that the
general welfare of the people should be our first consideration, I am bound to
embrace every opportunity to advance those views. If it be true, as some legal
members of the House contend, that a railway dispute cannot extend beyond
the limits of one State, it seems to me idle to introduce a measure of this
character.

The amendment of Mr. Fisher was carried by a majority of nine ;
this was on Thursday, the 21st of April. On the 23rd the Governor-
General sent for Mr. Watson, the leader of the Labour party, who
formed his Ministry, and took office on the 27th, Mr. Fisher becoming
the Minister for Customs.

At the present time [middle of June] the Labour Ministry is
trying to pioneer the Arbitration Bill through Parliament, and with
a promise of success, but not to cover all sections. By a majority of
twelve the House of Representatives have declared in favour of the
Act applying to disputes on State railways or any public authority
constituted under the Commonwealth or a State, and to employes
in industries carried on by the Commonwealth. But the Labour
Government agreed to drop the clerical staff of the public service, nor
is the bill to apply to rural industries. It is difficult to exaggerate
the intensity of feeling in this discussion ; the capitalist portion treats
the matter as fundamental and vital ; the Employers' Federation is
vigilant in its endeavours to organise hostile opinion, and the line of
cleavage between the ' classes and masses ' is very well marked.

From the standpoint of the Collectivist the Arbitration Bill is
but an incident in a much larger campaign, and much depends upon
the extent to which the present Commonwealth Government is

484 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

imbued with Collectivist principles. It would be wrong to suppose that
it is an avowed Socialist Ministry, although each member individu-
ally would probably declare in favour of a Socialist State, save perhaps
Mr. Higgins, the Attorney- General.

And yet the entire Ministry are a most cautious group of men.
The Hon. J. C. Watson, the Prime Minister, who was a compositor
by trade, is the essence of politeness and tact.

The Hon. W. M. Hughes, who has filled numerous occupations,
has recently been called to the Bar, and is now Minister for External
Affairs, is exceptionally well read and a very shrewd and able debater.
The Hon. E. L. Batchelor, Minister for Home Affairs, was for upwards
of two years Minister for Education in the South Australian Parlia-
ment, is a member of the Amalgamated Engineers, and a cultured
man all round. The Hon. Senator Dawson, Minister for Defence,
was formerly in the Queensland Parliament, and was for a short time
Labour Premier in that State. The Hon. Hugh Mahon, Postmaster-
General, is a highly trained journalist, and commands and receives
the respect of his Parliamentary colleagues on all sides ; and equally
so does the Hon. Senator M'Gregor, Vice-President of the Executive
Council; and the rest of their colleagues belonging to the Labour
party, in both Upper and Lower Chambers, are men of considerable
experience and wide reading.

That they wish well to the Commonwealth, and honestly devote
their energies to the advocating and bringing about that which is
likely to prove most conducive to the general well-being in all agri-
cultural, industrial, and trading affairs, none can doubt who has any
real knowledge of them. That the affairs of the Commonwealth are
safe in their official charge every fair-minded person agrees ; for as
regards the Ministry, at all events, every man, without exception,
brings with him not merely a general knowledge of men and affairs,
but also, as the result of years of devotion to a genuine study of social
and industrial progress, with an intimate knowledge of Australia's
condition and requirements, each man's past life gives evidence of a
philosophic grasp of the essential conditions to progress. Whether
their period of office be of short or long duration, certainly the true
interests of Australia will be duly guarded.

THE VICTORIAN STATE ELECTIONS AND THE LABOUR PARTY.

To explain the growth of the Labour movement in Victoria it is
necessary to go back to 1889, up to which time it had always been
looked upon as quite the correct thing by workmen to support the
capitalist candidates. It was held to be the duty of the properly
behaved trade unionist to work politically for the return of an em-
ployer of labour to Parliament, the universally prevalent idea being
that the worker was dependent upon the employer, that the interests

1904 THE SITUATION IN AUSTRALIA 485

of both were identical, and woe betide any one of their number who
dared to whisper in favour of running a Labour candidate ; such
an one was immediately scowled down as proposing that which was
absurdly unpractical.

The dividing line between the respective capitalist candidates was
the fiscal question. Nearly everything was imported from Europe
or America, and being desirous of establishing manufacturing industries
in Victoria, it became part of the political faith of the Liberals to
religiously support protection, whilst the Conservatives supported
free trade. Numerous Parliaments were returned on the protec-
tionist ticket, with a sublime indifference as to their intentions or
doings as regards the more weighty matters of social and industrial
development. In 1889 the first definite signs of a change came by
the successful running of two Labour candidates, the one Mr. William
Trenwith, then secretary to the Bootmakers' Union, now Senator in
the Federal Parliament ; and the other, Dr. William Maloney, who
recently successfully contested Melbourne against Sir Malcolm
M'Eachern as Federal representative.

The time that tried men's souls and sharpened their intellects in
Australia was during the maritime strike of 1890. In August and
September 1889, when the London dock strike was on, when some
60,000 men were on strike, and at least four times that number
had to be provided for by the Strike Committee, the Australians
generally responded right nobly to the appeal for financial assistance,
and remitted some 30,OOOZ. to London in the space of five weeks — a
most exceptional response which earned the gratitude not only of the
dock labourers, but of the whole democratic half of the English people.
I have been surprised to find, during my residence in Australia, that
those who were instrumental in obtaining this aid were unable to
account for the magnificent enthusiasm shown by all classes in
Australia ; but how different was it when the following year, 1890,
brought with it the Australasian workers' own trouble in the shape
of the maritime strike ! Instead of kindly conference and friendly
co-operation, it soon became war to the knife, and the knife to the
hilt. Every humiliation the employers could inflict upon the workers,
this they did, and, monopolising all social and political power, they
had every institution under their control ; the struggle must have
been an exceedingly severe one, fought out most bitterly. It was
interesting, when in New Zealand two years ago, to find how
deeply resentful were some of the men there towards the Australian
capitalists who had used their power so mercilessly ; and, of course,
the strike affected New Zealand and Tasmania as well as the main-
land of Australia. From this time, and as the result of this serious
struggle, dates the real Labour movement not of Victoria merely, but
of the whole of Australasia.

One can reflect upon what would have been the probable trend of

VOL. LVI— No. 331 K K

486 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

events had that struggle not taken place, or, taking place, had the
men and not the employers won the day. It is difficult to conjecture,
but it is highly probable that there would have been very little in the
shape of a real political Labour movement like unto that which now
exists in each State. Partly in consequence of the great distance
separating Australasia from the large centres of civilisation, and
partly because of the prevalence of the idea, so common until a decade
or so ago in Britain, that the Britisher has nothing to learn from the
foreigner, the Australian lags a little in the development of the cos-
mopolitan spirit. But for good or ill capitalism is so thoroughly
international, and capitalist instincts so truly universal, and the
effects of the capitalist system so identical in all lands, young and old
alike, that in spite of race prejudice, and the utter inability to take
week-end runs to Paris, or Easter or Whitsun holidays to Ostend or
the Rhine, there is now developing that feeling of international brother-
hood that is a determined foe to racial conceit, and the sure fore-
runner of international relationship.

In consequence of Federation the Australian States have found it
necessary to cut down the size of their State Parliaments, and Victoria,
which formerly had ninety-five members in the Legislative Assembly,
now has sixty-eight only. In the Act carried by the Irvine Govern-
ment last year, the railway employes and the public service generally
were partially disfranchised, i.e. they were not allowed to vote, as
heretofore, as ordinary citizens, but provision was made for the rail-
way employes all over the State to elect two members to represent
them in the Assembly, other Civil Servants to elect one member for
the Assembly, and the railway men and Civil Servants to jointly elect
one member for the Upper Chamber or Legislative Council, which,
under the new Act, is also an elected body. Under the older arrange-
ment the Labour party had twelve pledged men in the Assembly of
ninety-five. In the New House, as a result of the election that took
place on the 1st of June, there are now eighteen pledged Labour men
in a House of sixty-eight. So that, allowing for the reduced total
numbers, the Labour men are twice as numerous in the present Parlia-
ment as they were in the last.

It is noteworthy that as the avowed object of the special fran-
chise for railway men and public servants was to prevent them voting
for Labour candidates, all three elected under the special franchise
to the Assembly and the one elected to the Council are pledged
Labour men. Not only so, but as prior to the railway men's strike of
last year the railway men were ordered by the Government to dis-
associate themselves from the Trades Hall under penalty of dis-
missal, to show their appreciation of this treatment of ex-Premier
Irvine the two members the railway men have elected are Mr. Robert
Solly, who was the Trades Hall Council's president last year, and Mr.
Martin Hannah, the president for the current year.

1904 THE SITUATION IN AUSTRALIA 487

Thus the proportion of straight-out Labour men in the Victorian
Parliament is about the same as in the Commonwealth Parliament,
and equally interesting developments may take place in the one as in
the other.

Among the items found on the programme of the State Labour
party nothing has excited so much controversy as that of the pro-
posed ' progressive tax on land values, town and country, without
exemptions, exclusive of improvement.' The Government, with
Mr. T. Bent as Premier, are strongly opposed to a land tax. Those
who are advocating it call attention to the fact that although
Victoria is the smallest of the Australian States it consists of 88,000
square miles, or the same area as Great Britain, and that 24,000,000
acres of the best of this land is in the hands of private owners,
chiefly large squatters. That although the total population of
Victoria is merely 1,205,000, of whom 500,000 are in Melbourne,
it is impossible for Victorian natives who have a knowledge of
farming to get land to farm. Worse than this, a considerable
number of young farmers have quite recently been compelled to leave
the State because of the impossibility of obtaining good land under
tolerable conditions. The loss of population by such means almost
equals the natural increase, and yet it is universally admitted
that a much larger population is urgently needed in the State, and
quite a number of plutocratic statesmen are habitually calling atten-
tion to the necessity for a greater population ; but a State that cannot
find an outlet for the young farmers who were born in the State, and
have learned to farm in the State, with a knowledge of its climate, its
soil, and methods, can offer but a sorry invitation to others at present
living in other parts of the world. The land was sold by the Govern-
ment for an average of 11. per acre, some of it for considerably less.
Much of this land now yields 30s. per acre per annum rent ; in the
Western district much of it is let for dairy farming for 21. and upwards
per acre. Land suitable for potato-growing lets for from 51. to Ql. 10s.
per acre, and in a number of instances this is not paid for the use of
the land the whole year, but just from the time the potato crop is put
in till it is taken off, the owner claiming the use of the land for the
remaining portion of the year.

In many instances the squatter supplies the cattle and the utensils
with the farm, and lets the same on shares ; usually the farmer, who
does all the work, gets one-third of the results, two-thirds going to
the squatter. In some cases of dairy farming the squatter pays so
much per gallon to the farmer for all milk which goes to the butter
factory ; in one notable instance the squatter pays the working farmer
Id. per gallon for the milk, all of which must go to the factory, and,
as the average price of milk for butter-fat purposes is not less than
3\d. per gallon, it will be seen that the squatter gets two and a half
times as much as the farmer who does all the work.

K K 2

488 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

Within one hundred miles radius of Melbourne there are millions
of acres of the best land in Victoria, which under present conditions
carries about one sheep to two sheep per acre, but which, with decent
cultivation, could yield fifteen times as much ; portions of similar land
under proper cultivation are yielding more than this. | Although agricul-
tural land is of the value stated under the present system of land taxa-
tion, no land in the State is valued for taxation purposes at a greater
capital value than 4:1. per acre, i.e. even land that brings in 51. per acre
per annum rent is for taxation purposes never considered to be of a
greater capital value than 4Z. per acre. The Land Act provides that for
taxation purposes the capital value of the estate must be based upon
the average number of sheep it is estimated to be able to maintain.
The land is classified under the Act in four classes as follows :

First-class land is estimated to carry two sheep or more per acre.
Capital value, 4Z.

Second-class land, carrying three sheep to two acres. Capital
value, 3Z.

Third-class land, carrying one sheep to the acre. Capital
value, 21.

Fourth-class land, not capable of carrying one sheep per acre.
Capital value, 11.

But there are exemptions of two kinds, area and value.

As regards area, unless the estate exceeds 640 acres in extent, no
tax is imposed. As regards value, irrespective of the area, unless the
estate exceeds 2,500Z. in value, estimated as per previous statement,
no tax is levied ; and if it exceeds that value and area, then only that
in excess of the amount is taxed. So that in the State of Victoria,
consisting of 56 millions of acres, the poorest of which only is now in
the direct control of the State, 24 millions of acres of best land are
privately owned, and after allowing for exemptions only seven and
a half millions of acres, of the nominal value of 11,700,OOOZ., yield any
tax, the tax being 1£ per cent, on capital value, leaving fifteen and
a half millions of acres, of the declared value of 100,000,0002., as per
Coghlan the statistician, which escape taxation.

Those who wish to understand why the Labour party is growing
so rapidly should give attention to these matters ; herein lies the cause
of their deep-seated dissatisfaction, and seeking a remedy they resort
to the vigorous advocacy of a tax on unimproved land values, begin-
ning with Id. in the pound, which is estimated to yield about 600,OOOL,
or nearly half a million more than the present system, which yields
120,OOOL per annum only. If these figures appear small by compari-
son with similar figures that might be adduced concerning Britain or
portions thereof, then it must not be forgotten how small is the popu-
lation of the State, rather less than one and a quarter millions ; and
very much of the recent unrest is the direct outcome of the late Govern-
ment's methods of introducing economies in the State, by lowering the

1904 THE SITUATION IN AUSTRALIA 489

income-tax exemption, by reducing the wages of public servants, and
by adding to the duties most materially, particularly of railway
employes, signal-boxes that had been worked on eight-hour shifts
for years being placed on ten-hour shifts, and the surplus signalmen
thus created being reduced to porters with porters' pay.

The workers have a serious grievance, or consider they have, in
the reactionary character of the municipal franchise. As occupier,
the worker can have, of course, only one vote ; but property owners
may have as many as three votes in each ward if they have the neces-
sary qualifying value, so that commonly one wealthy firm can vote
down a dozen workmen. As a consequence it has never yet been pos-
sible to return a Labour candidate to the Melbourne City Council ;
several Labour men occupy seats on suburban councils, though the
property interests are always dominant. The franchise for the State
Parliament, unlike the Federal, admits of property owners in different
electorates exercising the vote as they may choose in any one electorate
where they reside or hold property, but they must not vote more than
once.

For local government purposes the whole of Victoria is divided
into cities, towns, boroughs, and shires, the total area under local
control being 87,322 square miles, only 562 square miles remaining
unincorporated. For provision of water supply, house draining,
sewering, &c., there exists a supervisory body known as ' The Mel-
bourne and Metropolitan Board of Works ; ' this body consists of
representatives from the City Council of Melbourne and twenty-two
other local bodies. And in one direction this body deserves the highest
praise, though probably a very large percentage of it should be given
to the chairman of the board, Mr. E. G. FitzGibbon, J.P., C.M.G.,
who was responsible for the present system of disposing of the sewage,
that still unsolved problem in London and most other cities in the
United Kingdom. In Melbourne and its suburbs, so far as the sewerage
system extends, not only is this difficulty managed efficiently, but a
solid 6,OOOZ. per annum net profit is obtained for the municipalities,
and this in spite of the fact that 150,OOOZ. had to be paid for the 8,900
acres comprising the sewage farm at Werribee, twenty miles distant
from Melbourne. The cost of pumping the sewage to the farm
boundary is borne by the rates ; on reaching there, every other expense
in connection with its treatment is added to the working expenses of
the farm. In addition to the 17Z. per acre paid to the previous owner
for this land, to grade and prepare it suitably has cost from 11. to
I4Z. per acre additional.

Of the total acreage, 4,500 acres is at present leased to farmers,
until such time as the land will be required when the sewerage system
is complete ; 2,000 acres are occupied by roads, channels, settling
ponds, &c., the actual area of the farm proper being 2,300 acres ; this
formerly carried from one to two sheep per acre. By treating this

490 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

acreage with sewage, twelve crops of rape and other herbage are
obtained per year, maintaining twenty sheep to the acre the year
round. The plan is to breed and fatten sheep for the market, and
for years in succession some of the very choicest are those from the
Werribee Farm.

A sufficient sum is earned to pay interest on the cost of

land £150,000

And on cost of grading, machinery, wharf, drains, &c. . 250,000

I.e. interest is paid on a total crop of . . . . £400,000

and the net profits for the last five years have been 32,OOOZ.

One is made to wonder why some such scheme has not been found
practicable in London, where the population is thirteen times the size of
Melbourne, and the possibilities proportionate ; why the lowlands of
the Essex Coast by which the London County Council fleet of sludge
vessels ply could not be built up and utilised like the Werribee
Farm on Port Phillip Harbour is difficult to understand. In any case
as one has so often been met by the statement that 'it is impos-
sible to deal with sewage in any known way to make a profit,' here
is at last a case where, without any glossing of facts or figures, a
genuine commercial success is made, and which is surely worthy of
the attention of municipal authorities at home.

What may be expected to take place during the next decade in
Australia ? is a question asked by many who have been surprised
at the coming to power of a Commonwealth Labour Ministry.

It is not wise to prophesy far in advance, especially as so much
in this case depends upon what development takes place in Europe
generally, and in the United Kingdom particularly. But amongst
other changes may be expected the nationalisation of the tobacco
industry, the opening up of the iron-ore deposits, the manufacture of
iron and steel, and consequently a large increase in engineering and
machine-making. In this connection a most important development
has just taken place in Melbourne, where the manufacture of iron and
steel from the magnetic iron sand of New Zealand — and this without
the aid of a blast-furnace — is an accomplished fact, and the same prin-
ciple can be applied to crushed iron ore. The iron-making industry
will be taken in hand by one of the State Governments, and kept
rigidly under State control. The resumption of the land by the
States will be demanded with increasing force. State agriculture and
horticulture will be initiated and developed. Land will be set apart
for co-operative production, so as to afford scope for co-operative
farming, and on lines that will afford opportunities for the unem-
ployed.

Old-age pensions are not yet on a satisfactory basis ; additions to
the amount allowed, and a more generous manner of disbursing the
same, will certainly be authorised.

1904 THE SITUATION IN AUSTRALIA 491

Between the workers of Australia, Europe, and America there is
rapidly developing a community of interest which will result in con-
certed action on all main social and industrial changes.

Fate has decreed that these Australian States shall be the fore-
runners in a really triumphant democracy, not on the lines set forth
by Mr. Andrew Carnegie ; for instead of the workers of America to-
day occupying that position they are amongst the most exploited
people on earth. Industrial warfare is there being waged by means
of bullets and sabres, by the organised capitalist forces, for the express
purpose of fighting down the workers and keeping them under capitalist
subjection. The ranks of the unemployed are increasing rapidly in
the United States, and their people are suffering because of a plethora
of wealth.

The stupendous power of wealth production in America does not
result in raising the standard of life of the workers, or in solving the
problem of unemployment. The conditions in all countries under a
capitalist regime are so unsatisfactory that the Australasian States
are compelled to look forward to a Collectivist regime ; this the workers
believe to be inevitable, and this they are sensibly preparing for by
peaceful and constitutional methods. Many of them are students of
social economics, with no prejudice in favour of any system other than
that obtained by education and observation of the world's affairs,
and they have come to see the wisdom of John Stuart Mill's state-
ment : ' The social problem of the future we consider to be, How to
secure the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common owner-
ship of the raw material of the globe, and the equal participation
by all in the benefits of combined labour.'

TOM MANN.

Melbourne, Victoria : June 1904.

492 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

A CHAPTER ON OPALS

ASSUMING that intrinsic beauty and rarity are the characteristics
which constitute a gem, then the precious or noble opal, as the best
specimens of the opal are termed, is entitled to very high rank. At
the present time Mr. Edwin Streeter, a considerable authority in
everything relating to jewels and precious stones, places it fifth in the
order of precedence, an arrangement which is apparently governed
by the test of money value or price ; because in setting pearl at the
head of the list, he points out the great appreciation which has recently
taken place in its marketable value, saying that pearls which twenty
years ago were worth 60Z. to 80Z. now fetch 500Z. to 600Z. This advance
may be due to fashion, and, if so, has to be regarded apart from those
cardinal traits of beauty and rarity which are herein accepted as the
qualities that ought to determine us in forming a judgment upon the
relative merit of gems. Mr. Streeter's table proceeds in the following
order : — I. pearl, II. Burma ruby, III. diamond, IV. emerald,
sapphire, oriental cat's eye, alexandrite, precious opal. To find
diamond in the third place will be a surprise to many, but there
are circumstances at work which, if continued, will relegate the diamond
to a still lower position, notably the large production from the
Kimberley and other South African mines, the ability to make real
diamonds artificially, which, although as yet a difficult and costly
operation, may be capable of development, and the ease with which
brilliant imitations can be manufactured. These conditions apply
also, but not with equal force, to the pearl, ruby, emerald, sapphire,
and other gem-stones. With the precious opal it is otherwise.

It is on record that by the ancients it was counterfeited more
successfully than any other jewel, so that with their tests it was
nearly impossible to distinguish between the real specimens and their
imitations. If so, the knowledge of this art has been lost, and modern
attempts to revive it have ended in failure. It is almost beyond
conception that anything possessing the indescribable and fascinating
beauty of the finest types could be made by human skill. Therefore
as it stands exempted from the danger of imitation, should the element
of rarity persist, the noble opal seems likely to regain the exalted
position it formerly held.

1904 A CHAPTEE ON OPALS 498

While not included in the somewhat comprehensive list of gems
set by Moses in the breast-plate of Aaron the High Priest, or of those
mentioned by the Prophets, and later by St. John the Divine, over
whose mind precious stones appear to have exercised great imaginary
sway (unless jasper, to which opal is allied, be taken as representative
of opal), nevertheless iheopalus of the Romans, oTraXXtos of the Greeks,
and the Sanscrit upala, has a fair claim to antiquity. The affection
which the ancients entertained for this lovely gem was unbounded.
The Romans particularly held it in great esteem. ' Of all precious
stones,' says'Tliny, ' the opal is the most difficult to describe, since
it combines in one gem the beauties of many species, the fire of the
carbuncle, the purple of the amethyst, the green of the emerald, and
the yellow of the topaz.' The same writer tells that the Senator
Nonius possessed a valuable opal, about the size ol a filbert nut, of
which he was extremely fond. It was set in a ring, and its value,
computed in the money of to-day, was 20,OOOZ. At the instance of
Mark Antony, who, it is alleged, coveted the gem and wished to obtain
it, Nonius was proscribed and preferred banishment rather than
surrender this treasure. In a curious old volume of the seventeenth
century entitled A Lapidary the author thus expresses himself ;
' The opal is a precious stone which hath in it the bright fiery flame
of the carbuncle, the fine refulgent purple of the amethyst, and a whole
sea of the emerald's green glory.' Another writes, ' The tender
violet of the amethyst, the blue of the sapphire, the green of the
emerald, the golden yellow of the topaz, and the flashing red of the
ruby appear at times in certain parts of the stone, crossing each other in
vivid play with an effect that is magical.' And Boetius, ' The fairest
and most pleasing of all other jewels by reason of its various
colours.'

The cause of this play of colours in the precious opal, on which
its trueness or nobility depends, has greatly exercised the scientific
mind and given rise to many different opinions, but no entirely
satisfactory reason has been forthcoming, although it has in recent
tunes been investigated by Sir David Brewster, Sir William Crookes,
and Lord Rayleigh. Thus far we have been considering only one
description, viz. the precious or noble opal ; there are many
varieties, of which the following are the principal :

(1) Precious or noble opal, which exhibits brilliant reflections of
green, blue, yellow, and red, the play of colours indicated above.

(2) Fire opal or girasol, presenting chiefly red reflections.

(3) Common opal, whose colours are white, green, yellow, and red,
without the play of colours.

(4) Semi-opal, the tendencies of which are more opaque than
common opal.

(5) Wood-opal, which shows a woody structure.

(6) Hydrophane, which assumes a transparency only when thrown

494 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

into water. This is a most interesting variety, of which more will be
said.

(7) Hyalite, colourless, pellucid, or white.

(8) Cacholong, nearly opaque, of a bluish white colour.

(9) Jasper-opal, moss opal, asteria, and some others.

There are occasionally found specimens of black opal, which are
very beautiful, exhibiting variegated colours on a black ground.
These are rare and command very high prices.

All of them are composed of silica in the gelatinising or colloidal
state, with more or less water, and occasionally, as accidental admix-
tures, other substances in small proportions. By analysis the following
results have been found as regards the silica :

Per cent.

Precious opal of Hungary 92

Fire opal of Mexico 92

Semi-opal of Hanau 82'75

Opal may be regarded as an uncleavable quartz. Hardness 5*5 to
6*5, specific gravity 2'091. When first taken out of the earth it is
not very hard, but by exposure to the air its hardness is increased ;
nevertheless it always remains a soft stone compared with other gems.
More particularly now with regard to the species called Hydrophane,
which is composed of

Per cent.

Silica 93

Alumina 2

Water . 5

In its ordinary state it appears as a white or reddish yellow material,
feebly translucent or completely opaque. But if it is plunged into
water it disengages small bubbles of gas, and at the same time becomes
transparent, sometimes displaying the colours of the true opal. Taken
from the water this curious stone keeps its transparency for a time,
but gradually, as the water evaporates, becomes once more
opaque. The older mineralogists, considering this stone an unex-
ampled marvel, named it ' Oculus Mundi,' the Eye of the World.
Other kinds have the curious property of improving by the warmth
of the hand, which brings out the brilliant tints for which the opal
is so famed. In contrast to the Hydrophane, the remarkable gem
introduced by Sir Walter Scott into his novel Anne of Geierstein,
described as an opal, is said to have been utterly destroyed by a drop
of water falling upon it. The water, however, was holy water, and
the wearer of the jewel was strongly suspected of demoniacal possession,
a combination likely to lead to some catastrophe.

Commercially, only three varieties of opal are recognised, viz.
oriental opal, fire opal, and common opal. The term oriental
was given to it by the Greek and Turkish merchants, who obtained
it from Hungary and then carried it to the East for the purpose of

1904 A CHAPTER ON OPALS 495

imparting to it additional value under the title oriental, because
gems coming from that quarter were supposed to be superior to others.
For a long period Hungary was the chief locality from which precious
opal was taken, being found in the Tokai Esperieser mountains,
not far from Czerwenitza, the principal mines being in the
Libanka Mountain, west of Dubnik. It is thought that it was from
this district that the ancient Romans procured their opal. More
recently fine specimens have been discovered in Mexico, Honduras,
and the Faroe Islands. Hitherto little has been found in the United
States, or generally throughout North and South America, excepting
the two places named. It is to Queensland and New South Wales
that the world is now chiefly indebted for its supplies of opals. Atten-
tion was first directed to their occurrence in Queensland by Mr. H. W.
Bond. In the western interior of that colony, where the water-
courses lead with scarcely perceptible fall southward and discharge
through the Darling River into the Great Australian Bight,
none of the metallic minerals have been found. But in those
regions, at detached localities in a north and south line from Ero-
manga or Opalopolis, on the River Bulloo, in the extreme south-
west corner of the State, to Fermoy or Opal Town, near Winton, almost
in the centre of the territory, the first recorded discovery of opal was
made in 1890, when gem-stone to the value of 3,OOOZ. was raised.
Since then there has been an output valued at 124,OOOZ., but this is
a loose estimate, as the miners either dispose of their winnings to buyers
who visit the fields or bring their opal to the towns and there dispose
of it, so that the transactions escape official notice. The long-con-
tinued drought has particularly affected this industry of late years.
The state of the country prevents southern buyers from visiting the
opal-fields. The miners have been living under great hardships,
being unable to prospect owing to the want of water, afflicted also by
the high price of stores and the difficulty in keeping horses alive. A
Government official, the Warden of Cunnamulla, who recently visited
the district, thus reports :

The country from Eulo to the opal-fields, a distance of forty miles, is un-
interesting in the extreme, not a blade of grass or patch of herbage being met
with in the whole journey. So severe is the drought in this locality that the
very birds seem to have migrated. Permanent water is scarce, the nearest to
the opal workings being at Sheep's Station Creek, five miles off. From the dam
at this place the water has to be carted to the mines, which conveys some
idea of the disadvantages under which the diggers work.

With special reference to the Southern Cross Mine, from which
Bond and party had a few years ago taken many thousands of pounds
worth of fine opal, the warden says :

There was no work in progress at the time of my visit, nor did I see any
signs of habitation in the vicinity. An air of gloom hung over the old workings,
silent and deserted, and the solitary grave of the first English manager,

496 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

Mr. Rossiter, roughly fenced in, with a bendee tree at the head, stood out clear
and denned in the centre of countless heaps of mullock and abandoned shafts.
Under his grave (he is buried in a shaft which he himself had sunk) a bed of
rich opal was found, but before the whole of it could be brought to the surface
the shaft caved in and the working party, with the loss of their tools, had a
narrow escape of being entombed also. A great deal of work has been done
here. There are many hundreds of disused shafts, and there is evidence of
some attempts at prospecting in the neighbourhood, but the place is practically
abandoned, save by a few ' fossick ers ' who at odd times rake over the old
workings, but seem to lack the enterprise to prospect for fresh leads.

The sinkings average 32 feet in depth, through soft desert sand-
stone, opal being met with in a band of pipe-clay in thickness from
6 inches to 2 feet. The gem is found in small ironstone nodules or
boulders, thickly imbedded in the pipe-clay. In New South Wales
the conditions of mining are very similar, the most important district
being known as the White Cliff Opal Fields. Fully 95 per cent, of
the opal obtained on this field is of no value, being common or semi-
opal, and much, although of the noble variety, contains little or no
colour, being very cloudy, or too watery, carrying the colour only in
minute bars or streaks, or being stained a reddish yellow by iron, the
latter being known locally as ' sandy whisker.'

There is another peculiar form common at White Cliff known as
4 nigger head.' These nigger heads are usually oval or spherical
masses of more or less opal-impregnated, fine-grained silica ; they are
of all sizes from 1 Ib. to 1 cwt., and almost always contain a centre of
opalised wood, often also containing opal of good 'colour in cracks,
caused by contraction. Possibly the most welcome information with
regard to opals will be that which enables one to distinguish between
good and bad. In valuing opal several points have to be taken into
account. Needless to say colour, in a technical sense, is the first,
red fire, or red in combination with yellow, blue, and green, being the
best. Blue by itself is quite valueless, and green opal is not of great
value unless the colour is very vivid and pattern good.

That the colour should be true is of vital importance. However
good it may be, if it runs in streaks or patches alternating with
colourless or inferior quality, that is untrue, and it is of compara-
tively small value. Pattern is a considerable factor in deciding the
value, the various kinds being distinguished as pin-fire, when the grain,
so to speak, is very small ; harlequin, when the colour is in minute
squares, the more regular the better ; and flash-fire or flash opal, when
the colour shows as a single flash, or in a very large pattern.

Of course there are many intermediate classes. The harlequin
pattern is the most uncommon, and also the most beautiful. When
the squares of colour are regular and show as distinct chequers of red,
yellow, blue, and green, this kind of opal is truly magnificent. The
flash-opal is often very beautiful in colour, especially when of the true
ruby or pigeon's blood colour. As a rule, however, it shows green or

1904 A CHAPTER ON OPALS 497

red flash, according to the angle at which it is held. The direction
of the pattern must also be taken into account. Often a stone that
shows a very good edge pattern will not look nearly so well on the
face, whilst a stone which shows somewhat streaky in the shorter
direction on the edge will sometimes give a fine harlequin pattern on
the face. For this reason the shape of the stone comes into the
reckoning. A thick stone with a good edge pattern may often be cut
up so as to use that pattern as a face to all the portions taken
from it, whereas a thin stone, though of equally good edge pattern,
which could only be cut with a natural face, would probably not be
worth nearly as much, weight for weight. It is difficult to obtain
separate pieces of absolute similarity in colour and pattern, therefore
for suites of jewellery a large true stone, from which the whole could
be cut, is worth a great deal more than many smaller stones approxi-
mately alike. Again, the ground or body of the opal has to be con-
sidered. This is not a constant quantity, as the various patterns
require slightly different ground. It should be neither too transparent
nor too opaque ; almost clear, with a faint milky tinge, translucent,
being about the best ground in general. Some kinds of opal are more
brittle than others. The harder and tougher the stone, the better it
is, as when cut it is less likely to be injured, and it retains the polish
better. Remarkable specimens are known to exist in different collec-
tions. There is one in the Imperial cabinet of Vienna, found at
Czernowitz, near the river Pruth, in 1770, which weighs 17 ounces,
and, notwithstanding its cracks and flaws, 10,0001. has been offered
for it, but the Government refused to sell it even at that price. Some
of the finest Hungarian opals are seen among the Crown jewels of
Austria, though France includes in her State collection two very
valuable gems of this kind. Perhaps the finest of modern times was
that of the Empress Josephine, called the ' Burning of Troy,' from
the numberless red flames blazing on its surface. An American writer
says that one of the most beautiful pieces of jewellery ever seen in
America was a necklace made of opals obtained from Honduras, cut
and mounted in gold with diamonds.

Whence has originated the superstition, now so widely spread,
that the opal is unlucky and the cause of misfortune to the wearer ?
By the ancients it was held to exercise the combined virtues of the
amethyst, ruby, and emerald, becoming moreover the type of Hope,
Innocence, and Purity.

Certainly its impaired reputation is not of long standing.

Brand, in his Antiquities, having collected together a large
number of popular superstitions and beliefs, makes no reference to
the opal. Even the gems alluded to are credited with good and
benevolent characters. Of the turquoise an early English compiler
says, ' The Turkeys doth move when there is any peril prepared to
him that weareth it.'

498 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

And again, ' Corall bound to the neck takes off turbulent dreams
and allays the nightly fears of children.'

Apparently the only reason for the disparagement which the
beautiful opal has suffered in modern times is found in chapter xi.
of Anne of Geierstein,1 and it must be said that it is wholly insuffi-
cient and quite ridiculous.

Superstition spreads quickly, and is very hard to uproot.

The writer overheard in Australia a conversation between two
young women in which a most circumstantial story was related of
the pernicious effect of an opal ring which had been given to a friend
on her marriage. The recipient had sustained misfortune upon mis-
fortune, and the chain of disaster was not broken until the ring was
taken to a jeweller and the unlucky opal removed. The narrator of
this story was unquestionably in earnest. Eugenie, the French
ex-Empress, would not wear a precious opal because it was said to
bring ill-luck to the wearer. Queen Victoria, on the contrary, pre-
sented each of her daughters upon her marriage with a parure of
opals and diamonds. Without the influence of an opal the life of
the French Empress was full of vicissitude, and latterly of disaster
and sorrow. Her Majesty the Queen, on the other hand, could not be
considered otherwise than fortunate in most respects. Gradually,
however, the fair fame of the precious or noble opal is being restored,
and her admirers are increasing in number and enthusiasm.

H. KERSHAW WALKER.

1904

LAST MONTH

THE close of the Parliamentary Session on the 15th of August was
hailed with general expressions of relief among all classes of
politicians. My readers would hardly forgive me if I were to inflict
upon them at this date a review of the Parliamentary history of the
year. It has been in some respects eventful, in others most
unexpectedly uneventful ; but the close of the Session seemed to
find everybody filled with an absolute distaste for the proceedings
at Westminster and the performances of the Government. It is
noticeable that the one event which in January everybody expected
to be the distinguishing feature of the Session was the event which
did not happen. There was no fatal defeat of the Ministry, and,
contrary to universal anticipation, Mr. Balfour emerged from the
conflict at Westminster still occupying the office of Prime Minister.
It is useless for his admirers to profess that the anticipations of his
defeat which prevailed when Parliament met in February were
confined to the more sanguine or the more foolish of his opponents.
Nothing could be further from the truth than this assertion.
It was among the ranks of the Ministerialists, and even among
the members of the Cabinet, that the gloomiest forebodings
of the fate of the Ministry were heard six months ago. It
was they who thought that Ministers could not possibly live
through the Session. Is Mr. Balfour's survival with the com-
plete falsification of the predictions regarding his fate to be
regarded as a triumph for himself and his party ? In one sense,
of course, the question must be answered in the affirmative. It is no
small tribute to the Prime Minister's adroitness that he should
have been able to hold his own in the midst of almost unexampled
difficulties, and that the barque of the Government should
have been able to ride successfully through all the cross-currents
which have so often threatened its existence. If the sole object
of a statesman is to keep office as long as possible, no matter
under what conditions, then, undoubtedly, Mr. Balfour deserves all
that his most enthusiastic panegyrists have said of him, and he is
entitled to a high place among those whose lot it has been to lead

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500 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

great parties. But there is a very large proportion of the British
public, by no means confined to his political opponents, who feel
constrained to object to this superficial view of his achievements.
Everybody will admit that he was not personally responsible for the
disastrous schism which destroyed the unity of his party in the
summer of last year, and whatever credit is due to him for having
kept the Ministry afloat in spite of that disaster he is certainly
entitled to receive. But those who look below the surface must ask
themselves whether his success in retaining office has been based
upon any substantial victory of his in the political world. To this
question the only possible answer must be in the negative. He has
had his majorities in the division lobby, and these have sufficed to
keep his Ministry alive ; but it is impossible to pretend that the
condition of his party is in any respect better than it was twelve
months ago, or that its prospects, when the inevitable hour of
reckoning comes, have been in any degree improved during the
Session that is just closed. Distraction and confusion are still the
lot of the Ministerial majority, and the evidence steadily accumu-
lates which proves that, whatever else the Cabinet has retained, it
has lost the confidence of the country. After all, then, it does not
seem that Mr. Balfour's much-belauded triumph is a very substantial
one. He has maintained his hold upon the Treasury Bench, but he
has done nothing to restore its old unity to his party, whilst his
position in the constituencies is unquestionably weaker than it was,
even in the autumn of last year.

By-elections, in ordinary times, are proverbially poor guides to
the trend of public opinion ; but when, during a whole session, or,
to speak more accurately, during a whole year, the by-elections
all teach the same lesson, it is only those who are wilfully blind or
perverse who will pretend to dispute their significance. There is no
need to go beyond the by-elections of last month for proof of the
steady and unmistakable tendency of electoral opinion in the
United Kingdom. Oswestry, Eeading, and North-East Lanark all
point to the same fact. If Ministerial optimists choose to ignore
that fact, and to cling to the delusion that a General Election will
set everything right, and give a Ministry which apparently does not
know its own mind on the chief controversial question of the hour
a renewed majority, other people may very well leave them to their
hallucination and to the painful surprise which awaits them.
Certainly nothing that has happened in Parliament during the
Session has been calculated to make the fall of the Government,
when it takes place, less severe and complete than the results of the
by-elections indicate that it will be. The first three months of the
Session were wasted in profitless bickerings over the Protectionist
policy of Mr. Chamberlain. Ministers, living under the sword of
Damocles, made no attempt to push forward measures which they

1904 LAST MONTH 501

did not expect to carry out during what remained to them
of life. It was not until Mr. Balfour's adroitness had enabled
him to patch up a hollow truce between the food-taxers and
free-fooders on his own side of the House that he took
courage to proceed with any important measures of legislation.
When he did so the measure to which he gave special prominence
was one that excited even greater animosity and resentment than
any of the other Bills for which the present Government has made
itself responsible. The Licensing Act is the one important piece of
business that has been carried out during the past Session. It is
needless to speak of the controversies which it has excited, and of the
searchings of heart which it has caused even among the most faithful
friends of the Government. The notion that it is in reality not a
measure for conferring immense pecuniary benefits upon brewers and
license-holders, but for effecting a great reform in the interests of
temperance, is not one that can hold water. For proof of this fact
we need only turn to the reports of the meetings of the great
brewery companies. But even if the measure were the innocuous
and virtuous thing which, according to its authors, it purports to be,
it has certainly not satisfied that very numerous and powerful body
in the community which regards intemperance as our greatest social
curse. By them it is regarded as a measure which must delay
indefinitely any real reform of the licensing system. Ministers have
thus added largely to the number of their enemies by the chief work
of the past Session. The fact that the Bill was forced through the
House of Commons by the drastic weapon of closure by compartments
cannot have softened the feeling which its passing has excited among
a large section of the public. Nor can it be said that the Education
Bill dealing with defaulting authorities in Wales is calculated to
strengthen the position of the Government in any of the constituen-
cies in which the original Education Act has aroused so strong a
feeling of resentment. In short nothing has been done in the way
of domestic legislation during the year to restore anything of its lost
strength to the Ministry.

But good Ministerialists who found themselves compelled to
differ from the Government on some important questions, and who
could not deny that the country no longer felt its old confidence in
Mr. Balfour and his colleagues, took comfort from one thought.
That was, that at last the great question of Army reform had been
entrusted to firm and competent hands, and that the Government
would in consequence be able to wipe out the depressing memories
of the South African War by carrying into execution a great scheme
of root-and-branch reorganisation in our military system. Many of
the opponents of the Ministry shared these hopes, and received
with unconcealed satisfaction the report of Lord Esher's Commit-
tee when it appeared. At last it seemed that a Minister of War,

VOL. LVI— No. 331 L L

502 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

competent, vigorous, and resolute, had seized the thorny problem of
the Army, and that in his hands it was about to be solved. But where
are now the hopes that burned so brightly in the spring ? Every-
body knows how they have gradually died away, until at the close of
the Session there is a feeling of general bewilderment as to what has
and what has not been done to bring about the desired reforms.
It would be most unfair to lay upon the Secretary for War the whole
or even the chief responsibility for this grievous disappointment.
During the Session, if we have learned nothing else, we have at least
been allowed to see the nature of the obstacles against which a
reformer at the War Office has to contend. We have seen Mr.
Arnold-Forster openly flouted by some of his colleagues on the
Treasury Bench ; we have been told of the unrelenting opposition
to his proposals that has been offered in high military and official
quarters. To many of us it must appear that whatever may be the
merits of his scheme he has never had a chance of winning for it the
public favour which it must secure before it can be put into opera-
tion. Perhaps we have no right to be surprised in these circum-
stances by the fact that the author of the scheme himself, engaged
in struggling for his very life against his highly placed antagonists,
has seemed to some extent to have lost his grip upon his own
proposals, and that at the end of the Session the country is left in a
state of bewilderment as to what has and what has not been done to
give us the military system which we are told is necessary to the
national safety. It is clear, at any rate, that, so far as the achieve-
ments of last Session are concerned, the carrying of a scheme of
Army reform is not to be counted amongst them. The recess may
not impossibly prove more fruitful than the Session, and relieved
from the embarrassments and provocations of constant debates, in
which he had to face more formidable foes on his own than on the
Opposition side of the House, Mr. Arnold-Forster may be able to
make some real progress with his far-reaching plans. It is of course
something to be able to hope that this may be the case, but it
cannot remove the strong sense of disappointment which last Session
has caused to all earnest friends of Army reform. It cannot change
the fact that in the one department of public work in which friends
as well as foes believed that Ministers might be able to redeem the
failures of the past their victory is still to be achieved.

It is hardly necessary to spend much time upon the history of
Mr. Chamberlain's Protectionist campaign during last month. I
know that some of his friends believe that all is still for the best in
the best of all possible worlds, and that his triumph, though slow in
making its appearance, is as certain in the end as the St. Petersburg
mob believes the ultimate victory of Eussia to be in the war with
Japan. But in the meantime to the ordinary observer it certainly
appears that the crusade of the bread tax has ' fizzled out.' It no

1904 LAST MONTH 503

longer fills the newspapers ; it is hardly heard of in railway carriages
and other places in which the man in the street delights to air his
opinions ; and where it is seriously discussed, as at the by-elections,
the result is uniformly disastrous. Mr. Chamberlain himself ad-
dressed a long speech during the month to a great Protectionist
gathering at Welbeck ; but no one pretended that the speech added
anything to what he had already told us, and the greater part of his
audience was utterly apathetic in consequence, probably, of being
unable to hear what he said. In Parliament, it is true, he scored
one distinct triumph. A vote of censure upon those Ministers who
whilst accepting office in his reconstituted Protectionist Association
had retained their seats in the Cabinet was defeated by a majority
of 78. On. the other hand he met also in Parliament with an un-
equivocal rebuff. He had proposed, as his latest expedient for
keeping his agitation in being, that a conference representing the
Colonies as well as the Mother Country should be summoned to
consider the whole question of fiscal union within the Empire.
Lord Rosebery, whilst declaring that a conference was not in itself
objectionable, practically invited Mr. Chamberlain to say whether a
food tax was to be one of the subjects of discussion, and the member
for West Birmingham, falling into the trap, replied that it would
be. Lord Kosebery retorted that this answer killed Mr. Chamber-
lain's own proposal, as it was clear that the country would not
sanction a food tax. ' To invite the colonists to send delegates to
discuss a proposal which Great Britain refused to accept would be
nothing less than an insult. So the project of a conference fell
through, but not before Mr. Balfour had stated in the House of
Commons that the Government had no intention of summoning a
gathering of the kind. Upon the whole, then, there have been no
signs of progress in the cause of fiscal reform during the past month.
Free Traders, indeed, may justly maintain that all the signs point in
a different direction, though they cannot afford to forget the courage
and resourcefulness of their powerful and determined opponent.

One need not take too seriously the angry demonstrations which
marked the last days of the Session in the House of Lords. Similar
demonstrations of a less pronounced character have been common
enough before. The peers, not unnaturally, resent the way in which
they are treated by successive Governments in the arrangement of
business. It must be trying to the temper of any man who takes
his position as a legislator seriously to find that he is expected to
deal with important measures when there is literally no time for a
proper examination or discussion of their merits, and when they
must either be swallowed wholesale on the spur of the moment or
summarily rejected. It is particularly galling to the peers, the
overwhelming majority of whom are members of the Unionist party,
to be treated in this way by a Government which they uniformly

L L 2

504 TEE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Sept.

support. This year the scandal, as the House of Lords considered
it, has been worse than ever ; for in the House of Commons, owing
to causes I have already glanced at, the arrangement of business has
been grossly mismanaged, and the consequent block at the end of
the Session has been more severe than ever. No wonder the working
peers, who really like to take their full share in public affairs, were
more angry than usual when they were denied time for the adequate
discussion of the Bills sent to them. It is to be feared that in their
eyes Mr. Balfour has not shone during the past Session as responsible
leader of the lower Chamber. Obstruction may have accounted in
part for his failure, but other causes, for which he was himself
responsible, contributed still more directly to it.

So far as one important portion of the United Kingdom is con-
cerned, by far the most striking event of the month has been the
judgment of the House of Lords on what may be described briefly as
the Free Church case. Under this judgment, if it were to remain
without alteration, nothing less than a revolution in the social and
ecclesiastical life of Scotland would be carried into effect. The
Scotch people like to manage their own affairs, and are extremely
jealous even of the criticisms of outsiders upon their way of doing so.
Englishmen, on the other hand, whose natural bent of mind is by no
means theological, have been only too glad to leave Scotsmen to
attend to their own business in matters religious. But the judgment
which at one fell swoop has deprived the United Free Kirk of
Scotland of property worth more than a million of money, including
its colleges, its churches, and its manses, and has left it to go out
stripped and naked into the world, is an event in which even those who
feel the least concerned in the disputes of theologians must take an
interest. Nobody, except the two dozen ministers in the Highlands
who have won an astounding victory over a religious body which
is probably second only to the Church of England in Great
Britain in power and wealth, pretends to dispute the fact that
the judgment of the five members of the Appeal Court in
the House of Lords, carried against the protest of two members
of the court, is one that gravely and injuriously affects the public
interest. Technically correct it may be assumed to be ; but there
are occasions, happily few in number, when strict legality conflicts
directly with the eternal sense of justice ; and for my part I am not
surprised that in the opinion of the majority of the Scotch people
the present is one of those occasions. It is to be feared that the
ordinary Englishman of the present day knows very little of the
history of the Free Church of Scotland. It is quite possible that
some of the law peers, who constitute the highest legal court in the
Empire, are not themselves familiar with that history. Certainly some
of the observations of the Lord Chancellor in giving his judgment
suggest that he has a very inadequate conception of the ecclesiastical

1904 LAST MONTH 505

ideas and traditions which have prevailed for centuries on the other
side of the Tweed. The Free Church of Scotland owes its existence
to the revolt of the most distinguished members and the majority of
the clergy and laity of the old Established Church, from the inter-
ference of the State in its affairs, and, above all, in the right
of congregations to select their own ministers. Theoretically
the men who, with Dr. Chalmers at their head, seceded from
the Church of Scotland in 1843 were all in favour of a State
Church, but it was to be a State Church in which the spiritual
liberties of the people were to be duly respected ; and it was
because those liberties seemed to them to have been trampled
upon that hundreds of ministers — the very flower of the Kirk
of those days — retired from their livings and threw themselves
upon the mercy of the world. Scotsmen of all parties are now
agreed that these men took a noble and heroic step. They gave
up their houses, their churches, their stipends, and appealed
to their congregations to approve of what they had done. The
congregations responded to their appeal in a way that was unique
in the history of ecclesiastical disputes. The overwhelming majority
stood by the seceding ministers. They opened their pockets with
a freedom which is unjustly supposed to be rare among their race.
In almost every parish in Scotland they raised churches and
manses in place of those which had been given up by their spiritual
leaders, and in an astonishingly short space of time provided a
sustentation fund — in other words, an endowment — which put the
new organisation, the Free Church as it was called, upon a footing
that compared favourably with that of the old Establishment. Ever
since then the Free Church has been by common admission the
most powerful and prosperous religious communion in Scotland.
It has established churches of its own in England and through-
out the Colonies, and there can be no question of the fact
that throughout the world it has furnished a rallying-point
for all Scotsmen who cling to the Presbyterian faith and mode
of worship. But in going out as they did from the comfort
and security of the Establishment, the leaders of the Free Kirk
made certain declarations of their principles. One of these was
their adherence to the Westminster Confession of Faith, a doctrine
which, during the past sixty years, has faded almost as much out of
the spiritual life of the Scotch people as the Athanasian Creed has
faded out of that of the English. The other, and for the purposes
of this controversy the more important, was their affirmation of their
belief in the principle of a State Church. Dr. Chalmers and his
brethren declared that they did not leave the Establishment because
they had ceased to believe in that principle. They left it because
they could not accept the principle of State patronage, holding that
the Church ought to be its own master in all things that affected

506 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

the spiritual welfare of the congregations. For nearly sixty years
the Free Church grew and prospered, and enlarged its boundaries on
every hand. For many years during that period there had been a
strong movement in the Church in favour of its union with another

O

religious body, the United Presbyterian Church. This body held
practically the same doctrinal views as the Free Church and adhered
to the same Presbyterian form of government and organisation.
Upon only one point was there any definite difference between the two
communions. The United Presbyterians did not believe in the theory
of a State Church. They held that the State and the Church had
not, and ought not to have, any corporate relations. But, as a matter
of fact, this difference in theory was of infinitesimal importance in
reality, seeing that for more than half a century the Free Church
had been as completely severed from any connection with the State
as the United Presbyterian Church had always been. After pro-
longed discussion, and with the all but unanimous assent of both
parties, the two Churches in 1900 resolved to amalgamate. The
General Assembly of the Free Church agreed to the amalgamation
by a majority of 643 to 27. In the United Presbyterian Church
there was absolute unanimity in its favour. Before taking the de-
cisive step the highest legal authorities in Scotland were consulted,
and I believe I am correct in saying that they were unanimous in
pronouncing in favour of its legality. But the small minority of
twenty-seven, most of whom were ministers of Gaelic congregations
in the Highlands, went to law. The Scotch courts, whose members
happen to know what meaning is attached by Scotsmen to the word
Church, decided in favour of the legality of the amalgamation. The
Highland ministers, with what seems to have been a curious reckless-
ness as to legal expenses, went to the House of Lords, and by five votes
to two the House of Lords has decided in favour of the small minority,
and has declared that they, and they alone, are the true representatives
of the Free Church established in 1843 by the Scotch people. No one
doubts that the House of Lords acted from a sense of duty, and on the
highest and driest legal technicalities ; but from the point of abstract
justice, and of the interests of a great people, it is equally beyond dis-
pute that the decision was absurd and impossible. If the majority
of the House of Lords had been familiar with the well-known story
attributed (though, I believe, wrongly) to Dean Eamsay, they
might have paused before pronouncing a judgment that can only be
called disastrous. The old lady who having denounced her minister
for heterodoxy was told that she seemed to think that nobody but
herself and her crony, John, would be saved, and replied, ' I'm no so
sure of John,' seems to typify the plaintiffs in this remarkable
action. It is useless to waste words over it in its present stage.
The very unsympathetic attitude of Mr. Balfour when asked if the
legislature would intervene to prevent what is for Scotland a national

1904 LAST MONTH 507

calamity, points, however, to further developments. Lord Rosebery
on a famous occasion declared that after a certain General Election
a single first-class compartment would be sufficient to carry all the
Scotch Conservative members up to London. It seems not improb-
able that his prediction will be realised on the next appeal to the
country, unless, indeed, Scotland has ceased to take the keen
interest which it once felt in its ecclesiastical affairs and its religious
liberties.

More interesting, and on the whole more vitally important, than
any questions of domestic policy has, however, been the story of
Russia during last month. The great war in the Far East has
reached a stage in which it threatens, by no means remotely, the
peace of the world. Happily it does not appear that any person of
standing in Russia really wishes to enlarge the boundaries of a
conflict with which the Czar and his people already find it difficult
to deal successfully, and there is certainly no desire on the part of
Great Britain or the other Powers affected by Russian doctrines and
pretensions to plunge into the life-and-death struggle which is
being carried on in Asia. We may hope therefore that the
diplomacy of the world will be able to avert a grave calamity ; but
undoubtedly during last month that calamity seemed at one time to
be very near. The question of contraband of war is one that has
often troubled the relations of States. To a country situated as ours
is there is no need to say that it is a question of supreme importance.
As the great naval Power of the world it is, above everything else,
our interest to see that the legitimate rights of combatants waging
war upon the seas are not unduly interfered with. But, with our
vast commercial fleet and our insular position, it is also our duty to
prevent any unfair extension of the rights of combatants in dealing
with contraband carried in neutral bottoms. The authorities at
St. Petersburg do not seem in the first instance to have appreciated
the necessities which bind us to a certain line of policy, and they
have acted with a high-handed disregard for the rights and interests
of neutrals which, if it were to be persisted in, would cause a very grave
crisis. It is not necessary to tell here the stories of the stoppage of British
mail steamers on the high seas, of the interference with our commerce
even in waters so near our own as the North Atlantic, or of the
seizure and, in one case at least, the destruction of vessels suspected
of carrying contraband. The whole mercantile commerce of Great
Britain would be exposed to grave injury if we were to acquiesce in
the Russian doctrine that neutral ships are liable to be stopped and
searched anywhere outside the limits of their own waters. Nor is it
conceivable that this country can acquiesce in so flagrant a violation
of the Treaty of Paris as that involved in the passage of the so-called
volunteer fleet through the Dardanelles, and its immediate trans-
formation into an armed force intent upon stopping mercantile

508 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

traffic even in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Least of all
can a country like ours acknowledge that food not intended for the
use of armies but for non-combatants is to be regarded as contraband
of war. These are the chief points of difference which have arisen
between ourselves and Russia during the past month, and it is not
necessary to emphasise their gravity. Fortunately the swollen
pretensions of the authorities at St. Petersburg have been abated in
consequence of the representations of our own and other Governments,,
and there seems to be reason to hope that the dangers which arose
so suddenly a few weeks ago are now passing away. The English
Cabinet has acted firmly, though happily not in a hostile spirit, and
one of the most serious crises in our foreign relations which we have
known for years past seems now to be subsiding. Probably the
feeling on the subject in this country would not have been so
intense but for the action of Germany, which made haste to profit
by the difficulties which Russia threw in the way of our ships
trading with Japan and the Far East in order to increase her own
service of vessels to that part of the world.

But Russia herself has had other and graver matters than these
questions to deal with during the month. At the end of July her
chief statesman, M. de Plehve, the real author of the reactionary
policy of recent years, was struck down in the streets of St. Peters-
burg in circumstances which recall the assassination of Alexander the
Second. It was a staggering blow for the Czar and his administra-
tion, and its full significance has yet to be revealed. The course of
the war has been during the month uniformly unfavourable to
Russian arms. The Japanese have, in two severe naval engagements,,
practically destroyed both the Vladivostock and the Port Arthur
squadrons, and their armies, after a series of desperate battles in
which the loss of life on both sides has been enormous, have closed
in upon Port Arthur, the fall of which may be expected at any
moment. Further north in Manchuria the movements of the con-
tending armies are still hidden from us, though there is no reason to-
suppose that the Japanese commander has abandoned his determina-
tion to cut off the retreat of General Kuropatkin and his army, or
that the position of the latter is in any respect more favourable than
it was a month ago. Altogether the position of Russia in Manchuria
is one that may without exaggeration be described as desperate.
The one gleam of sunshine that has fallen on the unhappy country
is in the birth of an heir to the throne — a great-grandson of Queen
Victoria. All the peoples of Europe will join in the prayer that this
innocent babe may be spared to play his part in a regenerated*
Russia.

France during the month has lost her great statesman Waldeck-
Rousseau; the United States are entering into the tumult of a
Presidential election, and it does not seem that the candidature oiT

1904 LAST MONTH 509

the Democratic candidate, Mr. Parker, will be the insignificant
demonstration which Mr. Eoosevelt's friends at one time imagined
it would be ; the Australian Commonwealth has passed through a
political crisis, which has resulted in the resignation of the recently
formed Labour Ministry and in the formation of a Cabinet under
Mr. Heid, the old leader of the Free Trade party. Our expedition
to Tibet has succeeded in reaching the mysterious capital ; but the
Dalai Lama has fled from Lhasa, and Colonel Younghusband, in his
attempt to bring the negotiations with the Tibetans to a close, is
once more hampered by their incurable love of excuses and delays.
The reappointment of Lord Curzon as Viceroy of India may be
regarded as proof that the English Cabinet is in entire agreement
with him on the subject of his policy in Tibet.

WEMYSS REID.

510 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

LAST MONTH

II

THE British public, unless I am much mistaken, do not trouble them-
selves greatly with elaborate investigations as to the electoral vicissi-
tudes, the party conflicts, the Parliamentary debates and divisions
which have signalised the Session now numbered with the dead.
They are looking forwards, not backwards ; they are not over-curious
to ascertain the exact balance of Parliamentary profit and loss
attaching either to the Ministry or to the Opposition ; they are con-
tent to accept facts as they are, and they realise that the bottom
fact of the situation is that the Unionist Government is still in office,
and still commands the support of a formidable, though a diminished,
majority. My readers, therefore, will not be disappointed if I do not
attempt to discuss at any length the Licensing Bill, the Chinese
immigration controversy, the Army reforms, the modification of our
educational system, or the minor issues with which Parliament has
been occupied, more or less unprofitably, ever since the opening of the
Session. I shall content myself with dwelling on the general features
of the Session which throw some light on future events rather than
on particular incidents of ephemeral interest.

It has always seemed to me that partisans on either side have
overlooked the main cause of the decline in popular favour which
the Unionist party has undoubtedly sustained. I may, and do,
doubt the magnitude of this decline, but I cannot honestly deny its
existence. What I contend is that any Government would have
suffered a like loss of popularity, whatever might have been their
policy or whatever might have been their administrative ability. The
plain truth is that we, as a nation, have, since the Boer war ended,
been passing through the mauvais quart d'heure of Rabelais. The
glamour of the war has passed away, the bill has had to be paid, and
the British public, who has had to pay it, is out of temper, com-
plains that the amount is excessive, and lays the blame upon the
Administration under whose direction the debt was contracted. If
Mr. Balfour had been, as Pitt was called by his admirers, a ' heaven-
born ' Minister, and if all his colleagues had been statesmen of excep-
tional ability, the Ministry would still have lost ground whenever the

1904 LAST MONTH 511

country was called upon to make good the outlay required to bring
the war to a successful termination. Owing to a variety of circum-
stances, most of which have little or nothing to do with the cost of
the war, whether extravagant or otherwise, trade has been excep-
tionally stagnant for the last three years. Time after time we have
seemed to be on the eve of a general recovery of public confidence,
and, as a necessary consequence, of the resumption of industrial
activity ; and on each occasion our hopes have been blighted by some
unforeseen occurrence. It is not in human nature to accept these
disappointments with equanimity — and the nature of the British
public is exceptionally human.

I am personally of opinion that this popular dissatisfaction would
not have assumed so acute a form if a somewhat bolder line had been
taken by the apologists of the Government both in the Press and in
Parliament. Instead of dwelling upon the facts that the absolute
necessity for the war had been proved by the course of the campaign,
and that no other nation could have brought the war to a successful
conclusion more rapidly or at a smaller outlay than was done by
England, they took an apologetic tone and sanctioned the appoint-
ment of a commission of inquiry, which, in virtue of its composition and
of our national dislike to follow the Napoleonic maxim as to * washing
dirty linen at home,' was certain to call public attention to any errors
that may have been committed in the course of the campaign. Thus
the country was led to believe that the war in South Africa had been
a mistake, or that, even if it had been an absolute necessity, it had
been conducted incompetently at an extravagant cost.

I need hardly say that the dissatisfaction of ' the man in the
street ' has been taken advantage of by the Opposition to undermine
public confidence in the Unionist Administration. The policy adopted
by the Liberals was in accordance with the rules of party govern-
ment, though the party tactics of wilful misrepresentation, deliberate
perversion of truth, and unjustifiable personal invective have been
carried by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, his fellow-Liberals, and
his Home Rule allies to an extent hitherto unprecedented in our
Parliamentary annals. I, in common with my fellow-countrymen,
cannot read the accounts of how all party recriminations are tabooed
in Japan during the war with Russia, and compare it with the attitude
adopted by our Opposition during the war with the Boer Republics,
without feeling a sense of shame. For the time being the Japanese
seem to have realised the ideal ascribed to the old Romans by Lord
Macaulay in his Lays of Ancient Rome, ' Then none was for a party ;
then all were for the State.' However, I console myself with the
reflection that if government by party is once firmly established in
Japan, the politicians of the Island Kingdom will soon rise — or fall —
to our British standard of party warfare. Happily, there is a vast
amount of what I may call 'suppressed good sense ' amidst the British

512 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

public. They may be carried away by party clamour, but the
aberration is temporary, and when they have been led into error they
are not slow to realise and, if possible, to retrieve their mistakes.

The next fact to be borne in mind with regard to the past
Session is that it has witnessed the collapse of the endeavour to
form a cave within the Unionist party. The attempt of the
Duke of Devonshire — or, more correctly speaking, of his personal
followers — to bring about a schism in the Unionist party and to join
the Liberals in resisting any attack upon the sacrosanct principles of
Free Trade has resulted in a complete fiasco. The imbecile proposal
to pass a vote of censure on the Government, which marked the end
of the Session, must have dispelled any illusions which Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman and his potential colleagues in a hypothetical
Ministry may have entertained of securing the co-operation of the
Liberal Unionists. Anything more preposterous cannot well be con-
ceived than the assertion that the Ministry deserved censure because
Lord Lansdowne and Lord Selborne had accepted seats in the Council
of the Liberal Unionist Association as reorganised and reconstructed
by Mr. Chamberlain. At the division not more than one professed
Liberal Unionist had the courage to vote against the Government.
Indeed, the only open deserters from the Unionist cause who could
screw themselves up to support the vote of censure openly in the
division were the handful of Unionists who had already changed
sides and removed their seats from the Ministerial benches.
Amongst these malcontents the most prominent was Mr. Winston
Churchill. The friends of his distinguished father, amongst whom I
may venture to class myself, must feel extreme reluctance to say
anything in disparagement of his son and heir ; and this reluctance is
increased by the fact that there is so much in the look and manner
and speech of this * Will-o'-the-wisp ' of politics which recalls vividly
to their memory the statesman whose career commenced so brilliantly
and ended so tragically. Whatever his defects or failings may have
been, Lord Randolph had a touch of genius rarely to be found among
party politicians. Genius is not an hereditary possession which
passes from father to son ; and it would be unfair to disparage Mr.
Winston Churchill because he has not as yet displayed the oratorical
ability or the political insight which raised Lord Randolph almost at
a bound to the leadership of the House of Commons. If I might
venture to give advice, I would urge the member for Oldham to
emulate his father's power of laborious study, his talent of making
himself master of any subject he was compelled to take up, and his
art — if art it was — of winning the confidence and the affection of his
friends and colleagues. I would also advise him to study not only
the causes of his father's success, but the causes of his father's failure.
The advice is sound, but I have lived too long in this world of ours
to expect that advice, however sound, is likely to be followed. In

1904 LAST MONTH 513

this connection I may perhaps be excused if I mention a personal
experience. Shortly after the historic brawl in the House of Commons,
when manual violence was resorted to by the Irish Home Kulers in
order to enforce their contentions, I happened to be staying at the
house of a common friend with Lord Randolph. He asked me to
read a letter which he proposed sending to the Times on the subject
of the attitude adopted by the Government in dealing with the dis-
turbance. The contention of the letter, which, I may add, was
singularly clear and well written, was to the effect that the course
of procedure employed on this occasion had not been in accordance
with constitutional precedents. As I knew that at this period of his
career he was extremely anxious to effect a reconciliation with the
Conservative party, and to resume office in the Conservative Ministry,
I ventured to point out that the appearance in print of such a letter
under his own name would, to say the least, not facilitate the objects
he had in view. With the curious frankness which characterised his
conversation with his friends, he said at once : ' I see you are right.
I shall not send the letter.' Then, after a few minutes' silence, he
went on to remark : ' I wish to heaven I had shown you every public
letter I have ever written before dispatching it.' I may add this
was the only occasion during the years subsequent to his resignation
of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer that he ever alluded in con-
versation with me to the letter which he dispatched to the Times
without having first communicated his intended resignation to Lord
Salisbury. Looking back on the past, I cannot but fancy that when
he made the remark I have quoted he had begun to realise that in
signing this letter in question he had, personally as well as politically,
signed his own death-warrant.

I allude to this incident because the recollection of the Irish brawl
I refer to has been revived by the childish demonstration made by
the Opposition in the closing days of the Session. Under the new
Education Act the Municipal Councils are entrusted with the duty
of paying the salaries of the teachers legally appointed in Voluntary
as well as Board schools. This is the law of the land, and, while
it remains the law, all local authorities are bound to obey its provisions.
A certain number, however, of Welsh municipalities resent the dis-
charge of this duty on the plea that they entertain a conscientious
objection to paying salaries to teachers in Church schools, as by so
doing they may indirectly encourage the spread of Church of England
doctrines. If I were to refuse to pay my rates in my parish, because
I objected to grants being made out of the rates to various denomi-
national institutions, the views of these demoninations not being in
accordance with my own, I should have my furniture seized and sold ;
and if I offered jiny active resistance to the officers of the court,
I should certainly be fined, reprimanded, and possibly sent to prison.
But then I am, unfortunately, an Englishman and not a Welshman,

514 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

a member of the Church of England and not a Nonconformist, con-
scientious or otherwise. In order to remedy a gross public scandal
and a grave infraction of the law, the Government introduced a Bill
which, to put the matter briefly, gives authority to the Board of
Education, supposing the recalcitrant municipalities to remain obdu-
rate, to pay any lawful expenses incurred by the voluntary schools in
the discharge of their legitimate functions, and to deduct the amounts
so paid from the annual grants made to the defaulting municipalities
for the purposes of local education. It is difficult to conceive of a
fairer or more considerate solution of a difficulty which must be solved
at once, unless the authority of the law is to be openly defied. The
Liberal representatives of the Principality, however, are up in arms
against this outrage on the Nonconformist conscience, and their cause
has been espoused by the bulk of the English Liberals. Every effort
has been made to protract discussion and so to obstruct the passing
of the Bill. When the closure was applied, the Opposition felt it their
duty to make a solemn protest. On the extraordinary plea that
sufficient time had not been allowed to discuss the question whether
the arrangements for air and light in the Welsh schools were of a
thoroughly satisfactory character, the Opposition wasted three mortal
hours in wrangling with the Chairman in Committee for declining to
prolong the debate after closure had been voted by a majority of eighty-
four : a demand which he had absolutely no power even to take into
consideration. The brunt of the wrangle with the Chair was borne by
Mr. Lloyd-George, who rumour says is to be President of the Board
of Trade, if not of the Board of Education, when Sir Henry Campbell -
Bannerman or Lord Rosebery becomes Prime Minister ; by Mr. Guest,
who was chosen member for Plymouth at the General Election as
a staunch Unionist ; by his cousin Mr. Winston Churchill ; and by
Mr. Bright, whose recent election for Oswestry is the crowning achieve-
ment of the Opposition. When the division was called, the Opposition
refused as a body to leave their seats and take part in the voting.
For this violation of Parliamentary procedure a number of members
were named by the Chairman. If they had still declined to quit their
seats, they would have had to be forcibly removed by the officials of the
House. But at this prospect the courage of the Liberal stalwarts
oozed away. Mr. Asquith — qu' 'allait-il done faire dans cette galere ? —
suggested that instead of being removed by force they should march
out of the House * and take no further part in the discussion ' — a
sorry ending to a feeble demonstration. During the Chancellorship
of Lord Eldon a deputation of dissenting ministers waited upon his
lordship to protest against the Test Act. When they had finished
a lengthy statement of their objections, the great Tory judge simply
replied, ' Gentlemen, you have made your protest, and having made it
the best thing you can do is to go home to bed.' Such, I suspect,
must have been the comment made in his heart by poor Mr. Asquith

1904 LAST MONTH 515

when he marched out at the head of the Welsh Nonconformists, after
having solemnly assured them ' that he entirely sympathised with
Mr. Lloyd-George and those who were associated with him in the
protest they had made.'

I am told on every side that the Liberals are regaining the confi-
dence of the British public. I am heartsick of the flowing tide metaphor
invented by Mr. Gladstone and repeated parrot-like by his followers.
When I ask for proof, I am reminded of the baker's dozen of seats
which the Opposition have won from the Ministerialists, and my
attention is particularly directed to the latest Liberal victories at
Oswestry and Beading. In racing questions I never pay any heed
to arguments trying to show that the horse which came in second
ought by rights to have come in first. The stakes go to the winner,
and after that there is no more to be said. The same rule applies
to politics, and the elaborate mathematical calculations by which the
Westminster Gazette endeavours — through a comparison of the rate of
increase or decrease in the votes polled at any by-election — to establish
the probable results of a General Election seem to me an example of
perverted ingenuity. Supposing I had the time or inclination I could
prove to demonstration that if the elections of this year are taken as
standards of the rate at which the Liberal minority in Parliament will
increase, and the Unionist majority will decrease, the Government
is not likely to be defeated till long after its period of Parliamentary
existence has been brought to a close by the efflux of time. I am
well aware that my arithmetical calculations would be unsound, but
they would not be a whit more unsound than the ingenious theories
by which prognostications of the political future are based upon
isolated facts, such as the return of Mr. Rufus Isaacs for Reading
by a smaller majority than his Liberal predecessor. I should be
personally obliged if the anonymous writer who contributes weekly
articles to the Westminster Gazette under the signature of ' Greville
Minor ' — should it not be ' Minimus ' ? — and who professes to be in inti-
mate relations with the leaders of the Liberal party, would inform
me what is to be the policy of the Liberals when they present
themselves before the constituencies at the General Election, whose
advent he has assured us week after week was an imminent con-
tingency.

The strength of the present Ministry consists, I am bound to
admit, quite as much in the demerits of the Opposition as in their
own intrinsic merits. We all know what the policy of the Govern-
ment has been in the past, and will be in the future. We may approve
or disapprove of their policy, but we are in no doubt as to its general
character. Both Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain have made no
secret of their intentions. We know that the former proposes at
the next election to ask the constituencies to confer upon him authority
to impose retaliatory duties. If the country refuses to grant the

516 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept.

authority demanded, there is an end for the time being both of the
Ministry and of the fiscal controversy. If the permission should be
accorded, the Ministry will remain in office and proceed to consider
how far they can adopt Mr. Chamberlain's views as to the consolida-
tion of the British Empire by means of Preferential duties in favour
of the British colonies. The Prime Minister has given the country
clearly to understand that in principle he shares the opinions of his
late colleague, but he declines to pledge himself definitely to any
positive alteration in our fiscal system, based, as it is, upon Free Trade,
until he has ascertained, by an appeal to the constituencies, whether
the country is or is not prepared to sanction the imposition of retalia-
tory duties, which, whether desirable or undesirable, is manifestly
a first step in the path of Protection. All this is clear, open, and
above-board. But as to the policy of the Liberal party in the event
of their succeeding to office after the coming election, we are left
utterly in the dark. All we are permitted to know is that the Liberals
intend to keep our present fiscal system unchanged ; to allow foreign
countries to exclude us from their own markets, while they deluge
us with goods produced in their own bounty-protected factories ;
to refuse all overtures made by our British colonies for closer trade
relations with the Mother Country ; to see our own native industries
decline and to take the decline lying down ; to encourage alien immi-
gration and thus to cheapen the wages of the home-born British
labourer; and, in short, to act on the general principle that for England,
under Free Trade, everything is already for the best in the best of
possible worlds. Such a policy may be welcomed by the Cobden Club,
who believe that the era of fiscal reform was closed for ever when
Cobden persuaded the British nation to adopt the principle of un-
restricted competition on the faith of assurances every one of which
has been falsified by the event. But, unless I am mistaken, it will
never commend itself permanently to the good sense of my fellow-
countrymen. So far the policy of the Liberal party is of a purely
negative character, but the Liberals, before they can aspire to take
up the administration of public affairs, must produce a positive as
well as a negative programme. It is no use assuring us that at Brooks's,
the Reform Club, the Devonshire, the Eighty Club, and at the Fabian
Society, supposing it to be still in existence, the Liberals are all of one
mind, have sunk all sectional differences, and are unanimous in
favour of declining to propound any policy till they are installed in
office. Now, on a variety of issues — such as Home Rule, Disestablish-
ment, secular education, an hereditary Legislature, municipal
trading, the Licensing Act — issues in which the great public take
far more interest than they do in the dogmas of Free Trade, the
Opposition is known to be divided into discordant sections, antagonistic
to one another. We are still left completely in the dark as to which
of these sections is to dictate the policy or decide the composition

LAST MONTH 517

of the next Liberal Administration. The utterances of the Liberal
party organs are as vague and unsatisfactory as those of the Delphic
oracles. To the question ' under which king, Bezonian ? ' we can
obtain no answer, except that the coming Premier is to be the
one best fitted to reunite all sections of the Liberal party into one
harmonious whole. But as to who is to be the leader, whether Lord
Rosebery, Lord Spencer, Sir Henry Campbell -Bannerman, Mr. Asquith,
Mr. John Morley, or Mr. Lloyd-George, we know no more than the man
in the moon. All I can say is that the amalgamation of the Liberal
party is a work of far greater difficulty than the amalgamation of the
Kimberley mines, which won for Cecil Rhodes the appellation of the
Great Amalgamator. I may also add that it would be difficult to
find out half-a-dozen public men of ability possessed of the peculiar
qualities which enabled Mr. Rhodes to reconcile conflicting interests
and to create order out of chaos. With the Session now ended, there
is little prospect of any pronunciamiento being ]made by the Opposi-
tion. The ' era of good feeling,' to quote a well-known phrase of
American political history, will probably last till a General Election
is nearer at hand than it seems to be as yet. For the moment we
must content ourselves with the declaration that the Liberal party
is unanimously in favour of peace and harmony within its serried
ranks. The fires of faction are, I fear, only hid from view, and will
burst out with increased ardour as soon as the prospect of obtaining
office comes within the domain of practical politics.

If proof were needed of the utter disorganisation of the Liberal
party, it would be supplied by the correspondence which was exchanged
last month between Lord Rosebery and Mr. Chamberlain on the
suggestion thrown out by the latter that a Colonial Conference should
be convoked to consider whether fiscal union be practicable. Now,
for years past we have been assured by Lord Rosebery and his political
adherents that they, and not the Unionists, were the sole original and
genuine authors of Imperialism. His lordship was the leader of the
so-called ' Liberal Imperialists.' It was, therefore, to be expected
that he would support any proposal calculated to ascertain the opinion
of our colonies on the question of Preferential duties. This expecta-
tion was not fulfilled. The ex-Premier lost no time in stating in the
columns of the Times that he welcomed the abstract idea of a Colonial
Conference between the Prime Ministers of our self-governing colonies
and the Imperial Government. He also intimated that the credit of
this idea ought by rights to be ascribed to himself, not to the late
Colonial Minister. This somewhat ungracious acceptance of the
Conference idea was practically withdrawn in the self-same letter by
which it was conveyed. The ' certain limitations ' which Lord Rose-
bery attached to his approval, put into clear language, amounted to
a proposal that the meeting of the Conference should be made condi-
tional on a formal understanding that its members should not be
VOL. LVI— No. 331 MM

518 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Sept.

permitted to take into consideration any change in the fiscal system
which has existed in the United Kingdom since the repeal of the Corn
Laws. There is no disputing the force of the comment made by the
President of the Liberal Unionist Association on this extraordinary
limitation. To quote Mr. Chamberlain's own words in reply to Lord
Rosebery's letter : ' To suggest ' (to the colonies) ' a Conference on
Preference, while rigidly excluding all reference to taxes on food,
would be in present circumstances a childish and almost an insulting
proposition.' Lord Rosebery is far too able a man not to realise the
truth of Mr. Chamberlain's retort. What, it may be asked, could
have induced a statesman with a distinguished past, and possibly a
distinguished future, to stultify himself by so inane a proposition ?
The answer is obvious enough. His lordship, in common with all
the other potential candidates for the leadership of the Liberal party,
had come to the conclusion that the only cry on which a Liberal
majority could possibly be obtained at the impending appeal to the
electorate was the unpopularity of any tax which might conceivably
raise the price of bread, the staple article of the working classes' food.
He felt it, therefore, incumbent upon him to go one better than any of
his rivals, and to announce that the taxation of bread-stuffs was a
subject upon which no discussion could be allowed under a Liberal
Ministry. He had also learnt that his reputation as an Imperialist
was a stumbling-block in the way of his acceptance as leader by
the Radical wing of the Liberal party, who regard Imperialism as
an unpardonable sin. In order to establish his orthodoxy as a staunch
believer in Free Trade, and to avoid giving offence to ' Little Eng-
landers,' he had to repudiate all connection with the pestilent heresies
of Protection and of England's Imperial mission. The example thus
set will be followed doubtless by other leading Liberals who are
candidates for office. But I think, when it comes to swallowing
every fad of latter-day Liberalism, from the abolition of the House
of Lords down to passive resistance and anti-vaccination, no one
of his former colleagues will surpass Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
in the power of prompt and wholesale deglutition. It is with such
leaders, and such allies/^and such a following, that the Liberals still
hope to march into power within the next few months. I doubt their
success. I do not pretend to the gift of prophecy. All things, how-
ever improbable, are possible, and it may well be that before next
Session is over we may see the Liberals once more in office.

I confess that theological controversies are matters ' too high for
me.' But I have of late been much interested in the judgment of the
House of Lords in the question at issue between the Free Church of
Scotland, the United Presbyterians, and the Gaelic branch of the
Free Church, as a survival of a bygone era. I speak with diffidence,
as a simple-minded Englishman. But in as far as I can learn from
my Scotch friends, the dogmatic differences which separate the Old

1904 LAST MONTH 519

Kirk from its offshoots are of the most minute and unintelligible
character. The original secession took place sixty years ago, on a
question of ecclesiastical patronage. I have also been unable to
ascertain what differentiated an United Presbyterian from a member
of the Free Kirk. All I can learn is that a movement in favour of the
reunion between these two bodies was carried by an overwhelming
majority of both sects. There was, however, a small minority of
malcontent Free Kirkers, chiefly Highlanders, who objected to this
reunion, and contended that the vote in its favour was ultra vires.
The Scotch courts decided in favour of the majority. The British
Court of Appeal has reversed this decision, and has declared that the
minority was within its rights in protesting against this reunion as a
breach of trust, and that the funds, lands, and manses of the Free Kirk
belong, as a matter of law, to the dissentient minority. The property
of the Free Kirk, in accordance with the terms of the trust, will, there-
fore, be awarded to two dozen Free Church ministers residing in High-
land parishes, where Gaelic is still the spoken tongue ; while some
seven hundred Lowland ministers are thereby deprived of their
manses and, pecuniarily speaking, k left out in the cold.' All this
turmoil and trouble — based, to British apprehension, upon some
obscure difference of opinion as to the precise meaning of the dogma
of Predestination — takes place in the present year of grace. Our
fellow-countrymen north of the Tweed have too much common-sense
not to come to a practical compromise on a moot point of law.
But the fact that in the twentieth century — the era, as I am assured
by my Liberal teachers, of enlightenment and toleration — Scotland
should be convulsed by a controversy about the precise significance
of Predestination fills me with awe and wonder. I trust I may not be
considered cynical in congratulating myself that I was born in a land
where there is a State Church with an established hierarchy, where we
have archbishops, bishops, deans, priests, and deacons, where our
services are conducted with dignity and propriety, and where I and
all my fellow- Churchmen can entertain and profess our own opinions
without being catechised by ministers or elders.

Another incident of last month which I cannot allow to pass
without notice is the arrival of Dr. Jameson in London for the first
time since his accession to the Premiership of the Cape Colony. By
common consent he has carried out the traditions of Cecil Rhodes'
policy, has established British supremacy in the Cape Parliament,
has upheld the interests of Great Britain in the greatest of her South
African colonies, and has done much to acquire the confidence and
good will of the Dutch population. When I recall the days of the
Raid, of the trial at Bar, of Jameson's conviction and imprison-
ment ; when I remember how even liberal-minded papers, such as the
Spectator, joined in the well-nigh universal outcry in the English Press
against the mad folly and wickedness of tlK ~°qid ; when I recollect

520 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Sept. 1904

how with one consent publicists and politicians at home agreed that,
whatever might occur, neither Cecil Rhodes nor Jameson could ever
take part again in public life or even return to South Africa, I cannot
but feel a personal satisfaction at having been one of a small number of
writers who ventured to assert that the Raid might have been a mistake
but was certainly not a crime ; that the indignation at the Raid
expressed in England, whether honestly or otherwise, was not shared
in South Africa ; and that the public career of Rhodes and Jameson
in South Africa was, to use the words of the former, ' not ended, but
only just beginning.' Cecil Rhodes had recovered the leadership of
the Progressive party in the Cape before his untimely death ; and
Jameson is now Prime Minister of the Cape. It would be well, I
think, if before his leaving England to return to his arduous task,
some public recognition could be given to ' Dr. Jim ' in reparation for
the wrongs he sustained at the hands of British justice, and of the
loyalty with which he has since served his country in South Africa.
The British public is sometimes, as in the case of the Jameson Raid,
carried away by prejudice and passion, but it is never in the long
run unjust or ungenerous in its judgments.

EDWARD DICEY.

The Editor has received the subjoined letter from the office of the Neivcastle
Daily Chronicle : he prints it as it was received, though he considers it to be an
erroneous interpretation of Mr. Fisher's words.

Westgate Road, Newcastle upon Tyne :

9th August, 1904.

DEAR SIR, — We have to draw your attention to an article which appears in
the current number of ' the Nineteenth Century & After ' entitled " Liberal
Members & the Liberal Party," in which it is stated that " In Newcastle, that
old pillar of earnest Radicalism, has gone, the ' Newcastle Daily Chronicle '
having been squeezed out," &c. The writer evidently means the " Newcastle
Daily Leader," which was bftught up by the " Mail" at the end of last year.
We shall be glad if you will make this correction in your next issue.

I remain, yours truly

p. pro. Proprietors

JOSEPH REED.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake
urn wnwx&pted MSS.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTUEY

AND AFTER

XX

No. CCCXXXII— OCTOBER 1904-

[Conclude^]

AT the period alluded to in the closing paragraph of Part I. of this
article, the peace negotiations had begun to assume concrete form.
China had throughout evinced a wilh'ngness to accede to reasonable
demands, and towards the end of August 1900 Prince Ching and
La Hung-Chang were nominated as her co-plenipotentiaries. Views
were actively interchanged between the Powers, and matters had
progressed so far that in October the Chinese plenipotentiaries sub-
mitted a Memorandum for the consideration of the Diplomatic Corps
at Peking. In this, among other things, China acknowledged her
fault in laying siege to the Foreign Legations, and promised that
it should never occur again ; admitted her liability to pay an
adequate indemnity ; and showed a readiness to revise commercial
treaties. Eventually, by the combined efforts of the Ministers of
the Powers, a joint note was agreed upon and presented to the Chinese
VOL. LVI— No. 332 N N

522 THE NINETEENTH CENTUKY Oct.

Government, toward the latter part of December, embodying twelve
demands, the fulfilment of which was deemed necessary for the
restoration of normal relations between China and the Powers.

Russia was, of course, a party to all these proceedings, but she
secretly cherished the idea of independently making a great stroke
herself which was extremely well calculated to thwart and paralyse
the concerted policy of the Powers in general in at least one portion
of the Celestial Empire. This design crystallised into the so-called
Manchurian Agreement.

The hole-and-corner arrangement which it was sought to carry
through was actually entered into at Mukden by a subordinate of
Tseng, the Tartar General stationed there — a person with no
^authority whatever to make such a treaty, as the Chinese Government
rightly complained — with a representative of Admiral Alexeieff, viz.
•General Korostovitch, and the purport of it all was first disclosed
to an astonished world by a telegram published in the London Times
from its correspondent in Peking, dated the last day of 1900. It
was an enumeration of conditions which were dictated, as is credibly
-reported, to the accompaniment of very significant threats from the
Russian side, leaving absolutely no alternative for the Chinese but to
acquiesce, and only upon compliance with which would Russia consent
to allow the Tartar General and the Chinese officials to resume the
civil government of Manchuria.

These new conditions, plus the concessions previously acquired,
were tantamount to an annexation of Manchuria. It may be
remembered that soon after the Chino-Japan war Russia seized the
•opportunity and, by successive machinations, partly by threats and
partly by gilding the pills in many ways, chiefly at the cost of Japan
^and England, exacted from China, under the so-called Cassini conven-
tion and others, not only a concession of the right of constructing the
Trans-Manchurian railway line, having no other credible object than a
military one, right across Manchuria to Vladivostok, which she utilised
in substitution of her own trans-Siberian line, but also a similar right
of construction from Harbin down to Port Arthur and Talienwan, and
also that of stationing all necessary troops nominally for the protec-
tion of these railways. Add to these the new concessions embodied
in the Manchurian convention, and it could not amount to other than
a consummation of Russia's long-cherished designs. Hence the next
step taken by her was to seek to obtain recognition of the compact by
the supreme authority at Peking, and to have it embodied in the form
of a recognised treaty, and this demand was forthwith pressed upon
the Chinese Government at the capital with all imaginable vehemence
and persistency.

Diplomatic correspondence immediately followed the disclosure of
Russia's secret endeavours, and the utmost alacrity was shown by
the Governments of America, Britain, Germany, and Japan in dealing

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 523

with the question. The Russian Government pretended that the
Agreement had no more than a local significance and application, but
it was like trying to smother the electric light under a fold of crape,
for the real meaning of the compact was always visible. The succes-
sive communications and replies that Russia made to the Powers in
response to their protests were all alike. Here is one which Count
Lamsdorff telegraphed to M. Iswolsky, then Russian Minister at
Tokio:

You are authorised to deny most categorically the false reports about a
treaty between Russia and China concerning an alleged protectorate in
Manchuria. Negotiations which are yet to take place between the Russian and
Chinese Governments will bear on the manifold questions relating to the
installation of Chinese Administration in Manchuria and the establishment in
this province of permanent order capable of insuring the tranquillity of our
[Russia's] extensive borderland, as well as the construction of the railway,
which is the object of a special Russo-Chinese Convention. As to the Agree-
ment signed between the Chief of our [Russian] forces and the Dziandjiem of
Mukden, it is but a temporary arrangement laying down rules for the relations
between the local authorities and the Russian troops while those are still in
Manchuria. The aforesaid false reports are particularly malignant at the
present juncture, when the Russian Government is about to hand over
Manchuria to China, in harmony with Russia's previous declarations.

There was, however, another and very pregnant allusion in this
telegram, which was handed by M. Iswolsky to Mr. Kato, then Japanese
Minister for Foreign Affairs, but as it bore upon a somewhat different
branch of the subject, reference will be made to it later on.

Here is another, which was sent to the Marquis of Lansdowne by
the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg, and, with the full consent
and cognisance of the Russian Government, presented at the time to
the British Parliament :

Count Lamsdorff said that the Emperor had no intention of departing in
any way from the assurances which he had publicly given that Manchuria
would be entirely restored to its former condition in the Chinese Empire as
soon as circumstances admitted of it. ' Russia,' he added, ' was in the same
position with regard to fixing a final date for evacuating Manchuria as the
allies found themselves with regard to the evacuation of Peking and the
province of Pe-chi-li. When it came to the final and complete evacuation of
Manchuria, the Russian Government would be obliged to obtain from the
Central Government of China an effective guarantee against the recurrence of
the recent attack on the frontier and the destruction of her railway, but had no
intention of seeking this guarantee in any acquistion of territory or of any
actual or virtual protectorate of Manchuria. . . . Manchuria would be restored
to China, when all the temporary measures taken by the Russian military
authorities would cease, and everything at Newchwang and elsewhere would be
replaced in its former position.

All these asseverations and protestations of Russia were ostensibly
genuine, but in reality they little corresponded with her actions.
Remonstrances from the aggrieved nations continued, and China
was herself by no means inclined to concede the Russian demands.

N N 2

524 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Oct.

She sought the conjoint mediation between herself and Russia of
America, Germany, Great Britain, and Japan. It was at this critical
moment that the Emperor of China, ruler of a huge empire with
400,000,000 of inhabitants, made in an Imperial Edict the following
truly pitiable avowal :

Russia proposes an Agreement of twelve articles. We have authorised our
plenipotentiary to amend and modify them, so as to preserve our right of
sovereignty. The foreign representatives also advise China not to accept them.
But in reflecting upon the present situation, though we are grateful for the
advice of the foreign representatives, it is impossible for China alone to incur
the displeasure of Russia by remaining firm. This is not only a question for
China to study with all possible care in order that it may be solved without any
danger to her, but also a question in which the foreign Governments interested
should maintain the balance of power.

Meanwhile the suggestion, or rather complaint, had been made
by Count Lamsdorfi that garbled versions of the Agreement made at
Mukden were being circulated by the Chinese Government in order to
create dissension between the Powers, but this was all a farce. The
Emperor of China speaks in his solemn edict of the twelve demands of
the Russians, and we have here in full the actual document as trans-
lated from the Chinese by no less an authority than Sir Ernest Satow,
who succeeded Sir Claude Macdonald in Peking. He stated that the
Chinese version had evidently been translated direct from the Russian
text.

(1) The Emperor of Russia, being anxious to give evidence of his friendly
feeling towards China, is willing to forget the hostile acts committed in Man-
churia, and to hand back the whole of that country to China— its administration
to be carried on as heretofore.

(2) Under Article 6 of the Manchurian Railway Agreement the Adminis-
tration is authorised to maintain troops for the protection of the line. The
country, however, being at present in an unsettled condition, and such troops
few in number, a body of soldiers must be retained until order is restored, and
until China shall have carried out the provisions of the last four articles of
the present Convention.

(3) In the event of grave disturbances the Russian garrisons will afford China
every assistance in suppressing the same that lies in their power.

(4) In the recent attacks against Russia, Chinese troops having taken a
prominent part, China agrees, pending the completion of the line and its opening
to traffic, not to establish an army in those provinces. She will consult with
Russia as to the number of troops she may subsequently wish to establish there.
The importation of munitions of war into Manchuria is prohibited.

(5) With a view to safeguarding the interests of the territory in question,
China will, on representations being made by Russia, at once deprive of office
any military governor or other high official whose conduct of affairs may prove
antagonistic to the maintenance of friendly relations.

A police force, consisting of mounted and unmounted units, may be organised
in the interior of Manchuria. Its numbers shall be determined after consulta-
tion with Russia, and from its armament artillery shall be excluded. The
services of the subjects of any other Power shall not be employed in connection
therewith.

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 525

(6) In conformity with the undertaking given by China at an earlier date,
she will not employ the subjects of any other Power in training Chinese soldiers
or sailors in North China.

(7) The neighbouring local authorities will, in the interests of peace and
order, draw up new special regulations with reference to the neutral zone (see
Agreement of the 27th of March, 1898) treated of in Article 5 of the Agreement
relating to the lease of part of the Liao-tung Peninsula.

China's autonomous rights in the city of Chinchou (Kinchau, near Port
Arthur), secured to her by Article 4 of the Special Agreement of the 7th of May,
1898, are hereby abrogated.

(8) China shall not, without the consent of Russia, grant to any other
Power, or the subjects thereof, privileges with regard to mines, railroads, or
other matters in conterminous [i.e. with Russia] regions, such as Manchuria,
Mongolia, and the sections of the new dominion known as Tarbagati, Hi,
Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khoten. Nor shall China, without Russia's consent,
construct railroads there herself.

Except as far as Newchwang is concerned, no leases of land shall be granted
to the subjects of any other Power.

(9) China being under obligation to pay Russia's war expenses and the
claims of other Powers, arising out of the recent troubles, the amount of the
indemnity presented in the name of Russia, the period within which it will have
to be paid, and the security therefor, will all be arranged hi concert with the
other Powers.

(10) The compensation to be paid for the destruction of the railway lines,
for the robbery of property belonging to the railway administration and its
employes, as well as claims for delay in carrying on the construction of the lines,
will form subject of arrangement between China and the Administration.

(11) The above-mentioned claims may, by agreement with the Adminis-
tration, either hi part or in whole, be commuted for other privileges. The grant
of such privileges would involve a complete revision of the previous agreement.

(12) In conformity with the undertaking previously given by China, it is
agreed that a line may be constructed for either the trunk line or the branch
line [of the Manchurian railway] in the direction of Peking up to the Great
Wall, its administration to be governed by the regulations at present in force.

Although in some respects a little difference in the form and
scope is to be perceived between this version of the Convention and
one which had been telegraphed to the Times by its Peking repre-
sentative, their purport is substantially the same. In any case, how-
ever, China was bound hand and foot under the heel of Russia, and
that, too, contrary to Russia's solemn pledge to maintain concord
with other Powers.

The strenuous opposition of the Powers interested continued, how-
ever, and at last, in April 1901, Russia had to abandon the project.
On the 5th of that month the Government of St. Petersburg published
an official communique in the Official Messenger, which explained her
position at great length, interspersed with the usual protestations to
the effect that in every case the course which she had adopted was a
temporary measure, and that she meant to withdraw her troops from
Manchuria when order had been permanently restored, and every-
thing possible had been done to safeguard the railway, provided that
no obstacle was placed in the way by other Powers. The motive of this

526 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

qualifying phrase will be obvious to my readers. The communique
went on to declare that the reported Agreement was only intended to
serve as a starting-point towards the realisation of the restoration of
Manchuria, but owing to obstacles having been put in the way of the
conclusion of that Agreement it became impossible for her to im-
mediately take the contemplated measures of evacuation, and that,
remaining true to her original programme, she would quietly await
the further progress of events.

Subsequently to the publication of this communique on the 8th of
April, M. Iswolsky handed at Tokio to Mr. Kato a Note Verbale,
which, after it had announced Russia's abandonment of the project,
viz. the Manchurian agreement, on a plea similar to that advanced
in the communique, proceeded thus :

Divers information having shown that under the actual circumstances such
an understanding might cause all sorts of difficulties to the neighbouring Empire
instead of serving to clearly show the friendly intentions of Russia with regard
to the interests of China, Russia would not only not insist, vis-a-vis the Chinese
Government, upon the conclusion of this understanding, but even renounce all
further negotiations on the subject.

A similar announcement was, of course, made to the other Powers.
Here we have Russia affecting to ride off in dudgeon upon her high
horse, whilst retaining in her own hands that which was the actual
object of dispute — viz. the possession of Manchuria.

I might here perhaps venture to recall to the remembrance of my
readers that prior to the middle of January 1901, Russia, as far as
her Foreign Office was concerned, consistently held that a state of
war did not exist between the Powers and China, but that sub-
sequent to that date she began to insinuate that she had the right
to hold Manchuria as a result of conquest. Thus we see that on the
4th of July, 1900, the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg, in a
despatch reporting to the Marquis of Salisbury the particulars of an
interview with Count Lamsdorff, said : ' There was one point on
which Count LamsdorS laid particular stress in his conversation with
me, and it was that the European Powers should proceed on the
assumption that they were not in a state of war with the constituted
Government of China, but with rebels and anarchists.' Again, on
the 29th of August, 1900, Count Lamsdorff said to the British
Ambassador : ' We had been proceeding ... on the assumption
hitherto that we were not in a formal state of war with the recog-
nised Government of China, but with a nation in a state of rebellion.'
On the 27th of September Count Lamsdorff said to the British Charge
d? Affaires that ' his view was that there had never been any rupture
of diplomatic relations [between the Powers and China], as had
been strikingly proved by the fact that a new German Minister
had been appointed.' Then came, in January, 1901, a faint
suggestion of the ballon d'essai in the next recorded expression of

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 527

Count Lamsdorfi's informal but candid opinion, as telegraphed by
the Japanese Minister at St. Petersburg to Mr. Kato at Tokio. The
Russian Minister declared that ' the Russian occupation of Manchuria
being the result of self-defence on the part of Russia against the
Chinese aggression upon her frontiers, she would be in perfect right
even if she should choose to make the occupation permanent, but in
point of fact she entertains no intention of exercising the right of
conquest.' And in the telegram handed by M. Iswolsky to Mr. Kato
— to which previous reference has been made as embodying an allu-
sion of much significance — Count LamsdorfE declared that Russia, in
harmony with her previous declarations, was about to hand over
Manchuria to China, ' instead of possessing herself by right of con-
quest of this province [Manchuria], from which came an attack on
her boundaries.' As to the Russian military authorities, they have,
from almost the very moment that opportunities for increased
activity in the Far East presented themselves — after the Boxer
rising — made pretensions, as we have seen already, to these so-
termed rights of conquest, shadowy in the extreme as they must have
known such rights to be.

While, on the one hand, Russia had been giving interminable
trouble to the Powers by her action in the railway and Tien-tsin inci-
dents, and her intrigues in connection with the Manchurian Agree-
ment, the real peace negotiations, on the other hand, between China
and the Powers, Russia included, had made satisfactory progress,
and the final Peking Protocol was signed on the 7th of September,
1901, wherein the Powers declared that the international forces
should evacuate Peking itself on the 17th of September and the
province of Pe-chi-li five days later, save for certain trifling excep-
tions provided for in the protocol. The Chinese Court returned
from Hsi-An-Fu, to which city it had resorted on the approach
of the Allies to Peking, and the old order of things was revived at
the Chinese capital in January 1902. It may be remembered
that by this protocol the importation of arms into China was for-
bidden for two years, with a proviso to the effect that this term
might be prolonged if requisite, according to circumstances. In
the course of the discussion of the terms of the protocol a sub-
committee of the Conference of Ministers of the Powers had proposed
that the period of prohibition should be five years. But the American,
Belgian, and Japanese delegates held to the opinion that two years,
with a proviso, would suffice. This view prevailed, and before the
clause was finally embodied in the protocol China had published an
Imperial Edict in anticipation. The Russian delegate, however, was
of opinion that the term should be ten years. This marked divergence
of Russia's views from those entertained by other Powers was
eminently suggestive, now that we can calmly reflect upon it, of some
lurking sinister motive.

528 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

In the meantime Russia was eagerly engaged in an intrigue for
the revival of that objectionable Manchurian Agreement which she
professed to have abandoned months before. Her diplomacy on this
occasion was precisely similar in its base and cynical disregard of
all moral obligations to that she had employed decades before in
depriving China of the ' Maritime Province.' The Marquis of
Lansdowne was apprised in August 1901 of the fact that, despite
her denial thereof, Russia was seeking to obtain China's signature
to a Manchurian Agreement, and a week later it was definitely stated
in reliable quarters that as soon as the final Peking Protocol should
be signed, Russia's negotiations concerning Manchuria would be
recommenced at Peking or St. Petersburg. The protocol was, as we
ihave seen, signed on the 7th of September, and it is to be presumed
that thenceforward Russia was busily occupied with the furtherance
•of her schemes.

It was at this juncture that the Anglo- Japanese Agreement of
.alliance took practical shape, and was signed in London on the 30th of
January, 1902, it being entered into between Great Britain and Japan
solely from a desire to maintain the status quo and general peace in
"the Extreme East. This Agreement is to remain in full force for five
years, and is terminable after the expiration of that period at one
year's notice. When, however, one of the Allies happens, in the
meantime, to be engaged in war, the alliance shall, ipso facto, continue
until peace is concluded. The aims and motives of the Agreement
were admirably summed up in an eminently statesmanlike despatch
from the Marquis of Lansdowne to Sir Claude Macdonald at Tokio,
as is well known to the students of history.

The publication of this Agreement was followed on the 16th of
March by the issue of a Russo-French Memorandum, being com-
municated in due course to the Powers concerned. It ran as under :

The Allied Governments of Russia and France have received a copy of the
Anglo-Japanese Agreement of the 30th January, 1902, concluded with the
object of maintaining the status quo and the general peace in the Far East,
and preserving the independence of China and Korea, which are to remain open
to the commerce and industry of all nations, and have been fully satisfied to
find therein affirmed the fundamental principles which they have themselves,
on several occasions, declared to form the basis of their policy, and which still
remain so.

The two Governments consider that the observance of these principles is at
the same time a guarantee of their special interests in the Far East. Neverthe-
less, being obliged themselves also to take into consideration the case in which
either the aggressive action of third Powers, or the recurrence of disturbances in
China, jeopardising the integrity and free development of that Power, might
become a menace to their own interests, the two Allied Governments reserve to
themselves the right to consult in that contingency as to the means to be adopted
for securing those interests.

Simultaneously with the issue of this Memorandum was published
in the Journal de St. Petersbourg of the 20th of March an official

1904 HOW EUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAE 529

communique, omitting to consider how and why it came about that an
Anglo-Japanese Agreement came to be entered into, and insinuating
that two of the eleven Powers (Britain and Japan being meant) which
had quite recently signed the Peking Protocol were seeking to sepa-
rate themselves from the others, and to place themselves in a ' special
situation in respect to the Celestial Empire,' and after repeating the
usual rigmarole about Russia's guiding principles and desire for peace,
wound up with the assertion that the French and Russian Govern-
ments found it needful to formulate their views owing to ' the ever-
persistent agitation concerning the Anglo-Japanese Arrangement.'

France appears to have felt some sort of reluctance to associate her-
self with the Russian policy in the Far East, but she was persuaded to
do so on account of Russia being most studious in making her believe
that the Muscovite Government were sincere as to their intention of
evacuation.

What America thought of these matters was to be seen from
Secretary Hay's Memorandum, which, after expressing America's
gratification on finding in both the Anglo-Japanese Agreement and
the Russo-French Memorandum renewed assurances of the concur-
rence of their views with those held by America in respect of Far
Eastern affairs, ended thus :

"With regard to the concluding paragraph of the Kussian Memorandum, the
Government of the United States, while sharing the views therein expressed as
to the continuance of the Open Door policy against possible encroachment
from whatever quarter, and while equally solicitous for the unfettered develop-
ment of independent China, reserves for itself entire liberty of action should
circumstances unexpectedly arise whereby the policy and interests of the United
States in China and Korea might be disturbed or impaired.

This was an indirect way of telling Russia that America was not
to be inveigled into any sanction or acceptance of ' suitable means '
to be devised by her, and it is not difficult to understand how
little trust was at that time placed by America in Russian avowals.
Indeed, the American people were just then irritated by the friction
which had arisen between the Russians and the American consular
and naval authorities, as well as the American mercantile community
at large, owing to the iniquitous retention by the Russian military
authorities of the treaty port of Newchwang and the resultant inter-
ference with telegraphic and mail facilities, and obstacles to com-
merce at large, in consequence of which America had several times
made representations to the St. Petersburg Government, to say
nothing of the many anxieties concerning graver subjects created by
Russia's policy.

At the very moment when the Russo-French Memorandum was
being circulated, Russia was, in point of fact, maturing her second
Manchurian Convention, which was as objectionable as the first one.
Mr. Conger, the American Minister in Peking, had in December 1901

580 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

reported to Washington that Prince Ching had returned to Peking
armed with authority to sign a Manchurian Convention, and also
that the British and Japanese Ministers were warning China not to
enter into it. He asked for instructions as to the course he should
take, giving the substance of the provisions of this proposed Conven-
tion which had come to his knowledge.

Mr. Hay thereupon instructed Mr. Conger to advise Prince Ching
that America trusted and expected that no arrangement which would
permanently impair the territorial integrity of China, injure the
legitimate interests of the United States, or impair the ability of China
to meet her international obligations, would be made with any single
Power. Prince Ching, in assenting, said he would insist on the Russian
evacuation in one year instead of three, that matters concerning
Chinese troops should be left to China herself to arrange, and likewise
as to guarding the railways or building railway bridges. Russia's
claim for expenses in repairing and maintaining the railway would
not be paid if it was found that it had been covered by the general
indemnity. But Mr. Conger confessed that he had grave doubts
regarding the Prince's ability to secure consent to the terms he pro-
posed.

Mr. Tower, the American Ambassador at St. Petersburg, was then
instructed by Mr. Hay to remonstrate with the Russian Government
on the ground that by permitting or creating any monopoly by one
Power of the trade of the region, China would contravene the pro-
visions of the treaties with other Powers, and such action would
infallibly lead to the impairment of Chinese sovereignty, and tend to
diminish the ability of China to meet its obligations ; and further that
other Powers as well might be expected to seek similar exclusive
advantages in different parts of the Chinese Empire. This would be
destructive of the policy of equal treatment for all the Powers, and
contrary to Russian assurances regarding the preservation of an ' open
door ' in China. Mr. Conger was simultaneously directed to warn the
Chinese Government still further.

The Russian reply to America was handed to Mr. Tower on the
9th of February, and it must be characterised as one of the most
remarkable of Russia's many remarkable despatches. After declaring
that Russia was fully disposed to remove the causes of anxiety to the
American Cabinet, but that it felt bound at the same time to assert
that negotiations carried on between two entirely independent States
were not subject to be submitted to other Powers, it proceeded thus :

There is no thought of attacking the principle of the ' open door,' as that
principle is understood by the Imperial Government of Russia, and Russia has
no intention whatever to change the policy followed by her in that respect up
to the present time.

If the Russo-Chinese Bank should obtain concessions in China, the agree-
ments of a private character relating to them would not differ from those

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 581

heretofore concluded by so many other foreign corporations. But would it not
be very strange if the ' door ' that is ' open ' to certain nations should be closed
to Russia, whose frontier adjoins that of Manchuria, and who has been forced
by recent events to send her troops into that province to re-establish order in
the plain and common interest of all nations ? It is true that Russia has
conquered Manchuria, but she still maintains her firm determination to restore
it to China and recall her troops as soon as the conditions of evacuation shall
have been agreed upon and the necessary steps taken to prevent a fresh
outbreak of troubles in the neighbouring territory.

It is impossible to deny to an independent State the right to grant to others
such concessions as it is free to dispose of, and I have every reason to believe
that the demands of the Russo-Chinese Bank do not in the least exceed those
that have been so often formulated by other foreign companies, and I feel
that under the circumstances it would not be easy for the Imperial Government
to deny to Russian companies that support which is given by other Govern-
ments to companies and syndicates of their own nationalities.

And it concludes by stating that there is not, nor can there be, any
question of the contradiction of the assurances which had been given
by Russia under the orders of the Emperor. Was it not a scandalous
thing that Russia, the promulgator of the so-called ' fundamental
principles,' should have the hardihood to claim for her clandestine
negotiations with China that they were no concern of the other Powers ?
Was it not positively outrageous that Russia, whose contention it
had been that the Powers were not at war with the constituted Govern-
ment of China, should declare, when it suited her purpose and in
a formal State document, that she had a claim on Manchuria by
conquest ?

It will be remembered that the Powers which took most interest
in the aSair at this period were Britain, America, and Japan. As to
Germany, she seems to have made the best use of the Anglo-German
Agreement during the peace negotiations with China, as shown by the
report of Mr. Rockhill, the American Commissioner, to his Govern-
ment, which states that ' the position of Germany on the question of
the indemnity was most uncompromising,' and that ' the urgent
necessity for Great Britain to maintain her entente with Germany in
China was responsible for the numerous concessions that she had
made to Germany's insistence on being paid the last cent of her
expenses.' Germany, however, soon showed herself lukewarm, and
in March 1901 Count von Biilow announced in the Reichstag that
her interpretation of the Agreement was that it had no application to
Manchuria ! He even went so far, in an attempt to minimise its
scope, as to designate it ' the Yang-tse Convention ' ! — not, how-
ever, without evoking much comment and surprise, nay, even some
suspicion, in England and elsewhere. Such being the German
attitude, the Imperial Chancellor, speaking in the Reichstag on the
3rd of March, 1902, in reference to the Anglo- Japanese Agreement,
remarked quite unconcernedly that no exception could be taken to it
by Germany as it did not in any way interfere with the Anglo-German

532 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Oct.

Agreement of the 16th of October, 1900, with regard to the Yang-tse
Valley, or with declarations exchanged by the several Powers with
regard to the * open door.'

Russia continued to exert the utmost pressure at Peking, and
on the 8th of April, 1902, the Manchurian Convention was signed at
Peking by the Russian and Chinese Plenipotentiaries. The Journal
Ojfiriel of St. Petersburg published the text of it four days later, and
this veritably Satanic triumph was crowned by China formally ex-
pressing her obligations to the Powers whose counsel she had sought,
viz. America, Britain, and Japan. True it was that the terms were
perhaps more favourable to China than she would have secured had
she been left entirely to the tender mercies of Russia, but they were, in
all conscience, onerous and degrading enough. The truth was that
China's helplessness to resist Russian coercion was coupled with an
intense anxiety on the part of the Manchu Court to regain possession
of that part of the empire which, for dynastic reasons, was most dear
to it. The dilemma in which the Chinese Court found itself is well
illustrated in a report by Mr. Conger to the American Government,
dated the 29th of January, in which he states :

On the 27th I had a conference with Prince Ching, who informed me,
substantially, that he was in a most difficult position. He had used, he said,
every effort in his power to come to some agreement with Russia whereby the
evacuation of Manchuria might be secured without the great sacrifice, on the
part of China, which Li Hung-Chang had agreed to. He had, he said, secured
some very material concessions on the part of Russia, but they would yield no
further, and he was convinced, if China held out longer, that they would never
again secure terms as lenient ; that the Russians were in full possession of the
territory, and their treatment of the Chinese was so aggravating that longer
occupation was intolerable ; that they must be got out, and that the only way
left for China to accomplish this was to make the best possible terms. The
only terms that Russia would consent to was the signing of both the Convention
and the Russo-Chinese Bank Agreement.

Accompanying the text of the Agreement there was published in
the Russian official organ an explanatory communication to the effect
that, having been ' repaid the material expenses to which she was put
by her military operations in China,' Russia saw no necessity thence-
forward ' for leaving armed forces within the confines of the neigh-
bouring territory,' and therefore this Agreement had been made by
Imperial will. The stipulations of this Convention are tolerably well
known, but they may be briefly stated :

The right to exercise authority in Manchuria to be restored to
China, and the Russian troops, within six months after signature — i.e.
8th of October, 1902 — to be withdrawn from the South- West Province
up to the Liao River, and the railways handed over to China.

[Prince Ching said he thought Newchwang was included, but, as
the sequel showed, the Russians thought otherwise.]

Within the following six months the remainder of the Mukden

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 533

Province, plus the Kirin Province, to be evacuated, and finally, within
another six months, to quit Hei-Lung-Chiang ; thus all three provinces
were to be restored to the Chinese Empire by, at the latest, the 8th of
October, 1903.

Of course, as a set-off to this magnanimous return of wrongly
acquired property, Russia laid a number of restrictions on China.

She was limited as to the numbers and disposition of the troops
she was to place in Manchuria.

She was to protect the Russian railways there, and the persons
employed thereon, in their various undertakings.

Nor might she invite any Power to participate in protecting, con-
structing, or working her own railway — viz. that from Shan-hai-Kwan
to Newchwang and Hsin-Min-tsun — nor allow any other Power to
occupy the territory vacated by the Russians.

China might neither extend nor reconstruct, nor erect a bridge
nor remove the terminus, at Newchwang, without first discussing the
matter with the Russian Government.

Finally, China was to pay Russia's expenses incurred in the working
and repair of the Chinese railway in Manchuria, which sums, it was
declared, were not included in the total of the previous claim.

Could any rational being fail to perceive that in these stipulations
there were direct infringements of the sovereignty and integrity of an
independent State ? They evoked, indeed, on all sides, the severest
criticism. Yet because it was presumed that Russia would keep her
word on the essential points — the evacuation by given dates of the
three occupied provinces — the Powers were willing, it would seem, to
acquiesce.

I may here remark in passing that the Russian share of the
indemnity included not only the expenses incurred by her in Pe-chi-li
but also in Manchuria. For all that it was altogether exorbitant,
as was much commented upon at the time, when compared with the
claims of other Powers, not to speak of the extreme moderation of
Japan's claim, which was actually recognised by the British Govern-
ment in a telegram to Sir Ernest Satow. Now that Russia insisted
on claiming an extra indemnity on account of railway, the iniquity
of it all became the more glaring.

For some time after this things appeared to be going on tolerably
well, though some anxiety was felt in certain quarters as to Russia's
sincerity. The 8th of October, 1902, was the day on which the first part
of the Russian evacuation was to be completed, and towards the end
of that month the Chinese Government was enabled to announce the
restoration of the south-west portion of Mukden Province, and all
the Chinese railways outside the Great Wall, as previously stipulated.
Then came the second part of the evacuation — Newchwang included
— which had to be carried out by the 8th of April, 1903. Not only
did the Russians not evacuate Newchwang and other parts of the

634 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

territory as agreed upon, but signs were perceptible that they had
altogether changed their programme. Rumours began to circulate
that Russian troops were being moved towards the Korean frontier.
On the 17th of April the British Charge d? Affaires at Peking
telegraphed to Lord Lansdowne, ' There is a growing feeling
here that either the evacuation will not take place or that Russia is
exacting conditions.' When inquiry was made about it at St. Peters-
burg by the Chinese Minister, both Count Lamsdorfi and M. de Witte
assured him that, as to the movement of troops, neither the Imperial
Government nor the Russo-Chinese Bank had any interest whatever
in any timber concessions which private individuals might have
acquired, and they repudiated the idea that troops had been sent there
to guard these concessions which were said to have been obtained
from China and Korea. General Kuropatkin, then War Minister,
did not deny, however, that M. BesobrazofE had acquired certain forest
rights in Manchuria, and thought it possible that Admiral Alexeieff
had ' granted ' some soldiers to protect these rights. The Chinese
Minister, who persisted in his inquiries, was assured that the delay
of the second stage of the evacuation was but temporary, and was
caused by the presence of foreign ships at Newchwang; Admiral
Alexeiefi feared, so he said, that the Chinese might admit some other
Power as soon as the Russians had gone away. Count Lamsdorff
was nevertheless positive in affirming that the Emperor's commands
would be fulfilled. By this time, however, things had begun to assume
a very alarming aspect in Peking, for in reality the Russian represen-
tative was once more vigorously pressing there his daring new ' seven
demands,' the purport of which could not for long be hidden from the
diplomatic circle there, and the British Charge tf Affaires briefly out-
lined their scope in a telegram on the 23rd of April, 1903, to his
Government. They comprised :

(1) A demand that no portion of the territory restored to China by Eussia,
especially at Newchwang, should be leased or sold, under any circumstances, to
any other Power.

(2) The system of government actually existing throughout Mongolia should
not be altered.

(8) China to engage herself not to open new ports or towns in Manchuria
without notice to Eussia, nor permit foreign Consuls to reside at such ports or
towns.

(4) Foreigners engaged by China for the administration of any affairs shall
exert no authority in the northern provinces, where Eussia has predominant
interests.

(5) As long as a telegraph line may exist at Newchwang and Port Arthur,
the Newchwang and Peking line must be maintained, as the telegraph at
Newchwang and Port Arthur and throughout Shing-King Province is under
Eussia's control, and its connection with her line on the Chinese telegraph
poles at Newchwang, Port Arthur, and Peking is of the utmost importance.

(6) After the restoration of Newchwang to China, the Customs receipts shall,
as at present, be deposited with the Eusso- Chinese Bank.

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 535

(7) No rights which have been acquired in Manchuria by Russian subjects
or foreign companies during the Russian occupation shall be affected by the
evacuation. Quarantine to be established in Newchwang against the spread of
epidemics to the northern provinces. Russians only eligible for Commissioner-
ship of Customs at ports or the post of Customs Physician, under control of
Inspector- General of Maritime Customs. Permanent Sanitary Board under
presidency of Customs Tao-tai to be instituted.

All of these demands were not divulged at first, but what leaked
out was bad enough, and diplomatic activity was stimulated to the
highest pitch, though mainly by Britain, America, and Japan. China
herself wished to reject the demands in toto, and at the same time
solicited the support of these three Powers, which at once was pro-
mised. Russia, on the other hand, exerted all her craft and subtlety
to gain her ends, but in vain. On the 29th of April the Chinese
Government finally intimated its refusal to comply. M. Pla^on, the
Russian Charge d? Affaires, continued to grumble, and insisted that his
Government should be ' reassured ' that (a) there was no intention of
assimilating the administration of Mongolia to that of China proper ;
(6) that no cession of territory to a foreign Power in the Liao River
region was in contemplation ; and (c) that no foreign consuls were to
be appointed in other places in Manchuria, even with China's consent.
Prince Ching told M. Pla^on point-blank that there had never been
any intention of ceding territory — that no alteration of the administra-
tive system of Mongolia was for the present under consideration, and
that the extent to which trade might be developed would alone decide
the question of the opening of treaty ports and the appointment of
consuls. M. Plan9on promised the Prince that this answer, which
he insisted was to be given as a note, should be transmitted to the St.
Petersburg Government, and he then volunteered to state, with much
apparent candour, that the delays of the evacuation had been brought
about by the military party in Russia, and that this reply by the Prince
would go far to allay anxiety, so that, in his opinion, Newchwang
would shortly be evacuated. As will presently be seen, this proceeding
was simply a farce.

The report of a movement of Russian troops towards the Korean
frontier was only too true. Some time previously a timber-cutting
concession had been extracted by Russia from China, as regarded
the right bank of the Yalu, and from Korea as to the left, nominally
on behalf of some private individuals who transferred their rights to
M. Besobrazoff. But, as the world came eventually to know, Admiral
Alexeieff, certain Grand Dukes, and even the highest personages in the
Muscovite Empire, were implicated in this transaction. Private and
public concerns were thus intermingled, and the movement of Russian
troops to the Yalu banks was undoubtedly connected therewith.
And though Russia had for decades coveted the Korean peninsula,
it was by this means that the affairs of Manchuria and Korea were

536 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

artfully blended, and the military forces were brought to bear to
further the ends both of private avarice and the unscrupulous territorial
aggrandisement of Russia.

As before shown, the time limit for the second stage of the evacua-
tion of Manchuria was the 8th of April, 1903. At Mukden the
Russian troops once made a feint of evacuation ; they even actually
did withdraw, in part, but the remainder simply marched to the rail-
way station and marched back again to their old quarters, without
entraining. At Newchwang too, they once appeared as though they
were preparing for evacuation ; but the aspect of affairs suddenly
changed when the 8th of April arrived, and it was urged in excuse
for the troops' retention that the Tao-tai was not present to have
the place handed over to him. This was the crowning impudence, for
the Russians themselves had the Tao-tai safely in their own hands at
Mukden. Simultaneously, M. Pla^on was trying hard at Peking to
get his demands acceded to ; true, he once told Prince Ching, on the
29th of April, that the evacuation would probably be proceeded with ;
but next day the cloven hoof peeped out, for in returning to the
charge with his seven demands M. Planc.on allowed himself to say
that if they were not acceded to there would be no evacuation at all !

From that time Russia's military activity grew apace. At the Yalu
the Chunchuses were enlisted by her ostensibly as ' forest police ' for the
timber-cutting district, and coals and munitions of war were brought
to Yongampho, at the mouth of the river, in vessels specially chartered,
be it observed, by the Russian military authorities. Here a settlement
was quickly formed, to which was given the title of Port Nicholas,
and this was used thenceforward in all official documents.

Parenthetically it may be mentioned that, in accordance with
Article 11 of the Peking Protocol, England negotiated with China and
concluded a new Anglo-Chinese Commercial Treaty in September of
the preceding year 1902. Then America, and some time afterwards
Japan, were likewise in negotiation with China. As, however, the
opening of Antung and Mukden was included in the project of the
Chino-American Treaty, and of Ta-tung-Kau and Mukden in the
Chino-Japanese Treaty, to which also a provision for the concession
of a ' settlement ' was attached, the Russian representative at Peking
repeatedly opposed it, at times indirectly, and at others directly;
and as the Chinese Government was anxious first of all to see Man-
churia freed from Russian domination, the definite conclusion of the
Treaties was put off for a time. While these tricks were being played
by Russian agents in the East, at St. Petersburg the most plausible
tales were being told as usual to the Powers' representatives.
Count Lamsdorff declared solemnly that no demands were being
made at Peking, and that China was simply endeavouring by her tor-
tuous diplomacy to sow discord between the Powers. At another time
it was that Russia merely ^sought to obtain guarantees, and that

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 537

there was no idea of excluding the consuls or obstructing foreign
commerce.

But on the 19th of May, on the British Charge d1 Affaires paying a
call at the Russian Legation in Peking, it being the Tsar's birthday,
M. de Plan9on at once ' took occasion to speak about the existing
state of affairs at Newchwang. He represented that the port could
not be held to be included in that part of Manchuria which should
have been evacuated during the last month, since it more properly
formed part of the section evacuated in October last, and was held by
the Russians much as Tien-tsin was formerly held by the Powers.'
Needless to say, M. de Planc,on's visitor was astounded at this pro-
position. For it had been at Russia's own instance that Newchwang
had been placed outside the sphere which formed the first part of
the evacuation provided for in the Agreement. Perfidy could no
farther go ! M. Lessar returned to Peking, but there was no change of
Russian diplomacy ! And now Russia found it time to shift her ground
once more, as the discrepancy between promises and actions had become
too pronounced for even her lax notions of diplomatic morality.
So Count Benckendorff called on the Marquis of Lansdowne in London
and assured him that (a) whatever might be the outcome of the
pending Russo-Chinese negotiations, Russia had no intention of
opposing the gradual opening of some towns in Manchuria as com-
mercial relations might develop, excluding, however, the right to
establish ' settlements.' But (6) this declaration was not to apply
to Harbin. That town, being within the limits of the concession for
the ' Eastern Chinese Railway,' said he, was not unrestrictedly subject
to China, and the establishment of foreign consuls there must depend
on the consent of the Russian Government. Lord Lansdowne frankly
told the Russian Ambassador that this was a qualification of Russia's
previous assurances, and that the exclusion of Harbin was something
quite new. Russia's representative begged that Britain would dis-
courage Chinese opposition to Russia's demands ; but Lord Lansdowne
plainly said that England must first be fully informed of the nature
of those demands. A few days later Count Lamsdorff, who had been
informed of this answer, observed in conversation with the British
Charge d* Affaires that this desire for information was natural, but he
could not supply it until General Kuropatkin's return from the East,
whither he had been on a visit. General Kuropatkin did, in fact, at
this time visit the East. He went to Japan by way of Manchuria,
ostensibly on a pleasure trip only, but no doubt in reality to form his
opinion of her naval and military strength and resources, and on his
return westwards he called at Port Arthur, and held the now famous
conference with Admiral Alexeieff and M. BesobrazofL

On the 29th of July, 1903, the Russian Ambassador in London
once more approached Lord Lansdowne with a view of coming to an
understanding with Great Britain, saying that it might be arrived at

Vet. LVI— No. 332 0 0

588 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

by Russia's not opposing England in the Yang-tse Valley. To this
Lord Lansdowne peremptorily replied that the British difficulty with
Russia lay more in the Manchurian question. As to the Yang-tse
Valley, his impression was that by the Anglo-Russian Agreement of
1897 a partial understanding had already been arrived at, and that
unless the British Government were more frankly made acquainted
with the terms Russia was endeavouring to obtain from China no
hope existed of coming to an understanding.

At this juncture her first approach to Russia, which led to the
subsequent negotiations, was made by Japan — viz. on the 28th of
July, 1903 ; but of this more anon.

The conference at Port Arthur had had no pacific tendency. On
the contrary, whilst the Russian Ambassador was suggesting to Lord
Lansdowne an utterly unacceptable modus vivendi on the one hand, and
entering to all appearances willingly upon negotiations with Japan
on the other, the Russian Government was planning the audacious
coup d'etat embodied in the Imperial ukase of the 12th of August
(the 30th of July, O.S.), 1903, creating a Russian Vice-gerency out
of the Amur and Kwan-Tung territories. By this the Tsar's repre-
sentative was invested with full administrative control, the command
of both military and naval forces, and supreme power for the main-
tenance of order and security in ' the zone of the Eastern Railway of
China,' as well as with the duty of providing for the needs of the
Russian populations in ' the frontier possessions beyond the Imperial
Lieutenancy.' He was also given control of the diplomatic relations
of these provinces with neighbouring States. By the same ukase a
special committee under the presidency of the Emperor was appointed
to control the Viceroy, thus making the office independent of any
Ministry or Department, and Admiral AlexeiefE was nominated Viceroy.
This, of course, was Russia's defiant intimation to the world that she
meant to hold Manchuria in perpetuity.

Early in the ensuing month of September 1903 the Russian Minister
at Peking made five new demands as conditions of evacuation. Briefly
these were that :

(1) Assurances should be given by China that the three provinces should
never be ceded to any other Power, nor any scrap of land therein pledged,
leased, or disposed of in any way whatever.

(2) Russia should construct wharves at several points along the Sungari,
and should station troops for the protection of the telegraph lines along the
river and of the vessels plying thereon. Russia should also establish stations at
various points on the roads between Tsitsihar, Mergen, and Blagovestchensk.

(3) No specially heavy duty to be imposed on goods carried by railway, nor
any heavier duties to be levied on goods conveyed into Manchuria by rail from
one station to another than on those transported overland or by waterways.

(4) The branch offices of the Eusso-Chinese Bank in various parts of Man-
churia to be protected by the troops of the Tartar General of Mukden, the
expense of lodging such troops to be defrayed by the Bank.

(5) Needful sanitary measures, similar to those in Shanghai and Tien-tsin,

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 589

to be taken by the Chinese authorities in order to prevent the importation of
plague through Newchwang; and within the territories appertaining to the
Chinese Eastern Eailway, Russia to adopt the necessary measures. Where the
Taotai has charge of these measures a Russian physician to be appointed, so as
to secure due accord between the steps to be taken by the Chinese and Russian
authorities respectively.

The Russian Minister further demanded a prolongation of the
period for evacuation, representing to Prince Ching that on these con-
ditions Russia would withdraw her troops from Newchwang and other
places within the province of Mukden on the 8th of October, 1903,
from the province of Kirin within four months, and from that of
Hei-Lung-Chiang within one year. The creation of foreign settle-
ments was still, however, objected to, and there was, according to a
report emanating from a source deserving of all confidence, another
proposal, designed to overthrow the provisions contained in Article
VIII., section 10, of the Mackey Treaty, by the establishment of a
separate Inspectorate of Customs for Manchuria, to be presided over
and manned exclusively by Russian officials.

The more one examines these proposals the more one realises the
gravity of their purport. Had China accepted them, as Prince Ching
observed to Sir Ernest Satow, and Russia had nominally withdrawn,
the Russians would still have remained in actual possession, to all
intents and purposes, of Manchuria. Prince Ching, however, animated
by the assurances of America, Britain, and Japan, on the 25th of
September finally refused the Russian demands, at the same time
pointing out that by a solemn convention entered into by pleni-
potentiaries of both Powers, and ratified by their respective Sovereigns,
Russia was bound to complete the second stage of the evacuation by
the 8th of April, which in reality had already passed, and the third
by the 8th of October, 1903. China was willing, he said, to discuss
international matters needing settlement as soon as the evacuation
had been completed in accord with that convention ; and on the 6th
of October the Chinese Government formally requested the Russian
Minister to carry out the promised evacuation by the 8th, to which
the answer given by him was that unless China accepted the Russian
conditions the evacuation was not practicable.

The new Chino-American Treaty, and also the Chino-Japanese
Treaty, were signed, despite Russian opposition, simultaneously with
the expiration of the third term of the Manchurian evacuation, and,
by virtue of these treaties, Antung, Tatungkau, and Mukden were
opened to foreign commerce. China's original wish was to sign these
treaties subsequently to the Russian evacuation, so as to give Russia
no offence; but the Russian threat that, unless the new conditions
she proposed were accepted, the evacuation would be impracticable,
decided the Chinese statesmen to wait no longer.

The day that the Chino-American Treaty was signed the Russian

o o 2

540 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

Minister actually wrote to Prince Ching upbraiding him, and
threatening that unless he reconsidered his action Russia would her-
self carry out the projects contained in the five proposals, and from
that day forth the military and naval activities of Russia, which had
been for more than half a year before incessantly pursued, were
redoubled in intensity. Forts were constructed, additional warships
were sent out from Europe, more troops were moved to the Korean
borders, and in one way and another the Manchurian and Korean
affairs were inextricably blended, and everything assumed a most
warlike and menacing aspect.

On the 28th of October Russian troops occupied the Chinese castle
and palace of Mukden, possessed themselves of the public offices and
archives, and next day imprisoned the Tartar General. The castle
gates were guarded by Russians, the telegraphs seized. The pretext
for all this was that a Chunchus bandit, one of those enlisted by
Russia for service at the Yalu, had been condemned to death for an
offence against Chinese law by the Tao-tai's chief aide-de-camp. The
Russians demanded that the latter should himself be beheaded and
the Tao-tai dismissed.

On the Korean side of the Yalu Russian aggression became parti-
cularly noticeable. The Government of Seoul was pressed to grant
a lease of Yongampho similar to that extorted from China for Port
Arthur. Telegraph lines were set up without consulting Korea at all,
and, without waiting for an answer about Yongampho, forts were begun.
(One of the first completed was reported at the beginning of October,
by a military attache sent from the Japanese Legation at Seoul to
investigate matters, to be twenty metres in height, with three embra-
sures for guns.) Koreans having business connections with Japanese
were arrested without cause, timber which the Japanese residents
had found floating down the Yalu and had brought to bank for their
own use was violently wrested from them on the plea that every
fragment belonged of right to the Russian concessionnaires, and
things had become so unbearable to the Japanese that they were
preparing to quit when Mr. Hagiwara, Secretary of the Japanese
Legation at Seoul, was despatched to investigate and report on the
condition of affairs in general. The Russians refused to let him
land at Yongampho from the steamer, and he was obliged to return
with his mission unachieved, though later on the Russian Minister
at Seoul acknowledged that his people had been indiscreet. All
these high-handed proceedings could have no other object than that
of securing the Russian position beforehand, in defiance of inter-
national obligations and solemn pledges, and with the express purpose
of driving Japan to extremities. Both the United States and Japan
had strongly advocated the opening of Yongampho to the trade of all
nations. The opinion of the British representative at Seoul was similar ;
but this course was systematically and strenuously opposed by Russia.

1904 HOW RUSSIA BROUGHT ON WAR 541

We now come to the stage of the purely Russo-Japanese negotia-
tions, but as my article is already of great length, and, moreover, as
I have already given full details of this branch of the subject, I will
simply give the substance thereof in brief.

Japan had always, from time immemorial, possessed large interests
in Korea, and it was in the determination to uphold her rights there
that she did not hesitate to throw down the gauntlet to the Chinese ten
years ago, at a time when China's naval and military strength was con-
sidered by many to be far superior to that of Japan. She staked her
existence on the result then, and she has done so now for much the
same cause, with the additional reason that she has interests in Man-
churia likewise which she cannot afford to sacrifice. More than all,
the presence of any foreign Power in Manchuria tends to become a
constant menace to Korea, and the territorial integrity of the peninsular
kingdom is absolutely indispensable to Japan's safety. Russia's
ambitions had for years run counter to this, and thus it was that in
Japan there was perpetual anxiety and unrest. When matters in
Manchuria and Korea began to assume the unmistakable character
which has been described in the foregoing pages, and which was
totally at variance with all the pledges Russia had given, not to Japan
alone, but to the whole world, it was high time that Japan paid some
attention to her own interests and allowed herself to be actuated by
the instinct of self-preservation. She therefore addressed herself to
Russia direct, in the early autumn of last year, and sought to open
up negotiations with the aim of bringing about a more desirable
condition of things both in Korea and Manchuria, in order that the
advantages of a permanent peace might be secured for all.

Japan was willing from the first to recognise Russia's special inter-
ests in Manchuria in so far as they had been acquired by legitimate
means, but she desired that Russia should keep her word by entering
into an international compact with Japan to respect the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of China in respect of those provinces, as being
vital to Japan's special position in Korea, and which, in its turn,
was vital to the Japanese Empire's own existence.

Japan's demands were presented only when the most careful
consideration had been given to every phase of the question, and
after the interests of other Powers as well as her own had been taken
into account. Russia had all along perfectly understood Japan's
position, and there was absolutely nothing in the Japanese demands
that was new or extravagant. In their extreme moderation they
scarcely satisfied the aspirations of the nation, but it was the Govern-
ment's aim to avoid any disturbance of the peace of the Far East.
Russia had pledged herself, in her various communications at different
times to the Powers, to accord practically everything that Japan asked
for, but when it came to a request that the Russian avowals should
be embodied in an international compact she practically ignored all.

542 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

After this barefaced avowal it was plain to Japan that Russia would
have to be kept up to the mark if the promises that had been given so
freely were not to become a dead letter.

The negotiations were by Russia made to drag on month by
month, whilst she was unremitting in her efforts to strengthen her
armaments in the Far East by land and sea, until Japan's patience
was exhausted and an answer to her final inquiry was requested by
a certain day, the only responseHbeing a further irritating postpone-
ment.

To conclude, I have, I hope, fairly set forth in this and my previous
article all that is necessary to show how Russia brought on war. My
aim has been to show how she was prolific in self-denying ordinances,
but resolute in her practice of ignoring them as soon as they could be
supposed to have served her turn. And from all that I have urged
it will be plain that the present war in the Far East is not in reality
a conflict which has arisen merely out of a dispute between the two
combatants. It is rather to be ascribed to the general revolt of all
the civilised peoples of the earth against the perfidy and insincerity
of Russia, who for many years past has sought to outwit the other
Powers. It was because Japan felt all along that her interests, more
than those of any other country, were involved, and because China's
helplessness to cope with her own calamity was out of the question,
that Japan, little as she is, at last resolved that she would take up
the cudgels, and was content to do battle with Russia single-handed,
in advance of the other nations whose prospects were similarly jeopard-
ised. It cannot be too often pointed out that in so doing Japan
risked her very existence as a nation, and this is why we demand so
boldly, as I am sure we are entitled to do, the common sympathy of
the world at large in our huge undertaking, on which we embarked
in the interests of justice and humanity. It is my proud privilege to
perceive that, excepting in certain quarters, which have reasons of
their own for the attitude they adopt, this sympathy has from the
very beginning been cordially and universally extended to us.

SUYEMATSU.

1904

ROME OR THE REFORMATION

Is there an alternative ? It is my belief that there is none, and that
when the certainty of there being no alternative has been conclusively
proved, many who have associated themselves with the Ritualistic
movement will draw back and refuse to aid further in a campaign
against the life and liberties of our Church. I believe that the
success of the Ritualistic movement is very greatly due to the fact
that large numbers of people imagine it to be possible to indulge in a
modified Romanism without joining the Church of Rome, and in the
following pages I would attempt to prove the impossibility of realising
this ideal.

Two systems are striving for the mastery in the Church of England ;
one or the other must in the end prevail. The one, the party of the
Reformation, claim possession of a title undisputed for over three
hundred years ; claim for the Reformed Church of England a lineal
descent in unbroken line from the English Church of the earliest ages ;
claim the right of that Church, as a national Church, to have reformed
itself and to have established its own government; claim that its
doctrines are true to those Scriptures which it holds to be the final
court of appeal ; take their stand, in short, on the Reformation, and
entirely repudiate the peculiar doctrines and practices of the Church
of Rome.

The other party, the advocates of the other system, maintain that
the event called the Reformation, in so far as it is insisted and dwelt
upon, constitutes a breach of the continuity of the Catholic Church,
and they desire to restrict that event solely to a rejection of the
supremacy of the Pope. They seek to prove that mediaeval doctrines
have a place in our Church, and that our Prayer-book allows of them,
with a view of bringing about eventually some reunion with the Church
of Rome on terms not yet defined. They are apparently not dis-
couraged at the uncompromising attitude taken by the Church of
Rome, which ought to leave them in no doubt as to the nature of
these terms.

These two systems, however, if we come to look more closely into
the matter, proceed from two fundamentally different and irrecon-
cilable principles, one of which is bound to< claim and obtain the

543

544 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

obedience of every thinking person : principles which, if worked out
logically, will be found to enrol people in opposing camps. The
question resolves itself into a question of authority.

There are but two sources of authority for men in matters of
faith — namely, the Church and the Bible. The Church of Rome holds
that the authority of the Church is superior to that of the Bible ; she
does not altogether abandon Scripture as the source of her faith, but
she places it in an altogether subordinate position. It must be Scrip-
ture as expounded by the Church, no private interpretation of the
Scripture being allowed. The free circulation of the Scriptures
is looked upon as a danger, and the high-water mark of Roman
Catholicism is the extent of the jealous guard placed on that
book. The Roman Church holds that the Holy Spirit is with the
Church, and continually inspires her as to what she should believe ;
and consequently the Church defines the Faith, and from time to tinfe
adds articles which must be accepted on peril of eternal damnation.
We find this principle drives us to the doctrine, expounded by Newman,
of development, so that the Church's faith to-day is not the faith of
to-morrow, and the doctrines which are de fide to-day were not held
by the Church of a former age. The Sinless Conception of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, only recently discovered, but now obligatory on the
faithful, and the Infallibility of the Pope, are doctrines which count-
less generations of Christians have lived and died without holding,
and similarly all the characteristic doctrines of the Church of Rome,
repudiated by us, were not held by that Church itself in earlier ages,
but were merely adopted from time to time as exigency, or, as they
would term it, as the Holy Ghost required. This principle, once
admitted, places us under the authority of a Church in which there
is no limit to the possible development of dogma, no doctrine the accep-
tance of which may not be required at the hands of its members,
but a Church, at the same time, which sets an absolute barrier to all
independent thought, which stifles inquiry and prohibits discussion.
It is a logical position, if not a true one.

The other authority, and that to which we and other Reformed
Churches appeal, is that of Scripture, absolute, alone and unfettered.
The position is that which is asserted in our own Article, that nothing
which cannot be proved from the Scripture is to be accepted as an
article of faith. Acting on this principle, our Reformers, separated
from the Church of Rome, deliberately expunged from our formu-
laries every word that could in the remotest manner be supposed to
infer a belief in the characteristic doctrines of that Church. The
Reformation thus brought about was in no sense a breach with the
Catholic Church ; rather was it a return from medievalism to those
primitive ages when alone the Church could claim to be truly Catholic.
The Roman Church has no claim to catholicity if we rightly interpret
the word, for her doctrines have never been universally held. But

1904 ROME OR THE REFORMATION 545

the Reformation, and the work of the Reformers, seems forgotten in
England to-day. What do we know about it ? For the most part,
people's knowledge is vague, and mainly confined to the fact that men
and women were burnt at the stake because they refused to believe
certain doctrines which were held by the Church of Rome. Traditions
of Bloody Mary, and the horrors of the Inquisition on the Continent,
linger in people's minds, but they are apt to be ascribed to the temper
of a barbarous and cruel age, and a repetition of such sanguinary and
persecuting methods is held to be impossible in any country at the
time of the world's history at which we have arrived.

As to our own Reformation, there are not wanting authorities
who will assure us that the breach with Rome was mainly due to the
desire of an autocratic sovereign to gratify his sensual inclinations,
and that Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth were influenced by political
and not religious motives in the policy which they carried to a suc-
cessful issue ; whilst others would have us believe that the only object
of the Reformation was to free England from the supremacy of the
Pope, and that it in no sense aimed at altering the doctrines of our
Church.

If the first allegation were true, and the Reformation was only
due to the desire of Henry VIII. to get rid of one wife and marry
another, then indeed it would be difficult to see why the martyrs
should have died, or to explain the reason why liberty, prosperity,
and expansion have marked the career of this country from the moment
that the Reformation was an accomplished fact ; whilst, if the Refor-
mation was nothing but a rejection of the interference of the Pope in
the affairs of our Church or country, it is not easy to account for the
fact that our Prayer-book, which was compiled by these very martyrs,
in the most explicit manner rejects those pre-Reformation doctrines and
in our Articles stigmatises them as blasphemous fables and dangerous
deceits. The fact is that both these allegations are made by men who
desire to upset the Reformation, and who are hard pressed to find any
standing-ground on which to rest whilst they convert the country to
their views, or any arguments to justify them in their unpatriotic and
thankless task. It is difficult to know whether to marvel most at the
fact that Englishmen should be found capable of discrediting the
work of men, who, in the truest sense, may be described as the makers
of England, men who loved not their lives unto the death, in their
heroic efforts to free our country from the bonds of superstition and
priestly tyranny, or at the credulity which is content without exami-
nation to accept of such shallow arguments to undo a work rightly
described by one of our own bishops as the greatest event in the
world's history since the time of the Apostles. The Reformation
cannot be explained by any of these causes. It was entirely an
appeal to Scripture as the source of authority. It was a denial that
the Church, apart from Scripture, could claim the obedience of men.

546 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

Except on the principle of the supremacy of Scripture, of its being
an authority superior to that of the Church, there was absolutely no
justification for the line of action taken by our Reformers. The
Church of England is either justified in her appeal to Scripture, or else
she is, as has been well said, in a meaningless schism. The position,
therefore, of our Reformed Church is a logical one, and, as we hold,
a true one. But the two principles are opposed to each other. One
of them must be supreme. It must be either the Church or the
Bible which is the ultimate court of appeal. It is easy to see that
these are principles which lead to roads that must diverge ever farther
and farther, for they touch springs which reach down to the depths
of human thought and action. The one is the principle of authority,
and demands absolute and unreasoning submission of every faculty ;
the other gives play to all the God -given powers of the soul.

If we now apply these two principles to the matter in hand, what
do we find ? We find the Ritualist leaders engaged in the hopeless
task of reconciling the irreconcilable. They are striving to develop
in the Church of England, a Church which stands on the Scriptural
principle, that creed and system which belong only to the Church of
Rome. Rome, on the authority of the Church, has promulgated
certain doctrines which we, on the authority of Scripture, reject. If
Rome is right, and the authority of the Church is the one to which
God would have us yield obedience, then those who accept this autho-
rity, and these doctrines on that authority, are sinning against their
consciences and all light in not yielding obedience to her. It is only
on the supposition that her claim to define doctrine is an unlawful
one that we are justified in our independent position. These men,
therefore, are not only illogical, but they are sinning perversely, and
Rome has a perfect right to say that they are dissenters and schis-
matics, for they hold her doctrines, acknowledge her principle of
Church authority, and yet do not submit to her control. And while
they are dissenters as regards the Church of Rome, they are equally
dissenters from our own Church, and worse, for while their sin against
Rome is the sin of rebellion and schism, their sin against the Church
in which they find themselves is the sin of disloyalty and deception.
They cannot shut their eyes to the fact that our Church, taking
Scripture as its authority, shuts the door, on almost every page of its
Prayer-book, to the beliefs they hold and teach. They hold Masses
for the dead, and we search in vain there for a prayer for the dead ;
they pray to the Virgin and Saints, and we find not one such prayer
in that book. They teach the doctrine of the Mass, whilst using a
Communion office drawn up by men who died at the stake to reject
it and banish it for ever. To such plights are they reduced that the
Roman Missal has to be surreptitiously dovetailed into the English
Communion Service. So lost are they to all sense of the propriety
of human conduct that they do not find it impossible to tell us that

1904 EOME OR THE REFORMATION 547

they offer the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ, whilst reading
words from our Prayer-book which tell of the Saviour who came ' to
suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption ; who made there (by
His one oblation of Himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient
sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world ' ;
nor to invite people, in the words of our Communion Service, to ' draw
near and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort,' and, further on
in the service, to thank God for ' that Thou dost vouchsafe to feed
us, who have duly received these holy mysteries,' when the religious
ceremony has been a Mass without communicants, and where there
has been nothing but a wafer held up for the adoration of the people.
It is utterly impossible that such a moral deception, which constitutes
an outrage, not only on our sense of honour but on our intelligence,
should continue long to disgrace our churches. If men want the
Mass, let them have the courage to discard the English Prayer-book
altogether, for it is an insult on the compilers of a book which is the
glory of our Church to degrade it into a cloak for doctrines which it
exists to condemn.

Logic, honesty, and common sense must ere long compel those who
hold the creed of the Church of Rome to see that our English Prayer-
book cannot satisfy them, and that it is the height of folly and dis-
ingenuousness to remain where they are, luring people on to a position
from which there is but one possible exit, and that out of our Church
into the Church of Rome.

We cannot, however, shut our eyes to the fact that the leaders of
this party have an object in view in their present line of action and
in pursuing a course which to us seems so wanting in honesty. AThey
can hardly themselves be under the delusion that Roman doctrines
can be held apart from submission to the Roman Church. It would be
almost as easy to prove that black is white, or that two and two make
five, as to believe that the formularies of the English Church do not
repudiate in the clearest manner the doctrines of the Church of Rome.
But they have to persuade their followers that there is no impossi-
bility in this position. Their task is a difficult one. They have to do
with a large mass of uninformed opinion, a flock which must be gently
led from one pasturage to another, until it can be herded in the fold
of what they hold to be the true Church. For them, therefore, the
fiction and phrase of Catholic doctrines and practices within the
Church of their baptism has been invented and coined, and very large
numbers of unthinking people imagine that this discovery of a Roman
paradise in England is as real and tangible as was the discovery of
the New World to the explorers of the Far West. But in this case a
mirage is taking the place of a continent, and the poor travellers
will find to their cost that they have forsaken the land of their birth
to be cast as exiles on the inhospitable shores of a foreign people.
But for the nonce they are swimming in smooth waters, fondly

548 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

believing under the tuition given them — a tuition which, we regret to
say, is afforded unlimited scope and opportunity through the strange
blindness of some in authority and the apathy of the general
public — that the Reformation is but a bad dream, that their
churches and services may take their colour from those in Roman
lands, and that ere long they may communicate indifferently at
friendly altars.

The unthinking public in England who are toying with Ritualism
are altogether unaware of the edifice that they are unconsciously
rearing, of the web they are weaving round themselves, of the fetters
they are forging. They indulge in it because there is something so
fascinating to some minds in ritual and ceremonial, something so
pleasing in the care and concern which the priests evince over the
affairs of people's souls ; it is so pleasant to be under direction and
guidance, to have the Church always busying itself about you, whether
you are alive or dead. ' May we not,' say they, ' have just a little of the
best part of Romanism, just the incense and candles and beautiful
vestments, just a little of the confessional, just the prayers for the
dead, and the reverence for the Blessed Virgin ? The alternative
is so unpleasing, so cold and unattractive ; nothing to aid devotion,
nothing to stimulate affection. We have no idea of going over to
Rome, we love our Church too well ; we only want to see her graced
with all the ceremonial which a Puritanical generation deprived
her of.'

People thus persuade themselves that they are culling the fair
flowers of the Church of Rome without running the risk of any of the
dangers which lurk around the system, those echoes of a far-off past
when that Church was guilty of corruptions which even they can
hardly condone. Even they cannot fail to see there is a difference
between Roman Catholic and Protestant countries, that England is
more blessed in many respects ; and although they incline to attribute
our better condition to our natural good qualities rather than to any-
thing connected with our religion, yet they would for the most part
rather not see the Church of Rome again established in England. For
them, therefore, this Ritualist system is as balm to the soul. Little
do these unconscious victims of the halfway-house system realise the
nature of their temporary shelter, which has been erected for them by
men who know well its frail and feeble structure, and only intend it to
last until it is full enough to allow of its removal.

The mass of the Ritualist world is walking in a fool's paradise ;
they are like people who are lost in the mist on some mountain-side.
It has descended all around them, shutting out of their horizon the
goal towards which they are hastening. The road behind them is
completely blotted out, the perspective is blurred and indistinct. All
they can behold is the figure of the guide close at hand, on whom they
blindly rely to conduct them to safety. It is well for such people if

1904 ROME OR THE REFORMATION 549

the mist suddenly rises and shows them the precipice they are nearing.
To dispel the mental fog in which so many are now wandering, a
concrete issue, such as the title of this paper suggests, may not be
without effect.

If proof were needed that modern Anglicanism is but the wicket-
gate to Rome, it must surely be supplied by the history of those who,
in recent years, have seceded from our Church and joined that other
communion. In a book recently published, entitled Roads to Rome,
we have the autobiographies of some sixty persons who have taken
this step, and with almost wearisome monotony they tell us the
mental process through which they passed, and how in that process
they reached a point where no other course was open to them but to
join the Church of Rome. Each writer enlarges upon the peace of
mind then attained, and marvels that he or she could so long have
hesitated on the brink ; but the reason for this peace of mind is to be
found rather in the mental surrender, in the cessation of conflict,
and in the fact that their beliefs and environment were no longer
contradictory, than in any virtue belonging to the faith itself. A far
larger number would seek this haven of rest but for the attitude of
their guides. The object of these men is not individual secessions,
which hinder the general advance by creating alarm and checking the
movement. Those who are bold enough to obey the dictates of con-
science in this respect are treated with coldness, and held to have
played the part of traitors. The entire party is gradually to be
brought to a position where a crisis will accomplish the rest. Mean-
while, for the benefit of the general public, the Ritualist leaders and
Rome play the part of lovers coquetting with each other. At times
they vow that no power on earth could bring them together ; that
terms of unconditional surrender on the one hand, and feelings of
national antipathy on the other, must for ever keep them apart ; while
secretly, in their heart of hearts, they long for a closer embrace, and,
in spite of acts and words, know well that they are destined for each
other. Each, with consummate skill, is playing into the hands of the
other, while persuading the outside world that nothing is further from
their intention than a union of forces.

Both are adopting the same methods, and those are the capture of
the children. Rome is deliberately working for the conversion of
England, and is planting her schools and seminaries all over the
country. An enormous influx of monks and nuns from abroad is
enabling her to put forth fresh efforts in this direction, and from all
quarters of England and Wales come accounts of buildings and pro-
perties passing into the hands of the Roman Orders, who have but
one object in view, and that is, through the education of the young,
to bring back England to obedience to the Roman Church. The
recent Education Act has conferred upon them immense facilities for
this work, and they are well aware of it, and intend to avail them-

550 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

selves of them to the full. A correspondent in the Tablet of the
20th of August writes as follows :

All these advantages of the Act fade into insignificance beside the great
apostolical opportunity the Act gives us, in that contact with the whole nation
to which it introduces our educational system. For the first time we are in
direct and immediate communication with every part of the country. We can
no longer be ignored ; we touch the people everywhere, in the school and in the
home ; officially and unofficially, the Catholic Church has entered into the life
blood of England. The contact has been like to the meeting of fire and water.
In many cases the splutter of indignation has raised a vast amount of heat and
smoke, and it proves how completely and successfully the mass of the people
have lived apart from us. Stolid Dissenters, dry Agnostics, to their surprise,
have found themselves within the walls of a Catholic school, compelled to
tolerate images, and to study Catholic feelings and modes of thought. It has
been an upheaval in their lives. . . . Providence has opened a door for us ; let
us not shut it. If we shut it we shall not have it opened again, at least in our
generation, if at all. That the people are compelled to speak to us is our
opportunity to speak to them. If they can enter our schools, our teachers and
children can show them the beauty, the purity, the solidity of Catholic
education.

In this manner is the Roman propaganda being carried on ; in
this manner are we as a country helping it forward. In short, we
are confronted with the extraordinary and almost incredible fact that
whilst foreign countries are all, in a greater or less degree, revolting
from the domination of the Roman Church, curbing its power, re-
jecting its faith, we with open arms are welcoming its emissaries and
facilitating its work. An innate conviction of our absolute safety
from any danger of a national return to Rome is to a great extent
responsible for this attitude of mind on the part of the public ; but
it is a dangerous experiment and one that is novel that we are trying,
in allowing unlimited scope for the inculcation of the Romish faith in
the children of the country.

This danger, which is not an imaginary one, is rendered ten times
greater by the party in our own Church, which is heading for Rome.
The leaders of this party, while persuading the adult world that
Romanism without the Pope is the true interpretation of the position
of the Church of England, are devoting their whole attention to the
task of bringing up the young in such a manner that the transition
to Rome will present no difficulties whatever in the course of another
few years. The catechisms and manuals which they publish would
form a small library, and they teach, for the most part, all the
essential doctrines of the Church of Rome, or such an amount of them
as must place the learner in harmony with that Church.

In a little book entitled Catholic Prayers for Church of England
People,1 which has reached the fifth edition, we have the Litany to
the Blessed Virgin in Latin, with the doctrine of the Immaculate

1 Catholic Prayers for Church of England People. W. Knott, 26 Brooke Street,
Holborn, E.G.

1904 ROME OR THE REFORMATION 551

Conception taught, the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin, with the five
Joyful and Sorrowful Mysteries, such services as the Adoration of the
Reserved Sacrament, the Devotions of the Sacred Heart, the Devo-
tions to the Precious Blood, the Bona Mors, the Litany for the Faithful
Departed. But, superstitious and false as we hold all this teaching to
be, it fades into insignificance before that given on the subject of
the Holy Communion, which is equivalent to the doctrine of Tran-
substantiation, that root and foundation of Romanism. Lord Halifax,
in his recent speech at the annual meeting of the E.C.U., after
enumerating various items of the creed of the Ritualist school, used
these words : ' It is the Mass that matters.' And he is perfectly
right, for the battle of the Reformation was fought on the doctrine of
the Mass. The Reformation changed the Mass into the Communion,
and Rome and the Reformation are distinguished one from the other
by these two words. The Mass is the sacrifice offered by the priest
of Christ Himself, into Whose Body and Blood, by the uttering of
certain words, he has changed the bread and wine ; the Communion is
the reception, by means of the sacred elements, of the Body and
Blood of Christ through faith, in remembrance of that sacrifice.
There is the whole difference between the mediaeval and primitive
Church in the two ideas ; the whole difference between priestcraft and
sacerdotalism and spiritual freedom and liberty. The object, then, of
this party being to re-establish the Mass in England, the method
which they are adopting is gradually to wean people from our Morning
Prayer, by substituting for it a constant repetition of the service of
the Holy Communion. All their ritual and ceremonial will be found
to centre round this service, which they are daily more and more
approximating to the Roman Mass. Hampered as yet by the re-
pugnance of the English people to the Mass, by their deep attachment
to our Morning Prayer, to which for generations they have been
accustomed, and, above all, by our English Prayer-book, which so
plainly provides for its due observance and so clearly repudiates the
Roman rite, they are nevertheless gradually and surely bringing about
the change by means of familiarising the children with this service.
It is becoming an established practice in parishes under Ritualistic
clergy to take the Sunday-school children en masse to the Holy Com-
munion, and frequently to this alone. Instead of the custom, which
up till recent years was universal, of bringing the children to Morning
Prayer and dismissing them after the sermon along with such members
of the congregation as did not wish to partake of the Holy Communion,
they are now brought in to what is made an entirely separate ser-
vice, commencing with the Commandments and going on without
interruption to the celebration of Holy Communion. This service is
termed variously the Holy Communion, Choral Eucharist, sung Mass,
or Holy Sacrifice, according to the level of Ritualistic practices to
which that particular parish has attained ; but by whatever name it

552 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

is called, it bears no similarity to our Communion service, and in
many churches could hardly be identified with it. The children are
supplied by their teachers with manuals, the Prayer-book apparently
not being considered sufficient to emphasise the doctrine it is desired
to impart to them, and these manuals teach the children, in language
suited to their understanding, the doctrine of the change of the
elements into the Body and Blood of Christ.

In a little manual entitled Altar-book for Children,2 the child is
told:

Jesus is corning, the church will soon be filled with angels, He will see me,
I must try to be very quiet, I must ask Him as well as I can for ...

Again, after the prayer of consecration :

This is the most solemn part of the service, try and be very still ; Jesus is
now coming, the angels are round the Altar. . . . Hail, ever Blessed Body of
Jesus ! . . . Eemember you are now in the presence of Jesus, keep very still,
and say this — 0 Lord Jesu, I adore Thee, I worship Thee, Jesus, on Thy Altar,
I worship Thy Body and Thy Blood.

In another manual, entitled Book for the Children of God,3 we read
the following words :

"When the Priest begins the Prayer, that which is on the Altar is Bread and
Wine ; when the Priest ends the Prayer, that which is on the Altar is Christ's
Body and Blood ; it is Jesus ; it is God. Who does this ? The Priest acting
for Jesus in the power of the Holy Ghost. How does he do it ? I cannot tell
you ; he does not know himself how he does it ; but it is done. It is a work of
God, and no one knows how God works. If you were to ask the great St.
Michael, he could not tell you. If you were to ask the Blessed Mary, she could
not tell you. . . . We go to the Altar and kneel down, and the Priest comes
to us with the Blessed Sacrament. We receive That which looks like bread, and
tastes like bread ; we receive That which looks like wine, and which tastes like
wine ; but That which we receive is the Body and Blood of Christ, it is Jesus
Himself, it is Almighty God.

In another, entitled Catholic Devotions for Young People,* we find,
with regard to the Holy Communion, the same doctrine taught :

After the words of Consecration, the bread and wine are really changed into
the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, though they still look, and taste, and feel
the same. Jesus Himself is hidden there under the outward forms of Bread
and Wine. Some people refuse to believe this, just as they refuse to believe our
Lord is God as well as Man, but the teaching of the Church is the only true
teaching, and all false doctrine comes from the devil, who is the father of lies.

2 Altar-book for Children. Mowbray & Co., 64 Farringdon Street, E.G.

* A Book for tlie Children of God. 2nd Edition. W. Knott, 26 Brooke Street,
Holborn, E.G.

4 Catholic Devotions for Young People. Church Review Co., Ltd., 11 Burleigh
Street, Strand, W.C.

1904 ROME OR THE REFORMATION 553

Again, in a manual entitled Hosanna : A Mass-book for Children,5
we read :

O Blessed Lord Jesus, Thou art coming from Heaven to be with us in this
church. The priest is going to make this bread to be Thy Body, and this wine
to be Thy Blood. Very soon Thou wilt be here. . . . Hail ! true Body of Jesus,
offered for me upon the Cross, Thou art here, and I adore Thee. Hail ! true
Blood of Jesus, shed for me upon the Cross, Thou art here, and I adore Thee.

And in The Praises of Jesus • A Hymn-book for Children,6 among
other hymns to the Blessed Sacrament, we find one containing this
verse :

O see, within a creature's hand

The vast Creator deigns to be,
Reposing, infant-like, as though

On Joseph's arm, or Mary's knee.

For all practical purposes this is equivalent to the doctrine of
Transubstantiation. However much the leaders of the Ritualist party
may try to persuade the adult world that they teach only what they
call the ' Real Presence,' and insist on the vast difference between that
and Transubstantiation, the children are taught to believe in a localised
Christ present on the altar, obedient to the word of the priest.

While, then, this doctrine of Transubstantiation is being gradually
implanted in the minds of the children, that other great engine of the
Church of Rome, the practice of confession, is being sedulously taught.
In a book entitled The First Communion, we read the following
words :

And now a few words of warning, and of encouragement. Be honest in your
confession. Keep nothing back that you feel you ought to confess. Don't hurry
over the worst things, in hopes that the priest won't hear or won't notice them. If
anything is very hard to own, take particular pains to be most clear in owning
it. Unless you mean to make a perfectly true confession of all the sins you
remember, you had better far get up and go out of church, and not make your
confession and communion at all ; better that you should die without ever
making your communion, than mock God by wilfully making a bad confession.
A communion made after a bad confession deserves hell. And now for a little
encouragement. There is nothing really dreadful in confession. The devil
tries to make you afraid of it, but there is no need. God knows all your sins,
and He is full of mercy, and the priest who hears you is the minister of Jesus,
and the grace of Jesus makes him kind. You need not think that he will scold
you or be angry with you. He cannot do so, for he is acting on behalf of God,
Who is always gentle with us when we are sorry for our sins. If there is some-
thing that you ought to confess, but you don't know how to say it, stop when
you come to that part of confession, and say, ' Father, there is something that
I don't know how to confess.' Then the priest will give you the help you need,

5 Hosanna : A Mass-book for Children. Prefaca by the Rev. R. A. J. Suckling,
2nd Edition. W. Knott, 26 Brooke Street, Holborn.

8 TJie Praises of Jesus: A Hymn-book for Children. Church Printing Co.
VOL. LVI— No. 332 P P

554 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

Also, in a book entitled Confession? by a committee of clergy, we
find:

You must tell the priest all the sins that you remember to have committed ;
God absolutely requires this. If through pride or shame you were so unhappy
as to hide a sin on purpose, you would commit a very grave fault, you would
make a very bad confession ; not only your sins would not be forgiven you, but
you would be far more guilty than before. You had better not confess at all
than make such a bad and sacrilegious confession. There have been persons
who have wilfully concealed their sins in confession for years. They were very
unhappy, were tormented with remorse, and if they had died in that state their
souls would certainly have been in the greatest danger of everlasting death.

Again, in A Little Catechism for Little Catholics,8 these words occur :

What does ' to repent ' mean ?

To repent means we must (1) be very sorry for our sins, (2) tell our sins to
God before His priest, (3) do all we can to make amends.

How does the priest forgive sins ?

The priest forgives sins by the power of God when he says, ' I absolve thee
from all thy sins in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost.'

This is the spade work which is being carried on amongst the
children, which is ensuring a harvest for the Church of Rome, but
which is being done so quietly that no one troubles about it. Occupied
with business or pleasure, the world gives but slight heed to a work
which, if allowed a few more years of uninterruption, will have created
a condition of things beyond remedy. It is occasionally aroused to
take a languid interest in the account of some service more outrage-
ously Roman in character than usual, but for the most part it is
tired of the controversy, willing that religious work should be done
by any agency, rather than not at all, and thinksrthat it has done all
that can be expected of it in the matter of religious education when
it enunciates the plausible theory that children should be brought up
in their parents' faith, and passes a conscience clause protecting any
child from compulsion in the matter of religious teaching. No greater
fallacy ever was propounded than that of the parents' right. Amongst
the poor, we must say it regretfully, not one in a hundred troubles
what the children are taught. Occupied with the struggle for exist-
ence, the man goes to his work without a thought as to the religious
teaching of the child ; the wife, only too glad to rid the cottage
of the presence of the small band of children, sends them off to the
nearest school, and the parson occupying the position of vantage,
and being able to render material aid to the poor in the matter of
treats, relief, and assistance of all kinds, secures the flock without
question. Once he has the children, he has gained all he wants.
There is no saying more profoundly true than that ascribed to Cardinal
Manning, ' Give me a child till he is six, and you may do what you

1 Confession. By a Committee of Clergy. W. Knott, 26 Brooke Street, Holborn.
8 A Little Catechism for Little Catholics. W. Knott, 26 Brooke Street, Holborn.

1904 ROME OR THE REFORMATION 555

like with him after.' What is learnt as a child is never forgotten,
and in some curious incomprehensible manner, no matter how the
tedium of these Masses may pall on the children, nor how incredible
the doctrines may appear when, later on, the child comes in contact
with other views, the teaching will stick to him, or else be discarded
in favour of some pronounced form of unbelief. This is the invariable
result in all Roman Catholic countries, and one can see no reason
why England's fate should be different.

While all this is apparent to those who are engaged in defending
the cause of the Reformation, there is one difficulty under which
they labour, and that is that, while doctrine is the real danger, the
only vulnerable point of attack which the Ritualists present to them
is to be found in the apparently unimportant field of ritual. The
intimate connection between ritual and doctrine is not apparent to
many minds. It is through ritual that the whole ground has been
gained by this party, but, in being driven to select this field of battle,
the Protestant leaders have been placed at a great disadvantage.
What harm, says the world, can there be in an ornate ritual, in incense,
in vestments, let alone such trivialities as eastward position, mixed
chalice, and lights, especially when they are indulged in by men whose
lives bear witness to sanctity, devotion, and energy ? So wise and
broad-minded a statesman and Churchman as the late Lord Selborne,
the last man in the world to have any sympathy with Romanism,
could yet be found to express his view on the unimportance of ritual,
in writing to Sir Arthur Gordon,9 in the following words :

For my own part I am entirely of one mind with you in thinking that, under
present circumstances, it is much better to submit to and acquiesce in deviations
(even if they seem ever so wrongheaded) from the Act of Uniformity, as inter-
preted by the authorised Courts, on matters of dress, posture, and forms of
ritual, than either to break up the Church, or to drive out of it Bishops, clergy-
men, or laymen, who are otherwise good men, good Christians, and doing good
work. . . . Perhaps it may also be true that, independently even of our present
circumstances, the Act of Uniformity is more rigid about these formal matters
than it ought to have been ; they are all, in comparison with spiritual and
organic unity (at least in my judgment) inexpressibly trivial and unimportant,
and it might be well if some distinction had been drawn by the law between
great things and small, and if dispensing power had been lodged somewhere.

And yet it is through these same ' inexpressibly trivial and unim-
portant ' details that we have been brought to the present state of
things, to see in English churches all over the land services which are
indistinguishable from those in Roman churches, services in which
Romanists themselves can detect no difference between them and
their own, whilst an angered and embittered laity is watching, with
melancholy gaze, the threatened downfall of the Church at the hands
of the Nonconformists and Secularists.

9 Memorials, Personal and Political : Earl of Selborne. Vol. i. p. 401.

p p 2

556 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

If we, then, the party of the Reformation, are justified in our con-
tention that there is no via media between fidelity to the Scriptural
position of the Church of England and complete surrender to Rome
— in short, that Ritualism is but the jumping-board for Rome ; if
we can point to the alarming manner in which the extreme party in
our Church and the Church of Rome herself are, through the education
of the young, bringing near a surrender to the Church of Rome, may
we not plead for two practical considerations with regard to the
Reformation movement — namely, what it did for the country and
what it did for the Church ? Well may we ask, why does England
to-day occupy the foremost position amongst the nations of the
world ? Why is it that the English people possess a genius for governing
inferior races to such a degree that to be under British rule is synony-
mous with good government, even justice, and righteous laws ? Why is
England the cradle of philanthropy, the heart of missionary effort,
the very home of individual freedom and liberty ? Why have we been
free from the cataclysms and revolutions that have submerged foreign
nations, the frantic efforts of people striving to be free, which have
let loose forces destructive of the very elements of social order and
religious truth ? Why has religion been a power in this country
which has moulded the character of the people, and made truthful-
ness, honour, and industry the foundations of national life ? If cause
and effect are indissolubly bound together, there can be but one answer
to these questions. It is to the Reformation and to the men of that
time that England owes all it possesses to-day, blessings denied to
the countries untouched by that event, and blessings which only a
fidelity to that event can retain.

But what is the secret in the Reformation of its mighty power to
regenerate, to set free, to provide that impetus to national effort
which has not ceased to operate from that time till now ? What is
the key to the whole movement ? Whence came that inspiration which
enabled men to die, content if by their death they might contribute to
the demolition of falsehood and add one stone to the edifice of truth ?
It was not primarily Papal supremacy, priestly tyranny, national or
individual bondage, it was not ritual and ceremonial, which were the
objects of attack ; all these were the resultants, not the first causes, of
the system which the Reformation doomed to extinction ; but as these
things were the inevitable consequences, so were they the necessary
adjuncts of a faith which owed both its existence and its maintenance
to the suppression of all individual thought and opinion.

The secret was the Word long buried but at last regained, that
Bible which gave utterance to the Divine Voice, calling men from
formalism and ceremonialism, from superstition and from darkness,
from priests, Virgin, and Saints, to the faith of children at liberty in
their Father's house, needing no go-between, no middleman between
them and the Father, no Intercessor but the Saviour who had called

1904 EOME OE THE REFORMATION 557

them brethren and who had completed the work of salvation. The work
of the sacrificing and confessing priests was gone, the people were free ;
in this world they could approach the Throne without them, in the next
they could attain heavenly bliss without their prayers. No wonder the
priesthood struggled hard ; they would not surrender without an effort
the illimitable power which their system had conferred upon them. Not
only power but wealth was gone. The money of the people had been
poured without stint into the coffers of the Church. The entrance
into Heaven was in the hands of the Church, it was not to be unlocked
without money. The richer you were the sooner the door would be
opened, but the poorest must contribute in order to enter. Money,
from the time the Romish system was first imposed on human credulity
up to the present hour, is the key to the Kingdom of Heaven for a
benighted people, and to affluence for the Church and its dignitaries
But those who had been touched with that Divine inspiration were
able to defy the threats and fulminations and persecutions of an
expiring tyranny. Henceforth England was free. No priest could
control the home by bringing its womenfolk into the confessional, or
dominate the State by his claim to vast and supernatural powers.
England was free, and in that newborn freedom her naval heroes
went forth, with their Bible in one pocket and their military text-book
in the other, to inaugurate that era of conquest which, beginning with
the destruction of Philip of Spain, with the discovery and absorption
of a new hemisphere, has continued with uninterrupted progress down
to the present day, when it is not too much to say our country is
in many respects the envy and admiration of the world.

And if we ask why the Reformation has procured for us a position
of such undeniable pre-eminence, it seems clear that it is due to the
effect of the Reformed Faith on the character of men. With the
disappearance of the priest as a necessary factor in salvation came a
deeper sense of personal responsibility to God. The false excuses of the
Confessional, by which priests could be hoodwinked and men's con-
sciences deceived, were of no avail in the eyes of an all-seeing God,
and consequently that groundwork of all national progress, absolute
truthfulness and honesty of purpose, became an essential and marked
characteristic of the English people. And as with truthfulness, so
with self-reliance and courage. Men found that they must lean on
God, and trust to their own right arm and their own resources, and
in that personal communion with Him they formed that character of
grit and endurance which has enabled Englishmen to accomplish the
deeds by which the Empire was won.

And if the Reformation did so much for the nation, what did it
do for the Church ? It made the Church the exponent of the nation's
highest life and thought. It was the Church itself that gave expres-
sion to the pent-up feelings of two hundred years that were welling up
in the nation, ideas of freedom and expansion and purity of faith. It

558 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

was the Church itself that threw off the fetters that were holding the
country down, cramping its powers and arresting its development.
There was no attempt on the part of the Church to curb and check the
new forces that were coming into operation, or to restrict education in
some narrow channel. The Church led the way in the path of liberty,
and consequently became interwoven with the life and history of
the country. We have but to look to Roman Catholic countries to
see the opposite of this picture, to see national development only
effected in the teeth of the opposition of the Church, to see the Church
looked upon as the greatest foe to progress, to education, and to all
that conduces to national greatness, and consequently to witness
all the irrepressible aspirations of a country forced into antagonism
to the power upon which depends the religious life of the people.

It will be a sad day for England if our Church ceases to express
the religious convictions of the country. When that day arrives
the Church is doomed. There is no fear for the Protestantism of
England ; the day is past and gone when priestcraft can govern in
the land. The fear is that the Church of England, or that any large
portion of it, should be so altered in its character as to be utterly out
of harmony with England herself, should fall from its high estate
as the Church of the people and become the Church of a small and
insignificant minority, whose latter days will be spent in an igno-
minious surrender to the Church of Rome. The moment for decision,
then, has come. It must be either Rome or the Reformation.
There is no other alternative. Either we must be true to the
Reformers, protesting for the supremacy of Scripture, rejecting
all doctrines which cannot be proved from that Book, or we must
submit to the authority of the Church of Rome, and blindly place
ourselves in the hands of a power which, however much it may protest
to the contrary, must for ever, as the very essence of its faith, as the
very condition of its existence, as the very object of its aspirations,
set itself against all freedom of thought, all intellectual advance,
and, as a consequence, against all progress and development of national
life, all spiritual power in the hearts of men. The choice must be
made. We are now in a condition of religious thought which cannot
long continue. However much statesmen and lawyers may argue
on the legal aspects of ritual, on their relation to Acts of Uniformity,
or on the importance of an Ornaments Rubric, the question will in
the end be decided by none of these things. The question which men
must answer is, Are we going to take the authority of the Church or
that of the Bible ? And on the answer which Church people make to
this question will depend, not perhaps the Protestantism of England,
but certainly the question as to whether this Church of ours is to
remain a power for God, not only in this country, but in those vast
dominions beyond the seas over which, in the Providence of God, we
are called upon to rule.

CORNELIA WIMBORNE.

190-1

THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST
CONGRESS

THE International Socialist Congress of 1904 will be remembered as
that at which a new phase of Socialist activity was definitely entered
upon. The one question which was discussed with any degree of
fulness was the tactics to be pursued by Socialist politicians, the
controversy mainly raging round the point at which the Revolutionist
should abdicate in favour of the Statesman. Revolution has always
been maintained as an essential part of Socialist propaganda, although
of late there has been a tendency to give the term an esoteric or philo-
sophic rather than a popular meaning, or at least to qualify it with a
' mental reservation,' as Scotch Presbyterian "-'ministers do when
swearing allegiance to the Westminster Confession of Faith. Revolu-
tion is no longer meant to connote the barricade-and-bullet method
of propagating Socialism, but simply the change in the social order
which the introduction of Socialism implies. Tn its political sense
Revolution is meant to express the view that, since Socialist propa-
ganda is based upon an irreconcilable and ever-increasing antagonism
of interests between the property-less and the propertied classes, the
conflict being waged is really in the nature of warfare, and admits of
no participation by the representatives of labour in any system of
government which does not aim at the overthrow of the existing
order of society and methods of wealth production and distribution.
It was the tactics based on this theory which was assailed at Amster-
dam. Revolution by force having dropped out of sight, the further
stage has now been reached of considering whether the political
method is to remain revolutionary in spirit and action or become
frankly evolutionary. The marvellous growth of the movement in
recent years and its success at the polls has forced the question into the
arena for discussion, and the result is already a foregone conclusion.
Socialist human nature is, after all, but a slice from the common stock,
and is not cast in any ultra-heroic mould.

The personnel of the Congress was, as usual, full of interest.
Amnestied French Communards from New Caledonia, escaped Russian
Nihilists from Siberia, tortured and pardoned Spanish Anarchists from
the dark dungeons of Montjuich, Saxon and Dane, the inflammable

559

560 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

Latin, and the stolid Teuton : for scores of these men and women
life is one continuous conflict with despotic authority. All, however,
were intent on planning that new order of society in which class rule
shall have ended and Altruism reign supreme. Theirs is a great faith,
a noble enthusiasm. To many of them — political exiles, the overflow
of the seething caldron of Continental revolutionism, victims of
Governmental despotism who see no way of escape save that which
the rifle can open out — the discussion on what degree of latitude is
permissible in co-operating with Bourgeois Governments must have
seemed weirdly unreal. Nowhere in all that vast assembly was there,
however, any trace left of the old Utopianism of Saint-Simon, Fourier,
Louis Blanc, or Robert Owen. Despite divergence of opinion as to
methods, Revolutionist and Evolutionist were at one in their agree-
ment that Socialism cannot be developed as an isolated phenomenon
by means of colonies or phalansteries. Whatever their favourite
method of hastening its coming, they one and all see in Socialism but
the next stage in the progressive evolution of a more ordered state of
society in which all will be free and equal.

The personality which attracted most attention was the quiet,
grey, slightly limping form of Vera Zassulitch. It seems hard to
believe that this is the intrepid Nihilist who, in 1878 and in broad
daylight, killed the head of the Russian police and successfully
pleaded justification for the deed. Her shot rang right across the
Continent, and was the signal for the beginning of that reign of terror
and propaganda by deed which men still think of with a shudder.
What perhaps lends special interest to her presence at the Congress
is the fact that it was her brother, General Zassulitch, whose death
at the front was such a blow to Russian hopes in the early stages of
the war with Japan.

August Bebel, who since the death of Liebknecht is the recog-
nised leader of the Socialist party in Germany, was there, but only
intervened in debate when questions deeply concerning the movement
were being discussed. M. Jaures, the brilliant French lawyer and
parliamentarian, was the opponent whom Bebel laid himself out to
match. So far as applause indicates anything, Bebel was the undeni-
able favourite. He belongs to the old guard, and has endured much.
Emile Vandervelde, Enrico Ferri, and Dr. Adler represented Belgium,
Italy, and Austria respectively, and are all men of note. It is a notable
fact that the largest delegation at the Congress was the British. The
Independent Labour party, the Social Democratic Federation, and
the Fabian Society were there as a matter of course, being Socialist
organisations ; but, in addition, there were the representatives of the
Labour Representation Committee, the General Federation of Trade
Unions, and the Metalworkers. Though they took little part in the
proceedings, it was recognised their influence was a force which would
require to be reckoned with in future Congresses.

1904 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS 561

To understand the situation as it presented itself to the Amsterdam
Congress it is necessary to trace its development. In 1874 the Inter-
national Working Men's Association went to pieces, rent and torn by
internecine strife between the Anarchists under Bakounine, a Russian
aristocrat of great force of character and a born Revolutionist, and
the State Socialists under Karl Marx. Following its dissolution there
was a lull for a time in the International movement. Organised
Socialism was at that time non-existent in Great Britain, and on the
Continent outside of Germany the revolutionary Anarchist element
had the upper hand. Of a real democratic movement there was none.
Revolution has the rule of the strong inherent in itself ; it cannot
exist otherwise, and a democratic movement which has to burrow
underground is doomed. The conflict between Marx and Bakounine
and other opponents was the strife of intellectual giants waged in
Titanic fashion, and the outcome of their conflict was the shattering
of the organisation which each sought to control. Both were auto-
crats, although Marx was the more shrewd and also the saner spirit
of the two. B

*^l

In 1847 Karl Marx, in collaboration with Friedrich Engels, had
drawn up a manifesto as an expression of the principles of the Com-
munists' League, and this became the recognised basis and ground-
work of Socialistic propaganda. This document, strangely enough, was
as acceptable to the Anarchists as it was to the Communists. True
each placed their own interpretation upon it, and gave a different
meaning to the practical application of their common creed. Marx
declared the State under democratic control to be necessary for the
preservation of the liberty of the subject under Socialism ; whereas
Bakounine saw in the State only an engine of oppression which would
render Socialism of non-effect. Further, both parties were, when
occasion served, frankly revolutionary. Marx wanted a revolution
for the overthrow of the Bourgeois and the establishment of a Social
Democratic State ; Bakounine for the overthrow of the State alto-
gether. For a moment it is important to remember that the Com-
munist manifesto of 1847 was drafted by Revolutionaries to meet a
state of affairs in which revolution was the only method by which the
voteless proletariat could enforce their demands. It was, in fact, as
Engels frankly stated many years after, intended as a counterblast
and an antidote to the Utopian schemes of those who thought that
Socialism could be ushered in by such peaceful methods as the forming
of colonies or the setting-up of national workshops. It was an exposi-
tion of scientific as opposed to'^Utopian Socialism. Strange enough,
the phrases and methods set forth in the manifesto still form the, basis
of Socialist tactics in most countries, and the proceedings at'Amsterdam
were also dominated by the spirit of that interesting historical
document. This being so, it will assist the reader to a better under-
standing of what follows if I give here the summary of it as given

562 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

by Engels himself in his preface to the English edition. The summary
states

That in every historical epoch the prevailing mode of economic production
and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it form the
basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political
and intellectual history of that epoch ; that consequently the whole history of
mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society holding land in
common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between
exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes ; that the history of these
class struggles forms a series of evolution in which, Snowadays, a stage has been
reached where the exploited and oppressed class — the proletariat — cannot attain
its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class — the bour-
geois— without at the same time and once and for all emancipating society at
large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction, and class struggles.

On this frankly materialistic conception of history and evolution
the Socialist movement of the world has been, in theory at least,
founded, and arising out of it has grown the dogma that under no
circumstances should Socialists countenance any form of Bourgeois
Government, since to do so would be to lend support to the existing
order of society and retard the coming of Socialism. Further, it is
assumed that the lot of the worker under capitalism must be one of
increasing misery, and the more he is oppressed and downtrodden,
the more anxious will he be to throw off the system that oppresses
him, and that therefore any palliatives put forward by Bourgeois
Governments can only be intended to relieve the pressure somewhat,
and make the proletarian contented with his lot, and blind him to his
true position ; and these also, therefore, must be classified in the
category of hindrances to Socialism. It was to a great cataclysmal
upheaval in society that the men who penned the manifesto looked
for the bringing-in of Socialism, and that idea still perpetuates itself
in the minds of those who, in practice, have long since overthrown its
method. For, as I shall show presently, even the most rigid adherents
of the Marxian theory are among its greatest offenders when acting
as politicians.

The resuscitation of the Congress, after the fall of the Red Inter-
national, was due to German initiative, and, as was inevitable, the
movement for a time bore the impress of Teutonic bureaucracy. At
each succeeding Congress after 1887, the Anarchist element declined
in numbers and influence until, at the London meeting in 1896, a
resolution was carried which excluded them altogether, and Socialism
was definitely committed to parliamentary and constitutional methods.
But the seeming harmony thus attained was only on the surface, and
at Paris in 1900 a fresh element of discord was discovered which
marked a further stage in the evolution towards a progressive inter-
pretation. The new cause of alarm came from France, where M.
Millerand, a Socialist Deputy, had, in consequence of the Dreyfus
affair and with the concurrence of a majority of his colleagues, accepted

1904 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS 563

a portfolio in the Ministry of M. Waldeck-Rousseau. Socialist opinion
in France was divided on the wisdom of this step, and at the Inter-
national gathering of 1900 it was the subject of a long and animated
debate. In the end, a resolution, moved by Herr Kautsky on behalf
of the German delegation, was carried, reaffirming the class war and
declaring that no Socialist could enter a Bourgeois Ministry save as
the delegate of his party, and only for a definite and particular object,
and that he should withdraw so soon as the object in view had been
attained. On the face of it, this was a lowering of the flag and a
temporising with principle, and a departure from the strict interpre-
tation of the class-war theory. It was, in fact, an admission that
there were occasions when it might be incumbent on a Socialist party
to assist in saving Bourgeois society as the lesser of two evils. After
this admission, as the wiser heads foresaw, it only became a question
of where the line should be drawn, and it was a certainty that the
mark would tend to recede as the Socialist movement neared the
goal of its operations. Meanwhile, the Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry
was shooting down striking workmen, and receiving the Czar of
Russia as if he were a Heaven-sent saviour of society, and M. Millerand
could not escape the odium which attached itself to these acts. Feeling
kept steadily rising against him, despite his efforts in the cause of
labour reform, and finally a resolution of no confidence was carried,
and he resigned his portfolio, but not his seat in the Chamber of
Deputies. The trouble did not end there ; during the four years
which have elapsed since 1900, the malady of which M. Millerand's
portfolio was but a symptom has become widespread and assumed
many varied forms.

The growth of political Socialism during the past ten years has
been phenomenal, not only in Germany, but in Italy, France, Belgium,
and to a lesser degree other countries where the Socialists have grown
from an insignificant faction into a . powerful and well-ordered force,
with a controlling influence in the Parliaments. The functions and
responsibilities of a regular opposition have to be met by them, and
this is bringing with it a changing outlook. They are no longer in the
mere propagandist stage, where a destructive criticism of the existing
order of society serves as material enough for speeches. If they are
to continue to grow, constructive statesmanship must supplement
criticism. A mere negative will no longer serve. The break-up of
old political parties and combinations is revolutionising the political
situation, and with the passing of the old-time theory of a cataclysmal
introduction of the Socialist regime there has come also a widening
of the political outlook and a freer interpretation of Socialist dogma.
Not only is the irreconcilable intransigeant being driven to the rear,
but the philosophic interpretation of the basis of the Socialist creed is
expressed in different terms. It is no longer universally held that the
growing poverty of the masses is the best assurance for the speedy

564 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

realisation of Socialism, or that reforms are, even if a Bourgeois class
meant them to be so, hindrances to the spread of the movement.
When Socialism comes, say the new men, it will be as the result of
the growing intelligence and comfort of the masses, and not their
growing poverty and despair. The theory of the ' increasing misery '
of the working class, long one of the bulwarks of Socialism, is no longer
tenable, and has given way to the commonplace that ' the gap between
the working class and the rich class to-day is greater than ever before.'
The value of human thought as a solvent of class prejudices, and even
of interests, may also be considered a new factor in the situation. In
a word, the Hegelian interpretation of history, on which Marx founded
his theory of Socialist evolution, is now either discredited or at least
disregarded. As a natural corollary to this new outlook, there has
grown up a feeling that the Socialist parties should, whilst rigidly
adhering to their ideal and independence, be prepared to co-operate
with other parties for certain well-defined and specific purposes, or
when by so doing they can save the country from reaction. It has
not generally, at least, been conceded that Socialists should take office
in coalition Governments, although it is evident that this is a logical
sequence which is bound to follow joint action on the floor of the
Chamber. To neither of these tendencies will the leaders of the old
German guard lend the slightest countenance. They will tolerate no
revision or even reconsideration of the tactics adopted to meet the
situation as it existed half a century ago. Intransigeant revolutionists
they have always been, and so, they assert, they will always remain,
and until recently they would have been supported by the practically
unanimous voice and vote of the Congress in this resolve ; but at Am-
sterdam they found themselves almost alone among European nations
with parliamentary institutions. The times and the situation have
moved, German thought has stood still.

But even in Germany the new leaven is at work. The Revisionists,
as the new school of thought has been named, have been making
their influence felt of late, and although the party conference can
always be relied upon to carry any resolution on policy which has
the support of Herr Bebel, still in action the party keeps moving
further away from the old Revolutionary standard. The election
address, for example, on which the German party won its magnificent
success eighteen months ago might, with the deleting only of some
thirty-five words towards the end, quite well form a model for Liberal
candidates in Great Britain at next election. Army expenditure,
protection, expenditure on the Colonies, taxes on beer and tobacco,
the fiscal fleecing of the poor, the neglect of domestic and social reforms,
for which the Government can find no money, and so on, are all com-
mented on and denounced, and it is only in the concluding lines that
Socialism is named. On the second ballots, too, it is becoming common
for the Socialist vote to be given to Radical candidates, whilst partici-

1904 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS 565

pation in municipal administration is now admitted as permissible.
The influence of the Volmar-David-Bernstein section is growing, and
the tactics of the party are being modified in consequence. In Belgium
the Socialists and the Radicals have practically come to terms, and
will not only support each other's candidates as against the reactionary
Clericals at next election, but will co-operate with them in working
for such an amendment of the franchise laws as will abolish the fancy
franchises now existing and secure universal suffrage. In Italy
Signer Turratti proposes to co-operate with the Radicals in securing
a number of immediate administrative and social reforms, and at a
special conference of the party held at Bologna in April this year
to consider the question of policy, attended by twelve hundred
delegates, the Revolutionaries, under Enrico Ferri, only won by a
few votes, and through obtaining the support of the semi- Anarchist
southern branches where the Socialist movement is weak. In all
these cases Revolutionary Socialism is giving way to Evolu-
tionary. The ideal is the same, but the methods or tactics are
themselves undergoing a change which can only be described as
revolutionary.

But it was France that once more supplied the Amsterdam Con-
gress with a concrete case. The fall of the Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry
and the withdrawal of M. Millerand from the Cabinet have not been
followed by any change of tactics on the part of the French Socialist
party, and the Government of M. Combes is as much dependent
upon, and as freely receives, Socialist support as that of his predecessor,
M. Waldeck-Rousseau. In addition to all this there was the British
section and its special position. Since the formation of the Labour
Representation Committee the Independent Labour party has been
committed to supporting trade-union candidates standing as such
and without Socialism being a factor in the contest. True, the I.L.P.
has never accepted the Marxist interpretation of Socialism or Socialist
tactics, and a few years ago its alliance with the Trade Unionists on a
non-Socialistic basis would undoubtedly have been considered damning
evidence against its claim to be considered a Socialist organisation
at all. The British Colonists, who, together, were recognised as one
separate nationality at the Congress, were in a like position. In the
Australasian Colonies the Labour party is not troubled about theory,
but confines itself strictly to practical questions of the hour. The
number of avowed Socialists in the ranks of the Labour party is not
large, but the work accomplished proves unmistakably that Socialism
may be won quite apart altogether from theories of ' class conscious-
ness,' or any of the dogmas by which the Marxists set such store.
They, too, therefore had a position to defend aganist the Germans.
It was, therefore, not without some anxiety that Herr Bebel and his
colleagues met with the representatives of International Socialism
and Trade Unionism at Amsterdam.

566 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

At the Dresden Congress of the German party in 1901 a resolution
was carried, after considerable debate, in which the Revisionists were
smitten hip and thigh. Subsequently that section of the French
movement which is led by MM. Vaillant and Guesde, which dissents
from the tactics of M. Jaures, adopted the same resolution and for-
warded it to the International Congress so as to have the whole question
of tactics raised there. The Dresden resolution affirms in its most
uncompromising form the class-war revolutionary theory — always
bearing the mental reservation in mind — of the Marxist doctrine, and
condemns all and sundry who in any way seek to modify its terms or
question its wisdom. In true dogmatic fashion it assumes that the
wells of truth and wisdom were exhausted when the Communists'
manifesto was framed in 1847, and that all who gainsay this are
heretics fit only for excommunication. Even the errors of that
historical document, abandoned by Herr Bebel, are re-enunciated with
all the acclaim of verbal inspiration. For three days at Amsterdam a
mixed commission considered the Dresden resolution, and finally, after
rejecting an amendment moved by Vandervelde (Belgium) and Adler
(Austria), passed it on to the Congress by twenty votes to sixteen. By
this time everyone knew that the resolution was primarily a declara-
tion against Jaures in France and the Revisionists in Germany.
Towards the end of the debate it concentrated itself upon Jaures.
The brilliant Frenchman, however, did not take it ' lying down.' In
a forty-five minutes' speech he carried the war into the enemies' camp,
and taunted the Germans with their impotence despite their big
3,000,000 vote. In France they could show a Republic saved and
some social legislation achieved as a result of their policy. But the
German party was still barren of results. They were even in doubt
as to whether it would be safe to invite a few fellow Socialists from
other lands to meet them in Congress. Bebel replied. Was the French
Republic, after all, worth saving ? If Jaures had won social reforms
by his tactics, they in Germany had forced them from the Govern-
ment, who hoped thereby to wean the workers from Socialism. Before
they could be an effective party in Germany they must increase their
vote to 7,000,000. Others took part in the debate, but the interest
had evaporated when the two leading opponents had said their say.
The resolution of condemnation was as follows :

The Congress condemns to the fullest extent possible the efforts of the
Eevisionists, which have for their object the modification of our tried and
victorious policy based on the class war, and the substitution, for the conquest
of political power by an unceasing attack on the bourgeoisie, of a policy of con-
cession to the established order of society.

The consequence of such revisionist tactics would be to turn a party striving
for the most speedy transformation possible of bourgeois society into Socialist
society — a party therefore revolutionary in the best sense of the word — into a
party satisfied with the reform of bourgeois society.

For this reason the Congress, convinced, in opposition to revisionist tenden

1904 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS 567

cies, that class antagonisms, far from diminishing, continually increase in
bitterness, declares :

I. That the party rejects all responsibility of any sort under the political and
economic conditions based on capitalist production, and therefore can in no wise
countenance any measure tending to maintain in power the dominant class.

II. The Social Democracy can accept no participation in the Government
under bourgeois society, this decision being in accordance with the Kautsky
resolution passed at the International Congress of Paris in 1900.

The Congress further condemns every attempt to mask the ever-growing
class antagonisms, in order to bring about an understanding with bourgeois
parties.

The Congress relies upon the Socialist Parliamentary group to use its power,
increased by the number of its members and by the great accession of electors
who support it, to persevere in its propaganda towards the final object of
Socialism and, in conformity with our programme, to defend most resolutely
the interests of the working class, the extension and consolidation of political
liberties, in order to obtain equal rights for all ; to carry on more vigorously
than ever the fight against militarism, against the imperialist and colonial
policy, against injustice, domination, and exploitation of every kind ; and, finally,
to exert itself to the utmost to perfect social legislation and to enable the
working class to fulfil its political and civilising mission.

The Vandervelde-Adler amendment, which followed the resolu-
tion in its affirmations concerning Socialism, but left out all the con-
demnations of Revisionism, was fathered in the Congress by the
British section, and was first voted on. The numbers showed a tie,
twenty-one for, twenty-one against. Thereafter, the Dresden resolu-
tion was carried, twenty-five votes being given for it, five against,
and twelve nations abstaining. The Revolutionists cheered, but
their leaders knew that they had gained but a Pyrrhic victory. The
future is not theirs.

An analysis of the voting on the Vandervelde-Adler amendment
reveals the strength of the Revisionist position. Each nation had two
votes. Those supporting the amendment were : Great Britain two,
the British Colonies two, Argentina two, Sweden two, Austria
two, Belgium two, Denmark two, Holland two, Switzerland
two, and France one, Norway one, Poland one ; total twenty-one.
Opposed to the amendment were : Germany two, Bohemia two, Bul-
garia two, Spain two, United States two, Hungary two, Italy two,
Japan two, Russia two, and France, Norway, and Poland one vote
each ; total twenty-one. The most superficial glance at this list is
sufficient to show that, with the exceptions of Germany and Italy,
wherever Socialism is a political force, Revisionism is the policy
favoured. Even in Italy, as already stated, one half, and that by far
the more representative of the party, is with Jaures, although at the
Congress both votes went against the amendment. In countries
without Parliamentary institutions, or where they are of the most
rudimentary kind, the trend of the movement is necessarily Revolu-
tionist. The one French vote cast for the amendment represented
forty members of the Chamber of Deputies against eleven deputies

568 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

on the other side. The case of the United States requires a special
word of explanation. For half a century the Socialist movement
there was confined almost exclusively to the Germans, who, with a
devotion and fidelity to a great cause all too rare, kept their Socialist
clubs going, and waged continual warfare against capital. But all
in vain. They insisted on telling the well-fed, free-born American
worker that he was a poor, down-trodden slave ; they expounded the
class war, and called for class consciousness in a country where, at
that time, the words had no meaning, and so they made no headway.
But now the conditions are rapidly changing. In no country in the
world has the capitalist system of production developed so rapidly
as in the United States of America, and now all the evil social condi-
tions which haunt the older nations of Europe like a nightmare are
reproducing themselves in an aggravated form in that vast continent.
As a natural consequence the American workmen are taking to
Socialism with avidity. Already the Socialist party boasts of a
financial membership of 25,000, which will probably mean a vote of
250,000 at the coming Presidential election. But as yet the American
Socialists, beyond a few small successes in local elections, have not
become a political party. The movement, although strong and
rapidly growing, is still in the early propaganda stage, and still domi-
nated by a stern Marxism. True, it has shaken itself free from the
incubus of some of the logical extremists who formerly terrorised it,
but it has not yet gained confidence or courage enough to think for
itself. Time, however, and a growing sense of strength will rid it
of that enslavement to phrases and dogmas by which it is still en-
thralled. Briefly, the situation as revealed by the voting at Amster-
dam is this wherever free parliamentary institutions exist, and
where Socialism has attained the status of being recognised as a party,
dogmatic absolutism is giving way bejfore the advent of a more practical
set of working principles. The schoolman is being displaced by the
statesman.

When the alternative is borne in mind, the growth of the new
tactics ceases to be matter for wonder. The idea which seems to
dominate the Revolutionaries is that, whilst Capitalist society is going
to pieces from its own inherent rottenness, and political parties and
institutions as organs of Capitalism are dissolving with it, Socialism
shall go on building up a new party, bringing with it a new system,
and that when the old order and the old parties can no longer keep
themselves erect, the new party and the new system will supersede
them. The whole thing is reminiscent of the One-Horse Shay. As a
theory it may be perfect ; in practice it is unthinkable. It only shows
how the old traditional idea of a physical-force revolution still per-
petuates itself with a certain order of mind.

In statesmanship, more probably than in any other sphere of
human activity, it is difficult to carry a theory, however logical, into

1904 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS 569

the field of action. The crowd which to-day cheers the philosopher
enunciating some abstract proposition will to-morrow vote for his
opponent who promises them something immediately practical. And
the crowd is right both times. The old taunt alleged against Socialism,
and not without reason, was that whilst its professors were agreed in
a merely negative denunciation of the existing order of society, no
two of them could keep from fighting when they sought common
ground of action in building up the new order. If the coming of
Socialism is to be evolutionary and not cataclysmal, that of itself implies
a long process of experimental legislation. The famished multitudes
cannot, and will not, wait for a Socialist majority to give them relief
through a complete change of system, and if Socialists will not co-
operate with those who are prepared to aid them in their social schemes,
then the proletariat will turn from them and look elsewhere for the
relief they so much need. Men, however earnest, who are not them-
selves feeling the pinch, can afford to be philosophic and logical ;
but the mind of the working class has a practical bent, and their
condition is a sad bar to their too rigid adherence to logical principles.
In Italy it is a moot-point whether the Radicals will not seriously
undermine the position of the Socialists in coming forward with a
strong social programme.

There is, too, a touch of the humorous in the situation. Those
who monopolised the forum at the Congress did not lend much counten-
ance to the theory that Socialism is a movement of the class-conscious
proletariat for its own emancipation from the bondage of Bourgeoisism.
When doctors of medicine and of law, learned university professors,
successful business men, wealthy stockbrokers, and rebellious aristo-
crats loudly proclaim their class consciousness, and their determination
to wage the class war without compromise, there is a touch of the
ludicrous and an air of unreality about it all. Not that they are not
sincere — far from that ; but, after all, they are not the proletariat,
conscious or other.

The results of the new policy remain to be tested. That mistakes
will occur, and that they will be made the most of, is inevitable. It
may also be regarded as certain to occur that minorities in each
country will remain irreconcilable, and break away from the main
body of the party. This is already the case in France, and is threatened
in Belgium. Had the Revolutionaries been defeated at the recent
Congress of the party in Italy, a split there would have occurred at
once. It may come as it is. It may even be that the International
itself will again be rent in twain for a time. But these risks will all
have to be faced. No one who has watched the movement could
miss seeing that some such crisis as the present could not be long
delayed. It is not any man's doing or seeking. It comes as the
natural outcome of the growth of the movement. Herr Kautsky,
one of the ablest and most single-minded men there are in the Socialist

VOL. LYI — No. 332 Q Q

570 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

movement, and Guesde, may have precipitated it by their narrow
determination to stamp out its beginnings ; but its coming was inevit-
able. Socialism may keep out of politics and be frankly revolutionary,
but it cannot enter politics and remain so. Socialism is and must
ever remain the greatest revolutionary change the world has seen,
but if it is to be accomplished by peaceful methods its supporters
must adapt themselves to7"parliamentary tactics, and the moment
this is admitted the revolutionary ideal must be put aside. The
change will not all be gain, and the danger is that the agitation, by
becoming flabby, will lose its greatest value as a force for regenerating
the character of the democracy. Here all the argument is on the side
of the extremists. No hard-and-fast rule can be laid down for
the application of the new methods, but generally speaking, where
the Socialist propaganda has so far succeeded as to have built up a
strong party in the State, and where the ties which kept the older
parties together have so far been dissolved that there is no longer an
effective reform party remaining, there the Socialists may be expected
to lend their aid in creating a new combination of such progressive
forces as give an intellectual assent to Socialism, and are prepared
to co-operate in waging war against reaction and in rallying the forces
of democracy. When this can be done so as in no way to impair
the freedom of action of the Socialist party or to blur the vision of
the Socialist ideal, it would appear as if the movement had really
no option but to accept its share of the responsibility of guiding the
State. Then, just in proportion as Socialism grows, so will the influ-
ence of its representatives in the national councils increase, and the
world may wake up one morning to find that Socialism has come,
that the long-dreaded revolution is over, and that the dreamers are
already in quest of a new ideal for the regeneration of the race.

J. KEIR HARDIE.

1904

MR. HARRISON'S HISTORICAL ROMANCED

THE last occasion when I made bold to write for the readers of this
Review (February 1892) about a literary achievement of Mr. Harrison's,
was on the appearance of that remarkable volume, the New Calendar
of Great Men, a dozen years ago. I ventured at some length to ques-
tion the omission from the list of those heirs of the Roman Empire
in the East who, on any sound estimate, must be held to have per-
formed in more ways than one services of the first magnitude in
saving civilisation in the West. The omission was Comte's fault — so
far as fault it was — and not that of his distinguished adherent.
Hannibal has a place in this famous calendar ; so have Harun-al-
Raschid, the caliph of Bagdad, and Abd-al-Rahman, the caliph of
Cordova. Charles Martel had a place for the glory of stemming the
torrent of Mussulman invasion at Tours. Yet the battle of Tours
(732) was only a victory over a plundering expedition of Spanish
Arabs, whereas the repulse of the Saracens before Constantinople by
Leo the Third (718) was what first drove back the tide. Still Leo and
the other great champions at Byzantium were held unworthy of
canonisation. Of course the heroes of New Rome were schismatic in
the eyes of the Popes of Old Rome, and it is not irreverent to the
great name of Comte to suppose it natural for him to take up the
Pope's grievances against the Greek schism, along with some other
pontifical attributes. In truth, Comte had broad reasons of his own.
The dominant fact in the mediaeval West was in his eyes the separa-
tion of spiritual from temporal power. In the Eastern Rome the two
powers were essentially one ; military concentration was a necessity
of existence ; and the Church was, as it is in Russia to-day, and
as Napoleon intended it to be in France a century ago, the instru-
ment of the State. The other vital element, again, in Comte's view
of the normal evolution of the Middle Ages, was feudalism, and
feudalism was inconsistent with the military requirements of Byzan-
tine power. In consideration, therefore, of these two ruling factors,
the series of events dealt with in Theophano was regarded by Comte
as moving outside of the main stream of the progress of mankind.

1 Theophano : the Crusade of the Tenth Century. A Romantic Monograph. By
Frederic Harrison. London : Chapman & Hall.

571 Q Q 2

572 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

Whatever defect there may have been in his master's appreciation
of Byzantine influence on our world, Mr. Harrison has, at any rate,
in his new volume as well as in other pieces, made it strenuously
good. His Eede lecture at Cambridge four years since is a singularly
comprehensive, just, and eloquent statement and vindication of the
modern case. The chapters upon Constantinople in his volume on
the meaning of history abound in brilliant description and in reflec-
tions at once deep and precise. The scholar, the politician, and the
general reader who happens to be little of either politician or scholar,
will find both pleasure and food for thought in those sixty admirable
pages.2 His present story Mr. Harrison describes as an attempt, under
the form of romance, to give the history of one of the most striking
episodes in the annals of what used to be called the Dark Ages. His
aim is to paint a general picture of the South and East of Europe,
and of the relations of that portion of Christendom to the advancing
power of Islam, in the tenth century. His first design was a prose
narrative, with no larger use of imagination than is as truly indis-
pensable in history, as it is declared to be in the fields of natural
science.

Some of his readers may possibly wish that to this design he had
adhered, for the mixture of history with romance, of real actors and
known events with avowed fiction, has not always been a successful
experiment. No novelist has ever had so much of the genius of his-
tory as Scott, that great writer and true-hearted man ; and if it be
unluckily true that Scott is no longer widely read, we may be quite
sure that it is so much the worse for the common knowledge of his-
tory. Apart from the stimulating contribution to historic knowledge
in Ivanhoe, it may be suspected in the palace of truth that a majority
of people who would fairly pass for cultivated, owe all they know of
such figures as Louis the Eleventh and Charles the Bold to Quentin Dur-
ward. Scott tried his hand at a Byzantine story, but he made nothing
of it ; he knew little of the ground, for not even Gibbon had per-
ceived the full bearing of the stupendous events of which Constanti-
nople was the centre between the time of Justinian and the time of
Richard Cceur de Lion. When Scott wrote Count Robert of Paris
(1830), the noble brain that had peopled the world's gallery with so
many incomparable figures, such vivid scenes, such moving interests,
was at last itself outworn, and the gallant man could only liken himself
in a mournful image to a leaking vessel out at sea in the pitch-dark.

If anybody chooses to say that Theophano is old-fashioned,
assuredly a fashion set by Ivanhoe and Quentin Durward has something
to say for itself. In Hypatia the genius of Kingsley, who had less of
the historic sense than any other professor that ever sat in a chair of
history, brought out some aspects of the fifth century with enchanting

2 The Meaning of History, and other Historical Pieces (Macmillan, 1894) ;
Byzantine History in the Early Middle Ages (Macmillan, 1900).

1904 MR. HARBISON'S HISTORICAL ROMANCE 573

success. None, again, of Bulwer's romances stood higher in popularity
than Rienzi, and to this day some foreign writers do justice to his
admirable mixture of intrigue proper for a story with historic narra-
tive, his animated description — among other things of the plague of
Florence — though less scrupulous in respect for his authorities than
might have been expected from his severe treatment of the errors of
some other writers.3 Catherine the Second of Russia might appear a
theme of grand promise, and the experiment has been in a certain
fashion tried, but with indifferent result.4 Lucrezia Borgia, as we all
know, has been set to music, but the libretto is sadly unhistoric, for
Lucrezia, it now seems, if not absolutely blameless, was still an excel-
lent woman, and died in an entirely respectable confinement. Chateau-
briand's once famous Martyrs (1802-9) was a romance of the persecu-
tions of Diocletian and Galerius. Though without verse, it is poetry
and not history. Its prose has the melody of plaintive song, and a
fluent harmony that prose has never surpassed. The emotions with
which it so deeply stirred a generation early in our last century, arose,
as Aristotle said they should, not merely from scenery and spectacle,
but from the inner structure of the piece. They arose, too, from the
burning association, in the minds of the readers of the time, of the
sufferings of the Church at the hands of Galerius with the fresh
persecution of the children of the same Church at the hands of Chau-
mette and the firebrands of revolution. All this gives a pathos and
poetic tenderness to the tale of Eudore and Cymodocee that is hardly
to be conceived in dealing with Theophano and Nicephorus. Here
warm thoughts and free spirits must give way to

The Iron-pointed pen
That notes the Tragic Doomes of men.

In this dire conflict of faith and race and rival empires, we need a
firmer and sterner chord. Mr. Harrison has naturally felt an artistic
compulsion to introduce the relief of gentler episodes. Some may
find these episodes less suited to his silver trumpet of a style, than
pageant, landscape, battle, fervid councils, stirring scenes of high
historic fate.

In the works that I have named, history is secondary to romance.
In Theophano this is reversed. It is primarily and really history, an
attempt to relate authentic facts in deep colour, not verifiable in
every detail out of written documents, yet wholly true to the historic
tones. No piece of dilettantism, it is the production of one, now
long well known as an accomplished scholar, a traveller, a powerful
writer, who has kept himself well abreast of the acquisitions of new
learning and new culture, and who, in this case, has both thoroughly
worked the contemporary records at first hand, and laboriously

3 See Eodocanachi's Cola di Ricnzo, p. xi., 1888.

4 Le Roman dhme Imptratrice, K. Waliszewski, 1893.

574 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Oct.

mastered the mass of elucidation and dissertation due to an army of
specialists.

Of course most people would admit the noblest piece of tragedy
in all written history to be the retreat of the beaten Athenians from
Syracuse. ' Is it or is it not,' wrote Gray to Wharton, ' the finest
thing you ever read in your life ? ' Macaulay said : ' I do assure you
that there is no prose composition in the world that I place so high
as the seventh book of Thucydides. . . . Tacitus was a great man,
but he was not up to the Sicilian expedition.' 5 But it would be
absurd to compare the original history of Thucydides, Herodotus,
Caesar, Machiavelli, Guicciardini with the composite narrative of even
the greatest of literary historians. Gibbon's description of the cap-
ture of Constantinople is indeed magnificent, but the gorgeous art of
this splendid composition is fatal to the profoundest kind of dramatic
effect upon our inmost minds, and conveys none of that tragic im-
pression which stirs us not less deeply than even the grandest of
stage-plays, and makes the reader, now more than two thousand
years since these events, hold his breath in that profoundest pity
which is pity without tears, as he watches the agony of the sea-fight
in the great harbour, the panic and misery of the march, the horrors
by the river, the death of Nicias — of all Hellenes least deserving of an
end so wretched — the dreadful sufferings of the prisoners in the stone-
quarries, fleet and army perishing from the face of the earth, and of
the many who had gone forth few ever returning home. Here is
indeed the supreme model of tragic prose.

It was inevitable that a story of Byzantium in the tenth century
should take a shape not so much of tragedy as of melodrama, and the
author has thrown himself into the melodramatic elements of his tale
with extraordinary force and spirit. He has not always resisted the
temptation to overdo these elements, and to push animation to
violence. Still, the temper of the age was in essence barbaric, and
any narrative without a sort of violence would be untrue to local and
historic colour, just as it would be in a romance of Petersburg or
Belgrade at certain moments of the nineteenth century. Every
competent judge will admire the energy with which the high and
strenuous pitch is from beginning to end swiftly and unfalteringly
sustained. Mr. Harrison is a recognised master of language ; not
always wholly free from excess, but direct, powerful, plain, with
none of our latter-day nonsense of mincing and posturing, of elliptic
brevities, cryptic phrase, vapid trick, and the hundred affectations and
devices of ambitious insincerity. He has the signal merit of looking
his readers in the eye ; his periods, even when we most dissent from
their substance, are alive with the strong and manly pulse of the
writer's own personality. Whether Theophano and Nicephorus and
Otto and Gerbert and Luitprand and the rest will be found ' con-
s Trevelyan, i. 440, 449.

1904 MB. HARRISON'S HISTORICAL ROMANCE 575

vincing ' or not, heaven knows ; I have never been able to attach any
definite significance whatever to that favourite word in our new
critical vocabulary. Let this be as it may, the result of the author's
industry, skill, and many talents is a book abundant at once in
dramatic interest, in sound knowledge, and in historical instruction :
a fine panorama of the long secular strife between East and West,
between Islam and the two rival and mutually infuriated forms of
Christian faith.

II

I should like to be allowed a single moment of digression on an
issue that needs hours. With graceful propriety, the book is dedicated
to the Professor of History at Cambridge, whose studies of the
Byzantine period ' so greatly inspired and enlarged ' our monograph.
We may be sure that Professor Bury will both appreciate the com-
pliment thus paid to him, and will enjoy the illumination diffused by
these flashing pages over the sombre landscape that he has himself
so laboriously explored. I even permit myself for an instant to wonder
whether it may not melt the learned and accomplished professor to
soften a little of the severity with which, in his memorable introduc-
tory lecture at Cambridge last year, he spoke of the time-honoured
association of literature with history acting ' as a sort of vague cloud,
half concealing from men's eyes the new position in the heavens.'
So long as history, he told his hearers, was regarded as an art, the
sanctions of truth and accuracy would not be severe. Why ? He
reminded them that ' history is not a branch of literature.' He adjured
them to observe that Ranke's famous saying that ' he would only say
how a thing actually was ' ought to be even more widely accepted as
' a warning against transgressing the province of facts.' Perhaps some
of Professor Bury's more youthful listeners, with the presumption of
their years, may have asked themselves whether the historian is to
present all the facts of his period or his subject ; if not, whether he
will not be forced to select ; if he must select, then how can he do it,
how can he group, how can he fix the relations of facts to one another,
how weigh their comparative importance, without some sort of guiding
principle, conception, or preconception ? In short, he will find himself
outside of ' the province of facts ' before he knows where he is, and this
is what actually happens to some of the most eminent members of
the school. The lecturer himself in truth speedily abated the rigour
of his limitation, and added to the collection, discovery, and classifi-
cation of facts the further duty of interpreting them. But when
does not the historian's interpretation govern from first to last his
collection and his classification ? Take what case you will. Father
Paul tells the facts of the Council of Trent one way, Pallavicino tells
them in another way. The annals of the Papacy — in some respects the
most fascinating and important of all the chapters of modern history —

576 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Oct.

are one thing in the hands of Pastor the Catholic, another thing to
Creighton the Anglican, a third thing to Moller the Lutheran, and
something again quite different to writers of more secular stamp like
Gregorovius and Reumont. It is not merely difference in documents
that makes the history of the French Revolution one story to Thiers
or Mignet, and a story wholly different to Louis Blanc or to Taine.
Talk of history being a science as loudly as ever we like, the writer of
it will continue to approach his chests of archives with the bunch of
keys in his hand. When examined, all these adjurations really mean
little more — and this is a great deal — than that sources, documents,
authorities are sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes first-
rate and sometimes second-rate ; that the student should know the
difference ; that he should be systematic and minute and definite and
precise ; that he should not regard a statement as certain unless he has
scrutinised the evidence. All admirable and indispensable and scientific
rules, but hardly constituting a brand-new science ; or banishing ' the
time-honoured association of history with literature ' from which the
reflective or ethical writer is warned off ; or reducing Clio, the muse,
to the level of the kitchen drudge who supplies her meals, and
cashiering the architect in favour of the honest bricklayer and
stonemason. A science means a good deal more than this, and even
something different from this. Dumas wittily said that Lamartine's
famous book on the Girondins raised history to the dignity of romance.
Lamartine doubtless exalted the arts of literature rather high, as did
the illustrious Dumas himself ; but after all it does a book no harm
to be readable ; and I believe Byzantine students, including Professor
Bury — the most eminent and thorough of them all, and (if I may
say so without offence) the most readable and enjoyable — will be
grateful to Mr. Harrison for attracting interest to a field whither
Heyd, Kopf, Hirsch, Schlumberger, Salzenberg, Paspates, Van Mill-
ingen, and Dr. Krumbacher have hitherto failed to allure more than
the esoteric and the elect.

Ill

What we may call the reclamation of the low-lying lands of the
Byzantine period is in some respects the most remarkable literary (or
scientific) event of our day. Voltaire called Byzantine history ' a
repertory of declamation and miracles, disgraceful to the human
mind.' Our limpid Rationalist, Mr. Lecky, talks of it as the most
thoroughly base and despicable form that civilisation has yet assumed.
Hegel again says ' the history of the highly civilised Eastern Empire —
where, as we might suppose, the Spirit of Christianity could be taken
up in its truth and purity — exhibits to us a millennial series of un-
interrupted crimes, weaknesses, basenesses, and want of principle ;
a most repulsive, and consequently a most uninteresting picture.'

1904 ME. HARRISON'S HISTORICAL ROMANCE 577

De Maistre, the ultra-Catholic, was as bitter as Voltaire, the ultra
non-Catholic. ' Byzantium,' he cries with characteristic energy,

* would make us believe in the system of climates, or in exhalations
peculiar to certain spots. . . . Ransack universal history, nowhere can
you find a dynasty more wretched. Either feeble or furious, or both
at the same time, these insupportable princes especially turned their
demented interests on the side of theology, of which their despotism
took possession to overthrow it. One would say that the French
language meant to do justice on their empire by styling it as Bas
Empire. It perished as it had lived, in the thick of a disputation.
Mahomet the Second burst open the gates of the capital while sophists
were wrangling about the glory of Mount Tabor.' 6 On a lower level
than Voltaire, Hegel, and De Maistre, — during the frenzy of the
Crimean War, a writer in a patriotic periodical exulted over the time

* when the last of the Byzantine historians was blown into the air by
our brave allies the Turks.'

It was Finlay with whom, among serious students, the reaction
began. In 1843 — one of the three or four continuous decades in
which the new era of intellectual life of the nineteenth century in
England was most active — Finlay published the first of the works that
came to an end eighteen years later, presenting twenty centuries of
the life of the Greek nation ' in Roman subjection, Byzantine servitude,
and Turkish slavery.' He brought a great mass of new knowledge,
and he lighted up new knowledge with fresh reflections and considera-
tions that constituted one of the most striking chapters in the history
of European civilisation on history's amplest scale. Finlay's case is
interesting and significant. He did not hunt for a literary subject.
He was the purchaser of a landed estate in Attica, endeavoured to
improve it, lost his money and his labour, and then in a philosophic
spirit turned to study the conditions of the country and its people,
tracing back link by link the long chain of political, social, ecclesi-
astical, racial, and above all economic events, that explained the
Attic peasant of to-day and of all the ages intervening since the
peasant of Alexander the Great. Of this vast operation, what the
world will pretty surely persist in calling the Byzantine Empire soon
became the dominating centre ; he could not tell the Greek story
without the Byzantine story, and it is Finlay who first unfolded what
the Byzantine Empire was, and first vindicated its share in the growth
of Western civilisation and the forms of the modern world.

These volumes kindled the ardent admiration of Freeman (1855).
He called them the greatest work that British historical literature
had produced since the days of Gibbon, and even the most thoroughly
original history in our language. No work, he said, from either an
ordinary scholar or an ordinary politician, could ever come near to the
native strength and originality of the work of the solitary thinker,
6 Du Pape, Bk. iv. ch. 9.

578 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Oct.

studying, musing on, and recording the events of two thousand years, in
order to solve the problems that he saw at his own door. Nobody has
ever grasped more effectively than Freeman the truth that is the main-
spring of Mr. Harrison's monograph : ' If there had been Turks at
Constantinople in the ninth and tenth centuries, the names Europe and
Christendom could never have had so nearly the same meaning as they
have had for ages.' This truth, first derived from Finlay, corroborated
and fitted in with the two cardinal principles that Freeman never
wearied of preaching to the studious minority of mankind : the unity
of history, and the fatal error of drawing lines between ancient and
modern. The doctrine about the Byzantine Empire, which he pro-
pagated with characteristic tenacity and an iteration that to the
carnal man was almost tiresome, became the inspiration of a new
school in this country, and in that school there has been no such
diligent and fruitful worker as Professor Bury.

Even those who discern most clearly the title of the more important
of the many various stages of Byzantine power to a marked place in
history, discern also some of the reasons why the tale of them has been
found, until our last half-century, so unattractive or even repellent, so
darkly tarnished, so remote from the ordinary track of literary or
historic curiosity. Mr. Harrison's own vivid and energetic presenta-
tion itself helps to explain. It is hard either to produce or feel the
charm, emotion, sentiment, of romance, where scene and personage
are on a plane of civilisation so alien to our own. Flaubert's story of
Salammbo was thought by French critics to find comparatively few
friends, for this among other good reasons, that readers in Paris or
in London could have no sympathy, and could be conscious of no
affinity, with a world where the cruel abominations imputed to Carthage
made the normal life of the community.7 Christian Constantinople
in the tenth century was certainly not so far off in ways of life and
modes of thought as Carthage is supposed to have been. Yet, if not
wholly Eastern, it certainly ^was not Western. A fierce controversy
raged in the ninth century between Slav and German clergy, whether
God could be adored in any language save Hebrew, Greek, and Latin,
these being the three sacred tongues of the inscription placed upon
the Cross.8 Whatever we may think of the right or wrong of the
trilingual heresy, it is certain that alike by the long stream of Western
institutions, and by all our unbroken systems of literary education,
it is with Hebrew things and notions, and Greek and Roman things
and notions, in the antique world that we are most at home. If into
the antique world we must be taken at the close quarters that a
romance requires, the Byzantine State presented old practice and

7 Francis W. Newman, with his turn for siding with minorities (see vol. i. of his
Miscellanies, pp. 278-304), once delivered what was thought an effective lecture
entitled P^tnicce Vindicia;.

8 Cyrille et Mttliode, par Louis Leger, 1868, p. 96.

1904 MB. HARBISON'S HISTORICAL ROMANCE 579

idea in such unfamiliar association as to hide any sense of affinity and
to shut out either sympathy or charm. The author of Theophano
faces this, and valiantly makes head against it. The signal peculiari-
ties that account for that alienation of common curiosity or feeling
from Byzantine history, which Mr. Harrison has so boldly confronted,
are pretty obvious. They have been often enumerated before now.
The Eastern Empire was a conservative State, not a progressive State.
It is the story of administration and law, not of letters, philosophy,
or liberty ; in spite of Hellenic vanities, it is the story of a government,
not of a nation. The leading exercises of mind lay in fields from
which all intellectual interest has long ebbed away. It was a Christian
Father who said of Constantinople in the fourth century, ' This city
is full of handicraftsmen and slaves, who are all profound theologians,
and preach in their workshops and in the streets. If you want a man
to change a piece of silver, he instructs you in what consists the dis-
tinction between the Father and the Son ; if you ask the price of a
loaf of bread, you get for answer that the Son is inferior to the Father ;
and if you ask whether the bread is ready, the rejoinder is that the
genesis of the Son is from Nothing.' Just as the religious fanaticism
inspired by the Koran put out in the twelfth century the light of
intellectual development among the Spanish Arabs, so the odious and
contemptible disputes of superstition at Constantinople arrested all
progressive movements of either Greek or Roman genius. What
Professor Bury himself says 9 of the seventh century at Byzantium
was not less true of many other centuries : ' Men who professed to be
educated believed in the most ridiculous miracles ; and the law of
natural cause and effect, which, however inadequately recognised, has
generally maintained some sort of ascendency in human reason, became
at this period practically obsolete.' By such periods men will never
be attracted. These futile and sanguinary wrangles, in spite of the
social and political problems involved in some of them, make us
wonder whether Comte, Voltaire, Hegel, and De Maistre were not
in the right after all.

In one of the most brilliant of his pieces10 Mr. Harrison has described
what he truly calls the painful majesty of the first sight of Athens ;
has reminded us that Attica is hardly bigger than the Isle of Wight,
and that the city of the violet crown itself would easily stand in the
area of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens ; yet what undying
dramas were played upon that narrow stage ! One main reason why
these dramas can never die is that, as Pericles and Nicias boasted in
Athenian polity, every man was free to lead his daily life, and free to
think his own thoughts. In Byzantium the stream never purified
itself or flowed clear. No fresh tributary of living water flowed
into it from the main currents of intellectual life in Europe. The
service, on the other hand, of Byzantium to Europe — without

9 Later Roman Empire, ii. 387. 18 Meanings of History, ch. x.

580 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

approaching the vexed questions of architecture and secondary deco-
rative arts — was in the first place military and defensive ; secondly,
it was preservative of the fruits of an intellectual life supremely
different from its own. Nobody has described this second service
more justly than Mr. Harrison in a passage of his Rede lecture :

The peculiar, indispensable service of Byzantine literature was the pre-
servation of the language, philology, and archaeology of Greece. It is impossible
to see how our knowledge of ancient literature or civilisation could have been
recovered if Constantinople had not nursed through the early Middle Ages the
vast accumulations of Greek learning in the schools of Alexandria, Athens, and
Asia Minor; ... if indefatigable copyists had not toiled in multiplying the
texts of ancient Greece. Pedantic, dull, blundering as they are too often, they
are indispensable. We pick precious truths and knowledge out of their garru-
lities and stupidities, for they preserve what otherwise would have been lost for
ever. . . . Dunces and pedants as they were, they servilely repeated the words
of the immortals. Had they not done so the immortals would have died long
ago.11

Besides this great service in the capacity, as it has been called, of
4 librarian to the human race,' a more important claim is made, that
Byzantium was for the Slav world what Rome was for the Germanic
world. It was Byzantium that out of Bulgarian, Magyar, Croat
hordes made Servia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Hungary. It transmitted or
imposed the Christian religion from Hungary to Armenia and Abyssinia.
It initiated a literary language among Slavs and Goths. It established
the first centres of literary civilisation. It gave them ideas and
methods of government.12 In comparison with the more highly
organised States of the Western world, the result may seem only a
moderate improvement upon anarchy, but in comparison with what
went before, even the South-Eastern lands of Europe are cosmos.

If it be true that an epic ought to have a beginning and an end,
we may say on the other hand, without paradox, that history is
most interesting when it is part of a tale that is continuous and has
no end. The close of the Eastern Empire, on a superficial glance, has
the look of a dark, squalid, and sanguinary cul-de-sac. When the
Latins and the Turks together brought it to its doom, Europe was
indeed conscious of a tremendous shock ; but it was not the shock of
tragedy, for the Westerns felt little pity or sympathy for the immediate
victims, though Europe was not without fear for herself, and not
without some belated indignation or remorse at a catastrophe due to
the bigotry, cupidity, and selfishness masked under Western Chris-
tianity. It was Rome that gave Constantinople to Mahound. Yet
the overthrow of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turk in the middle
of the fifteenth century was not really the end of the Byzantine system.
In the tenth century the faith of the Cross passed into Russia. It

11 See also Dr. Sandys' extremely interesting History of Classical Scholarship,
1903, p. 427.

" Bambaud's Empire Grec au Xitme Sttcle, p. 10.

1904 MR. HARRISON'S HISTORICAL ROMANCE 581

came from Byzantium, not from Rome, bringing Kussia over the
frontier of Christendom in one sense, yet, by reason of the great
Christian schism, at the same time cutting Russia off from Christendom
in another. The earliest type of civilisation in Russia is Byzantine,
an autocratic State, without political rights, ruled by imperial omni-
potence with the aid of a hierarchy of functionaries.13 The huge waves
of Mongol invasion did not sweep away the deep impress of Byzantine
influence. From Vladimir to Peter the Great, Russia has never
entirely escaped the Byzantine ascendency exercised over it by the
clergy, the schools, the laws, the literature. The Mongols gave an
Asiatic colour to Czarism which grew up in their shadow, yet it was
from Byzantium and from the Greeks of the Lower Empire that
the Russian princes borrowed the type and the model, along with the
forms, the etiquette, and even the very name, of autocracy, as after
the fall of Constantinople Ivan the Third borrowed from the Paleologi
the imperial eagle and arms.14 When Bishop Creighton witnessed
the coronation of the Russian Czar at Moscow he describes how the
stranger from the West felt that he had passed outside the circle of
European experience, European ideas and influences, and entered
upon a new phase of culture to be judged by canons of its own. The
Bishop's vivid story of that strange barbaric scene is the counterpart
of Mr. Harrison's picture of the coronation of Romanus and Theophano
in the Church of the Holy Wisdom at Constantinople in 960.15 How far
that peculiar prolongation of the Byzantine Empire through the
Orthodox Church has been an elevating force, this is not the place
to inquire, any more than it is the place to inquire into the connected
question how far the corresponding ascendency of the Catholic Church
elevated government or people in the Spanish Peninsula.

IV

Having said this much on the subject of our monograph, let me
rapidly sketch its outline. Theophano, the daughter of a Greek in
obscure circumstances, by her singular beauty and fascinations caught
the fancy of Romanus, the youthful son of Constantino (Porphyro-
genitus), seventh of that name in the list of Byzantine emperors.
Constantino consented to their union — a piece of kindness which,
according to some chroniclers, probably mendacious, the young people
repaid by a murderous palace plot. Romanus mounted the imperial
throne, and with him Theophano rose to the august rank of Basilissa.

Marriage, alas ! seemed only to have given the young Basileus increased
zest for wild sports and scandalous adventures, which were rapidly destroying
his health and sapping what was left in him of moral fibre. Now he plunged
into the forests of Thrace, now into those of Bithynia to hunt the boar or the

13 See Leroy-Beaulieu's L' Empire des Tsars, i. 214. u Ibid. i. 227.

13 See Creighton's Historical Essays and Reviews, 1902.

582 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

bear, exhausting himself in midnight fatigues and exposure to all weathers and
seasons. From time to time he was seen in the Tzykanisterion, or polo ground
in the east side of the Palace between the Pharos and the sea-wall. Here the
young nobles, having the entree, were wont to engage in polo and other exercises
on horseback. This spacious practising ground had been extended and levelled
by the Emperor Basil. And here his royal descendant loved to exhibit his
prowess as a player in that manly game of polo which the Byzantines had
adopted from the Persians. ... It was no flattery when the best players in the
kingdom yielded the victory to the splendid horsemanship and keen eye of the
Imperial athlete, whilst the courtiers and ladies of the royal household surveyed
the games from arcades of the terrace above. First one and then another of the
beauties, who thronged those gay companies, would be chosen by the gallant
prince to receive the crown or garland which was the winner's prize ; and the
vagrant amours of his insatiable fancy gave as much ceaseless gossip to the
witty and frivolous court as ever did a Louis at Versailles or a Charles at
"Whitehall.

The pleasure-loving prince was no more changed by elevation to
supreme power than was Louis the Fifteenth ; but from one high task
of empire at least he did not shrink. Crete was in the hands of the
Saracens, and Saracen corsairs harassed the islands of the Archipelago,
cut off the commerce of Constantinople, and even interrupted the
supply of provisions to the mighty capital. Komanus fitted out a
great expedition to root out so grave a mischief to his people, and
to wipe off a dark disgrace from Christian fame.

A glorious July morning in the year of our Lord 960 was irradiating the
shores of the Propontis and the porticoes and domes of Byzantium ; and already
the city and Palace of the Caesars were crowded with brilliant throngs and gala
trappings of expectant triumph. All the terraces which commanded a view of
the sea were full of eager sightseers. The walls thai girdled the city on the
seaside were covered with dense groups ; and the sea itself, from the Golden
Horn to the Princes Islands, was alive with thousands of vessels of every
description as far as the eye could reach. The mighty expedition to recover
Crete from the Infidel was at last about to sail. In the Sacred Palace itself a
throng of courtiers and high officials were gathered in the Tzykanisterion, or
polo ground, and in the gardens, porticoes and arcades that adjoined it, waiting
for their Majesties and the great ministers of State, who were to watch the fleet
at its departure and wish Godspeed to its illustrious commander. In the
corridors and cloisters of the Palace all was animation and a hubbub of greetings,
inquiries, and ardent anticipations. A group of gentlemen of the wardrobe,
grooms of the chamber, and a silentiary were discussing the exact constitution
of the vast expedition. Nicetas, the Paphlagonian, a vestiarius, or gentleman
of the wardrobe, was loudly exclaiming that so powerful an armament had never
left the Golden Horn since the age of the great Heraclius.

In command was Nicephorus Phocas, who is, in fact, the hero of
our story. The reader has been introduced to him in the glowing
pages that describe the coronation :

Nicephorus Phocas, the most eminent chief of a long line of Armenian
nobles, the most heroic warrior of a family of famous men of war, was now in
the flower of his strength, at forty-six years of age. His natural olive com-
plexion had been tanned and burnt almost to a dark hue in the incessant

1904 MB. HARRISON'S HISTORICAL ROMANCE 583

campaigns he had fought since his boyhood amid the suns of Mesopotamia and
the snowy passes of Cilicia. He wore his hair long and flowing, with a crisp
beard just beginning to be tinged with grey. His nose was long and aquiline,
his eyes were dark, of an intense fire, under a penthouse of thick black eyebrows.
Of middle height, he had the trunk and shoulders of a giant, with abnormal
depth of chest, and the long muscular arms with which he had more than once
in battle cleft a mailed enemy to the chine. His look was stern and pensive,
lighted up at moments, as it were, with a sombre fire within. He was taciturn
and immovable by habit, so that hardly a gesture or a look ever betrayed his
purpose or his thought. To-day he stalked on alone, his mind far away from
the Sacred Palace, with neither comrade nor lieutenant by his side ; and he
just acknowledged with his hand the cheers and obeisances with which he was
received. It was noticed that he alone of all that brilliant throng had chosen
to attend the procession in his well-worn tunic and his close helm and corselet
of action, hi the same accoutrements and arms in which he was wont to appear
in many a bloody field.

The conquest of Crete was both a triumphant feat of arms and a
triumph of patriotic policy. A new and greater expedition (962)
was mustered for a still mightier march.

Through seven different passes of the Taurus, mainly through that known as
the ' Cilician Gates,' the various corps debouched down upon the Saracen pro-
vince that had once been the Cilicia of Augustus and Trajan. The different
armies had separate objectives, but were kept in close touch with each other,
and each was preceded by an outer screen of light cavalry, which pressed on in
front and scoured the whole country. As the parallel forces poured down like a
deluge on the rich plains, the miserable people fled before them or crowded into
the forts ; the Saracen troops of all arms were seized with panic, and made no
effort to stem the torrent. Fort after fort, walled towns, castles, and camps fell
rapidly into the hands of the invading Christians. The overwhelming numbers
that Nicephorus had collected covered the country for a hundred miles. By
light siege train, hurried forward, they captured fortresses by escalade. Tarsus,
Adana, Mopsuestia, and Seleucia were taken by storm. The gallant Emir of
Aleppo, Self Eddauleh, of the dynasty of Hamdan, the hero of the Saracens of
Asia in the tenth century, whom the Greeks called ' the accursed Chamdas,'
yielded before the avalanche. He ordered his men to retreat inland towards
Syria and to attempt nothing but separate and small encounters to harass the
line of communications. The host poured on, the Arab historian declares, ' like
hungry wolves,' ravaging the land, burning villages and destroying all crops and
stores which they could not use. Karamountis, the Emir of Tarsus, attempted
pitched battle, but was utterly defeated and left five thousand of his men dead
upon the field : the rest being prisoners of war. All the calculations of the
Roman general were fulfilled. Every order had been carried out to the letter.
Every corps reached the point at which it was directed at the appointed time.
The whole of Cilicia was swept as by a tornado. And, within twenty-two days,
the Arab historian, Aboulfaradj, relates that fifty-five fortresses and forty-five
towns had fallen into the hands of the Christians. Enormous booty and tens of
thousands of prisoners were taken ; and, after three centuries, the rich and broad
land, watered by the Cydnus and Pyramus, and lying between the range of
Taurus and the Mediterranean Sea, passed again into the realm of Christ and
of Eome.

Nicephorus resumed his onward march in earnest. ... As the vast range of
Taurus had lain between the Empire and the Saracen in Cilioia, so now the
range of the Amanus divided it from the provinces of Syria, Damascus, and

584 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

Aleppo. Anazarba, Sis, and other strong forts were swept away, their defenders
ruthlessly slaughtered, and their homes sacked. But nothing could arrest the
invaders till they poured over the passes of Amanus down into the valley of the
Orontes, and reached the great plains which stretch away from the ' Gates of
Syria ' to the Euphrates. Once across the defiles of the Amanus range, Nice-
phorus concentrated his whole force for a plunge upon Aleppo, the seat and
capital of ' the accursed Chamdas.'

The plunge was irresistible ; the Byzantine general forced his way
into the city, and, ' with fierce exultation, he surveyed the annihila-
tion of the terrible enemy who had made the Roman Empire reel to
its foundations, and he saw that the frontiers of Rome were destined
to extend again to the Euphrates.'

At Constantinople, meanwhile, feud and intrigue within the
palace had prepared the way for revolution, when the youthful emperor
was removed by death. Though Nicephorus was not the man to play
the part assigned to Both well, the reader, with a feeling that most
stories have really been told before with different names and changed
costumes, may perhaps bethink him of Mary Stuart, and Both well,
and Darnley, and the explosion of the Kirk o' Field. That Theophano
was actively concerned in the death of her first husband is not proved,
and Mr. Harrison takes the other view, though either her fierce ambi-
tion or a lawless passion for the military hero of the hour made the
removal of Romanus necessary to her designs. She brought him back
to Constantinople ; by her craft and resolution baffled the schemes of
a powerful minister fighting to retain authority ; and, finally, with
the aid of the Patriarch, succeeded in making Nicephorus Autocrat
and her husband. Intrigues within the palace, factions and bloody
fights (Armenian massacres the other day were by no means the
first or the worst of such scenes in Constantinople, whether Christian
or Mahometan), gorgeous pageants, conflicts between Emperor and
Patriarch, the election of Theophano, the moral fall and remorse of
Nicephorus, make vivid masterpieces of description, while the historic
significance of it all is graphically brought out in eager debate and
eloquent argument in council and in camp. One of the main historic
facts is the cosmopolitan character of Constantinople in these ages ;
it was, let us repeat, the seat of a government, not the central home
of a nationality ; and, above all, the incessant strife within its walls
and without its walls was cosmopolitan strife. A reception of foreign
envoys in one of the vast courts of the imperial palace brings vividly
home to the reader of to-day, as it was intended to bring home to the
envoys themselves, the world-wide relations of the Empire and its
claim to be the centre of universal power.

The envoy of the Caliph was succeeded by a prelate despatched from old
Rome by the Pope (or Anti-Pope) Leo the Eighth, who was struggling amidst
horrors of every sort to dispossess the infamous Octavian claiming to be Pope
John the Twelfth. Nicephorus, whos3 detestation of the degraded and servile
Papacy was boundless, had been persuaded with difficulty to receive the

1904 MR. HARRISON'S HISTORICAL ROMANCE 585

opponent and rival of the ferocious murderer who now desecrated the Latin
•see. Nicephorus listened to the hollow congratulations of the Italian prelate
in silence, and directed his Chancellor to reply to them with the best grace he
•could assume. The Roman prelate was followed by envoys from Venice,
Amain, and the Dukes of Beneventum and Capua, who still admitted a
•shadowy bond of vassalage to the successor of Justinian at Byzantium. The
Italian envoys were succeeded by a crowd of deputies from various nations,
tribes, and princelets north of the Ister and the Euxine sea, or such as lay
beyond the eastern frontier of the empire. They were first Patzinaks, then
Euss ; then Chazars, Alans, and ' Turks,' or Hungarians, as we call them,
to-day. All were in uncouth and picturesque native costumes, shaggy skins,
tall and pointed headgear, and strange ornaments. They brought rich presents
of various sorts, embroidered garments, embossed arms, enamelled vases,
horses, performing bears, and white boarhounds, which were paraded in the
court outside — then announced with much solemnity, and received with equal
curiosity and interest.

The long reception was continued for hours as the envoys were presented
from the kings of Armenia proper, the dwellers around Mount Ararat and the
plains of Lake Van ; from the Abasgians and Georgians of the Caiicasus, the
Lazi, and the Chief of the Iberians, who had bean honoured with the right to
assume the Byzantine title of Curopilates. Lonqj before the stream of
introductions had ended, with its ever-varying changes of language, costume,
and manner, the young Scandinavian had been quite lost in the babel of
tongues and the moving panorama before his eyes.

Like the actual scene, and like Gibbon's history of it, Theophano
makes a crowded canvas. It could not be otherwise ; but one effect is
partially to deprive Nicephorus of the position of isolated relief that the
full interest of his moral catastrophe seems to require. The throng of
incident and figure in some degree disperses our attention, and prevents
its concentration on the hero, who was not only hero but saint. Still,
the author is writing history, not a modern psychological romance.
In its elements the case is old enough — the crash of a stern and lofty
nature before the wiles of Eve and the solicitations of appetite.
Nicephorus in one stage is full of the monastic enthusiasm of the
early centuries of Christian faith, despising the Christianity of the
common world, regardless of the State, eager for flight from all carnal
and secular things into a life of solitary communion with the unseen
God. Even when he has been forced, against the loud whispers of
conscience and the leanings of his inner will, into campaigns for the
deliverance of the State from the inroads of Mahometan blasphemers,
after he has assumed the crown of autocrat, he is still haunted by
the old visions of asceticism. Under the purple robe he still wears
the hair shirt of the penitent and the recluse, and at banquets of
savoury meats and exquisite wines he prefers water and lentils. The
struggle within the breast of Nicephorus was but a type of one of the
greatest of the conflicts that perplexed and tore that Eastern world,
and not the Eastern world alone.

The rule of Nicephorus marked a few years of failure and dis-
appointment, mixed with transient military success. From armed

Vor. LVI— So. 332 K R

586 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

anchorite, in spite of his sedulous performance of the ceremonial
offices of his Church, he relapsed into the ordinary habits of the Byzan-
tine autocrat. The cost of the levies of men, drawn from the Italian
coasts across Greece and Asia as far as the source of the Euphrates,
strained the finances to the uttermost. Heavy taxes and debased
coinage broke down his popularity, and his fulminations against
weakening the military resources of the empire by the multiplication
of monasteries brought him into disfavour with the Patriarch and
the ecclesiastics. What Mr. Harrison truly calls the eternal quarrel
about 'investitures,' that well-known chapter in the Western history of
Popes and Kings, led to fierce remonstrances from the Patriarch. He
joined the opposition organised within the palace by Theophano.
Whether from discontent at a temperament less ardent than her
own, or from politic desire to separate her lot from that of a falling
potentate, or from a new-born passion for Tzimiskes, a soldier as
heroic as Nicephorus himself, the empress was plotting treason with
formidable confederates. The long and exciting episode is told with
admirable vigour, and the end arrived in the chapter headed ' Clytem-
nestra.' The author spares us none of the horrors of the murder of
Nicephorus— in some details very like a similar transaction in the
same quarter of Europe not long ago. Theophano took little by
crimes that have given her a place, though a secondary one, among
the names of evil women in high places, Theodora, Irene, and the
others. The Patriarch refused to recognise Tzimiskes, her accomplice
in the murder of his uncle, unless he put her away. So, with her
beauty, her ambition, her passion for intrigue, she was banished to a
solitary island, where our present author is content to leave her.
When her sons came to the throne, they are said to have recalled her
to the imperial palace ; but for history the curtain of her drama and
its stage had fallen.

Such is the central outline of our romance, and into it the author
has wrought a rich store of episodic material, well incorporated into
the main tissue and design, extremely picturesque and striking, as
well as true to such records as survive. We have from time to time
the relief of being transported westward of Byzantium to the more
familiar ground of Spain and Old Rome. The glory of Rome had
departed indeed, for the tenth century was the nadir, and Mr. Harrison
does not paint the scene in darker colours than really belonged to it :

' I will not attempt to prophesy against your reverence,' said Guido ; ' I can
only speak of what is, and what has been in all living memory. This famous
city is now a den of bandits, the haunt of infamous women, and a scene of
bloodshed and torment. These barons live in their castles amidst gangs of
hired ruffians, till they ride forth to fight each other or to plunder their neigh-

1904 MR. HARRISON'S HISTORICAL ROMANCE 587

hours. I have seen these grey walls hung with the carcasses of their victims,
and these streets, churches, and streams run with blood, whenever the horsemen
of some pretender to the throne, or of the German princes, come down to sack
the city, or to quell an insurrection of the citizens. I have seen Popes made
and unmade at the order of a profligate woman or of a murderous despot.
I have seen one crowned Pope trample on another crowned Pope, break his
crosier, and tear off his robes, in presence of an Emperor and of all his Court.
I have seen the Prefect of Rome hung by his hair from the statue of Constantine,
and dragged through the streets naked on an ass. I saw twelve " Captains of
the Regions" hung on gallows, whilst other leaders were blinded, some decapi-
tated. Some were torn from their graves and their bodies cast to the dogs..
This is the modern rendering of the Pax JRomana, and all is done under orders;
of him whom we are waiting here to see, him whom they call their " pacific-
Emperor, semper Augustus," and with the blessing of the creatures whom he
pleases to nominate as the successors of St. Peter.'

In one fascinating chapter we see the Caliph of the West at Cordova,,
the great Caliph, the Charlemagne of Saracen Spain, now at the close-
of his long rule of half a century — ' the greatest ruler of his age and the
noblest of the Saracen race. In fifty years he had reduced the rebels and
traitors within his own dominion, had made vassals of the Christian
princelets of North Spain, and had driven back the Mauritanian
invaders from Africa. He possessed a magnificent fleet, a powerful'
army, and a treasury of 20,000,000 gold pieces. The police of his
realm secured perfect order and peace ; the state of agriculture was
in the highest degree thriving ; commerce and manufactures were-
equally advanced.' His days come to their close in this chapter, and
we read the moving words attached by him to his last testament :
* Fifty years have I been on this throne. Riches, honours, pleasures
have been poured on me, and I have drained them all to the dregs.
The sovereigns who are my rivals respect me, or fear me — both envy
me ; for all that men desire has been showered on me by Allah, the
Bountiful, the All-merciful. But in all these years of apparent felicity
I can only count fourteen days wherein I have been truly happy.
My son, meditate on this, and judge at their true value human grandeur,
this world, and man's life.'

It was his son, Hakem the Second, who, as Renan has described,
had the glory of opening that brilliant series of studies which, by the
influence that they exercised upon Christian Europe, holds so important
a place in the history of civilisation. Two centuries later the brilliant
Arab-Spanish era closed. Meanwhile, says Renan, the taste for
knowledge and for beautiful things had established in that privileged
corner of the world a tolerance of which modern times can hardly
offer us an example. ' Christians, Jews, Moslems spoke the same
tongue, sang the same poetry, shared the same literary and scientific
studies. All the barriers that separate men had fallen, all worked
with one accord at the task of common civilisation.' 16 Mr. Harrison

'" Avcrroes et VAvcrro'isme, p. 4.

E E2

583 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

has ascribed a mood like this to his Fatima in her home among the
mountains of the Sierra Morena, north of Cordova :

' There is but one God,' she said, with profound earnestness ; ' I know but one
God, and I care not if He be named the Trinity or Allah. I have lived so long
in this Andalusian Caliphate ; I have seen enough of the Eomans of the
Empire.' She sighed as she uttered that name. ' I have seen and heard
enough to know that Christendom and Islam have each much that is God-like
and good, and much that is of Sheitan and evil. This splendid capital of
Cordova is in many things, in most things, the counterpart of Byzantium — as
rich, as luxurious, as corrupt, as elegant, as turbulent. These Ommeyades here
execrate the Fatimites : Abbasides from the first contend with Kharijis. There
are as many sects amongst Mussulmans as there are amongst Christians — as
many dynasties, as many wars. Bagdad, Damascus, Haleb, Antioch, Edessa,
Fostat, Kairouan, Andalusia, war on each other as often as Byzantine, Bulgarian,
Lombard, Calabrian, Frank, or Saxon. Whether it be Allah and His Prophet,
or Christ and His Mother, who inspire these rivalries and combats, I know not.
All that I know is that it is not the one God.'

It was 800 years after this that a like thought inspired the
beautiful apologue of the Three Rings, as adopted and extended
by Lessing from Boccaccio, and coming to him through the
Hundred Old Novels, from some tongue in some corner of the
Mediterranean that, as scholars tell us, can never now be known.17
Everybody knows it, in or out of Lessing's noble dramatic setting,
how Saladin, the great Saracen, wishing to lay a trap for Nathan,
the wise and rich Jew, asked him, * Honest man, I would gladly know
from thee which religion thou judgest to be the true one, Jewish, Maho-
metan, or Christian.' Then Nathan, in answer, tells him of a certain
family owning a ring of much beauty and worth, and endowed with
the magical virtue of making every wearer of it beloved by God and
men. The possessor of it became thereby head of the family and
owner of the estate. This the father in successive generations always
gave to whomsoever of his descendants he deemed the worthiest.
At length a father had three sons, all of whom he loved alike. In his
perplexity to whom to give the ring, he sent for a craftsman, and had
two more rings made of such exact resemblance that even he himself
could hardly tell the true one. Being now very old, he privately
gave a ring to each of his three sons. When he was dead, each of
them produced his ring, and claimed the honour and the estate.
They brought the case before the judge. * I hear,' said the judge,
' that the true ring has the power of making its wearer pleasing in the
sight of God and of man. Let each of you believe that his ring is the
true one. Let each of you strive to make known the virtue of his
ring, by gentleness, by hearty peacefulness, by well-doing, by the
utmost inward devotion to God. And then, if this power of the gems
reveals itself with your children's children, I invite you again, thou-

IT.See Burckhardt's Renaissance in Italy, Eng. trans., ii. 302, note.

1904 MR. HARRISON'S HISTORICAL ROMANCE 589

sands and thousands of years hence, before this tribunal. Then one
wiser than I will sit in the judgment-seat and will decide.' 18^

VI

The speculative bearings of the phantasmagoria that he unfolds
before his readers scarcely fall within the scope of Mr. Harrison's
monograph. His business here is spectacle, and not philosophising.
The genius of Montesquieu early divined that the poisoned source of
all the misfortunes of the Byzantines was that they never knew the
nature, or the respective boundaries, of ecclesiastical and secular
power. ' This great distinction, that is the foundation on which
reposes the tranquillity of nations, springs not only from religion, but
also from nature and reason, that insists on things essentially separate
never being confounded.' 19 Here, indeed, as in so many other relations,
Montesquieu clearly came near the possession of the master-key. Of
all the manifold aspects of human history, the central and most com-
manding of them is the spirit of man, as we see and consider it,
working in creeds and institutions, working against them, piercing
them, transforming them, ever striving to coerce the concrete into
more and more hannony with the abstract. The military system that
was rendered necessary in the Eastern Empire by the pressure of
enemies outside, reduced abstract Christianity, in its doctrines and its
organisation, into a fatal, though often mutinous, subjection to
temporal institutions. The records of the Churches, alike in East and
West, have many a dismal and depressing page, but none more
depressing than the forms with which abstract Christianity clothed
itself in the Eastern Empire, or the feuds of policy and nationality
that blazoned the mysteries of faith in letters of blood upon rival
banners.

With marked power Mr. Harrison has depicted the exterior and
political force and momentum of Eastern monasticism ; that wonderful
ideal of contemplation and renunciation as a means of saving the
soul ; the attempt to realise ideals outside of the world ; the protest
in solitude against the weight of injustice that had become unbearable.
* The Byzantine code of laws,' says Harnack, now reputed greatest
theologian of our time — ' our own social and moral views, too, have
not yet emancipated themselves from its bonds — is in part a strange
congeries of pitiless Roman craft and of the monastic view of the
world.' Tolstoi, says Harnack, is in his writings a genuine Greek
monk, to whom the only chance of Church reform lies in a radical
breach with culture and history.20 Here, for an instant in our day, two

18 Nathan der Weise, III. vi., whither the wise reader will betake himself for one
of the grand passages in literature.

19 Grandeur et Decadence des Romains, ch. 22.

zo Monasticism. By Adolf Harnack, pp. 55, 60-G1, Eng. trans. (1901).

590 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

strangely diverse schools unexpectedly meet, for Socialism that is now
so alarming to the rulers of the world, springs in its root from the same
intolerable sense of the world's wrong, and insists on the same breach
with culture and with history. In some at least of its types and its
ideals, Socialism comes nearer to what is called Byzantinism than
either professors or opponents well know. Yet history — standing
forces, institutions founded on social needs transient or abiding,
forms and conventions — all hold their ground with a tremendous
grip. However violent the supposed breach, the old Manichean tale
will still go on.

* When you see,' cried Bossuet, ' the old and the new Assyrians, the
Medes, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, present themselves
successively before you and fall, so to say, one upon the ruin of the
other ; all this frightful turmoil makes you feel that there is nothing
solid among mankind, and that inconstancy and agitation is the
peculiar lot of human things.' But then he detects or he manufactures
a chain. The parts of so great a whole are linked together, he says.
With the reserve of ' certain extraordinary strokes in which God
intended that His hand alone should be manifest,' no great change
has ever taken place that had not its causes in ages that went before.
These ' extraordinary strokes,' if they exist, and if he had pondered
their significance, it must have puzzled Bossuet to reconcile with his
theory of the chain — with what in modern language we should call the
' reign of law in history — which it was his express object to set forth.
William of Tyre, the twelfth-century historian of the Crusades,
hit this when he wrote : ' To no one should the things done by
our Lord be displeasing, for all His works are right and good. But,
according to the judgment of men, it was marvellous how our Lord
permitted the Franks (the people in the world who honour Him most)
to be thus destroyed by the enemies of the faith.' Mr. Harrison's
book, with no deliberate intention of his, for he is here a writer of
neutral history, will give people of a reflective turn of mind, whether
Jew, Mahometan, Christian, or Agnostic, if they be in the humour,
many deep things to ruminate upon.

JOHN MORLEY.

1904

DURING the past session the Army has been a leading subject of
debate. We have less anxiety in regard to the Navy. We have had
•a sound system and able Ministers at the Admiralty, well advised by
the boards of naval officers over which they have presided. Our
naval administration is a source of strength to the country. In every
department of the State, and not least at the Admiralty, organisation
and policy must always need revision. There are changes in the
policy of foreign Powers which we must be prepared to meet, neither
falling behind nor going beyond the standard of strength which the
wisdom of Parliament has laid down. Nor can financial considera-
tions be disregarded. We have to make both ends meet, and the
national income is not a fixed quantity. In the late debate in the
House of Lords, Lord Selborne said truly : ' The Navy and the national
credit are the two pillars on which in every material sense the safety
of the Empire depends.' The principles laid down by Mr. Micawber
are as sound in public as in private finance. ' My other piece of
advice, Copperfield, you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual
expenditure nineteen, nineteen six ; result, happiness. Annual in-
come twenty pounds, annual expenditure, twenty pounds ought and
six ; result, misery.'

Our war expenditure has reached an amount unprecedented in
time of peace. The continual increase in estimates fills statesmen
with concern. In 1899 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was growing anxious
as to the cost of the Army and Navy. In a weighty speech he pointed
to the 63,000,000?. which were being spent by Great Britain, as against
a corresponding expenditure of 36,400,000?. by France, and 35,250,000?.
by Germany. In 1903, as it was shown in a Parliamentary return of
last Session, the cost of Imperial defence had increased to 87,487,000?.,
including Army estimates, 34,425,000?. ; military expenditure of India,
17,782,000?. ; contributions of Crown Colonies in aid of Army votes,
355,000?. For 1904-5 the expenditure for the Navy will be 36,889,000?.
under estimates, 5,111,000?. under Works Acts — in round figures,

591

592

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

42,000,0002. Our surpluses have disappeared. The public credit is
impaired. In the grave words addressed by Mr. Chamberlain to the
representatives of the Colonies at the Coronation Conference, * The
weary Titan groans beneath the orb of his too vast fate.'

II

Are reductions possible for the Navy under any head of charge ?
Let us consider first the votes for manning. They have increased in
ten years from 5,400,0002. to 9,100,0002., as against, in round figures,,
3,000,0002. for the French Navy and half that amount for Germany
and Russia. A voluntary service must be costly ; and we have-
raised our numbers from 85,103 to 131,100, the cost per man being
certainly not less than 1002. a year. In addition we have to give
the training at sea, which is indispensable to make seamen. This--
means more ships in commission.

In the strength of our permanent force we are far above the two-
Power standard. The table below is taken from a report by the-
Committee of the House of Representatives on the United States
Navy Appropriation Bill for 1904-5 :

NUMBER OF OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE PRINCIPAL NAVAL POWERS.

Commis-

Total com-

1

-

sioned line
and
engineer

missioned
officers,
sea-going

Midship-
men and
cadets

Warrant
officers

Blue- Marine
jackets officers

Marines

officers

corps

i

England

3,546

4,595

1,254

1,892

100,143 ! 474

19,106

France

2,065

2,830

461

1,078

46,603

—

Bussia .

1,965

2,360

430

790

49,663

—

Germany

1,384

1,736

688

774

31,914 87

1,229

United States

941

1,337

753

'525

27,245 220

6,091

Italy .

1,057

1,537

165

735

25,000 —

—

Japan .

919

1,378

1,240

771

27,389 —

—

Austria

583

803

180

155

9,124 i —

—

The permanent force of the British Navy is too large ; the Reserves,
are too few. As given in detail in the estimates, they number in all
60,000 men. France has a Reserve of more than 100,000 on the rolls,
giving at least 50,000 fit for service. Germany has 74,000 men on
the rolls, and all receive a training in the Navy.

The permanent force of the Navy should be strong in officers,
strong in all ratings requiring special training. Long-service training
is not necessary for all the duties of the deck and the stokehold. In a
battleship some 200 men are detailed for the ammunition supply,
and many are for unskilled work. British naval officers insist, and
rightly so, on a high standard of efficiency. Their desire is natural
to command men reared, as they themselves have been, from their
boyhood in the service. They share the reluctance with which

1904 NAVAL STRENGTH AND NAVY ESTIMATES 593

Reserves were accepted by their brother officers of the Army. Neither
the Volunteers nor the Yeomanry received much encouragement
from the military authorities of the elder day. Lessons may some-
times be learned from foreign navies. The ship's company of the
flagship of the squadron which represented the United States on the
occasion of the King's coronation were a splendid body of men. The
flag-captain informed me that nearly one-third of the crew had been
entered as landsmen. In addition he had ninety apprentices. These
novices made up for want of experience afloat by their keenness to
learn. They were efficient for their duties. The Navy of the United
States has never failed in war. Long service for all ratings is not
insisted upon.

It is the part of the statesman to take broad views of things, and
it is due to Lord Selborne and his predecessors in the office of First
Lord to say that they have appreciated the need for Reserves, and the
impossibility of maintaining in peace a permanent force sufficient to
meet the stress and strain of a great naval war.

After a long delay the Reserves have been taken in hand. We
have an increase in the estimates for 1904-5 of 13,000 men. The new
forces include the Colonial Naval Reserve and Royal Naval Volun-
teers. Our Colonies offer a wide field for recruiting. We have the
hardy fishermen of Newfoundland and the maritime provinces of the
Canadian Dominion. In Australia we have 20,000 seafaring men.
At home the call for volunteers has been warmly received. The
Admiralty have been fortunate in securing as the first commanders
the Hon. Rupert Guinness for the Thames, the Marquis of Graham
for the Clyde, Retired Admiral the Hon. T. S. Brand for Sussex,
and Retired Commander Stephen Thompson for Bristol. For in-
structors we may look with confidence to the Navy. The old force
of Royal Naval Artillery Volunteers was full of zeal for the service.
The men were smart and intelligent in gunnery. They could pull a
strong oar. They had one fault, and it was pardonable. They were
too keen to be rated as bluejackets. The force was too hastily dis-
banded. Under an improved organisation, and with conditions, now
clearly laid down, of liability to serve wherever and in whatever
capacity they may be required, volunteers will certainly take their
place in a general mobilisation of the fleet. To make Reservists
efficient more money must be spent. The Reserve vote for the cur-
rent year has been increased by 107,0002. ; yet the total remains at
404,0002. for the Reserves, while some 10,000,0002. are voted for the
permanent service. It seems still true to say that the Reserves are
starved. Any standard of strength is more or less arbitrary. Looking
to the numbers in foreign navies, it does not appear necessary that our
permanent force should exceed 100,000. With an equal number of
well-trained men in reserve, our total strength would be greater than
at present, while the cost would be considerably less. To raise the

594 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Oct.

numbers and improve the training of the Reserves is the first step
to a reduction in the votes for manning. The cost of Reservists does
not exceed one -tenth of the cost of permanent men.

Ill

In this connection suggestions from time to time offered in the
Naval Annual may perhaps appropriately be renewed.

(a) Our resources for manning the Navy may be materially increased
by organising a portion of the Army as an amphibious force. Regi-
ments may be permanently quartered at the naval ports, exercised in
boats, and drilled with the Marines as gunners. As disciplined
soldiers they would be ready for service afloat or ashore.

(6) It is more difficult to raise men for the stokehold than for
deck duties. Stokers of the tropical races should be enrolled in the
Reserves.

(c) The names of officers of the Royal Naval Reserve in the several
ranks fill pages of the Navy List. They should be something more
than a force on paper. For the cadets of the Royal Naval Reserve —
officers of the Royal Navy in time of emergency — something more is
wanted than the haphazard training and scanty opportunities for
general instruction of the apprentice in the mercantile marine. The
Admiralty should offer premiums to shipowners for the education of
cadets, under conditions which would ensure that the work should be
well done.

There is a further and a cogent argument for the reinforcement
of the Reserves. It is the only means by which the decline in the
British element in the mercantile marine can be arrested. The
reasons for the reduction in the number of British persons employed
are not far to seek. The vast trade with the East, through the Suez
Canal, is entirely in steam. The voyages are made through the
hottest seas in the world. In the tropics, men of tropical races are
most suitable. Climatic conditions cannot be changed. In the
trade with the Far East by the Suez route, working hands will not be
recruited from a northern population. In all other trades British
ships should be manned by British seamen. Their falling numbers
are due to the scanty wages of the sailor. Shipowners receive no
special favours from the State. Nor are they more disinterested than
other classes of employers engaged in keen competition, the most
severe which the British shipowner has to face being that under his
own flag. Expenses must be cut down. In mastless ships the
foreigner does the work required, and is content with wages too low
to keep a decent home in England. The State may combine with the
shipowner. It may supplement wages with the retainers paid to
Reservists, and a hundred thousand, as it has been said, are required.
The Reserve question is urgent. In framing a comprehensive

1904 NAVAL STRENGTH AND NAVY ESTIMATES 595

plan for the reinforcement of the Reserves, we should borrow from
the French Inscription Maritime those provisions which were designed
by Colbert with the view to attach the seafaring population of France
to the national flag, and which have proved so successful ; thus accom-
plishing a peaceful purpose while strengthening the Navy.

IV

In dealing with the question of manning, we have had before us
a double purpose. We have looked to reinforcement of the Reserves.
We have looked to retrenchment where it is possible without weakening
the Navy in essentials. The expenditure on naval works calls for
careful examination from the same point of view. The cost of naval
works is provided for chiefly by loans. It is a method which leads to
extravagance. The aggregate estimates for the works in progress, as
proposed under the Works Bill of 1895, were under 9,000,0002. In
a return of April 1904 the total had advanced to 27,500,0002. In a
return issued in July last the estimates for works in progress had
reached the vast total of 31,641,OOOZ. The table below is from the
latest returns :

NAVAL WORKS — TOTAL ESTIMATED COST

Eeturn, April 1904
Return, July 1904
Increase .

£

27,501,864

31,640,859

4,1B8,995

ESTIMATES

-

April 1904

July 1904|

Increase

Works already in hand —

£

£

£

Deepening Harbours and Approaches .

1,100,000

1,300,000

200,000

Gibraltar Dockyard Extension .

2,674,000

2,809,000

135,000

Simon's Bay . . ...

1,000,000

1,280,000

280,000

Chatham Naval Barracks . .

445,000

515,000

70,000

Gunnery Schools . . .

220,000

470,000

250,000

Portsmouth Naval Barracks . .

670,400

791,000

121,000

Keyham Naval Barracks .

230,000

281,000

51,000

Chatham Naval Hospital .

379,000

429,000

50,000

Britannia Naval College

315,000

375,000

60,000

870,000

1,335,000

465,000

New Works —

Chatham Dockyard Extension .

—

—

50,000

Sheerness Depot Torpedo-Boat De-

stroyers

—

—

250,000

Naval Establishment at Bosyth

—

—

200,000

Coastguard Stations and Eoyal

Naval Eeserve Batteries

—

—

50,000

Torpedo Eanges .....

—

—

320,000

Electric-Light Power in Naval Esta-

blishments . .. . .

— -

1,500,000

Total increase in Estimates for Naval Works, April to

July, 1904

4,052,000

596 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

It can hardly be contended that all the new works are of urgent
necessity. Among works lately authorised, let us take those in
Simon's Bay. Here, certainly, we have a case of overlapping. Our
commercial base at Cape Town, with all its resources in docks and
skilled workmen, is distant but a few miles from Simon's Bay, and
must be strongly held. With a subsidy from the Admiralty, the
Cape Government would have provided new docks or enlarged existing
docks. The first cost would have been far less. A heavy permanent
addition to expenditure would have been avoided. Docks at Simon's
Bay are useless without workmen, whose profitable employment
must be certain, and who must be paid at the Cape at colonial rates.

In the estimate of 700,0002. for dockyard extension at Bermuda,
we have another charge of doubtful necessity. The dockyard at
Bermuda was mounted on the present scale, and defended with
extensive and costly fortifications, at a time when our relations with
the United States were less happy than they are to-day. It is not
going too far to say that war is no longer possible between the two
great English-speaking races. If no naval establishment were already
in existence at Bermuda, it would not now be set up. And what shall
we say of the new works sanctioned in the short interval between the
two returns relating to naval works laid before Parliament in the
past session ? And what as to the increases in estimates for works
already authorised ? It is the duty of Parliament to be vigilant in
examining proposals for naval works, more especially in distant parts
of the world, and far removed from the naval stations of other Powers.

We have now to consider the votes for shipbuilding. The aggre-
gate amount has increased from under 9,000,0002. in 1896 to 18,420,0002.
for 1904-5. For the construction of new ships, as distinguished from
repairs, the expenditure has increased from 4,400,0002. for 1894-5 to
12,000,0002. for the current financial year. Has this increase been
necessary ? And, first, how do we stand as to ships ? We may
take the position as stated in the Naval Annual, edited by my son,
omitting the tables as given in that publication, compiled from the
best authorities, English and foreign. In battleships ready for
service we are equal to a combination of any three Powers. If we
include ships building, and assume an equal rate of progress, we are
up to a two-Power standard. In cruisers of the first and second class
built and building, we have a commanding superiority. We have a
long list of cruisers of the third class, not counting for much in com-
parisons of strength. Shipbuilding for the British Navy has not
been carried to excess. Our strength in battleships is not more than
sufficient. A margin is required. As to cruisers, no fixed standard
of strength is possible. Our vast over-sea trade requires many

1904 NAVAL STRENGTH AND NAVY ESTIMATES 597

cruisers for its protection. It would be too costly to build in numbers
sufficient to give absolute security.

Having compared the strength in ships, let us compare the expen-
diture on construction. It is the most exact measure of progress
available. For the years 1895-1904, the aggregate outlay for con-
struction was officially given by the Secretary to the Admiralty, in
reply to a question by Mr. Robertson, at 70,000,000?. in round figures
for Great Britain, as against 83,000,000?. for France, Russia, and
Germany. The total for Great Britain covers 5,000,000?. for gun
mounting, a charge not included in the case of foreign countries.

In recent years we have been increasing our expenditure. We have
now reached, as it has been said, a total of no less than 12,000,000?.,
or more than the aggregate votes of France, Russia, and Germany.
And we build at least 25 per cent, more cheaply than is possible in
Russia or in France. M. Dagnaud of the French Admiralty has
given, as typical examples, the British ship Hermes, 5,600 tons, cost
300,593?., and the French Jurien de la Graviere, of even tonnage, cost
475,979?. — difference over 50 per cent. British shipbuilding votes for
the present year have been abnormally increased by the purchase of
the Swiftsure and the Triumph. We may look for retrenchment in
shipbuilding in future years.

For the United States the vote for new construction has risen
from 2,090,000?. in 1899-1900 to 7,440,000?. in 1904-5. Potentially
the United States must be reckoned the first naval Power in the world.
Their Atlantic ports are unassailable. Their resources are practically
unlimited. We could not contend even for naval supremacy with
100,000,000 men in a territory secure from invasion. Happily those
100,000,000 in the United States are English-speaking men, on whose
goodwill towards us we have the claims of the Motherland — claims
not to be forgotten nor denied because in the far-off years some grave
errors in policy were committed, of which we have long ago repented.

Designs for shipbuilding are a difficult subject for the Admiralty.
It is useless to spend large sums on shipbuilding unless we have some
expectation that the costly ships we lay down will be retained for a
reasonable time on the list of effectives ; and the progress of invention
is unceasing. One leading principle is clear. In every operation
of war in which England has been engaged the command of the sea
has been necessary. Witness in the last century the Peninsula, the
€rimea, our wars in India and elsewhere. As later illustrations we
have the war in South Africa and the conflict between Russia and
Japan. The command of the sea gives security to commerce. The
•ships that command the seas are the battleships, with their auxiliaries,
the scouts and destroyers. In the appropriation of the sums expended
on construction as between battleships and cruisers our latest pro-
gramme of shipbuilding must command approval.

598 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

VI

As to types, it has been the rule for the British Navy to look to
what is being built elsewhere, and to try to go one better. It is a
good working rule. Measuring their work with that of foreign navies,
our naval architects fully hold their own. Our first-class battleships,
whether designed by Sir Edward Reed, Sir Nathaniel Barnaby, Sir
William White, or Mr. Watts, are not surpassed by ships of the same
date in any foreign navy. Ample provision is sure to be made, in
any design sanctioned by the Admiralty, for strength of structure,
sea-keeping qualities, and full supplies of coal and ammunition.

The rivalry of constructors under peace conditions tends towards
exaggeration of size. The cost has advanced for the eight ships of
the Edward VII. class — and doubtless for the Nelson, our latest design
— to no less than 1,500,OOOZ. As the cost increases, the numbers
which can be built for any given sum must be less. And superiority
in numbers counts for much. It was the lesson of the great war. The
fleets of Lord Nelson consisted chiefly of seventy-fours. At Trafalgar
there were no four-deckers in the British line-of-battle. It was the
aim in tactics to concentrate the whole force on a part of the enemy's
line. Superiority in numbers is even more important in modern
naval warfare. The largest ships are as vulnerable below the belt
as those of less dimensions. A blow from the ram or the torpedo,
the explosion of a mine, may be fatal. In a hard-fought action the
destruction of the upper works may leave a battleship without the
means of repelling attacks of torpedo boats by the fire of quick-firing
guns. Size gives no immunity from the risks of stranding, collision,
and fog. A fleet in the Channel may suddenly be enveloped in fog,
when the protection of the attending destroyers may for a dangerous
interval cease to be effective. We are bound to build ships equal to
the most powerful in foreign navies. We need such ships as the King
Edward and Nelson. We also need a less costly type. In the Swiftsure
and Triumph, designed by Sir Edward Reed, and lately purchased
into the Navy, at a cost per ship of 950,0002., such a type seems to
have been found. The Naval Annual for 1904 gives in tabular form
a comparison of the leading features of the Swiftsure and Triumph
and the most representative types now building or lately completed
for the British and foreign navies.

The maximum thickness of armour is less in the Swiftsure than in
battleships of heavier displacement. There is no inferiority in the
area protected. The main armament of 10-inch guns of the latest
pattern is in the opinion of Admiral Hopkins powerful enough for
anything. The secondary armament is superior to that of larger
battleships of recent type. The Swiftsure and the Triumph are a
knot faster than the Duncan, and two knots faster than the latest
French, German, and Russian battleships. The coal capacity equals

1904 NAVAL STRENGTH AND NAV7 ESTIMATES 599

that of any battleship, and would enable them to steam 12,000 miles at
ten knots or 4000 miles at nineteen knots. The Swiftsure and Triumph
carry their broadside guns as high above the water-line as the Duncan's,
and their freeboard is only one foot less. These two vessels are
suggestive specimens of a class which should find a place in future
programmes of shipbuilding.

It will not be necessary to dwell at length on the designs for cruisers.
We may begin by reviewing recent progress. The Powerful and the
Terrible, the first of a class equal in size and cost to battleships, were
an answer to the Rurik, Rossia, and Gromoboi — equal to their rivals
in armament, superior in coal supply, and still more conspicuously
in speed. The dimensions and cost of the Powerful and Terrible
were deemed excessive for ships without protection by vertical armour.
The next group of first-class cruisers were the eight ships of the Diadem
class, 11,180 tons, speed 21 knots, cost 582,6822. against 742,0002.
for the Powerful. In protection these ships had no advantage over
their predecessors. The Diadems were followed by the six ships of
the Cressy type, with protection by a continuous belt, but without
side armour. The dimensions were increased to 12,000 tons and
the cost to 780,0002. While cruisers were approaching battleships in
cost they were still inadequately defended by armour. Protection
by vertical armour, powerful armament, speed of 23 knots, and long
coal endurance, as combined in the Good Hope class, were not
obtained without an advance in displacement to 14,000 tons.

Our largest cruisers are the most satisfactory. Our noble cruiser
squadron consists at present of the Good Hope and Drake, and four
ships of the County class. Units of the latter type cost 750,0002., the
Good Hopes 1,000,0002. The cruiser squadron, as actually constituted,
has cost 5,000,0002. If all the ships had been of the Good Hope class,
the cost would have been 6,000,0002. With shipbuilding votes now
amounting to 12,000,0002., it should not have been impossible to make
provision for an additional expenditure of 1,000,0002. for the cruiser
squadron. The gain in fighting efficiency would have been more than
commensurate with the increase in cost.

Cruisers for the protection of commerce should be powerful vessels,
able to keep the seas for considerable periods, and armoured and
armed for single actions against the formidable adversaries described
by M. Messimy, author of the Report of the Committee on the French
Navy Estimates for 1905 :

Fussent-ils trois fois moins nombreux que leurs sirnilaires anglais, nos
croiseurs, par le seul fait qu'ils existent, constituent, d'une fagon perrnanente,
un avertisseinent salutaire. La seulfi existence de dix de ces navirea rapides,
a grand rayon d'action, que rien ne lie aux rivages de France, et qui peuvent,
de 1'Europe a 1'Amerique, entraver, sinon arreter, tout le commerce trans-
oceanique — leur seule existence est de la nature a rendre digne d'une serieuse
attention toute perspective d'un conflit avec notre pays.

600 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

Scouts are necessary. They are the eyes of the fleet. In the
elder day the scouts were the frigates, of which Lord Nelson never
had enough. In January 1804, when he believed the French fleet
at Toulon was about to sail, he wrote : ' I am kept in great distress
for frigates and smaller vessels at this critical moment. I want ten
more than I have, in order to watch that the French should not escape
me.' In a letter to Lord Barham (then First Lord of the Admiralty)
dated the Victory, the 30th of July 1805, he asks for ' many, many
more frigates and sloops of war.' Last year four vessels of the new
type officially designated as ' scouts ' were laid down. In the pro-
gramme of 1904-5 we have four more vessels of the same class. The
scouts have a displacement of 2750 tons. They are to steam 25 knots
on an eight hours' trial. The speed is high, the displacement too
small for vessels designed to sweep the ocean. The normal coal
capacity is sufficient, it is estimated, for 4000 miles at cruising
speed, but gives a much smaller radius of action at full speed. The
cost of the scouts is put at 276,384?., or approximately the cost of the
second-class cruisers of the Talbot class, with a displacement of 5600
tons and a speed of 19 to 20 knots. The scouts are not fighting vessels.
They cannot compare with cruisers in armament. They are with-
out protection. They would break up in a few minutes under such a
fire as that directed against the Belleisle, and their complements
number 268 officers and men. Vessels of the scout type could chase
destroyers, but with the disadvantage — which might sometimes be
serious — of greater draught of water. With a length of 380 feet, as
against 2 10 feet for the destroyers, they must be slow in turning. No
vessels have as yet been designed as effective as destroyers for re-
pelling attacks directed by destroyers upon a fleet of battleships.
The greater the superiority in numbers the more complete the de-
fence. Destroyers cost 50,000? . ; scouts six times that amount.

The Scout class is not an untried type. In the years 1896-1900
twelve third-class cruisers of the Pelorus class, similar in dimensions
to the scouts and designed for similar services, were laid down. They
had a speed of 20 knots. Their coal endurance was insufficient. In
introducing the Navy Estimates on the 25th of February 1900, Lord
Goschen gave the reasons why three third-class cruisers of rather
larger dimensions than the Pelorus class, intended to be very
fast and designed for special purposes, were dropped out of the
programme.

•* We were guided,' he said, ' in the matter to a certain extent by the experience
of other countries. France had also intended to lay down some very fast small
cruisers, but the French naval architects, like our own, appear to have
found the task impossible to perform, and the French Government have
withdrawn the small third-class cruisers from their programme, just as we have
• dropped them from ours. The attempt was to put an enormous amount of
juachinery within a vessel of very small dimensions. That has been accom-

1904 NAVAL STRENGTH AND NAVY ESTIMATES 601

plished in the torpedo-destroyers. They are light and very delicate instruments ;
but when we came to try it on a larger scale it was thought that these third-
class cruisers would only be torpedo-destroyers on a larger scale, and that they
would not have the necessary sea-going or fighting power.'

Small vessels of exceptional speed must be costly — for the Pelorus
class 156,OOOL, for the scouts 278,337L It is the price paid for an
advance in speed from nineteen to twenty-five knots. The scouts
cost 110Z. per ton ; battleships of the King Edward type 121. In his
recent statement in the House of Lords, Lord Selborne was careful to
explain that the scouts were designed not as destroyers of destroyers
but for the sphere of action which the name implies. For such a
service why limit the dimensions to less than 3,000 tons ? With
additional displacement, coal endurance, sea-keeping qualities, and
speed, except perhaps in the finest weather, would be much improved.
The Scout class are an unsatisfactory feature in a programme of con-
struction otherwise beyond criticism.

It would seem scarcely necessary to build special vessels as scouts.
In the third class we have many cruisers with a measured mile speed
of twenty knots, and a coal capacity far superior to that of the scouts.
Speeds might be considerably increased by reducing armaments. Our
third-class cruisers, too small for the service for which they were
designed, should be utilised as scouts.

As the eyes of the fleet, no regularly built vessels of war can com-
pare with the greyhounds of the mercantile marine. They were
strongly recommended to the Committee on Subsidies by Lord Charles.
Beresford. In giving evidence before the Committee he said :

In war the mercantile marine and the Boyal Navy must be to a very great
extent intermingled. In allowing your admirals a certain number of very fast
merchant ships by way of auxiliaries to the fleet you may save a campaign and
you may win an initial advantage. These ships would form the line of com-
munication. They would carry information to an admiral of the movements
of an enemy's fleet. There is no ship that can do this service better than the
ocean greyhounds that are built for speed in any weather. That is their utility.

Lord Charles Beresford gave suggestions as to the means by which
the construction of such vessels should be encouraged by the aid of
the Government, and the ships retained under the British flag.

There are strong political arguments in favour of a policy of sub-
sidies to auxiliary vessels as the scouts of the fleet. Swift communi-
cations are a bond of empire. I had the honour of presiding at the
Congress of the Chambers of Commerce of the Empire held last year
at Montreal. A day was given to the discussion of a fast service to
connect Canada directly with the Motherland. If established by an
Imperial subsidy we should be giving to our colonial fellow-subjects
a helping hand in an undertaking they have at heart, while adding to
the list of vessels available as the scouts of the Navy. On similar
grounds it seems desirable that the mail service to Australia should be

VOL. LVI — No. 332 S S

602 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

maintained by an Imperial subsidy, under conditions which would
secure that the ships should be held at the disposal of the Admiralty.
The speed should be accelerated. The Imperial Colonial Mail Service
would be a practical training for engineers, officers, and stokers of the
Navy and Royal Navy Reserve.

Submarines are formidable for port defence and for operations in
narrow waters. The construction of submarines is being pushed for-
ward in the French Navy, partly under the pressure of financial con-
siderations. The British Admiralty are making sufficient progress in
the construction of a comparatively new type. The failure of the
attacks by a Japanese torpedo flotilla on the Russian fleet when taking
flight from Port Arthur would seem to show that the torpedo is un-
reliable against ships steaming at speed.

After exhaustive trials by the Admiralty the water-tube boiler
has won the day. In all the recent battleships and cruisers building
by France, Russia, Italy, Germany, Austria, Holland, Sweden, and
Japan, water-tube boilers have been fitted. The mixed system of
cylindrical and water-tube boilers has not found favour. It is satis-
factory to know that, on the completion of their inquiry by an able
committee of experts, some definite conclusions have been reached
which will guide the policy in the future.

In connection with boilers, reference may appropriately be made
to the supply of fuel for the Navy. Foreign navies have been drawing
coal from Wales in increasing quantities. Welsh steam coal is the
best in the world, and our supplies are limited. Mr. Boyd Dawkins
recommends, in an able letter, that the most productive mines should
be acquired by the State. The Prussian State is now negotiating for
a large purchase in the Rhenish- Westphalian region.

VII

Some further suggestions may here be offered with a view to
economy in naval administration : .

(1) And, first, all that overlapping of expenditure should cease,
to which the Hartington Commission, and especially Mr. Ismay, a
member of the Commission, drew attention. Two-thirds of the food
for the population crowded together in our small islands being im-
ported, it is vital for us to keep our communications open with all the
world. The Navy, which gives protection to our commerce, is our
defence against invasion. The principle that our home defence and
communications are provided for by the Navy is now fully recognised.
In his speech on Imperial defence, on the 27th of November, 1903, the
Prime Minister specially insisted on our reliance on the Navy rather
than the Army for home defence. We require a citizen army, and a
permanent army sufficient to supply relief to the British force in
India, to defend the coaling stations, and to provide a striking force.

190-1 NAVAL STEENGTHAND NAVY ESTIMATES 603

To carry expenditure on the Army further is overlapping. Lord
Esher, Sir John Fisher, and Sir George Clarke, in their joint report,
dated the llth of January, 1904, observe as follows on this important
matter :

Our national problems of defence are far more difficult and complex than
those of any other Powers. They require exhaustive study over a much wider
field. The grave danger to which we call attention remains, and demands
effective remedy. The British Empire is pre-eminently a great naval colonial
Power. There are, nevertheless, no means for co-ordinating defence problems,
for dealing with them as a whole, for defining the proper functions of the
various elements, and for ensuring that, on the one hand, peace preparations
are carried out on a consistent plan, and on the othpr hand that, in time of
emergency, a definite war policy based upon solid data can be formulated. It
would be easy to show that unnecessary weakness, coupled with inordinate
waste of national resources, thus results.

The Committee of Defence, over which the Premier presides,
should be a guarantee against overlapping.

(2) The expenditure in the dockyards on the upkeep of useless
vessels was a blot on naval administration in the past. The resources
of our dockyards are still being wasted in repairs to obsolete vessels.
The remedy is to be found in putting all such vessels out of commis-
sion. Something has been done by the present Board in the revision
of our squadrons on foreign stations. It may be carried further. In
his report on the estimates for the French Navy, 1902, Mr. Lockroy
gives the cost of maintaining ships in commission — Great Britain 4-4*9,
Germany 29' 1, and France 23 per cent, of the total votes.

(3) Under the present practice in regard to estimates, the control
of Parliament over expenditure on Imperial defence is limited prac-
tically to the choice of a Minister with plenary responsibility. If
Parliament is to do more it must be, as it was pointed out by the
Committee on National Expenditure (1903), by the method of Select
Committees.

We consider (they said) that the examination of estimates by the House ox
Commons leaves much to be desired from the point of view of financial scrutiny.
The discussions are unavoidably partisan. Few questions are discussed with
adequate knowledge or settled on their financial merits. Six hundred and
seventy members of Parliament, influenced by party ties, occupied with other
work and interests, frequently absent from the Chamber during the twenty to
twenty-three Supply days, are hardly the instrument to achieve a close and
exhaustive examination of the immense and complex estimates now annually
presented. They cannot effectively challenge the smallest item without
supporting a motion hostile to the Government of the day; and divisions are
nearly always decided by a majority of members who have not listened to the
discussion. . . . We are impressed with the advantages, for the purposes of
detailed financial scrutiny, which arc enjoyed by select committees, whose
proceedings are usually devoid of party feeling, who may obtain accurate
knowledge collected for them by trained officials, which may, if so desired, be
• checked or extended by the examination of witnesses or the production of

s s 2

604 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Ocfc.

documents ; and we feel it is in this direction that the financial control of the
House of Commons is most capable of being strengthened.

The Committees of the French Chambers on Navy Estimates do
valuable work. They summon officials of every grade and call for
returns. Their reports are luminous and exhaustive, dealing with the
largest questions of policy, and, even on technical points, instructive
and suggestive. With us, the power of inquiry by Parliamentary
Committee or by Royal Commission has thus far been a power in
reserve for inquiry into the causes of disaster, or for the consideration
of some organic reform in administration. It has been held that
continuous supervision relieves Ministers of responsibilities. The de-
bates in Parliament are the British equivalent for the rapports of the
French Parliamentary Committees. Parliament should insist on
ample information in returns and departmental reports. These should
be studied at least by some few members, content to work in a field
offering perhaps little parliamentary distinction, but full of interest,
and in which there must always be much to be done.

Expenditure, if we go down to bed-rock, depends on policy — on
our policy in India, in the East, in Africa, in China. We claim that
we are disinterested. We say that we are reluctant to take new
responsibilities. And yet we are ever adding new territories ; and
how seldom with us is the Temple of Janus closed.

It is satisfactory to have the assurance that our fleets are
manned by officers and men in whom the country can trust. Earlier
in the present year the Mediterranean, the Channel, and the Cruiser
squadrons were brought together for exercise in the Mediterranean.
I saw that noble fleet, far the most powerful that had ever been
mustered in time of peace, in Pollensa Bay, and again under the
' Grand old Rock ' of Gibraltar. The crews numbered no fewer than
28,000. Officers and men, to use another happy phrase of Lord
Nelson, were ' a band of brothers.' It is not for laymen to criticise
in professional matters. The judgment to which alone a naval com-
mander can defer, the praise which he most values, must be that of his
brother officers. At the close of exercises, planned on a great scale
and carried through from beginning to end with success, such praise
was awarded to Sir Compton Domville at a farewell dinner.

Measured by every test, improvement, wherever it is possible, is
always to be found in the Navy. In gunnery progress is general, and
not less in the distant China Squadron than in home waters, in the
Channel Fleet. In the Engineers' department, the difficulties of
tubular boilers have been mastered. If the old seamanship is going,
the seamanship practically required is not wanting. The manage-
ment of the boats, whether under sail or the oar, in half a gale of
wind, in Pollensa Bay, was a credit to the fleet. At Gibraltar, coaling
ship was the order of the day. It is a stirring sight to see the crews

1904 NAVAL STRENGTH AND NAVY ESTIMATES 605

of our ships of war on coaling days — in our cruisers of weekly recur-
rence. It is difficult to say who work hardest, the men who wheel
their heavy loads along the hampered decks, always at the run, or the
bandsmen, whose cheering strains are sustained hour by hour.
'England expects that every man will do his duty.' The famous
signal is not forgotten. It is still the note and inspiration of the
British Navy.

BRASSEY.

606 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Oct.

THE GERMAN ARMY SYSTEM AND
HOW IT WORKS

AT the Hague Conference Germany's representative stated that ' the
people of Germany do not by any means look upon universal service
(allgemeine Wehrpfliclit] as a burden, but as a sacred duty ; and they
feel that they owe to the fulfilment of this duty their present pro-
sperity, and that their prosperity in the future will also be due to it.'
The law of the land prescribes that the obligation to serve the country
is a duty of honour which citizens who do not bear a fair and un-
blemished name — i.e., who have suffered punishment to which dis-
honour is attached — are not permitted to perform. It is only the
outcasts of society who are not deemed worthy to serve the Father-
land.

The obligation of every citizen to defend his country (allgemeine
Wehrpflickt), which had obtained by statute in the kingdom of Prussia
since the 13th of September, 1814, was inscribed on the first pages of
the national code of the new German Empire on the 16th of April,
1871. The fundamental principle of the German army system is that
it is the bounden duty of each and every able-bodied male inhabitant
of the State to defend his country. ' Every German is in duty bound
to defend his country, and he cannot discharge this duty through a
substitute.' These last words, of course, eliminated the possibility of
abuses such as those connected with the old system of French * con-
scription.' The only exceptions admitted in the German system are
in favour of certain specified reigning families, whose members are
exempt as such from compulsory service, but seldom or never avail
themselves of the privilege ; and in favour of special cases, which
will be referred to lower down.

A study of the history of Prussia from the days of the Great
Elector shows that no country in the world owes so much to its army
as does Prussia ; and as this army has always, since the introduction
of universal service, been made up of the whole able-bodied and
virile male population of the land, just as is the army of the German
Empire to-day, the people of Prussia and the people of the German
Empire may incontestably claim that their present position in the

1904

THE GERMAN ARMY SYSTEM

607

world is due to no special caste or class, but to the sacrifices and hard
work of the whole people.

The law enjoining universal service has necessarily involved, and
still does involve, immense sacrifices upon the individual ; but it
encouraged in the population of Prussia that military spirit that
already existed in the people, and imbued the latter with energy and
readiness to submit to any privation necessary for the maintenance
of the Fatherland. What Prussia derived from this law has been
participated in by the whole German Empire since April 1871.

The law regulating military organisation for the German Empire
stipulates that the Wehrpflicht, or duty to defend the country, begins,
with the completed seventeenth year, and lasts till the conscript has,
completed his forty-fifth year. The Wehrpflicht is subdivided into :
(a) the duty to serve in the army or navy (the Dienstpflicht) ; (6) the
duty to serve in the Landsturm.

Every German may be called upon to serve in the army or navy —
in actual practice from the age of twenty to the age of forty-five — and
every German between the age of seventeen and the age of forty-five
is liable to be called out to defend his country in war time if he be
not already serving in the army or navy. The general obligation ta
serve in the army or navy is subdivided as follows : —

THE ABMY

Standing Army :

a. Active service with the colours :

Infantry, Garrison Artillery, Field Artillery (falirende

Artillerie) .2 years-
Cavalry, Horse Artillery (reitende Artillerie) . , 3 years

b. With the reserves :

Infantry, &c., as above • 5 years

Cavalry and Horse Artillery (reitende Artillerie) . ,4 years

Landwehr :

First Levy • . • • 5 years

Second Levy (until end of 39th year) .... 7 years

Ersatz -Reserve (or Supernumeraries), including all those
who, though qualified for military service, are not for
various reasons required to serve in the usual order.
In peace time they may be taken for special purposes ;
in war time they would be taken to fill up vacancies
when required. The obligation lasts for twelve years from
the 1st of October of the year in which the conscript
attains his 20th year • . 12 years

Landsturm (all not in the army from 17th to 45th year) :
First Levy — those from 17th to 39th year.
Second Levy — those from 39th to 45th year.

THE NAVY

Active Service (beginning with 20th year)
Naval Reserve ....

608 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

Seewelir (corresponding to Landwehr) :

First Levy 5 years

Second Levy 7 years

Naval Ersatz-Reserve (Supernumeraries). — This is composed
of men of the seafaring population, or the semi- seafaring
population of the country. The conditions and period
of service are the same as for the army . . . .12 years

Landsturm (same as for the army).

In war time the Reserves are called in to supplement the active
army. Men in the infantry, field artillery (fahrende Artillerie), and
military train who volunteer to serve for three years with the colours,
and men of the cavalry and horse artillery who have served for three
years, according to the regulations, with the colours, and cavalry
men who volunteer to serve in the cavalry for four years are only
required to serve in the first levy of the Landwehr for three years.

A number of exceptions are admitted as regards the time when
the men are required to join the colours and as regards the duration
of active service. These deal with the professions and the condition
of life of the respective conscripts. For example, under certain
conditions men may volunteer after attaining the age of seventeen
for one year, two years, three years, or (for the cavalry) for four
years. In order to be able to volunteer for one year a recruit must
have acquired a certain amount of general education, the test for
which is his having passed an examination qualifying him to be
moved from the lower second to the upper second class of a State
gymnasium. Such volunteers must also have the consent of their
fathers or guardians.

The period for entering the service may also be postponed under
certain conditions to the twenty-third, and even exceptionally to the
twenty-seventh year — that is to say, in the case of individuals preparing
for any particular profession, whereby an interference in their studies
would injure their future career. Further, a man may be passed over
for a year, or perhaps for longer, if he is physically insufficiently
developed ; or, if owing to family reasons those depending on him
would suffer on account of his serving, he may be passed over altogether
and be handed over to the Landsturm. In regard to exceptional
cases, such as those above mentioned, the military authorities display
very liberal consideration. In fact, they have no reason for not doing
so, as in time of peace the supply of men is a good deal in advance of
the demand, and there is no difficulty whatever in obtaining the
number of recruits required for the year.

One year volunteers have to lodge, feed, and equip themselves.
When possible, they are allowed to live in barracks. In the cavalry
and horse artillery they receive a horse for their use, but are required
to pay down a sum ecfuivaient to 20£. for wear and tear, and about
36s. per month for the feed of the horse, veterinary expenses, &c. ; in

1904 THE GERMAN ARMY SYSTEM G09

the Field Artillery and Military Train the sum paid for wear and tear
is 11. 10s. Their work is very heavy for the first month in all branches
of the service, especially in the mounted branches. The privilege of
serving for a year accorded to men of higher education does not ex-
punge the liability to serve, and in return for the privilege they have
to acquire the requisite amount of military knowledge and to pay all
expenses. The actual sum required by a one-year volunteer varies of
course according to the young man's tastes and habits. It may be
said that, on an average, a one-year volunteer requires in the infantry
a minimum allowance of 1 501. ; in the artillery of 2001. ; and in the
cavalry of 300Z., to take him through his year's service. These sums
naturally vary also with the garrison as well as with the individual
tastes of the volunteers. For example, the minimum cost to a one-
year volunteer in the cavalry or horse artillery in Berlin may be
estimated at 300?. After the year's service one-year volunteers are
classed for six years in the Reserves, and are required in the earlier
years of this period to join twice for from four to eight weeks'
training each time. In general the years selected are the two
immediately following their year of service with the colours ; and
they may be called upon to undergo a third period of training.
Those who wish to become officers of the Reserve — i.e., officers
who in time of war would be called in to serve as officers with
the army on its war footing — will have received a certificate at the
close of their year's service, and in the first eight weeks' training they
will do non-commissioned officers' duty, obtaining rank, after passing
an examination, as Vice-Feldwebel or Vice-Wachtmeister of the
Reserve. During the second eight weeks' training, a one year's ser-
vice man of this class does officer's duty, and if he obtains the neces-
sary approval of his commanding officer his name is sent up to the
Kaiser to be elected as officer of the Reserve or the Landwehr.
Twice a year, whilst in the Reserve, the one-year volunteers have
to put in an appearance (in April and November) before the Board of
Control (Control-Versammlung) to report themselves and to hear
matters of military interest.

The rank and file, after concluding their period of service, are trans-
ferred to the Reserve. In case of war they would be called in to
supplement the active army. They go by the name of ' Reservists,'
and are classified according to their year and length of service. They
also are required to take part in two periods of training, not exceed-
ing eight weeks each, during the time they are classed in the Reserve,
and to appear twice a year before the Board of Control, the object
being to keep alive in them the sense that they belong to the army.
The first levy of the Landwehr are only required to attend once a year
before the Board, as it is supposed that when they have arrived at this
age their domicile is more likely to be fixed. The Landsturm are dis-
pensed from the duty of reporting themselves. The penalties for not

610 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

appearing at the regular intervals before the Board are inconvenient,
consisting partly in the lengthening of the time of service by a year.
On the days that the Reservists appear before the Board they are
subject to military, not civil, law, and may not attend any meeting or
visit any place of public resort prohibited by the military authori-
ties.

Efforts have been made in the Imperial Diet to abolish these
enforced appearances before the Board, as being useless as well as
irksome, unnecessarily interfering with the Reservist's usual daily
work.

It is the Kaiser who determines annually the number of recruits
that have to be enlisted, and this number is distributed amongst the
various federal States of the Empire.

There are twenty-three army corps — namely, the Prussian Guards
corps, sixteen corps comprising Prussia and the smaller States, two
Saxon corps, three Bavarian and one Wiirttemberg corps. Each
corps has its own recruiting district, with the exception of the Prussian
Guards corps, which is supplied from the whole Prussian kingdom
and Elsass-Lothringen, volunteers from the other States being also
allowed to present themselves. In general each of these corps dis-
tricts is subdivided into four infantry brigade districts, and each of
these latter districts consists of a number of Landwehr districts,
each under the command of a field officer of the Army Reserve.
These Landwehr districts are again subdivided into conscript
districts.

The recruiting authorities are as follows :

(1) The Recruiting Commission for each district, composed of the
Military Commander of the district and the Landrat, a civil official of
the Home Office. The Landrat is an official partly corresponding to
OUT sheriff, but is a fixed Government official under the Home Minister,
and does duties not dissimilar to those of an under-sheriff. Four
civil members are attached to them, specially selected in order to
check the identity of the recruits, as well as an officer of the line,
who checks the lists, and an army doctor, who conducts the medical
examination. The District Commander and the Landrat sit together
as presidents of the Commission.

(2) The Second Recruiting Commission, composed of the Brigade
Commander, the District Commander, a civil official (probably the
Landrat of the district), a civilian selected to give an opinion as to
the validity of the claims for dispensation from service or for post-
ponement of the same, and an army doctor of higher rank than the
one who sits in the former Commission.

(3) The Third Recruiting Commission — a Commission of third
instance (Court of Appeal), which exists in every army corps district —
composed of the general in command of the corps and the Ober-
President or supreme civil authority of the province.

1904 THE GERMAN ARMY SYSTEM 611

(4) The supreme recruiting authority, composed of the War
Minister and the Minister of the Interior.

The preliminary recruiting work for each year commences in the
early part of the year. A list of the recruits liable for the year has to
be drawn up. This is done with the assistance of the civil authorities.

As above stated, the whole able-bodied male population of the
empire is under an obligation to perform military service (Militdr-
pflicht) either in the army or the navy. The date when the recruit
enters upon this obligation is the 1st of January of the year in which
he becomes twenty years of age. In each year the biirgomeisters of
the towns and the heads of communes fix a day and an hour when the
recruits for the year are required to put in an appearance and report
themselves as militdrpflichtig, in order to have their names entered
on the muster-roll of their domicile. This muster-roll is passed on
to the Landrat above referred to, who has an alphabetical list of the
recruits of the district drawn up, a copy of which is given to the
District Commander above referred to.

Naturally the domicile of a recruit at the age of twenty is not
necessarily, and, indeed, very seldom is, his birthplace. For example,
take the case of a recruit who has reported himself at Koln, but was
born at Dortmund. The Landrat of Koln would immediately notify
the Landrat of the Dortmund district that the said recruit had
reported himself as militarpflicktig at Koln, and the fact would be
registered.

All the recruits entered on the muster-roll for the year have to
appear in March before the Recruiting Commission, which is com-
posed as above specified. Each individual who passes the doctor
steps before the members of the Commission, who question him as to
his domestic conditions. It may happen that some recruits are
physically not quite qualified to serve, or their absence from their
family may interfere with its maintenance. In such cases they are
told to step down and to report themselves in the following year.
The Koln recruit, just mentioned, might say he was the only son of
a widow, and that he had to look after his mother's business, and
that she would suffer pecuniary loss if he were already obliged to
serve. The Commission would take the case into consideration, and,
if the reasons set forth were considered valid, the man would be told
to come again a year hence, and his obligation to serve would be
temporarily postponed — namely, for a year — and if by then it should
chance that his mother was dead and the business sold, or if his
general condition should have changed to such an extent that no
obstacle lay in the way of his serving, he would then be accepted
as a recruit qualified to join a regiment.

The higher Recruiting Commission (No. 2) definitely decides in
May, when the recruits have to present themselves again, as to who
is to be excluded, who is physically unfit to serve, and who is to be

612 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

handed over to the supernumeraries (Ersatz-Reserve), and designates
the particular branch of the service to which each selected individual
is to go. Take, again, the same concrete case. The Koln recruit
above mentioned is told off to the foot regiment quartered in that
city. He does not, however, immediately join his regiment. He is
now reckoned as belonging to the rank and file of the ' Beurlaubten-
stand ' — i.e., he is a private soldier on furlough. As such he now
receives some preliminary instruction about his duty as a soldier, and
is given a certificate of leave. His active service with the regiment
begins on the 1st of the following October. He must join the regi-
ment by that date, and serve till the end of September two years
later with the colours, when he is transferred to the Reserve.

In selecting the men for the various branches of the army the
following points are taken into consideration :

(1) For the Guards the men must be physically and morally picked
men and of excellent character.

(2) For the Chasseurs and Rifles men of first-rate manual skill are
required.

(3) For the Cavalry, Horse- Artillery, and Military Train men who
are accustomed to stable work and understand the management of
horses are taken : the weight of men for the heavy cavalry and horse
artillery should not be above 11 stone (70 kg.), for light cavalry not
above 10*234 stone (65 kg.), for light cavalry of the Guards not above
11 stone. Intelligence and good behaviour is required for the Military
Train.

(4) For the Artillery men of physical strength.

(5) For the Pioneers and Railway regiments artisans are selected
who are fit for hard work in the open air.

For the other branches men are selected according to their
special qualifications, and physical defects are taken into account
also.

In the case of the army the minimum height required of the men
varies from 5*44 feet (170 cm.) for the Guards and 4-928 feet (154 cm.)
for the Infantry, Chasseurs, and Military Train. The proportions are as
follows : Guards in general, 5*44 feet (170 cm.), exceptions 5*344 feet
(167 cm.) ; Light Cavalry of the Guard, 5-28 feet (165 cm.) ; In-
fantry of the Line, 4*928 feet (154 cm.) ; Chasseurs a pied, 4*928 feet
(154 cm.) ; Cuirassiers and Uhlans, 5-344 feet (167 cm.) ; Dragoons
and Hussars, 5'024 feet (157 cm.) ; Horse Artillery (reitende Artillerie)
and Field Artillery (fdhrende Artillerie), 5*184 feet (162 cm.) ; Garrison
Artillery, 5'344 feet (167 cm.) ; Pioneers and Railway regiments,
5-184 feet (162 cm.); Military Train, 5-024 feet (157 cm.), with
exceptions 4- 928 feet (154 cm.).

In the case of the navy, the naval stations lay estimates as to
the number of recruits required for the year before the Reichs Marine-
Amt (the Admiralty) by the 1st of April in each year. By the 15th of

1904 THE GERMAN ARMY SYSTEM 613

April the Admiralty forwards a statement specifying the number of
recruits required for the navy to the Prussian Minister of War.
The Minister sends this specification to the various army corps
districts.

No height measurement is prescribed, but men below 5 feet
1|- inch must be well built and have a chest of sufficient breadth
and depth to be capable of expansion. Unless the physique is other-
wise good the minimum chest measurement of a man must not be
less than half his height. The minimum heights required for seamen
are as follows : divisions, 5 feet 4-9 inches ; artillery, 5 feet 6 inches ;
marine infantry, 5 feet 4- 9 inches.

One-year volunteers in the navy from the seafaring or semi-
seafaring population are generally drafted to the seamen artillery or
marine infantry.

Volunteers are taken for three, four, five, and six years ; and boys
between the ages of fifteen and eighteen who volunteer are taken
with a view of being trained as seamen or warrant officers. The
training lasts two years, when they become rated seamen in the
torpedo or seamen division. On entry they undertake to serve for
two or three years' training and for seven years' service.

According to Art. 57, § 4, the whole seafaring population of the
empire, including engineers and shipwrights, &c., are excused service
in the army, but are obliged to serve in the navy. With them also
the liability to serve lasts from the age of seventeen to forty-five, but
actually they are only called upon in peace time from the age of
twenty to thirty-nine.

The recruits of the navy consist of : (1) the ordinary conscripts ;
(2) one-year volunteers ; (3) volunteers for three years or longer ;
(4) boys who volunteer for the navy.

Conscripts are taken from the seafaring and semi-seafaring popu-
lation, and, if these are insufficient, from landsmen with suitable
qualifications. As a matter of fact, men join the navy from all parts
of the Empire, and those coming from localities situated far inland,
who have never even seen the sea, turn out to be very good seamen.
Under the head of the ' seafaring population ' are reckoned :

(a) Seamen by profession — that is, men who have served at least
one year on board German seagoing, coast, or harbour ships ;

(b) Sea, coast, or harbour fishermen who have followed their
calling for at least one year ;

(c) Ships' carpenters and sailmasters who have been to sea ;

(d) Engineers and stokers for seafaring and river steamers ;

(e) Cooks and stewards.

Under the head of the ' semi-seafaring population ' are reckoned :
(a) Seafaring people who have served as such for at least twelve
weeks on board German or foreign ships — i.e., A.B.'s, ordinary sea-
men, boys, engineers' assistants, firemen, coal trimmers, electricians,

614 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

fitters, plumbers, lamp trimmers, sailmakers, bakers, butchers, barbers,
writers, stewards, &c. ;

(b) Fishermen who have followed the calling regularly or tem-
porarily for less than one year.

The non-commissioned officers of a regiment, to whose training
great weight is attached, are taken : (1) From the lance-corporals and
privates who have distinguished themselves by good conduct (as a
rule Kapitulants — i.e., men who have undertaken to serve longer than
the prescribed time) ; (2) from the best pupils of the non-commis-
sioned officers' schools who enter the infantry and artillery as non-
coms. ; (3) from amongst the Kapitulants from other regiments.

Non-coms, are advanced according to length of service ; but the
chief ranks of them, Feldwebel (infantry) and Wachtmeister (cavalry
and artillery), are selected according to their capacity for the post.

The officers of the army are selected in time of peace as follows :
(1) From amongst the pupils of the Cadet Corps, who are transferred
to the army as lieutenants or as ensigns (Fdnnriche) ; (2) From young
men educated at some other first-class educational institute, who enter
the army as Fahnenjunker. A Fahnenjunker joins with the rank of
a private soldier, and serves at first as an ordinary private in order
to learn the elementary duties of a soldier. He rises to the rank of
Gefreiter (lance-corporal), and subsequently becomes a Fahnrich
(ensign), a post of non-commissioned officer's rank, filled only by
candidates for officers' rank. A Fahnenjunker, in order to become
Fahnrich (ensign) must have passed either an abiturient examination
(from a gymnasium) or the Fahnrich examination, and must have
obtained a certificate after having served for some months with the
regiment. Before being advanced to the rank of lieutenant a Fahnrich
must, as a rule, have attended a military academy, have passed the
examination required of an officer, have obtained the necessary certi-
ficate from his superior officer, and must be elected by the corps of
officers of the regiment in which he desires to serve. Afterwards
officers mount the ladder according to length of service, except in
special cases, when they are promoted on account of special merit.

The pay of an ordinary private in the German army is 35 pf .
(approximately 4id.) per day, from which 13 pf. (about IJd.) is
deducted as his contribution to the menage, for the supply of a warm
dinner, and coffee or soup in the morning. Besides this he receives
a loaf of coarse black bread (called Commis-Brod), value 3 pf . (about
$d.), per diem. The balance in coin left is 22 pf. (roughly, 2|- d.). In
the Berlin garrison, as well as at Burg-Hohensollern and Beeskow,
the men receive 28 pf. (3T3yd.) per day after all deductions.

The population of Germany, which, according to the census of
1900, amounted to 56,367,178 (of whom 27,737,247 were males), is
now estimated at about 58,000,000. The strength of the army in
1904 is, on its peace footing, 606,872, composed as follows :

1904 THE GEEMAN ARMY SYSTEM G15

Officers 24,374

Non-commissioned officers 81,958

Bandsmen 17,023

Sanitary assistants and artisans . . . * 7,888

Army surgeons 2,202

Veterinary surgeons ....... 679

Gunmakers and saddlers 1,104

Rank and file (including Kapitulants) . . . 470,591

Paymasters, &c 1,055

606,872

The army estimates for 1904-5 are 31,673,902Z.

Prussia has had ninety years' experience of universal service,
and after the Franco-German War this system was uniformly adopted
for the whole German Empire. The system has become engrafted
upon the life of the nation, and the people have steadily prospered
under it. There is no desire to abolish it. The question then is —
Is universal service the system the Germans want, and does it work
well ? The only answer that can be given hereto from practical
observation is that the people of the country have become imbued
with the idea that military training, to which all men in the country
without distinction of rank or station are submitted, though a system
of stern discipline, accompanied by a good many hardships, develops
a sense of duty, a readiness to obey authority, self-restraint, and all
the higher manly qualities which ensure success to a people. It
would not be possible, as things now stand, to induce Germans to
believe that such a result was attainable for them under any other
method. They have all gone through the mill ; and although the
physical strain required from the manhood of the nation during the
early period of training is very great, and although some of its details
are warmly criticised, the system in the main is approved. In his
Memorandum to King Friedrich Wilhelm the Third in 1817 General
von Boy en made use of the following remark : * Who is it that will
venture to blame the Dutch for using more for the construction of their
dykes than all other nations put together ? It is their position that
necessitates it. But our dykes are the army ! ' The same argument
for the existence of a strong army is used by all Germans nowadays.
One must not, above all, forget that a German, when he submits to
serve, knows that his time is not to be taken up for wars of wanton
aggression, but that he is only being trained in order to be able to
defend the country if assailed.

In 1806 the Prussian army amounted to 200,000 men on paper,
of which hardly 150,000 could be brought on to the field. The peace
footing of the German army of to-day is a little under 607,000 ; and
its war strength would amount to about four millions. In 1806 many
of the men were insufficiently clothed ; to-day every man would be
at his place punctually and fully accoutred within a couple of days
of the declaration of war ; moreover every officer of the army would

616 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

know exactly what he had to do on a declaration of war, for every
year every officer of the German army receives precise orders as to
what he must do the moment war is declared, and consequently
every officer would be at or on his way to his post, without a moment's
delay, ready for the commencement of hostilities. Colonel Lonsdale
Hale aptly exemplified this in the July number of this Review.

It is its readiness to strike in any direction the moment the country
is in danger that is the boast of those responsible for the efficiency
of the German Army, and this is regarded as the main proof that the
system works well by providing the country with an efficient army.
In this connection T should like to draw attention to the great advan-
tage Germany enjoyed when collecting her force (though a small one)
for the small war in which she is now engaged in South-West Africa.
Volunteers in plenty responded to the call to arms, and they were
all fully trained soldiers ; so that before starting it was not necessary
to teach them their work. Each batch of reinforcements was assembled
for five days at Doberitz Camp in order to drill together, after which
they were ready to start and to join the main force in Africa for imme-
diate service. Despite, too, their inexperience in the transport of
men and horses, reliable reports that have reached Berlin go to show
that the transport has been so far carried out with precision and
success. Their success in the transport of horses has been quite
creditable. On one transport, out of 923 horses, only three died
during the voyage, all the rest, despite the heat, arriving in good
condition. They were kept fit by means of daily exercise on
board.

Immense importance is attached by the German military authori-
ties to the conduct and training of the officers and non-commissioned
officers of the army. It is impressed upon both these classes that
in an army composed of men of all grades of intelligence their conduct
and their knowledge of their duty are subject to the fierce light of
criticism, and that besides the healthier elements which come under
their command there are many who are morally weak and vitiated.
All these men when they leave the army relate their experience broad-
cast amongst all classes of the population ; hence the officers and non-
commissioned officers must necessarily pose as instructors and trainers.
One may be permitted to say that in inculcating this ideal on the
country the authorities unwarrantably presume that an officer, as
such, must possess virtues not shared in to the same degree by civilians.
In doing so they commit an egregious error. German officers as a
class are no better and no worse in regard to ideas of honour and
morality than those of their civilian fellow-citizens who are upright
men. It is an uncalled for and wholly unjustifiable act of arrogance
to claim more, and the language used in military books on this subject
is decidedly mawkish and exaggerated, justifying much that is said
against the prevailing spirit of ' militarism,' notably in Prussia.

1904 THE GERMAN AEMY SYSTEM 617

Some persons abroad have recently been staggered by the expo-
sures of cases of gross cruelty amongst the non-commissioned officer
class, and of isolated cases of vile profligacy of certain officers of the
German Army. The publication of sensational novels on these subjects,
disclosing real facts that were not disputed, seemed to confirm the
view that a canker was gnawing at the idol of the German nation,
and that the cause of the evil was excessive militarism.

All human institutions are subject to abuses ; but the excrescences
exposed in these books could no more be laid at the door of the whole
body of officers and non-commissioned officers than could a whole
people or family be blamed for the outbreak of a particular plague
or malady.

The obscure subaltern who conceived the idea of attracting public
notice by exposing to the world the sins of his brother-officers and
their womenfolk, can only claim credit for misleading the world into
supposing that the profligacy of eleven or twelve officers of the battalion
of a frontier army service corps was a reflex of the conduct and cha-
racter of the whole German Army. His work was acknowledged
to possess no literary merit. What opinion must chivalrous England
have of such a man who goes over to a foreign country to turn into
money the knowledge he has acquired of the debauchery of a few
unfortunate whilom comrades ?

In a conversation I had with the Prussian War Minister last winter
on the subject his Excellency remarked : ' Foreign countries will do
well in their own interest not to let themselves be misled into believing
that the German Army can be judged by unfortunate cases of this
kind, or into supposing that the incidents of Forbach are in any
sense typical.'

Let me now speak in general terms of what an average German
raw recruit has to go through in the army. It must not be forgotten
that such a man, especially if he comes from the country, is appallingly
gauche and exceedingly backward in ordinary intelligence. If this
fact can be properly grasped, it may be easier -to comprehend why
the strict military training has had so beneficent an effect upon the
people of Germany. And to this fact must be added another — namely,
that under modern conditions of the labour market, coupled with
admitted hardships connected with military service, Germany would
be utterly unable to raise or maintain an army adequate to her needs
that had to be voluntarily recruited and paid for in competition with
the labour market.

An ordinary raw recruit when he conies to his regiment in October
vhas very little idea of the qualities that render a man sharp and suit-
able for responsible employment, and at this critical stage of physical
•development a very large proportion of the men are insufficiently
nourished. How does he look and feel in comparison herewith one
or two months hence ? What is his daily life in the regiment ? He
VOL. LVI— No. 332 T T

618 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

rises early, having slept in a large airy room — in summer at four, in
winter at five o'clock (the infantry at six) ; and he is trained to habits
of 'physical cleanliness, very minute instructions being carried out
on this point. His body and feet must be kept properly cleansed ;
his linen has to be regularly changed ; his bed is kept scrupulously
tidy ; each man is required to have his own glass and tooth-brush.
He must be dressed in a quarter of an hour, and the hours of drill
and instruction in the various things a soldier must know &c., which
begin directly after the early breakfast, must be punctually kept
during the day. The midday meal is at eleven o'clock, after which
there is a pause till one, followed by drill or other work in the after-
noon. Both the midday meal and seven o'clock supper are good
and plentiful repasts. In summer the men go to bed at ten, and in
winter at nine o'clock ; and it may truly be said that when the hour
for turning in arrives the men are honestly tired and ready to sleep
after the day's work.

In addition to their ordinary drill they get plenty of instruction
about matters of every-day life, and this serves to sharpen their wits
and their memory. They leave their regiment with a stock of increased
knowledge, and are physically stronger ; and the common soldiers can,
if they desire it, acquire a little knowledge of geography, history, and
arithmetic ; and other instruction is open to them also. If a man
capitulates and serves for twelve years, obtaining a good conduct
certificate, he is sure of a good appointment in the public service or
in private service. Should he prefer to quit at the termination of
his two or three years' service, it is quite certain that he will have
acquired habits of order and regularity which will serve him in good
stead all his life. The experience gained in manoeuvre time will have
widened his vision of things and sharpened his intellect. On return-
ing to the occupation of a civilian he is in every sense a more useful
man. Every employer of labour will tell you so. The man who has
served in the army is preferred to the man who has not served. The
former usually can and does work better and more intelligently than
the latter, and is in general more reliable at his work. Even amongst
one another, the reputation of the former is higher. Frequently in
cases of dispute the latter is silenced with the reproach : ' Du bist
nicht einmal Soldat gewesen ! ' ( ' You have not even served as a
soldier.' )

Take the case of an artisan, a mechanic, a tailor, a bootmaker, or
a smith. In general some of these find work of their own trade in
the regiment. As farrier a man can certainly acquire, while soldier-
ing in the cavalry or horse artillery, fresh professional knowledge. In
none of the smaller crafts do the men suffer perceptibly much. A
factory hand is more likely to be engaged by an employer if he has
served in the army than if he has not served. In the case of skilled
labourers, or of men from the intellectual professions, insofar as they

1904 THE GERMAN ABMY SYSTEM 619

do not take advantage of the right to serve as volunteers for one year
after the age of twenty-three, there is an acknowledged disadvantage ;
but, as everybody is subject to the same inconvenience, the loss to
the individual is proportionately less. An employer probably does
not keep an appointment open for a man for a couple of years ; but it
is not permissible to dismiss Reservists, officers or men, who are called
in to serve up to eight weeks, and they draw their pay or wages the
whole time they are serving.

To say that barrack life in Germany is deteriorating to the cha-
racter is to beg the question ; but to affirm that it is enfeebling or
paralysing is incomprehensible. Many of the details of the methods
of the German non-commissioned officers are obviously open to
criticism ; but the chief point to deal with is the general effect of the
system. A glimpse at the broad shoulders and full chest of the average
man in a German town will at once belie the assertion that soldiering
enfeebles or paralyses the male population. Let me cite a case that
has recently come under my own personal notice, that of a young
man engaged in a large retail house of business in Berlin, and thought
by his family to be consumptive. The doctor passed him last autumn,
thinking service with the army would do him good. He and his family
were miserable, but his older friends, who had themselves served
their time in the army and knew what the life and its effects were
like, assured him that he would return home a changed man. Only
two months ago I met him and hardly recognised him. His eyes were
bright, his chest was broader, and there was no longer a sign of ill-
health about him. The man declared that he was very happy and
grateful that he had been accepted to serve as a soldier.

It is surely an arbitrary assumption to submit that compulsory
service destroys like dry-rot the free and natural forces in contact
with it. Certainly this does not hold good of Germany; and the
statement that Germans feel a horror of universal service is, except
in a small minority of cases, wholly incorrect. Indeed, amongst the
people — especially in the villages — a man who has not been selected
to serve owing to physical infirmity or other cause loses caste. The
girh do not even care to dance with him. It is generally found that
those who have not served as soldiers are the ones who rail against
military service. Foreigners who talk as if Germans felt a horror
of serving in the army should make an excursion to a Teuton village
where a regiment is about to be billeted for a day or two. Every
adult who has kept his soldier's cap or is the possessor of decorations
brings them out for the occasion and revels in an interchange of
recollections of his corps. If, perchance, a man should have to lodge
the son of one of his former officers during manoeuvres, his joy is
unbounded. A household receives 80 pf. (about 9|rf.) per day for
every common soldier billeted upon it, but the goodman does not in
general hesitate to spend considerably more in order to give every

T T 2

£20 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

possible comfort — in fact, he literally kills the fatted calf for his guest's
entertainment. The allowance for an officer is 2s. 6d. per day. I know
of a German diplomatist who for many years had been absent abroad as
his country's representative in Eastern capitals. On one occasion, on
arriving in Berlin, he was startled by his cabby turning round to greet
him in loud and joyful tones : ' Guten Tag, Herr Leutnant ! guten Tag.
Wie geht's, Herr Leutnant ! ' Years before his Excellency had been
the man's lieutenant, and the Berlin Jehu's memory and sense of
military comradeship were as fresh as ever. Similar stories could be
repeated by the thousand, and anecdotes of this kind are those that
reflect the spirit prevailing amongst the people on the subject of the
army.

It is a matter of common experience that weakly recruits grow
strong through the daily training, the regular life, and the good and
abundant food they enjoy with the regiment. This applies especially
to those who come from the confined occupation of town life. The
constant movement in the fresh air restores them to health and
strength. Men, who could at first hardly ride for an hour, are able
to sit in the saddle the whole day without being fatigued ; those who
at first were bad marchers and got sore feet improve so rapidly owing
to the habits of cleanliness that they acquire that they no longer
think anything of from thirty to forty kilometres (twenty to twenty-
five miles) per day with their heavy knapsacks for marching order on
their back ; and recruits, who on joining as gunners could hardly
raise a laffette with two hands, treat the same work before long as
mere child's play. On the other hand really authentic cases of
recruits suffering permanent physical injury from the effects of the
regular work required of men in the army are so few as to be not
worth mentioning.

Admitting to the full that compulsory service entails a certain
amount of dislocation in industrial life, it is quite absurd to say that
the manhood of the nation is paralysed in Germany, or that the activity
of the whole people is arrested in its development during the time
of service. If one goes into the question in an unprejudiced frame
of mind, it will be found that, though the workers from the factories
and the numerous trades and professions of the country are called
upon to interrupt their life's work, every workman stands in this
regard on an equality with his fellows. Further, although he is not
earning wages for two years when with the colours, he is being kept
well in every respect at the expense of the State, and is acknowledged
to be acquiring qualities which render him afterwards a more accept-
able worker, so that his capital value is substantially greater at the
end of his time of service than it was when he joined as a raw recruit.
In many cases this capital value becomes considerably enhanced.

Considering that Germany has made enormous industrial progress
during the years when the greatest calls have been made upon

1904 THE GERMAN ARMY SYSTEM 621

her population for military service, and has even developed into
Britain's chief European rival in the fields of manufacture, trade,
and commerce, whilst Britain has persistently adhered to her
voluntary system of service, it cannot be pretended that if com-
pulsory military service be required of the male adult population
of a country individual or national progress must be necessarily
checked.

J. L. BASHFORD.

622 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

ARE REMARKABLE PEOPLE REMARK-
ABLE-LOOKING?

(AN EXTRAVAGANZA}

A LITTLE while ago, when staying in a country-house, I happened
to remark quite casually, in mixed company, and without thinking
what might come of it, that I believed most remarkable people (people,
I meant, who had unusually distinguished themselves in any parti-
cular walk of life) were remarkable likewise, as a rule, in their outward
appearance. Not handsome, necessarily, or even always pleasing to
the eye, but that there was generally something unusual, and dis-
tinguished, about them — something which seemed to compel those
who fell in with them by accident to turn round and look at them a
second time, and ask themselves who such a one, or such another,
might possibly be ; an assertion which met by no means with general
approval. ' Name ! name ! ' one of my fellow-guests (to whom I
shall allude henceforward as ' the Scoffer ') called out derisively : but
upon the spur of the moment I could only think of Prince Bismarck,
the late Lord Salisbury, and Mr. Cecil Rhodes in support of my theory.
This led the company to imagine wrongly that by the expression
' remarkable ' I meant to imply something of heroic proportions and
colossal build, men who towered a head and shoulders above their
fellows, and I felt bound, therefore, to mention a few remarkable-
looking small men, and cited Napoleon Bonaparte and Lord Nelson,
as many people might have done in my place, adding that I did not
believe Julius Csesar, or even Shakespeare, would have passed as tall
men in the Britain of to-day.

This, they all said, was rather unfair. The three heroes in question,
having achieved such world-wide renown, had come to be regarded
less after the fashion of men than of demigods. Julius Csosar's
prestige was so enormous that it was absolutely essential to his dignity
that he should be depicted in an idealised form. Shakespeare's bust
at Stratford-upon-Avon had been a good deal tampered with, and it
might be as well, perhaps, to leave the immortal bard out of the question
altogether, lest we might provoke a discussion upon the Baconian
theory, to which none of the party felt equal upon a particularly hot

1904 REMARKABLE-LOOKING MEN 623

day. The fact that Lord Nelson had lost both an arm and an eye
was, they said, quite enough in itself to make him ' remarkable,'
whilst as to the great Napoleon, like Julius Caesar, he was by common
consent treated almost conventionally, and depended for his effect
very much upon his crossed arms and general's cocked hat.

' I do not believe,' said the Scoffer, ' that if we were to see him in
plain clothes, carrying a small black handbag, and getting into an
omnibus in the Strand, it would ever occur to us that he was remark-
able-looking at all ! '

They would prefer, they said, that I should only give modern
examples in proof of what I had advanced ; people I had known
personally, or that, without a formal introduction, I had conversed
with, or had opportunities of studying quite close at hand.

' In order to judge correctly as to whether a man is really remark-
able or not,' said one, whom I will call ' the Seeker after Truth,' ' we
must have come under his direct magnetic influence ; vibrated at
the touch of his hand, looked into the depths of his eyes, and dwelt
upon the peculiar tones of his voice.'

Whereupon I hastily mentioned Field-Marshal Lord Wolseley,
Mr. James M'Neill Whistler, and his Holiness the late Pope, for ' Neces-
sity,' as the proverb says, ' makes strange bedfellows,' although in
the present case the necessity was not urgent; names that were
grudgingly approved, though the company was all for stripping Lord
Wolseley of his uniform, Mr. Whistler of his white lock and rimless
eyeglass, and the late Pope of the gorgeous accessories connected with
his sacred office, and subjecting one and all of them to the ' small-
black-handbag-and-omnibus-in-the-Strand' test, from which I knew
that the first two at any rate would emerge absolutely triumphant.
About the late Pope, however, I had some misgivings. The Triple
Crown is fraught with such imperishable associations, St. Peter's is
an exceptionally impressive mise-en-scene, and the ' small-black-hand-
bag-and-omnibus-in-the-Strand ' test is such a very severe one !

Then up and spake the irrelevant lady friend, who seems omni-
present, and related an anecdote.

A good many years ago now (for, alas ! how Time flies !) she
happened to get into a first-class railway carriage at Waterloo Station,
bound for her country home, which was then situated a little way
beyond Aldershot. Just as the train was starting, in jumped a dark
slim young man, evidently a foreigner, and ' looking very like a waiter,
only that he had such beautiful manners.' He asked her if she objected
to smoking, to which she replied in the negative, and, the ice once
broken, they thereupon engaged in ' most agreeable conversation,'
which lasted until the train stopped at Farnborough. Here, impelled
by she knew not what, she ventured to ask this most agreeable young
gentleman his name. ' I am Alfonso ! ' he answered briskly, as he
leapt lightly on to the platform, and lo ! it was actually the late King

624 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Oct.

of Spain, father of the reigning monarch, studying then as a cadet at
Sandhurst (so she had since been told), and she had had ' not the
slightest idea of it, you know ! ' One ' might have knocked her down
with a feather then and there ! ' &c.

We all admitted that the ' first-class railway carriage test ' was
also highly crucial, and that only a few choice spirits could hope to
emerge from it with flying colours, and we assured her that she need
not therefore reproach herself with undue obtuseness ; and I reminded
her of how, according to a well-known legend, King Henry the Eighth
was in the habit of going about ' incog.' amongst his citizens, and of
how upon one occasion he had partaken of supper at the house of a
cobbler, who had entertained him without having had the slightest
suspicion of the name and quality of his guest. A surprising circum-
stance, as I have always thought, for I feel myself that I should have
been able to recognise ' bluff King Hal ' anywhere — even in a first-
class railway carriage travelling from Waterloo Station to Farn-
borough !

' There is an Oriental proverb,' said the Seeker, ' which says that
whenever God vouchsafes high office to one of His creatures, He gives
him also the dignity and the ability wherewith to fill it becomingly,
and, above all, to enable him to look the part. What is this, however,
but our old enemy " Prestige " in Eastern garb ? To be able to say
truly whether a man is " remarkable " looking, we must see him
deprived of everything but his master-mind, and the soul which may,
or may not, be looking out at us from the eyes that are its windows.'

' In a word,' said the Scoffer, ' we must apply the " small-black-
handbag-and-omnibus-in-the-Strand " test, and see if he will bear
that " becomingly " before we record our final vote.'

' We will give you till luncheon-time to make out your case,' said
the Seeker. ' And remember, no heroes of antiquity ! All people-
of our own time, whether dead or alive, and with whom you have
been more or less personally acquainted.'

As soon as I was alone I seated myself at a writing-table in the
library, which was liberally provided with pens, ink, and paper. I
knew that any endeavour I might make to justify my theory would
be sure, in the first instance, to rise up before me like a kind of picture,
as this is the way my mind always works, and that the remarkable -
looking people, once they had appeared, would neither stand upon
the order of their coming or of their going, nor follow any acknow-
ledged laws of precedence. I knew that I should have no control
over them whatever, but that they would ' gang their ain gait ' whilst
I looked on as an irresponsible spectator ; and I thought that the best
thing for me to do, therefore, would be merely to set down in writing
a description of what they said and did when they presented them-
selves, and then let the company judge for themselves as to who had
the best of the argument. And then I said to myself, ' Might not

1904 EEMAEKABLE-LOOKING MEN 625

just the least, least little touch of not ill-natured caricature enliven-
what may otherwise prove a somewhat dreary description of a few-
elderly gentlemen who have chanced to distinguish themselves in
some " particular walk of life " ? ' (For people have not, as a rule,
done distinguishing themselves until middle age, or even later.)
' Let us not approach the subject, at any rate, merely in a conscien-
tious spirit of labelling and cataloguing, even if we aim at giving
correct descriptions,' I said to myself.

' / said to myself ' ! . . . Here is a great psychological mystery !
A common figure of speech suggestive of the dual personality from
which we are all doomed more or less to suffer, and from which, alas !"
there is no permanent escape. Who is ' / ' ? (the interlocutor in the-
present instance), and who is ' Myself ' ? (too often its feeble victim
and tool rather than its willing accomplice). Is it not evident that
each represents a distinct and separate individuality, and that this
fact is responsible for many of our human inconsistencies ?

' Myself (as who could have better reason for knowing than the
present writer ?) has always been a gloomy, pessimistic personality
having no confidence whatever in itself or others (the two are very
apt to go together). It is afraid of everything and everybody, from
drunken men upwards — is prone to self-abnegation and asceticism,
and is of so humble and retiring a disposition that I believe it would
rather die than take the highest place at a feast, or the liver- wing of a
chicken at a table-cFhote dinner.

' /,' on the contrary, is just as mischievous an imp as was ever let
loose from the nether world to work off its superabundant vitality in
a cooler climate. It delights in scandals and imbroglios ; in ' hair-
breadth 'scapes,' and in sailing as near the wind as it possibly can
without actually capsizing, just for the sake of making people open
their eyes. Like the traditional sapeur, nothing is sacred to it, and
one never quite knows what it may take it into its head to say or do-
next.

In a word, a more unsatisfactory and irrepressible colleague was
never imposed upon an inoffensive human organism, ever since this
world of mysteries began first to spin round upon its pivot, and I
could well have dispensed with its interference at this particular
moment, just as I was about to describe certain ' potent, grave, and
reverend signiors,' for it has no respect whatever for anybody, from
the Emperor William downwards, and is all for reducing everything

upon our planet to the level of ' 's curling-pins ' or ' 's

little liver pills.'

I was rather proud of the vivid manner in which I succeeded in
evolving the ' omnibus in the Strand ' out of my inward consciousness.
There it stood, before my mental vision, an omnibus of unusual magni-
tude, drawn up against the kerb-stone just opposite a shop which
supplied dairy produce, in the window of which I could see only a

626 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

basket of new-laid eggs, two pats of butter, and a small white statuette
of a cow, so that the plate-glass, being unobscured by goods and chattels,
acted as a mirror, reflecting, as it were, a dream within a dream, as I
stood hard by and contemplated it.

By-and-by my group of remarkable-looking men began to assemble
upon the pavement. As though by tacit consent, each one carried a
small black handbag. As I felt that I had been somewhat unduly
limited by the rules of the game, I could not afford to omit the first
•examples that had occurred to my mind in support of my theory, for
I was afraid when I saw the gigantic size of the omnibus that I might
not have known enough remarkable people to fill it. Fortunately,
no prohibition had been imposed upon me with regard to the nationality
of the occupants, so that I was not altogether surprised when, acting,
as it seemed, quite spontaneously, and without any conscious invoca-
tion upon my own part, out stepped from the midst of the group the
great German Chancellor, the ' Man of Iron and of Blood,' and walked,
with heavy tread, upon his resounding ' Bluchers,' towards its open
door. Awed by his mighty presence and strong mastiff-face — the
complexion of which bore traces presumably due to his favourite
beverage of mingled porter and champagne — several of the passers-by
looked frightened, whilst two small boys stood, as though paralysed,
with mouths wide open, upon the pavement.

And now, who have we here ? . . . Ah, I must confess this is
something of a surprise ! . . . ' My dear General, how are you ?
This is indeed an unexpected pleasure ! . . . E una vera gioia per me
di vedzrlo ! '

Yes ; there is actually the great General Garibaldi himself ; the
maker of Italy, following upon the heavy footsteps of the creator of
the German Empire ; looking hale and hearty, in spite of the years
that have elapsed since our last meeting, and I perceive at once that
he goes far towards proving the truth of my contention. Forbidden
by the arbitrary spirit of my day-dream to appear in the well-known
flannel shirt (which, like the more capacious ' macintosh,' has now
permanently taken its position in our language), and buttoned up,
as he now is, in an ordinary (a very ordinary) frock-coat, he is still
undeniably ' remarkable,' for even the Quakerish-looking silk hat
which he has been prevailed upon to assume instead of the limp
"* wide-awake ' which has become historical, is powerless to conceal
the splendid leonine head and the calm unflinching gaze of the hollow
fatalistic eyes. . . . All the same, I do not perceive in his lineaments
any of the fierce pugnacity which is generally apparent upon the
countenance of the born soldier. His is rather the earnest benevolent
face of a great thinker, whose massive brain having once conceived
the notion of a glorious ideal, is determined to embody it at all hazards,
and who counts for nothing the mere physical excitement of laying
about him. In other circumstances, I can imagine him as a learned

1904 REMARKABLE-LOOKING MEN 627

professor of languages, or even a confidential family physician, but
then I feel sure that he would have compiled some wonderful en-
cyclopaedia, or compounded some extraordinary elixir. With that
remarkable physique, he was bound, according to my theory, to
make a figure in the world somehow.

As foreigners of BO much distinction, he and Prince Bismarck
have been given the pas. Who will get into the omnibus next ?

Scarcely has this question occurred to me when one of the most
remarkable men of our epoch (of any epoch, I may venture to say
without fear of contradiction) separates himself from the assembled
group, and advances, leaning upon the arm of the trusty henchman
who, alas ! has lately departed from our midst. The appearance
of ' Dizzy ' is too well known and remembered to need description.
Surely it was as ' remarkable,' even amongst the ' chosen people '
from whom he descended, as was his career, and I am glad that the
caricature which appeared, many years ago, in Vanity Fair, and which
represents him and the late Lord Rowton (then Mr. Montagu Corry)
walking arm in arm, as was often their wont, reproduces it so vividly
for the benefit of posterity. It is the work, I believe, of poor Carlo
Pellegrini, himself one of the most grotesque of living caricatures that
was ever launched, ready made, upon a career of art and self-
indulgence, but a man of undoubted talent nevertheless.

Thus it is that the man who made his Queen an Empress, his wife a
Viscountess, his private secretary a Baron, and himself a ' belted Earl,'
advances now, leaning upon the arm of that same secretary, and takes
up his position inside the omnibus. A whole camel-load of small black
handbags could never have made him look commonplace, whilst the
mind controlling the low oracular voice, whose every utterance was
epigrammatic, had no need of ' steering ' in this or that particular
direction, lest it should fasten upon subjects uninteresting to his
hearers, as was sometimes the case (according to Lady Ribblesdale)
with that of his great rival, Mr. Gladstone. One need never
fear, when listening to Benjamin Disraeli, that ' precious moments '
might be wasted in discussions about ' tallow-candles, crockery,
poultry-shops, the cultivation of strawberries,' upon ' bumping
cabs,' or the respective merits of thick or thin tumblers and wine-
glasses.1

Only twice did I come under his ' direct magnetic influence,'
though I had often been his neighbour at crowded assemblies. Upon
the first of these occasions a curious mal entendu arose. It was at a
large party at the late Lady Salisbury's in Arlington Street, when
Lord Rowton led him up to me and formally presented him. We sat
down together upon a sofa, when he began by expressing the pleasure
he felt at having at last ' become acquainted with his dear goddaughter.'
His conversation was so delightful that I did not like to interrupt it
1 See article by Lady Ribblesdale in this Review, April 19C4.

628 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

by asking him the meaning of this opening phrase, and I parted from
him a good deal mystified, Lord Rowton having previously arranged
a little dinner for the following week, at his house in South Audley
Street, in order that we might improve the acquaintance. Now, it
happened that just before this a lady who was a near relation o3
mine had met the Prime Minister (as he then was) when staying at
Alton Towers. To her, too, his conversation had proved delightful,
He possessed the royal gift of remembering (or of appearing to re-
member) all about one's ' birth, parentage, and education,' and o5
seeming to be interested in everything that he imagined might be of
interest to those with whom he was conversing, and he immediately
informed her that her great-grandfather (who was my own great-
grandfather also) — an old gentleman who looked upon himself as a
poet and a patron of Literature and the Drama '2 — had been the
very first person to whom he had submitted the proofs of his first
book in order to ask his opinion of its merits. As this seemed to
imply some sort of intimacy with my family, and as I had neveir
known who my godfather really was (so little interest had he ever
evinced in my acquirement of edifying matter ' in the vulgar tongue,*
and as he had never given me so much as a penny whistle by way oi
remembrance), * 7 ' said to ' myself ' that it was by no means im-
possible that Lord Beaconsfield had actually been the godfather
hitherto undiscovered, starting from which vague supposition, ' I '
(impulsive bottle-imp that it is !) jumped at once to the conclusion
that not only was this just possible, but very probable indeed, and
sent me off to Lord Rowton' s dinner thrilling with emotions which
would scarcely have been out of place upon the occasion of a reunion
with a long-lost parent. Here an explanation awaited me.

Lord Beaconsfield had spoken of me as his ' goddaughter ' because
I had selected ' Violet Fane ' as a nom de plume, the name of the
heroine of one of his early novels. (Nom de guerre, I am aware, is
the correct expression, even when it is applied to a ' pen-name,' but
whenever I write it the printers always take upon themselves to
correct me. They cannot abide anything but nom de plume, and
of course one wants to keep well with one's printers.) He had
always wished to ask me whether I had chosen this name for any
particular reason ? Whether I had especially admired the character
of his heroine, and had felt drawn towards her by sympathy, or
whether I had merely selected the name because it was such a beautiful
one ?

When Lord Rowton told me this I felt greatly embarrassed,
Truth to tell, although I had, years ago, read Vivian Grey (the novel
in which the character of ' Violet Fane ' is introduced), I was too
young at the time to appreciate it properly. It had made but little

2 Sir James Bland Burges-Lamb, Bart., sometime Parliamentary Under-Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs, and a prolific author both in prose and verse.

1904 REMARKABLE-LOOKING MEN 629

impression upon me, and poor ' Violet Fane ' was utterly forgotten
when, quite by accident, I unconsciously appropriated her name for

* literary purposes.'

What was to be done ? Time pressed, but I was, fortunately, the
first arrival. Had Lord Rowton a copy of Vivian Grey at hand ?
Yes ; together with all the other works of his illustrious chief. In the

* tinkling of a bed-post,' as the saying goes (is it ' tinkling ' or

* twinkling ' ? The brass rings above my bed-posts ' tinkle ' and

* twinkle ' as well), the book was produced. It was a two-volume
edition, and, hurriedly seizing upon it, I flew with it into an inner
chamber. My plan was to scamper through as much of the novel as
I possibly could before Lord Beaconsfield's arrival, and then to trust
to Providence. I am a slow reader upon ordinary occasions, but
now I read, and read, and read, as I have never done before or since.
Poor Vivian Grey must have felt as if some hungry ogress was tearing
at his vitals. It gave me some idea of what the process known as
4 cramming ' must be like, and although I had no time to ' mark,
learn, and inwardly digest ' the subject-matter as it deserved, I
gradually felt that I was becoming more prepared to meet any emer-
gency which might be likely to arise. I came upon Miss Fane towards
the end of the fifth chapter, and when I read that ' the flush of her
eheek was singular ; it was a brilliant pink ; you may find it in the
lip of an Indian shell,' and that ' the blue veins played beneath her
arched forehead like lightning beneath a rainbow,' I guessed at once
that she would not be long for this world. As a matter of fact, she
barely lived through ten chapters, and then expired, in true early
Victorian fashion, in the arms of Vivian Grey, who thereupon ' gave
a loud shriek, and fell upon the senseless form of VIOLET FANE ! '
The name, I remember, was printed in capitals, and I must confess
that never did death of inoffensive human creature afford me more
unmitigated relief.

As I finished reading of this catastrophe I heard the Prime Minister,
with slow and weary footsteps, ascending the staircase.

We were a partie carree ; Lord Rowton's sister, the late Miss Alice
Corry, then in very delicate health, being the only lady present besides
myself, and even before the removal of the fish Lord Beaconsfield
began to examine me upon the subject of ' Violet Fane.' Which of
her personal characteristics did I particularly admire ? Why had I
wished especially to identify myself with her ? . . . Had I been
interested in her merely on account of her early death ? &c.

I remarked that she had, at least, died in the arms of her lover.
It was all that I could think of in reply, knowing, as I did, so very
little about her !

' And we agree in thinking that that is a death worth living for ? '
said the oracular voice.

Of course I agreed ; and then, in spite of what I have just said to

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

the contrary, I confess that a little judicious 'steering ' was necessary
in order to divert the author of Violet Fane's being from dilating
upon some of her subtler psychological aspects, which in my hurry I
had had no time to ' coach ' myself up in.

But I must return to my omnibus. Who is to get into it next ?
The late Lord Salisbury and Mr. Gladstone both come forward ; the
first with a sort of ponderous insouciance, the latter striding in some-
vaiat aggressive fashion, with that febrile glitter in his dark eyes,
beneath their rugged brows, which those who knew him in the flesh
are not likely to have forgotten. He is so abnormally observant, and
so sensitive to his own impressions (if such a phrase be admissible),
that he can be pleased or angry at trifles with which hardly anybody
else would be concerned at all. He delights in looking in at the shop
windows ; but if the white cow at the butterman's opposite happens
to have been represented with it 3 horns curled the wrong way, the
inaccuracy might very possibly annoy him for a whole afternoon, for
he has had good reason, as we most of us know, to become an authority
upon the subject of cow's horns, and their uses and abuses !

A lady of my acquaintance once told me an anecdote illustrative
of this curious sensitiveness to unimportant detail. She was sitting
next to Mr. Gladstone at a London dinner-party, having for a neigh-
bour upon her other side the late Lord Granville. Towards the
middle of the banquet Mr. Gladstone took up a menu-card and said
in a loud voice, presumably in order that Lord Granville, who was
then getting rather deaf, might hear, ' This bill of fare is not written
by a French cook, but by an Italian.'' Some of his neighbours at the
board, overhearing this remark, took up their menus and began to
examine them attentively, impressed, no doubt, by the universality
of the ' Grand Old Man's ' knowledge, whose amour-propre and repu-
tation for omniscience seemed thus to become involved. Lord Gran-
ville, turning to the butler, who was hovering hard by, inquired
whether Mr. Gladstone was correct in his surmise ? When, lo ! that
functionary made answer that the chef was unquestionably a French-
man. Upon hearing this Mr. Gladstone's expressive countenance im-
mediately betrayed the greatest annoyance. He was so evidently
perturbed at having been publicly proved to be at fault that even the
butler perceived it, and having gathered some idea of the subject
under discussion, as everybody had spoken in a loud voice for the
benefit of Lord Granville, he determined to set matters to rights if
possible. Leaving the room for a while, he presently returned with
the information that although, indeed, the first cook was a pure-
blooded Frenchman (as had been already stated), a friend of his, a
young Italian pastry-cook, had looked in to help him with the sweet-
meats and the spaghetti, and that this youth had still further obliged
him by writing out some of the menu-cards, of which Mr. Gladstone's
was one. Never did human countenance display a sense of more

1904 EEMAEKA13LE-LOOKING MEN 631

radiant triumph than did his at this welcome intelligence. ' How
wonderful !'...' How extraordinary !'...' How could he pos-
sibly have known ? ' came from the company upon either side.

' By that great big " Z)," ' Mr. Gladstone answered, as, flushed with-
victory, he pointed exultingly to the menu-card.

Lord Salisbury I should imagine to have been the very antithesis
of Mr. Gladstone with regard to his estimate of trifles, and he even
seemed to treat matters which by many might have been deemed of
importance with a real or assumed indifference that was all his own.
' Imperturbable ' is the term which strikes me as being the most
applicable to a nature so absolutely free from the curse of nervous-
irritability (leaving the word ' stolid ' to serve the machinations of
his political opponents), with just enough flavour of bitter-sweet in
its composition (revealed in an occasional blandly uttered sarcasm) a&
went to prove that an unruffled temper may not always be significant
of ' the smug contentment of the fool.'

Both statesmen were worshipped in their own domestic circle, a
trying ordeal for the male temperament, which, in Lord Salisbury's
case at least, produced no insalutary results. Nobody could have
been less of a tyrant in his own home, or of an autocrat at his own.
breakfast table, or fussed and worried less about little things. I
remember, when staying at Hatfield, seeing a large dog, the beloved
friend of the family, leap up with muddy paws upon the sofa on which
Lord Salisbury was sitting. How many people, preferring immacu-
late chintz covers to any such affectionate demonstration, might have
wounded the feelings of the faithful creature by a rebuff ! But the
look of placid contentment upon the face of the great Marquis merely
became accentuated ; that was all, as he rewarded disinterested
affection with the pat that it deserved.

Opposed as these two great men have ever been in all save their
abiding religious faith, will they even endure to sit next to one another
inside my omnibus ? . . . We have rather ' a mixed lot,' I must con-
fess, though through no fault of my own! Perhaps one of^them
would like to scramble up on to the top ? ... Ah, here is dear ' Old
Tom of Chelsea.' ' The Sage of Chelsea ' would be, perhaps, more
formally respectful. The philosopher who, to quote from one of his
recent critics, ' believed only in himself.' Slightly stooping, but
wearing with an air of determination his black straw hat and short
cloak, and with his wistful eyes looking out like those of a Skye terrier
from between his thick grey hair and shaggy beard, he makes for the
omnibus, small black bag in hand. He had better take a seat next
to Prince Bismarck, who, if he does not already know him, is probably
conversant with his works, and will be pleased, no doubt, to become
personally acquainted with one whose mind is so thoroughly imbued
with the various developments of German Philosophy.

Here we have one of the genus irritdbile with a vengeance, as poor

632 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

Mrs. Carlyle could have told us to her sorrow ; another complete con-
trast to the great Lord of Hatfield. I was once present at a meeting
between Thomas Carlyle and a gentleman, at that time, I believe, an
inspector of the London School Board, who had ventured to differ
from him upon the subject of the degeneration of * Shakespeare's
England,' which the Sage gloomity pronounced to be final and irre-
mediable ; and I was a good deal amused at the ' bare bodkin ' (a very
primitive weapon, much in request in nursery warfare) with which he
saw fit to administer to his adversary his quietus. After enumerating,
with growing self-satisfaction, several of our modern national blessings,
.the School Board official paused for a reply from the great man, who,
tiowever, preserved a dogged silence, his lips meanwhile wearing an
ominous smile, which, as his friends well knew, was indicative of
* the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn.' Mistaking this smile for one of
approval, the infatuated inspector went on with his list of national
advantages and improvements, turning to the Sage at the conclusion
of every sentence with a ' Now, Mr. Carlyle, what do you think ? '
which I can well imagine to have been rather irritating to a super-
sensitive nature. I cannot remember what all the institutions were
for which he thought that we of these latter days ought to be so
unboundedly grateful, but I know that he wound up with an enthusi-
astic panegyric upon the Volunteer movement, which he regarded
as an evidence that the courage and patriotism which had animated
the heroes of the Elizabethan era survived amongst us to the present
time. * Now, what do you think, Mr. Carlyle J ' he asked in conclu-
sion. ' I think,' answered ' Mr. Carlyle ' slowly, speaking in his
broad Lowland Scotch, in a tone of concentrated bitterness and con-
tempt, ' that ye're aboot the most meeserable creeture that ever cradwled
upon the face of the airth ! '

Cardinal Newman and Charles Kingsley now suddenly and simul-
taneously make their appearance, the very incarnation of asceticism
(if such a phrase is allowable) and the ardent apostle of ' muscular
Christianity ' walking arm in arm ; for both (alas !) hail from the
Land of Shadows, where, we may assume, there are neither ' Essays '
nor ' Reviews,' and where all differences of opinion are at an end for
ever. They are evidently intensely in earnest, however, about some-
thing that they are discussing, and Kingsley' s overhanging brows are
knitted to a frown over the small restless grey eyes, that always
reminded me of those of a bird of prey. He is so absent-minded when
engaged in an argument, or rather he is so absorbed in the subject of
it, that he is quite capable of passing the omnibus without even seeing
it ; but the wan spare Cardinal, with the death's-head face, plucks
at his grey shooting- jacket, and they both step in.

Charles Kingsley was one of the few men I have ever known who,
although he was the very soul of sympathy and good-nature, did not
look amiable. His receding brow (and surely he was the very last

1904 REMARKABLE-LOOKING MEN 633

person whose brow ought to have receded) was nearly always clouded,
as though oppressed by the brain's acute sensibility to all the varied
problems with which it was perpetually being confronted, and for a
solution of which his keen hawk-like eyes seemed for ever to be seeking
in vain. In defiance of one of the first laws of phrenology — for the
clouded brow was narrow rather than broad — his luxuriant imagina-
tion revealed itself the moment he opened his lips, and his habitual
stammer, which, like a Greek chorus, seemed always to occur with a
wonderful appropriateness, added to, instead of detracting from, the
charm and originality of his conversation. He was particularly
delightful with children, as one might have expected the author of
The Water Babies to be ; ever ' sowing the good seed ' without arousing
their suspicions as to his intention, and directing their minds to the.
marvels of Nature and Science. The more extraordinary he could
make out these marvels to be, the better he was pleased, and the*,
better pleased, as a matter of course, were his young friends, so thatr
quite unconsciously, he sometimes yielded to the temptation oi "
dealing in a little pardonable exaggeration, his love of the marvellous .
and his keen appreciation of dramatic effect aiding and abetting,
though always in the interests of ultimate truth. This led some
people to accuse him of ' drawing the long-bow,' and I can remember
upon one occasion his taking an insinuation to this effect in such
exceedingly good part that, at the risk of seeming tiresome, I venture'
to relate the circumstances here, as an example of his tact and good-
humour. ••>•'

He was ' holding forth ' one day, when he was living at Eversley,
at the house of a near neighbour, upon the internal economy of the
planet Mars, for he delighted in starting some subject which he fancied
would be entirely unfamiliar to his hearers, who, with the exception of
the host and myself, were upon this occasion strangers to him. Having
begun by being merely speculative and conjectural, his statements,,
as he proceeded, developed a somewhat reckless ' cock-sureness,'
encouraged by the attentive attitude of his listeners, amongst whom,,,
although he was quite unaware of it, there happened to be one of the-:
greatest of living authorities upon this and other kindred subjects ; a ,
man, moreover, of the accurate, ' rule-of- thumb ' sort, having but little
sympathy with flights of the imagination. Just as the scenery of the-,
planet was being described to us with almost photographic detail, a .
dry penetrating voice interrupted with, 'Are you quite sure, Mr.
Kingsley, that your assertions are altogether accurate ? '

He was not in the least sure, and not in the least ashamed. 1
doubt whether he knew much more about the planet Mars than the.
man in the moon ; but then it was that, without betraying the slightest
annoyance, he related the following parable, which I give as nearly
as possible in his own words.

' A short time ago,' said he, ' I happened to find myself in the
VOL. LVI— No. 332 U U

634 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

ancient town of Strasbourg, when of course I went to see the great red
sandstone Cathedral with its wonderful astronomical clock. An old
woman in sabots, and with only one eye, put the clock through its
paces, and expatiated upon its accomplishments in bad German. It
does all sorts of different things, as you no doubt know. Not only
does it profess to tell you the time of day, but the day of the week,
the date of the month, the changes of the moon, and no end of useful
things besides. And then at a given time the twelve apostles make
their appearance, with other symbolical figures. And at another
given time out comes the cock, and flaps his wings, and crows thrice.
But I soon found that this poor clock, in its over-anxiety to stand
well with the public, and pay for its keep, was attempting a good deal
more than it could be reasonably expected to perform, and was con-
sequently very often at fault. " It's all very well," I said to the old
woman, "• to show off your wonderful clock, but permit me to say that
it is something of an impostor, although, perhaps, an unconscious
one. For instance, it is now just half-past eleven by railway time,
and your clock makes it out to be twelve. To-day is Tuesday, but by
your clock it is very nearly Tuesday and a half. It is the 15th day
of the month, too, whilst the clock says that it is the 16^. The
moon is in her first quarter, but according to the clock she is at the
half; and so on, with all the rest (for I do not pretend to give even
its incorrectness correctly). What have you to say, madam, in its
defence ? " Then the old woman seemed very much pained and put
out. She was a widow, it appeared, and her children were all married
or dead, and this great clock was now the only old friend that remained
to her in the world, so, naturally, she forgave it all its shortcomings.
She answered me quite angrily. " Now, how can you expect," said
she, " that a clock which tries to do so many different things can do
them all quite correctly ? " This struck home, though the old woman
never knew it, for I felt that I must very often seem to others to be
like that poor over-anxious clock. I have the advantage of it in one
respect, however. Instead of creaking and groaning when I am
wound up, I rather like being put to rights.'

This was very characteristic of the man, as was his manner of
telling the story. No detail escaped his keen powers of observation,
and sometimes, no doubt, he saw things that were hidden from the
rest of us.

It is the great Cecil Rhodes who advances next, for, as I have already
explained, there is nothing arbitrarily chronological in the order in
which ' the forms arise.' Pale, stern, indomitable, his brow requiring
only the laurel wreath of a Caesar to look the mighty self-made monarch
that he is, he comes forward as with the inevitable tread of Destiny.

Brother of those who, ere our England threw
Her arms around the world, steered out to roam,
'Neath sails of Wonder, o'er the trackless foam,

1904 REMARKABLE-LOOKING MEN 635

I think I see them standing there with you
At azure gates within yon sky so blue,

So pure, it seems like Heaven's own sapphire dome —

Standing and gazing on the chosen home
For dust of Cecil Rhodes — the wild ' World's View.'

I hear them saying, those Captains of the Past,
All of Old England's hero-pedigree,
From him who drove the Spaniard from the sea

To him who nailed his colours to the mast —

' Pray God ye be not burying there the last

Of England's sons who keep her strong and free ! ' 3

These lines, written upon the burial of Cecil Rhodes in his mausoleum
* of Nature-builded towers and bastioned piles,' in the heart of the
wild Matoppos, may not be out of place here. A leader of men, but
not indiscriminately a sympathiser with them (I shall not easily forget
the expression of his eye when he told me that he had never permitted
a black man to shake hands with him, or even to sit down in his pre-
sence), and reticent in company until his interest is aroused. Slowly
he enters the omnibus (my omnibus), and sits there in monumental
silence, his small black handbag resting upon his massive knees.

But here comes General Lord Kitchener, who will certainly indorse
the final lines of the poem just quoted — the man of all others the best
fitted to keep with the sword the vast Empire which Rhodes has
evolved and created by sheer force of an indomitable will.

Here we have the square massive brow, the stern uncompro-
mising bearing, of the man of action ; above all, of the soldier. No
matter at what period of the world's history, or in whatsoever place
one might have chanced to fall in with him, one would always have
recognised him as a fighting man. I can see him now, in my mind's
eye, a gladiator in the arena, or else, at the head of the victorious
Roman cohorts, barelegged, sandalled, wearing helmet and scaly
corselet, his cheek tanned, as now, by the fierce suns of the Libyan
desert. Then, leaping the centuries, I picture him a Huguenot, fighting
against the Ligue, or circumventing in the Low Countries the tyranny
of Spain. Or, as a moss-trooper, fighting for King Charles, or, it may
well be, for Oliver, for I can scarcely imagine that he would ever be
upon the losing side. . . .

But all this time see whom we are keeping waiting ! . . . Sir William
Vernon Harcourt is trying with difficulty to squeeze into the omnibus,
and just behind him stands the late Mr. W. E. Lecky, his head thrown
slightly back, and looking, oh, so bored, and weary of the whole world !
It might be as well, perhaps, that the stalwart form of the great Sir
William should interpose between Lord Kitchener (the man of the
sword) and this gentlest and kindliest of all historian-philosophers

3 Tlie Burial of Cecil Bhodes. By Theodore Watts-Dunton. Empire Review,
June 1903.

u IT 2

636 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

that ever wielded the pen ; for one is so unlike the other as regards
the ' outward man ' that I can hardly believe they could even bear
to rub shoulders in a public vehicle. And yet, although I do not
perceive it in his face, which might well belong to a mediaeval saint
upon a cathedral-window, the author of what has been justly described
as ' the vast and monumental History of England in the Eighteenth
Century must have possessed a capacity for hard work, and a dogged
determination of purpose, in no way inferior to those displayed by the
conqueror of the Soudan, although they did not happen to be applied
to the realisation of the same end.

Both these new-comers are surely ' remarkable ' ; but there are two
more, sauntering arm in arm down the street leading from the Lyceum
Theatre, who are quite as fully qualified to get into my omnibus, as
far as their personal appearance is concerned — the late Lord Tennyson
(made up to look like a conspirator) and his friend Sir Henry Irving
(still, happily, in our midst), planning, no doubt, some great his-
torical drama of the future, which shall prove an unqualified success
and take the whole town by storm. As they advance all the passers-
by turn round to look at them, as I had felt sure that they would.
No doubt persons so interesting and so highly dramatic-looking must
have been immediately recognised. Their appearance is too well
known, at any rate, to need description, and whilst I am looking after
them Lord Leighton and Sir John Millais have approached from
another direction, walking together, both men of grand presence and
magnificent achievement.

Most of the men I have hitherto made mention of, although only
by a mere coincidence, have not only been ' remarkable ' in appear-
ance, but for the most part veritable sons of Anak ; of exceptional
height, and some of them of exceptional breadth as well. The omnibus*
is becoming almost too heavy, and I am afraid that when it sete
off it will ' hog ' and ' sag ' upon its springs (if it has any) like the
'Bolivar.' . . .

I look down the street to my left, and there perceive, coming
towards us, the handsome author of The Love-Sonnets of Proteus
and other works, upon whose arm a small elderly gentleman is leaning.
Obedient to the unwritten mandate which has somehow gone forth,
he has refrained from arraying himself in the costume of a Bedouin
sheik, but has contrived, in what are apparently his every-day town
clothes, to look quite as remarkable as in those of a child of the desert.

He is wearing a bl»e frock-coat of somewhat antiquated cut, a
blue-and-white striped shirt of crumpled appearance, checked black-
and-white trousers, a buff nankeen waistcoat, a scarlet necktie, and a
rather fatigued-looking top-hat, a good deal too large for his head,
from beneath which his wonderful eyes beam forth with the keen,
rather cruel, expression that I have observed in those of the fierce
eagle-owls (or ' owl-eagles ') of the Biscay, which always look as if

1904 REMARKABLE-LOOKING MEN 637

they were trying to defy the sun. It was of Wilfrid Blunt (poet,
artist, ex-diplomatist, traveller, politician, ' Lord-territorial,' breeder
of blue-blooded Arab steeds, and staunch supporter, in Europe at any
rate, of ' the one True Faith ') that a brother-poet, now no more,
once said to me, ' He has the power of attracting and repelling in a
greater degree than any man I have ever met in the course of my life.'
An enviable gift indeed, and upon the top of so many others ! To
be able to attract — particularly when a benevolent Providence has
meted out to one more than the average share of good looks — is, as
several of my friends are competent to admit, no very difficult matter ;
but to be capable, in such circumstances, of becoming actually repellent
is surely a privilege which even genius can but rarely hope to enjoy.

I now turn my attention to the little old gentleman who accom-
panies this many-sided genius. He is, I perceive, a good deal older
than I had imagined, and evidently a foreigner. At a distance his
alert step and the animation of his glance had deceived me as to his
real age. A certain appearance of anaemia and emaciation, combined
with his mean stature, shabby black clothes, and ignoble ' bowler '
hat, might have seemed to suggest, at a first glance, the ' undesirable
alien,' were it not that the look of authority in the small glittering
eyes, and the set self-reliant smile upon the firm lipless mouth, can
scarcely have emanated from the den of the ' sweater.'

As I gaze on, the whole face seems to grow wonderfully familiar,
and I perceive, in spite of the accentuated nose, that it is Italian
rather than Semitic. Where can I have beheld it before ? . . .
Somewhere in Italy, without doubt ; for it is the clean-shaven, colour-
less face that one sees so often amongst the haute bourgeoisie of the
old mediaeval towns, and which seems to have come straight down to
them from their ancestors of the ' tre cento,' and I know that I have
seen it, and examined it, a good many times, although I have forgotten
what was its owner's profession. All sorts of people occur to me. . . .
Is it the father of the man who turned out sham bric-a-brac at Siena,
or one of the sacristans of the Duomo at the same place, with whom
I became such friends whilst sketching in the biblioteca ? . . . Yes ;
the head is decidedly of the narrow-browed ecclesiastical type ; one
might imagine such a head presiding at an ' Interrogatory ' of the
Inquisition in the Middle Ages, and the face (as one might say of a
picture) is certainly ' of the Siena school ' — ' Red Siena ! ' — the
delightful old town where, the last time I visited it, there were as
many as eight earthquakes in a single night ; the cradle of the Chigi
and of the Piccolomini ; the town that has given so many painters
to Italy and so many Popes to Christendom. . . .

Good heavens !....! see it all now. ... It comes upon me like
a flash of lightning. This is the Pope ! ... It is the ' bowler ' hat
that has wrought such an extraordinary transformation, and besides,
as I have before remarked, it is almost impossible to judge fairly as

638 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

to whether such a great personage is really remarkable-looking or
not, for, even when deprived of the pomps and vanities which are
generally inseparable from his high office, the very remembrance of
them is apt to paralyse all independent criticism. Mr. Blunt has
brought him to my omnibus, however, and it is not likely that I shall
refuse a place to one who has inspired such universal respect. . . .

* No, no ! I implore your Holiness ! ' I can hear Mr. Blunt
saying, in a silvery falsetto, as the Supreme Pontiff, with his usual
vivacity, is endeavouring to climb on to a place at the top. ' Not
at your Holiness's advanced age. ... I will see whether there is not
a spare place inside. . . .' Then he added, addressing me in an
agitated whisper, * It is quite impossible. . . . Swinburne is sitting
just there in the gangway. . . . You remember those lines in
his Songs before Sunrise ? ... It will never do,' and he almost
lifted the pale, fragile-looking old man from the narrow stairway
which he was about to ascend. Apparently, however, he was only
dragging him from Scylla to Charybdis.

* There is no room inside ! ' I hear him exclaim, as he again tugs
at his venerable companion's coat-tails, whilst in the intensity of his
excitement he almost hisses in my ear, ' For Heaven's sake help us
to get out of the way somewhere ! . . . General Garibaldi is sitting
just inside the doorway ! . . . No, no, your Holiness ! ' he exclaims,
this time with more insistence. ' Come, let us try to find some other
conveyance.'

The Supreme Pontiff, who has condescended to honour me with
his company upon the present occasion, is not, I need hardly say, the
Pope who now occupies St. Peter's Chair, and whose fine square brow
and frank fearless gaze seem to betoken a nature uncorrupted and
untrammelled by the paralysing influences which are generally brought
to bear upon those who have elected to ' merge their manhood in the
priest.' Apart from his sympathetic appearance, we must all, surely,
hope great things from one who evidently looks at life with a much
* larger eye ' than did his venerable predecessor.

When, a few years ago, during the pontificate of Leo the Thirteenth,
I found myself established in the * City Eternal,' it occurred to me
that I would endeavour to write a book which should be entitled
The Temporal Power : How it was acquired ; How it was used ; How
it was abused ; and How it was lost, and with this object in view I
toiled through ancient manuscripts, collected newspaper-cuttings, and
consulted several learned living authorities. Finally, however, I had
to abandon the project, which would have entailed more attention
and concentration of thought than I could have afforded just at that
particular time, and I now make a present of the idea to my friends,
Count Pasolini or Mr. Richard Bagot, who are both so much better
qualified than I am to carry it out. Whilst I was engaged in these
researches I fell in with a very intelligent man, whose name I do not

1904 EEMAEKABLE-LOOKING MEN 639

feel at liberty to mention, to whom I confided my project, and with
whom I had several interesting conversations upon the subject of
the ' Temporal Power,' and the tenacity with which Pope Leo the
Thirteenth, in spite of his great age, appeared still to cling to it.
Whilst we were talking thus one afternoon my new-found friend
pounced suddenly upon an English newspaper which was lying upon
a table, advertisement-sheet uppermost, upon which was depicted the
well-known reclame of ' Pears' Soap,' representing a naked infant, its
face puckered up with crying, in the act of stretching out its hand
towards a cake of this much-vaunted accessory of the toilet, with the
legend ' He won't be happy till he gets it ' inscribed over its head.
Taking a pencil from his pocket, my friend hastily scribbled the words
' II Papa Re ' across the bare body of the infant, set a triple crown upon
its head, and wrote * Temporal Power ' upon the coveted cake of soap.

* Here is the situation,' said he, passing me the advertisement.
' Do you consider that this is a dignified attitude for the Supreme
Head of the Catholic Church ? A man of the first order of intelli-
gence would never have assumed it, but Leo the Thirteenth is possessed
of cunning without sagacity. When one cannot obtain a thing, is it
not always wiser to pretend that one does not want it ? ' Then,
before I could reply, he continued : ' And yet this attitude, that of a
peevish infant, is now the only one the present Pontiff is able to assume.
He adopted his views when public opinion was less enlightened than
it now is, and had the imprudence to surround himself by those who
exaggerated them. But, after all, they conduce on the whole towards
the peace of Europe.'

I ventured to inquire of him how this could be.

* The populace of Rome,' he answered, ' unlike that of Naples,
has no real sympathy with the Monarchy. All its traditions, all its
memories of the good old times (good only because they are now
departed), are associated with the Papal Government. The Nea-
politans, on the contrary, are cast in a distinctly monarchical mould.
That the government of their monarchs was atrocious ; that every
act of injustice, every political crime, was committed in the name of
the King, does not affect them now. They can look upon the Castello
delf Ovo, or even assist at a representation of La Tosca, and still retain
their loyalty to their ancient traditions. But with the Romans it is
different. The ' King,' whatever may be his name or his disposition,
says very little to the people. If Leo the Thirteenth were to be per-
suaded to abandon the ' Prisoner-of-the-Vatican ' pose ; were he to
walk or drive about the streets of the city, and show himself once
more to its inhabitants, I believe the enthusiasm he would evoke
would be so tremendous that it might even shake the very foundations
of the throne.'

' But this he will never do ? '

' Happily for the peace of Europe he will never be allowed to do it.

640 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Oct.

It' would be distinctly opposed to the policy of the Vatican, and too
much pressure is brought to bear upon him from without, whatever
his private opinions may now be. He is as well aware as I am, too,
that were he to change his present policy he would not survive it for
many days. The Vatican is " run " upon strictly mediaeval lines '

My look of inquiry interrupted him. Was this a euphemism, I
wondered, for the ' cup of black coffee ' that was said to come in so
useful sometimes at Yildiz Kiosk (which is certainly ' run ' also ' upon
strictly mediaeval lines ') ? Of course, like most people, I had heard
the story of a late Cardinal-Prince and the basket of fruit which was
sent to him as a present from the Vatican gardens, and of the tragic
fate of his maitre d'hotel, who rashly ate up the fig that he had decided
would make one too many for the dish. I bought two large scent-
bottles at the sale of the said Cardinal's effects (the princely crown,
combined with the ' hat,' looks very imposing upon the gilt stoppers) ;
but although I never look at them without thinking of the fatal fig,
I have made it a rule to swallow all such legends ' with a grain of salt,'
particularly at a place where the current of party spirit — I might
even say of ' party spite ' — runs as high as it does at Rome. After
all, why might not the Prince-Cardinal's butler have died of appen-
dicitis like anybody else ? . . .

' You have mistaken my meaning,' said my friend, assuming a more
cautious tone. ' What I intended to say was, that were the Pope to
change his habits, or his place of residence, it would inevitably prove
fatal to him at his great age. How many elderly persons succumb
daily to the " change of air " that has been recommended by their
physician ? Then, too, he is a vain man, and he could never endure
to admit that his original policy had been unwise. The chagrin
resulting from such an admission would kill him.'

Possibly these ' mediaeval lines ' may be the only ones upon which
anything so time-honoured and mystical as the Papacy can be ' run '
in this material age ; and possibly the late Pope, if he was really so
' vain,' thought that he had at least a good deal to be vain of. He
was without doubt a man of culture and refinement ; apt in argument
and repartee ; an unusually proficient Latin scholar, and a keen and
crafty politician, although, as a matter of course, a very one-sided
one. He loved riches and pageants, possessed beautiful hands and
glittering eyes, and wrote very creditable verses both in Italian and
Latin. I have read a poem of liis upon the subject of photography.
The theme does not seem to promise much, but he managed to extract
something really poetical out of ' these sun-painted pictures.' He
was afflicted rather painfully with the smile that is smiled indis-
criminately, at all times and seasons, and that has the appearance of
being purely mechanical. Sometimes, in the case of aged persons,
this may be partly due to unsuccessful dental arrangements, and so it
may wreathe the lips of those who should not be held responsible for it.

1904 REMARKABLE-LOOKING MEN 641

Pope Leo the Thirteenth is smiling now, as he appears before me in
my day-dream, but he looks pale and faltering, and Mr. Blunt leads
him off gently, and takes him inside the shop of the adjacent butterman.

' Wilfrid Blunt is one of those uncomfortable people who must
always be of the minority,' says a voice from the inner depths of the
omnibus. ' He won't come in here because we have got in before
him, and he won't allow the Pope to do so either. He wants an
omnibus all to himself. And what will you bet, too, that he has not
gone into the butterman's in order to astonish him by asking for
camel's milk, or some other unobtainable product ? He has ever
been, and ever will be, an " homme a sensation"

I look towards the window of the dairy company, and perceive,
over the horns of the symbolic statuette, the subject of these remarks
in the act of offering a glass of milk to his aged companion, though
whether of cow or camel I can do no more at that distance than
shrewdly conjecture. The appearance of the Pope, as he stands there
in his shabby black garments, being ministered to by one seemingly
so superior to himself as a specimen of humanity, is so grotesquely
at variance with all preconceived tradition that, in spite of myself, I
cannot help laughing aloud.

This laugh proved the death-knell of my vision, though not before
I had convinced myself of a truth about which I had previously been
rather doubtful. The late Pontiff would have been remarkable-
looking anywhere, and he was quite entitled to a place in my omnibus
had not untoward circumstances prevented. Now, however, it is
completely full, and although I can still see several well-known and
remarkable figures making towards it from a distance (the bland and
debonnaire apostle of ' Sweetness and Light ' amongst others, and Mr.
George Meredith, with his magnificent facial angles), all wildly
flourishing their umbrellas, a mysterious-looking individual, wearing
the leathern jerkin and demi-mask of the traditional headsman, leaps
lightly on to the box-seat, seizes the reins, and, cracking his whip in
Continental fashion, drives off at a brisk pace and is no more seen,
for even a dream-omnibus is not bound to be indefinitely elastic.

Suddenly I became aware of my actual surroundings, and I per-
ceived that the irrelevant lady, who had evidently come into the
room whilst I was still in the clouds, had risen from her chair, and
was hastily collecting her worsted work as though to escape from the
presence of one whom she regarded as a lunatic.

' The late Pope looked so funny in that " bowler " hat,' I said in
explanation, whereupon her countenance only betrayed an expression
of still greater alarm, and I then endeavoured to make her under-
stand the turn my imagination had taken.

Just then the rest of the company came trooping in, and I submitted
my little extravaganza to them with a good deal of nervous misgiving.

642 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

Everybody was agreed that I had certainly made out my case,
and that if an ordinary * outsider ' were to get into my omnibus he
would at once discover, merely from looking at its occupants, that he
was in the presence of his intellectual superiors.

* Still, you gave me so very little time,' I said, excusing myself,
' and subjected me to such stern limitations. Not one of the heroes
of Antiquity, or even of the Middle Ages, and only people I had
actually spoken to and seen quite near ! . . . I might have brought in
Thackeray, who was so remarkable-looking, and to whom I sat next,
once, at the play ; or Victor Hugo, whom I looked at from a yacht
through a telescope, and saw quite distinctly ; or Walt Whitman,
who sent me a lifelike photograph of himself with his signature at the
bottom, if I hadn't been so dreadfully conscientious ! . . . I have
left out a whole lot of remarkable-looking friends, too ; people who
have asked me to dinner and been so civil to me, to say nothing of
all my own relations. . . . And then, although somehow I couldn't
prevent the late Pope from making his appearance, I had to draw the
line at kings and queens, because it is impossible to divest royal
personages of their accumulation of prestige, or to judge quite fairly
of them in any way. . . .'

' But, after all,' interrupted the irrelevant lady, ' kings and queens
are only mortal. They are made of just the same flesh and blood as
the rest of us ! ' and she heaved a profound sigh.

' A fact that should be continually borne in mind,' said the Scoffer,
* or we might possibly lose sight of it altogether.'

' And then,' I continued, * there are a great many more things I
might have said about everybody, if I had not been afraid of being
" too offensively personal " (as Mr. Harry Quilter said of Mr. Whistler).
Some people can't even laugh at themselves, and won't stand the
least little bit of ridicule, or even of playful treatment, from others ! '

' Do you really think,' asked the Seeker, * that anything can seem
to be " too personal " after " the Creevey Papers " ? '

' But now,' said the Scoffer, before anybody could answer this
question, * what are we to say about those people who, although
extremely remarkable-looking, have never been fortunate enough to
distinguish themselves in any way whatsoever ? '

As he spoke, the company, one and all, glanced, as though in-
stinctively, towards a looking-glass hanging on the opposite side of
the room, and which was almost as large as the butterman's window
in my day-dream. The question had occurred to me already, and
was certainly something of a poser.

' Their future is in their own hands,' I ventured at last. '|They have
only to try earnestly, night and day, to live up to their personal appear-
ance.' The luncheon-gong sounded as I spoke, and so our morning's
fooling was brought to an end.

MARY MONTGOMERIE CURRIE.

1904

THE BY-LAW TYRANNY AND RURAL
DEPOPULATION

A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

I AM a landowner in a poor agricultural district of Sussex, having
an estate of some four thousand acres, mostly of woodland, in the
Weald. The estate, as I inherited it, had been got together as long
ago as the Civil Wars, and had remained without much change
as to acreage since, though here and there fields and farms have been
bought or exchanged or sold. I can see by old plans and records that
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was much more closely
peopled than now. There were then a number of small freeholds,
of from three to thirty acres, interspersing it, which have now dis-
appeared.

The question of this disappearance of the rural population has
always interested me. Its earliest cause was, I believe, the ruin of
the iron industry, which, about the reign of Queen Anne, began to be
abandoned owing to the competition of the coalfields of the North.
This diminished the wealth of the district and drove out a number
of the Sussex miners from the parishes where their work lay, while
others became squatters on the wastes of manors and took to smuggling,
sheep-stealing, and other ill-practices. During the latter half of the
eighteenth century the neighbourhood of the forest lands between
East Grinstead and Horsham was considered unsafe for quiet, law-
abiding persons, and many of even the lesser gentry went to live in
the towns. There were no hard roads, and the mire of the Weald
was cruel in winter. As late as the year 1811, when my father
came of age, he was unable to drive to his front door at Crabbet from
the London and Brighton coach road, three miles off at Crawley,
except in a broad-wheeled waggon. Nevertheless, the bulk of the
purely agricultural population retained their places on the land till
some ninety years ago, when, at the close of the great French war,
the small yeomen, who had been living beyond their normal incomes
during the days of high war prices, were obliged to sell their acres ;
and the twenty years following the Peace of Paris saw perhaps half
of these dispossessed and merged in the landless classes. We retained

643

644 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

still, however, a goodly number of small freeholders, descendants
of the squatting miners, labourers who owned their own cottages
and strips of garden ground. The lot of the peasant pure and simple
has never been with us, on our poor soil, so hard a one, even in the
worst of times, as in the richer counties. Where the soil is poor
there was less temptation to enclose wastes, and, as Cobbett long ago
pointed out, the peasant has always found elbow-room there and
ways of living, by odd jobs of forestry and garden culture, denied
him on the better lands. The upper Weald of Sussex enjoyed this
precious gift of poverty and, almost until to-day, the large bounty for
its cottagers of commons and wayside strips with freedom from many
despotic regulations enforced in richer neighbourhoods. It has been
reserved for our own quite recent times to see their more general
exodus, under pressure, no doubt, in part of changed economical condi-
tions affecting all rural England, but also in large measure of a new
class selfishness and the operation of laws, devised for the protection
of the poor but so unintelligent in their framing and so ruthlessly
misapplied in other interests than theirs that they are finding it
yearly less and less possible to live in their ancestral homes. How
this misapplication has come about (and it is the special subject of
my present pleading) I will endeavour to explain. ,

In old times, and down to the third decade of last century,
parochial affairs in rural England were managed in each parish by its
own vestry. This form of local self-government was a time-honoured
one, and, whatever its defects may have been, had at least this merit,
that in a purely agricultural parish the interests looked to were purely
agricultural ones. When, however, the new Poor Law was intro-
duced after the Reform Bill, a wider area of self-government was
chosen. Parishes were grouped together, in districts of half a dozen
or more, and the guardianship of the poor, and later other matters,
were put under the control of a common board elected by the various
parishes. This Board of Guardians had for its seat no longer any
strictly rural centre, but a town, the principal one included in the
parishes, and it is to this transference of power from village to town
that may be remotely traced the evils of administration which are
now affecting adversely the agricultural as contrasted with the urban
population of our southern counties. For forty years, however, no
great harm was done. The powers of the Guardians were small,
while economically the union of the parishes proved an advantage.
It was only in 1875, or rather some ten years later, when the pro-
visions of the Public Health Act of that year were beginning to be
taken advantage of by Guardians, now transformed into District
Councillors, that the oppressive tendency of the change became
visible. The Public Health Act of 1875 was the outcome of a phil-
anthropic movement throughout England caused by the coincidence of
a period of great economical prosperity and of certain gross abuses

1904 THE BY-LAW TYRANNY 645

of speculation in the housing of the poor made possible by the rapid
expansion of town life. On every side London and the great indus-
trial cities were extending their borders, and the same was the case in
most country boroughs and at all points where the railways favoured
the creation of new urban and suburban centres. Many of these
new areas were being covered with houses insanitary in construction
and unsafe for the poor who lodged in them, and the whole question of
housing was raised in an acute form.

In response to the cry of sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas raised by
Disraeli, the then Prime Minister, the Public Health Act of 1875 came
into being. It was essentially an Act for the bettering of the condition
of the poor — the poor, above all, of the London suburban slums ; and
those who framed it can certainly never have suspected that it would
one day be perverted by human stupidity and human selfishness into
an instrument of class tyranny over the labourers of our villages.
Yet such has proved to be the case. By a clause in the Act, unfortu-
nately introduced, it was provided that the Poor Law districts might,
if they so chose, declare themselves, through their Guardians, to be
' Urban Districts,' and so acquire powers similar to those exercised
in towns ; that is to say, they might, in common with London and
the great cities, issue their local by-laws on all matters connected with
sanitation, including the construction of new streets, laws enforceable
by summons and fine before the county magistrates. The purpose of
this clause clearly was that, wherever certain areas within the rural
districts began to be built over and acquired an urban character, urban
regulations might be applied to them. But it can never have been
intended that such regulations should be made applicable to the whole
of the purely agricultural areas included within the rural districts.
Nevertheless, in the early eighties this phenomenon began to be
observed. Rural district after rural district, in accordance with the
Act, made application to the Local Government Board to be vested
with urban powers, and in accordance with the Act the powers were
given. It was only human nature that the applications should be
made. Officials, all the world over, fall naturally in with any pro-
posal to increase their authority, and so it was with these rural
Guardians. Wherever the excuse could be put forward of a new build-
ing area here, or a new town suburb having come into being there, the
official instinct prompted an acquisition of the powers within its
reach. With or without sufficient cause, urban powers have become
possessed by half the districts of rural England ; and in each by-laws,
as a rule of the most stringent kind, have been imposed on the
inhabitants, including those the least reasonably amenable to them.

It may be said that, since the councils are elective, such a course has
had at least the sanction in each district of local approval. But
this, as regards the villagers, the agricultural labourers, in whom my
interest lies, is no true statement of their case. The urban powers

646 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

obtained and the by-laws issued have always been sprung without real
warning upon the villagers, nor have they had any true opportunity
of expressing their views about them. When a council wishes to
obtain urban powers, or when it seeks approval of the Local Govern-
ment Board for by-laws it proposes to issue, all the formality necessary
is that at one of the meetings a majority of its members should vote
that the application be made ; which done, a notice must be published
in a local newspaper (a single paper is sufficient), and during a month
a copy of the proposal must be on view at the local office in the town,
or for sixpence sent to each ratepayer who may demand it in writing.
After this month's delay the application may be made, and the approval
is at once granted. All who know anything of the isolated position
of our peasantry in their rural homes will understand how entirely
illusive such slight precautions are as a protection from surprise, and
how impossible it would be for them to make any effectual protest
against the change, even if it were explained to them what the change
implied, which has never been the case. As a matter of fact, not one
agricultural ratepayer in a thousand understood twenty years ago
what his council was doing when it applied for urban powers ; hardly
one in a hundred knew that it was being done. As to the by-laws,
one has only to glance through their multiplied and obscure para-
graphs to see that even a trained lawyer might be puzzled at some
of their provisions ; while to the agricultural understanding, examining
them at a town-hall, they must have seemed the merest gibberish.
Nor have the agricultural ratepayers since had any means of dis-
playing their displeasure or agitating for repeal. The votes of the
individual councillor are not published ; and even if they are known,
what can the peasant do to obtain their repeal ?

The position of rural councillor is not one of emolument or of suffi-
cient dignity to tempt a general competition for the office. It is unpaid,
and involves a considerable sacrifice of time and money, neither of
which farmers, still less labourers, can afford. The meetings are in the
country towns, often many miles away from their homes. There are few
of them who have such business capacity as is required for official
work. The candidates for office are therefore few, and as a rule the men
who come forward are either tradesmen or retired tradesmen ; or perhaps
a villa-dweller with idle time on his hands ; or, again, men who, in
American phrase, from their position in life have ' an axe to grind '
upon the council. In practice it has been found that it is men of the
last category who are the directing force on nearly every council,
the representatives of certain businesses which have a direct trade
interest in urbanising the district — local owners of residential land
which they desire to develop, contractors for local work, and, above all,
local builders. These alone have the personal interest, combined with
the technical knowledge, necessary for sustained and effective work
on the councils. In districts where such are the prime movers, the

1904 THE BY-LAW TYRANNY 647

urbanising process is pushed on merrily, and always at the expense
of the agricultural poor. The town interest is, of course, very different
from the country one, the suburban from the rural. It lies in what
is called improving the neighbourhood ; that is to say, in smartening
it up and introducing a wealthier class of residents in place of the
poorer. To the advocate of such improvement the existence of
the permanently poor man, living poorly in a poor cottage, is in itself
an offence and nuisance, for the sight of poverty deters rich men from
settling in the neighbourhood. To him the ideally desirable inhabitant
is not the peasant but the villa resident, and his vote is given always
against poverty. The peasant must be improved or removed. He
is consequently harassed in his traditional ways of country living,
subjected to this and that restriction borrowed from town life, and
when he is found irreclaimably poor his cottage is declared ' unfit
for human habitation,' and he is left houseless. He may not rebuild
his house except according to an impossible scale of urban expenditure
prescribed by the local by-laws and enforced in the interests of trade.
The Public Health Act, sprung in ignorance of its meaning on many
a rural district and manipulated since by the local building and con-
tracting interests in connivance with suburban landowners, has become
not only the instrument of a vast amount of jobbing expenditure
of all kinds in rural England, but also an engine of direct tyranny
which is driving the indigenous English peasantry from the soil of its
forefathers.

This said in explanation, I will return now to my own experience.
Some years ago I indulged in a dream of re-creating peasant holdings,
three acres and a cow, with chicken farming and spade cultivation.
But the initial expense, especially in providing the necessary buildings,
according to any method of construction then known to me, proved to
me that it could not be economically a success. Chicken — or, rather,
egg — farming alone seemed likely to bring fair results ; but difficulties
of marketing, and, I must add, the multiplicity of foxes, made even
this a most precarious industry, and with reluctance I abandoned
my idea. Like most English landlords, I let things be, contenting
myself with building what cottages were required on my estate,
expensively and unsatisfactorily, as a matter of duty rather than in
the hope of any larger improvement. It was not till the year 1899
that any better method of meeting the building difficulty suggested
itself to me. In that year, wanting a small dwelling in a hurry for a
plot of land I had acquired in the New Forest, I was advised to try
iron, and, on a plan of my own, Messrs. Humphries put me up in three
weeks exactly what I wanted — a single-storied cottage, with ample
fireplaces for wood, the fuel of the country, and a covered passage or
verandah on its northern front — it is a mistake in England to have
verandahs on the south side, as they shut out the sun — giving much
extra habitable space. I was present at the putting-up of the building,

648 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

and watched with surprise the method of construction, so simple that
it needed almost no professional knowledge to imitate, so effective
in the comfort it secured, and, above all, so wonderfully cheap ; and
when I had myself for a while inhabited it, and found its many
practical advantages, I gave commission to my estate carpenter to
put me up two others on a smaller scale to serve as an experiment
for further cottage-building in Sussex. This I found he could do at
the small cost of 130Z. for a building covering 700 feet area with a
verandah of 240 feet more, and an outbuilding containing washhouse
and closet — as snug and sanitary a home as any poor man could wish
to inhabit ; for there was a large fireplace in every room, roof ventila-
tion, and ample door and window space. The result was all I could
desire. The cottage occupants were delighted with their new dwellings,
and all the neighbours envied them their luck. Even aesthetically
the cottages earned praise. Low, and painted, as they were, green — a
hint I had brought home with me from the green roofs of Russia —
they were, in their woodland surroundings, inconspicuous and almost
pretty. My thought of twenty years before seemed once more possible.
One thing only stood in the way — the possible intervention of the
Rural Council. My first two cottages had been built where there
were no building laws, away from my principal property, and Crabbet
lay in the East Grinstead district. Here urban powers had been
obtained, and the whole programme of the London building by-laws
was in force. It is worth noting that the by-laws introduced had
been voted with so little of public notice that I was myself unaware
at the time of what was being done, and they had been approved by
the Local Government Board with so little hesitation that only four
days had elapsed between the Council's vote and the Board's approval.
For some years, however, the new laws had been but lightly insisted
on, though enforced latterly with ever-growing rigour. Several cases
of severity had recently occurred as to iron buildings, among others of a
man who had been refused permission to put up an iron building tem-
porarily when his dwelling had been destroyed by fire, and another
of a widow lady who, having built herself an iron cottage, had been
forced, at the expense of 60Z., to enclose the walls with a second and
needless walling of bricks. I consequently wrote to the chairman,
laying before him my plan of cottage-building, explaining my method
of construction, with the materials I intended to employ, and re-
quested him to lay the matter before his Council, and tell me whether
* from a sanitary point of view or from that of enabling the rural
population to be properly housed .... his Council would raise objec-
tions on the score of the materials used.' The answer, in view of the
subsequent action of the Council, is a very curious one, and no ex-
planation of it has ever been attempted. A copy of the by-laws-
was sent me, which distinctly forbade my plan, but at the same time-
I was officially informed that ' there appears to be no objection to-

1904 THE BY-LAW TYBANNY 649

your proposals except as to thatched roofs." What was in the
Council's mind I cannot undertake to say. I took it in the most
favourable light as a tacit permission, and instructed my carpenter-
builder to send in the plan of a cottage without thatch, and then,
after waiting two months for an answer which did not come, and the
season advanced, we got ready our materials and prepared to put
them up. At the very moment, however, we received notice that
our plan was disapproved as violating the by-laws, though in what
way was not explained.

I had then to reconsider the whole matter, no longer as a per-
sonal one, but from the point of view of the public interest. If
it had been the case of a single cottage, for whatever purpose,
I would have let the matter drop. I am the least litigious of land-
owners, and the least disposed to a local quarrel. But I felt that
to give in on a point which really affected the whole community
would be base, and I took advice how best to fight the battle legally.
The advice given me was to build and trust to the county magistrates,
in a case of such general importance, to use the discretion they have of
imposing a nominal instead of a real fine for my breach of the by-laws.
At any rate, by this method the housing responsibility would be
taken off my shoulders and placed openly and before all the world
upon the Council's. I therefore resolved to build and stand the shot.
The place chosen was a field on my Blackwater farm near Three
Bridges, isolated from all other buildings, and divided by a wood from
the high road ; and the cottage was designed to replace a singularly
poor cottage, which had come into my hands, standing without
garden on the road, for which a rent of 3s. GdL had for years been paid.
I found that I could not only provide the cottager with one of my
130Z. iron cottages, but throw in a quarter acre of land for garden,
and yet diminish, the rent by a shilling without loss. It seemed im-
possible that any Council pretending to be Guardians of the Poor
should refuse such a proposal, or that any bench of English magistrates
should enforce penalties, as to which they have an option, to the point
of obliging me to destroy the cottage when once it should be built.
Yet this is what has happened. During my absence last Christmas in
Egypt, my builder, having nearly completed his task, was summoned at
the Council's instance and fined 5?. at East Grinstead for the offence
of building otherwise than with bricks and mortar, and on my return a
further action was brought against me on the same charge, which re-
sulted in a continuing penalty of two shillings a day being imposed on
me so as to oblige me to pull the building down. The grotesque result
was therefore reached that on the strength of a Public Health Act,
designed to secure the better housing of the poor, a building against
which no charge that it was insanitary could be brought — indeed the
charge had been expressly repudiated — was condemned, not because
it was not good enough, but merely because it was too good. The
VOL. LVI— No. 332 X X

650 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

sole evidence brought by the prosecution was that of the district
surveyor, who deposed that he had measured the building and found
it was larger in area and contained more cubic feet of air — that is to
say, that it was a better and, according to all modern sanitary views,
a healthier building — than the Council's curious by-laws allowed to a
single-storied cottage not of brick or stone.

Such has been my individual experience. It is by no means a
solitary one in England. Two years ago a philanthropic gentleman
(T do not myself claim to be philanthropic), Mr. Till, built just such
another cottage in the Dartford district, and with just the same
result ; and in case after case landlords who have wished to help their
tenants have found themselves frustrated at the outset by the tyranny
of by-laws, introduced perhaps in ignorance, but maintained since,
and insisted on with ever-growing intensity in local trade interests.
In one case that I have heard of, it has been carried so far that a poor
Cornishman possessed of a few roods of land, and who had got together
during a number of years the boulders used from time immemorial in
the local cottage-building, found after all his labour that he would not
be allowed to build with them. But these cases have over and over
again been told in print. What I wish to impress upon my readers
is that it is not mere stupidity that is to blame for the enforcing in
rural districts of these grotesque town laws, but that there is behind
it an insistent power of speculation and trade which finds in these
laws its legal way to wealth. In this, I have no wish to make any
attack on individual land speculators or individual tradesmen who
enter the Rural Councils to support or extend a system by which their
class profits. Their position is just as honourable as that of the
brewers and railway directors and shipping owners, who go into
Parliament to push imperially the interests of beer and high traffic divi-
dends, and the extension of our sea-borne trade. All of these public
men. I do not doubt, are intimately convinced that they are fulfilling
a patriotic duty in the line they take on the questions that interest
them, but this does not prevent me from insisting on the public danger
there is in a state of rural things where power has passed away from
the true rural population into the hands of a class whose interest is
opposed to theirs. The Building By-laws were originally framed as
a check on speculative building ; speculation has accommodated
itself to them, and is now using them to secure to itself a monopoly
of rural profit. It must be clearly understood that the inexpensive
modern methods of house construction (and there are many such which
dispense altogether with bricks and mortar, and even with the necessity
of employing a professional builder to apply them to new houses) are
a menace to the trade, and that it is the trade that is nqw opposing
all reform. Yet reform there must be, for it is incredible that the
existing state of things — which is slowly but very seriously rousing
indignation everywhere among the agricultural poor, and is distinctly

1904 THE BY-LAW TYRANNY 651

aggravating their position, already difficult enough, of remaining on
the land — should be allowed, for national reasons and reasons of
justice and humanity, to continue. I have no doubt that it will be
dealt with in the coming Parliament, whichever party succeeds to
power.

A very short amendment of the Public Health Act would do all
that is immediately necessary in regard to rural housing. It might
be enacted very briefly that no by-law of any Rural Sanitary Authority
shall apply to any new building to be erected on a freehold property
where such building is more than a given number of yards from the
nearest other dwelling, or from the property of an adjacent owner.
This would encourage landowners to give sufficient ground enclosing
their new cottages, as exempting them in such cases from by-law
restrictions, and it would draw at once the necessary distinction be-
tween true rural and suburban conditions. The housing question,
however, is in my opinion, though the most crying evil of the moment,
only a small part of the rural reform I should like to see advocated.
The whole condition of the rural poor requires reconsideration in the
light of modern economy, modern science, and our new knowledge of
the laws of human race competition. But this is a subject far beyond
my present scope. To-day I can only express a hope that some
influential member of the House of Commons or some enlightened
Peer may take the By-law Question up and make it his own. I
am convinced that, with full public light thrown on it, an end would
be speedily put to the huge abuses now rampant in some of our rural
districts, and the causes of the anger raging so strongly against their
Councils in the bosoms of our too mute peasantry. The certainty
that these are with me, at least in my own part of Sussex, in what
I am saying is my best justification for pleading here publicly their
cause.

WlLFEID SCAWEN BLUNT.
Cmbbet Park, Crawley : September 12, 1904.

652 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Octi

THE LA AW OF JARGON1

THE following sketch records merely the impressions of a short
excursion, undertaken about two years ago, into the land of Jargon
or Yiddish literature.

I should be happy could I persuade others to make the journey
for themselves.

Partly for my sake, that I may have someone with whom to-
compare experiences. Partly for their own, because there must be-
many who would enjoy it as much as I, and profit by it more. Partly
for the sake of the land, which is in great measure ignorant of
its own treasures, and allowing its unique and fragile monuments
to crumble away in the atmosphere of present-day civilisation.

Within their walls lurk the ghosts that have been ousted from,
the literatures of other lands. In one dark and dusty corner, for
instance, there dwells Bovo, alias the tale of the Bevies of Hampton >.
of which an edition was printed — not as a literary curiosity — as
lately as 1895.

But even this last refuge is falling to ruin about their ears.

The Jargon -will soon be a living language no more.

Its disappearance, curiously enough, will coincide, not with the-
subjugation, but with the emancipation, both social and moral, of those
who speak it. It is the language of the Kussian Pale, which will
vanish as surely as the Ghetto and the Jewry vanished in times past.

Even the Zionists do not wish to preserve the Jargon by trans-
planting it root and branch to Palestine. It must ever remain
associated with a period of distress and outward humiliation ; it is
too obviously borrowed and its corruption of the Hebrew is looked
upon as unpardonable.

Then, again, its composite nature and strange, but not un trace-
able, history are just what constitute its great interest.

Professor L. Wiener has shown that the name Jargon is not
really applicable to the Judeo-German language, for its elements are

'.For nine-tenths of the information contained in this article I am indebted to-
Professor L. Wiener's History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century, as-
•well as to the author for the kindest personal help and encouragement. For the
present sketch, however, and the translations which it includes, no one is responsible-
but myself.

1904 THE LAND OF JARGON 653

-now closely welded together and it is pervaded by a spirit all its own.
But the word Jargon has a fascination about it, and it is used, in
Russia, by Kussian and Jewish writers alike. I retain it in this
chapter as designating the Judeo- German literature which has arisen
•in Russia, and with which I am mainly concerned.

The traveller to the land of Jargon requires the ability to read
the Hebrew printing letters ; a thorough knowledge of German ; a
good Hebrew-English dictionary (that of Bresslau, for example).

A Polish-English dictionary ; and the love which is better than
patience, and which may have for its object either philology, history,
folklore, literature pure and simple, the people of the land, or all five
together.

The student should also master the fairly easy Russian alphabet,
partly that he may be able to use the excellent little Russian-Jargon
dictionary i of Lifshitz. Harkavy's Yiddish-English dictionary (New-
York, 1898, published by the author), though by no means complete,
is indispensable, and contains valuable information on the Jargon
dialects.2

A knowledge of the Hebrew, Polish, or Russian languages is not
necessary ; but a certain familiarity with Hebrew is always of help.

Neither is it needful to know Turkish, though I will mention, for
the special delight of the philologist, that Turkish words have been
reported to occur in the Jargon, alongside the latest importations
from England, France, and America. Certain books are more
idiomatic, and therefore more difficult than others. Some abound
in Hebraisms and quotations from the Talmud, and there are eases
where neither love nor dictionaries will avail, and the student must
needs have recourse to a specialist.

German is indispensable, because Jargon or Yiddish, which is the
' Yiddish ' way of pronouncing J'ddisch, short for Jiidisch-Deutsch,
is fundamentally a German dialect of the Middle Rhine. It was
imported into Poland, and thence into Russia, by German-Jewish
immigrants of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Though old
German, it is no more bad German than Proven pal is bad French.
The Hebrew words are corrupt in pronunciation, though not in
spelling, while the Slavic words are spelt phonetically.

The land of Jargon Literature is a queer, topsy-turvy place, at
-once far and near; a land in which the soil, represented by the
certainty of getting the books you want, continually gives way
beneath your feet ; in which a quarterly may appear three times in
six years and never again, in which a serial edition comes to an end
the day on which you send in your subscription, and books go out of
print as fast as they come in.

A land in which authors frequently apologise for writing in their

2 Yiddish books, whether printed in Russia or America, can be obtained through
S. Mazin & Co., 59 Old Montague Street, London, N.E.

654 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

mother tongue ; in which the said authors may have not one, but
several — even half a dozen — pseudonyms a-piece; in which, while
the said tongue seems intended for continual joking, there is more
to move to tears than to laughter ; a land in which the deepest and
tenderest parental love exists alongside a system of education which
can only be described as mediaeval ; a land of prayers and curses ; a
land of feasts and fasts, charms and superstitions numberless, of
saints and relics and holy graves, where Greek and Roman Catholics
are termed picture and idol worshippers ; a land in which there is
more internal dissension and more kindliness of feeling towards the
rest of the world than is commonly supposed.

The traveller's opinion of it on his return will depend, in this case
also, on the spirit with which he set out. Of its interest and
novelty, and all its wealth of folklore, there can be no doubt, but is it
otherwise attractive ?

' The Jews ' (quoth the Grandmother in Meisach's Folk-Tales)
' will become, through suffering, better Jews with more Jewish
hearts.'

Occasional adversity is good for many of us, but that prolonged
periods of oppression, isolation, poverty and ignorance, should be
calculated to bring out all the best qualities of either nations or
individuals, would run contrary to every law of social progress.

The reader is at times tempted to wonder, if it would not be
better for the credit of Jew as well as Christian were the history of
Eussian Judaism, in all its phases, never written. But this would
involve sacrificing the record of too much that is admirable.

And when that history is taken in hand, some of its most
precious elements will be found in the Jargon books of the nineteenth
century.

Towards the first quarter of that period, still more towards its
second half, certain Eussian Jews awoke to a sense of the condition of
their people, and they began writing about them, so that^the people
might see themselves as in a glass. This awakening was largely due
to the influence of the followers of Mendelssohn. Moses Mendelssohn,
born in obscurity, but endowed with the noblest moral and intellectual
qualities, became the friend of Lessing and the grandfather of
Felix Mendelssohn and the gifted Fanny Hensel. He was the first
Jew to win anything like social recognition in Berlin and to open
the gates of Gentile culture to his German co-religionists.

The Jewish stories of Kompert, Franzos, and Zangwill, excellent
in their several ways, cannot have quite the interest of the Jargon
tales.

These latter were written, not for a Gentile public, but for the
very people they describe. This, again, makes them often very
perplexing, on account of the constant allusion to Jewish rites and
customs taken for granted as understood.

1904 THE LAND OF JARGON 655

The best living Jargon prose-writers, diverse in their talents, are
one in their single-hearted devotion to the cause .of the people.
They have striven, by means of songs and stories, novels, poems,
dramas, and, last but not least, calendars and magazines, to enlighten
or console, as the case might be, their humble brethren.

They were preceded by half a dozen others, each with his
special significance. There was Lefin, whose Jargon translation of
the Psalms was printed in 1817 ; and Aksenfeld, who began life as
the follower of a Kassidic 3 and, presumably, wonder-working rabbi,
while his son became a celebrated professor of medicine in Paris.

Among living poets are Perez and Frug; among the dead,
Berenstein, Michel Gordon, to whose memory Frug wrote the lines
of which an English rendering will be given later, and J. L. Gordon.

The latter was a Hebrew poet, but his one tiny volume of Jargon
verse is among the very best in the literature.

It contains, among other things, two or three powerful ballads, and
some comic pieces of great excellence. But, in the words of a Jargon
motto given elsewhere, ' to laugh is not always to be in fun — to
laugh is sometimes to weep bitterly.'

These authors differ from the men of the Haskala, or direct
disciples of Mendelssohn, in that they unhesitatingly employ the
Jargon (which the Haskala hated) instead of Hebrew, or a German-
ised form of Yiddish. Perez is eloquent in defence of its use —
always, it must be remembered, under existing conditions :

' Whoever wishes to be read by the rich and learned, or in the
houses of gentlefolk, may write in what other language he pleases.
Whoever wishes to reach the heart and intelligence of the simple,
uneducated people, that one must write in Jargon. . . .

Is Jargon a language ?

The intelligent should understand that Jargon is a fact — a fact
which has come to pass in spite of us, and which certainly will not
vanish overnight at our desire.'

The new Haskala, if I may so call it, has fully justified its
position. It has carried on the work of the old Haskala, namely, the
gradual enlightenment of that gifted, but somewhat dogged and
captious person, the orthodox Polish Jew, and it has also shown that
the Jargon is good enough for most uses.

The fragment of Lefin's translation of Ecclesiastes given in
Professor Wiener's History before mentioned leaves nothing to be
desired, while the style of Perez fears no comparison whatever.

Leon Perez, the short-story writer — he possesses a versatile
genius — wanders in the land of Jargon like a lost spirit. He may
not be in every way a better writer than Abramovitsh or Spektor.
He may not be capable, as they are, of writing a whole novel, on

8 The Kassids are a fanatical Jewish sect in the south-west of Eussia.

656 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

things Jargonistic, sad enough to be true and comic enough not to
be monotonous.

But Perez writing short stories in Jargon is Daudet, as it were,
dedicating the Lettres de mon Moulin to the shepherds of Provence,
or the Spaniard Becquer, with whom Perez has more than one
point of resemblance, addressing his delicate Literary Letters to the
rustic dwellers in the valley of Veruela.

If Perez has a fault, it is a tendency to be morbid, a tendency
not to be wondered at in one of such delicate psychological percep-
tion. It is, moreover, traceable here and there only.

The obscurity of some of his poems is baffling, but it is so
obviously intentional, as due to political reasons, that to reproach
him on this head becomes unnecessary. No one can be more
erystal-clear than Perez when he chooses. Witness his article
' On Trades ' (since printed in book-form) — a delight to read with
its flawless sequence of ideas. After a disquisition on labour,
productive and otherwise, he unflinchingly exposes to the Jewish
artisans why it is that they fail to compete successfully with their
Gentile neighbours.

So long (he tells them, in substance) as work is hurried through,
without regard to food or sleep, that one may return to the study
of the Law ; so long as the promising boy-children are confined in
the religious schools, and only the duller ones brought up to
manual labour ; so long as customers are sometimes unfairly treated
and engagements not always kept ; so long as technical education
is happy-go-lucky ; so long will the Jewish workman, in spite
of superior intelligence, industry, and sobriety, be worsted in the
struggle.

The date of this little book is 1894. How far it applies to
present conditions I am ignorant. But to anyone interested in
practical attempts to solve the ' Jewish problem,' Perez ' On Trades '
and Spektor's ' Three Persons' are to be earnestly recommended.

I will return to the latter presently. Of Perez the poet I will
not speak here, because my space is limited, and his poetry is far
too varied and original in character to be dismissed in a few lines.
He now devotes himself entirely to prose, in which I think his
genius finds its fullest and most lovable expression. This in spite
of the beauty of such poems as the Song of the Wedding Gown>
Monish, and others which crowd on the memory as I write.

I give in full one of his shorter sketches, entitled :

THE FAST
LEON PEEEZ

A WINTEK'S night ! Shirah sits by the oil-lamp, darning an old sock. She works
slowly, for her fingers are half-frozen : her lips are blue and brown with cold ;
every now and then she lays down her work and runs up and down the room to
•warm her icy feet.

1904 THE LAND OF JARGON 657

la a bed, on a bare straw mattress, sleep four children — two little heads at
•each end — covered up with some old clothes.

Now one child and now another gives a start, a head is raised and there is a
plaintive chirp : ' Hungry ! '

' Patience, dears, patience ! ' says Shirah, soothingly. ' Father will be here
presently, and bring you some nice, soft bread. I will be sure to wake you.'

* And something hot ? ' ask the children, whimpering, ' We have had nothing
3iot to-day yet ! '

' And something hot, too ! '

But she does not believe what she is saying.

She glances round the room — perhaps, after all, there is something left that she
can pawn . . . nothing ! Four bare, damp walls. A split stove — everything
•clammy and cold . . . two or three broken dishes on the chimney-piece ... on
the stove, an old, battered Hanoukah lamp. Over head, in the beam, a nail, sole
relic of a lamp that hung from the ceiling. Two empty beds without pillows —
-and nothing, nothing else !

The children are some time getting to sleep.

Shirah's heart aches as she looks at them.

Suddenly she turns her eyes, red with crying, to the door. She has heard
•footsteps, heavy footsteps, on the stairs leading down into the basement ... a
clatter of cans against the wall, now to the right, now to the left.

A gleam of hope illumines her sunken features.

She rubs one foot against the other two or -three times, rises stiffly, and goes
to the door.

She opens it, and in comes a pale, round-shouldered Jew, with two empty
cans.

' Well ? ' she whispers.

He puts away the cans, takes off his yoke, and answers, lower still: 'Nothing
— nothing at all ! nobody paid me. To-morrow ! they said — everyone always
says : To-morrow ! The day after to-morrow — On the first day of the month ! '

' The children have hardly had a bite all day ! ' articulates Shirah. 'Anyway,
"they're asleep — that is something. Oh, my poor children ! '

She can control herself no longer, and begins to cry quietly.

' What are you crying for ? ' asks the man.

' Oh, Mendele, the children are so hungry ! ' She is making desperate efforts to
gulp down her tears.

'And what is to become of us ? ' (she moans) ' things only get worse and worse ! '

' Worse? no, Shirah ! come, I am ashamed of you! we are better off than we
were this time last year. I had no food to give you, and no shelter. The children
were all day rolling about in the gutter, and they slept in the dirty courts. Now,
•sven if they sleep on straw, they have a roof over their head.'

Shirah's sobs grew louder.

She has been reminded of the child that was taken from her, out there in the
streets. It caught cold, grew hoarse and died — and died, as it might have died
in the forest — without help of any kind — no measuring of graves — nothing said
over it, to protect it from the evil eye — it went out like a candle !

He tries to comfort her.

' Don't cry, Shirah, don't cry so ! do not sin against God ! '

' Oh, Mendele, if only He would help us ! '

' Shirah, for your own sake, don't take things so to heart ! See what a figure
jou have made of yourself! Do you know, it is ten years to-day since we were
•married ? Well, well, who would think you were the beauty of the town ! '

' And you, Mendele ! do you remember, you were called " Mendele the Strong,"
and now you are bent double, you are ill — and you think I do not know it — oh,
my God ! '

658 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

The cry escapes her, the children are startled out of their sleep, and begin to
wail anew : ' Bread ! hungry ! '

•' "Who ever heard of such a thing ! who is going to think of eating to-dav ! '
is Mendele's sudden exclamation.

The children sit up in alarm.

' This is a fast day ! ' continues Mendele with a stern face.

Several minutes elapse before the children take in what has been said to them.

' "What sort of fast is it ? ' they inquire tearfully.

And Mendele, with downcast eyes, tells them that in the morning, during
the reading of the Law, the Pentateuch fell from the desk. ' Whereupon,' he
continues, ' a fast was proclaimed, in which even sucking-children are to take
part.'

The children are silent, and he goes on to say : ' A fast like that on the Day of
Atonement, beginning overnight.'

The four children tumble out of bed. Barefooted, in their little, ragged shirts,
they begin to caper round the room, shouting : ' We are going to fast, to fast, to
fast ! '

Mendele screens the light with his shoulders, so that they shall not see their
mother's freely-falling tears.

' There, that will do, children, that will do ! Fast-days were not meant for
dancing. When the Rejoicing of the Law comes, then we will dance, please
God!'

The children get back into bed.

Their hunger is forgotten !

One of them, a little girl, starts singing :

Our Father, our King, etc., and On the high mountain, etc.

Mendele shivers from head to foot.

' One does not sing, either,' he says in a choked voice.

The children are silent, and go off to sleep, tired out with singing and dancing.
Only the eldest opens his eyes once more and inquires of his father :

' Tata, when will I be bar-mitzvah ? ' 4

' Not yet, not for a long time — in another four years. You must grow big and
strong ! '

' Then shall you buy me a pair of Praying Scarves ? '

' Of course ! '

' And a little bag to hold my prayer-books ? '

' Why, certainly ! '

' And a little, tiny Seder-book :> with gilt edges ? '

' With God's help ! you must pray to God, Cheisele I '

' Th,en I shall keep all the fasts ! '

' Yes, yes, Cheisele, all the fasts ! ' (adding, below his breath) ' Lord of the
World, only not any like this one — not like to-day's ! '

Perez has written a great deal. As the editor of a popular
magazine, for which only the best was to be considered good enough,
he frequently had to supply most of the contents himself.

The more than fifty sketches of which the ' Fast ' is an example
are all, however, of equal merit.

It must be acknowledged that they are nearly all equally sad.
The inherent melancholy of Jargon letters will always represent, for
the general reading public, their most serious drawback. Yet this

4 Confirmed. 5 For the Passover home service.

THE LAND OF JARGON 659

literature is one of the most humorous in the world, and Perez's rare
comic touches are as irresistible as any.

Abramovitsh is the writer whose social influence has been the
most marked.

In an early drama : The Tax, or the Gang of City Benefactors,
he exposed the disgraceful system of ' home-rule ' obtaining in the
Jewish communities of his day. The heads of the community of
Berditchef, which he had specially in view, attempted to kill him.
He escaped, and even the Kussian Government was moved to interfere
on behalf of the oppressed Jewish poor.

Besides many prose works, some of which have been translated
into Polish, Abramovitsh has successfully versified the Sabbath
prayers (for the benefit of Jewish womenkind) and written one long
tale in verse. This poem, Tudel by name, presents, most enter-
tainingly disguised, the story of ' Judah ' to the present day. Yudel,
his admirable wife Torah (the Law), his two daughters, Judaism and
Christianity who marries an Emperor, the cold reception of the
destitute Yudel in his daughter's palace — all is so real, so quaintly
told, and so free from anything like recrimination, that I would
gladly dwell on it.

Fishke the Lame deals with very low-class Jews — vagabonds who
travel about Eussia in carts and beg. Disagreeable scenes are intro-
duced, but never lingered over. The brutal ways of the leader of the
band and his followers only serve as a foil to the self-restraint and
purity of the wretched Fishke and the little beggar-girl he loves —
virtues which they take as a matter of course, seeing that in spite of
everything they are Jews.

This book is rendered still more interesting by the fact that the
author himself, at one time, was being taken across country in a
mendicant's waggon. Indeed, there are few of the Jargon writers
whose biography would not be of the most captivating description.
The elderly book-peddler who tells Fishke's story — or gives Fishke's
telling of it — has the following adventure : Having, unwittingly,
penetrated by night into a peasant's garden, and refreshed himself
with a cucumber, the peasant ' has him up ' before the Commissioner
of Police. The latter, who is on circuit duty, happens to be in a
house near by :

After a glance in through the window, the Gentile gave me a push forward
and stood himself by the door, without a hat. In my bewilderment, I also took
off my hat, scratched my head and stared about me like an idiot.

At a table there sits a notary and makes notes, scribbling with a pen which
begs every few seconds to be allowed to dip into the inkbottle and wet its mouth,,
after doing which it is sick onto the paper.

The notary hurries it along, twists himself lower and lower and grumbles at
every dip. It is evident that they worry one the other — both are displeased —
the pen, with his heavy hand and contortions, and he, with its blots. He : a
squeeze — the pen : a blot. In the centre of the room stands a red collar with.

•660 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

•brass buttons, a kind of a man with a big stomach and a bloated face ... his
small ejes flash fire, he twirls his long moustache, and all the while he is pitching
into two persons who stand with bent head beside the door : a tall one with a
healthy frame, a shaven neck and a silver ring in the lobe of his left ear ; the
other, a thin one with a little pointed beard and a tin plaque on his breast, holds
& long staff with both hands, blinks with his eyes and bows continually.

The red collar abuses the first of the two persons, screams : ' In chains with
.him ! to Siberia with such a Starost ! ' 6 and to the other :

' I'll have passports flayed out of you, you Sotski 7 so-and-so — the devil take
jour grandmother ! '

All my limbs die away. I shake as with ague, there is a rushing sound iu my
head, a ringing in my ears.

I neither see nor hear what is going on. I hear nothing properly, not even
.the voice of my Gentile when he presently accuses me. But when the red collar
turns to me with a harsh word in Russian, I come to all at once, and I hear
perfectly.

A clenched fist hovers before my eyes and dreadful words are sounding in my
ears ;

'Thief, contrabandist, seller of illegal goods, pursecutter, chains, prison,
Siberia ! '

Suddenly he makes for my ear-locks 8 and, pulling me angrily about, he seizes a
pair of scissors from the table and shears off one whole lock ! I am bathed in tears at
the sight of my ear-lock lying on the floor ; my grey old ear-lock which has grown
with me from childhood into my old age, which has shared with me, in the course
of my life, pains and pleasures galore. My mother stroked both locks and
weighed them in her palm and could never look long enough at the beautiful,
"black curls.

They adorned my face in my good days when I was fresh and strong. They
"became grey before the time, but their greyness was no shame to me. Both locks
.turned grey early through need, wretchedness, worry, unjust enmity.

To whom had my lock done harm ? who had been wronged by my grey
hairs ?

My heart is torn within me and cries, Help ! help ! but my lips are silent. I
look dumbly round, like a suorn sheep, and hop, kop, the tears fall thick as
'beans.

My unmolested cheek flamed, and my face must have altered dreadfully. I
must have been a pitiable object.

For soon after the red collar puts away his tongue, so to speak, and speaks
kindly to me, laying his hands on to my shoulders. A human heart must have stirred
beneath the brass buttons, my grey hairs and my whole appearance have testified
to my honesty. And now, as though in apology to me, he turns wrathfully upon
my Gentile — why in creation has he dragged here a poor old man like that ? and
drives him out with a threatening gesture. He himself takes his cap and walks
round eaying a word now to this one, now to the other.

Then he goes out and soon we hear the trap driving away.

All the people in the room come to life again.

The notary gives the pen a fling with a farewell imprecation. The stdrost and
the sotski stretch themselves and lift up their heads.

Somebody waves his hand toward the street and his eyes say : Off with you and
•don't show your faces here again ! The starost draws a deep breath, runs his
fingers through his hair and follows the hint with a ' That's a stanovoi,9 if you
Jike!'

6 Russian = village bailiff. " One responsible for the taxes etc. of 100 houses.
8 Worn by every orthodox Russian and Galician Jew.
a Police commissioner of a district.

1904 THE LAND OF JARGON 661

Spektor also is an ideal popular story-writer. He has neither the
vigour of Abramovitsh, the artistic perfection of Perez, nor the
brilliance of Rabbinovitsh. But there is a playfulness and repose,
an absence of all bitterness and gloom, that render his books pecu-
liarly winning. There are few more lovable characters in any
literature than those of Franya and her father in Spektor's Jewish
Students and Jewish Daughters.

But so unpretending is the tale, that not till we close the book
do we realise how Franya's unselfishness and refinement have won
our heart.

The life depicted here seems to belong to another day than ours ;
but at the end of the book, typically enough, we find a letter from
Franya's friend Clara, full of the wonders of the Paris Exhibition
of 1889.

Spektor's Three Persons is a small but extremely valuable work-
It describes, in the guise of a story, three present-day types. The
Eussian orthodox Jew, the Assimilator (who would be Russian in
everything but religion), and the Palestinian.

The following extract borrows a mournful interest from certain
recent events.

The period is one of anti-Semitic disturbances. Jacob (the
Assimilator) and his wife hear that not even Russified Jews like
themselves are safe from the approaching mob of rioters. They are
in great terror and perplexity. Close by lies a small Jewish town
of the usual squalid and lively type.

' Jacob also has gone " to the Jews " to ask for advice as to what is to be
done.'

He has gone to the Jews, to the people he used to avoid, with whom he had
no dealings, and would often ridicule into the bargain.

Header, do not be hard on Jacob — God keep misfortune far from every one of
us! ...

It was past midnight when he came home ' from the Jews.'

His wife had not yet lain down to rest, and was impatiently awaiting 1m
return.

'Well, what is the news ? Why have you been away so long? I have not
known what to think.'

' I have been with the Jews, and it was all I could do to get away/

' And what do they advise ? What do they say ? Wrhat did they tell you to-
do ?'

' What do they advise me, you ask ? I will tell you. I wondered, as I went,
what I should do, where I should go, and decided to look first for the Rabbi, who
would tell me where the people had assembled, and I intended crossing the
market-place. But it was impossible ! The whole square is filled with Jews,
with women and children, old and young. I saw that I need go no further to make
my inquiries. But before I could get to one of the elder, well-to-do householders,
all the Jews surrounded me with great delight and the women began to weep.

'"The dear Pani 10 Jacob has come to counsel us ! We Jews were in trouble,,
and so he remembered us. ' There is no pricing a Jewish soul.' The Jewish
heart has awakened in Pani Jacob, because the Jews were in distress !

"> Polish = lord.

662 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

' " Save us with our husbands and children ! Advise us in this j udgment from
"God, so that our daughters and the holy books in the synagogues be not defiled ! "

' And I heard a hundred other voices imploring me on all sides.

' " What can I do for you, dear Jews ? " I answered.

' " Was heisst was? u You are no simple Jew like ourselves, whose heads are
muddled with the worry of getting a livelihood. You are a Jew of to-day, you
keep company with great people, they think a lot of you, you will be a good
advocate for the Jews.

' " We see that they treat you like one of themselves, you are hail-fellow-
well-met with them. Tell us what to do ! Advise us, have pity on our wives
and children ! They say there will be a riot this next Sunday, there has just

been one in B , and they say that the B rioters are coming to us, that

they are already just outside the town. Have pity on us, dear Pani Jacob, you
2know better what is to be done than we blind ones ! "

' My head began toswim' (Jacob went on to tell his wife). ' I didnot know what
'to do next. Should I look at the unfortunate people, should I speak to them?
-comfort them, or give them some advice ? I began to wish I had never come,
and all the while I hear my praises sung on every side :

' " A Jew after all, the Pani Jacob — he has no dealings with any Jew, he never
even enters a synagogue, and now — now that a great calamity has befallen the
Jews, he comes — may God reward him for his goodness ! Grant him to live a
/hundred and twenty years' and then to enter Paradise."

' A wave of compassion swept over me — and there I stood ! '

Madame began to cry.

' And how did you answer them, the poor things ? '

' How I answered them ? I asked : What were they thinking of doing, mean-
'time ? Why were they all assembled in the market-place ?

( My head was going round, my heart ached, it grew black before my eyes. I
only just managed to say : " Wait a little, I will come again directly and tell you
what to do."

' They made way for me and I struggled through and came home.'

'But why — what for? 'asked Madame in some astonishment.

' What's the good of asking me ? / don't know ! My heart is very heavy, I
could weep bitterly — my head is splitting.'

f But Jacob ' (said Madame — in great alarm) ' the wretched people are waiting
for your answer, they are hoping. . . .'

'Well, let us go, perhaps we two together shall find something to say to
them . . .'

It may be asked :

What is the attitude of the Jargon writers toward the Eussian
Government ?

I can only answer by pointing to the words, in Kussian characters,
on the title leaf of every Jargon book :

* With the permission of the Censor.'

' The rest is silence.'

There is, however, a spirit of conciliation abroad for which we
are grateful and which is not without a dignity of its own.

In Dienesohn's Yossele, one of the saddest tales of child life ever
written, the boy is brought before a court of justice to be tried
for theft. The patient endeavours of the judge to get at the truth
are in marked contrast with the vindictive ness of Yossele's Jewish
accusers.

11 What do you mean by ( what ' ?

1904 THE LAND OF JARGON 663

Spektor, in his Jewish Peasant, does fall justice to the efforts
made by the Russian Government to induce Jews to settle on the
land. These efforts have been few, but then the naturally suspicious
Jews gave them no very encouraging reception.

Perez has ' A Chat ' between two old Hebrews taking a holiday
stroll. One of them tells of the delight with which he recites, every
Passover, the list of the plagues of Egypt. His words have a double
meaning.

Whereupon the other describes how a certain holy Rabbi grew
melancholy at the Passover festal board :

' Melancholy — on a feast day — Passover — what do you mean ? '

' Well, we asked him the reason why ! '

' And what did he answer ? '

' God Himself (was his reply) became melancholy on the occasion of the Exodus.'

' Where had he found that ? '

' It's a midrash.' 12

' When the children of Israel had crossed the Red Sea, and the water had covered
up and drowned Pharaoh and all his host, then the angels began to sing sougs,
seraphim and ophanim flew through all the seven heavens with hymns and glad
tidings, all the stars and planets danced and sang, and the transmigrant souls —
you can guess what rejoicings ! '

But the Creator put an end to them.

A Voice issued from the Throne :

' My children are being drowned in the sea, and you rejoice and sing ! '

Because God created Pharaoh and all his host — the devil himself was made by
God, and it is written :

' His tender mercies are over all his works.'

' Certainly,' sighs lieb Zerach.

He is silent for a while and then asks : •

' And if it is a midrash, what conclusions did he draw ? '

Ileb Shekenah stands still and says gravely :

' Firstly, Belzer 13 fool, no one can be original, " there is no chronological order
in the Law," the new is old, the old is new . . . Secondly, he showed us why we
recite . . . even the plagues ... to a mournful Sinai tune, a tune that is
steeped in grief. Thirdly, he translated the precept : " Al-tismach Yisrael el gil
ca'amim " u thus : Rejoice not in a materialistic way, you are no boor ! " '

' Revenge is not for Jews.'

Somewhat apart from these three men stands Linetzki, the
author of one single masterpiece, the Kassidic Boy, or Polish Boy as
it has also been called. He wrote it in the bitterness of his soul, for
it is in great part a disguised autobiography, and he had suffered
incredible things at the hands of the Kassids. But, ' Farewell ' (says
the hero of the book to these same fanatics) ' and know that, although
I lost my chance in life through your sweet Polish way of educating
children, I leave the world happy, hoping that after the Polish Boy you
will bring up no more such " Polish boys " as your victim Linetzki.'

The information contained in this work respecting the manners

ls Talmudical exposition of the Biblical text. 13 Follower of the Rabbi of Belz.

14 Hosea ix. 1.

664 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct>

and customs, social and domestic, of a certain portion of Jargonland
renders it priceless. It is none too refined in tone, its jokes are broad
and its caricature ruthless ; but there is no mistaking the earnestness
of its purpose and the intensely tragic impression left on the reader.
The Kassidic Boy is one of the more difficult works, being full of
Hebrew expressions and very idiomatic. The student will do well to-
commence with the simpler, but no less pure, Jargon of Spektor and
Perez. The Songs from the Ghetto by Morris Eosenfeld, edited by
Professor Wiener, with an English prose translation and German
lettering, form an excellent introduction to the study of Yiddish.
Since Perez has left off writing iu verse, the first living Jargon poets
are A. Goldfaden and Frug. The former, who founded the Jewish
theatre in 1876, is the more powerful of the two; but my personal
knowledge of his work is of the slightest.

Frug is one of several who, in a time of national distress, gave
up Kussian for Jargon, that they might speak to the people in their
own tongue.

He is no great poet, but within certain limits, which he wisely
does not overstep, he possesses considerable merit.

Frug was born in a Jewish agricultural colony. Hence his love*
for nature, a feeling of which the expression in Jargon literature is
somewhat rare. This love he would fain impart to his humble
brethren. They are still mentally overshadowed by the stone walls-
of the ghettos, and their longing after vines and fig trees is apt to>
be more intense than literal.

• •••••••

The vales and the dales, and the wide-stretching plain,
The clouds and the stars and the wind and the river,
The green little leaflets that rustle and shiver,
That glance in the sun and are wet with the rain :
The snow-wreath of silver, the gold of the fall,
The heaven above and the earth at my feet,
Of hope and of gladness they sang, one and all,
And oh, but their singing, their singing was sweet !

My Rabbi was Nature — she set me to learn,
She taught me to sing and she taught me to plav,
She taught me to think and to feel, day by day,
And all that is beautiful swift to discern.
The heart must be fresh, and the brain clear and steady r
The scales and the measure be waiting and ready,
And I, after all, have become — why, you know it :
A poet, my brothers, a poor Jewish poet ! '

• >••»•• •

The following are three of Frug's shorter poems :

ON THE GRAVE OF MICHAEL GORDON

One more gravestone — one more heart,
Cold and still, has found relief
From the joy and bitter smart,
From the wrath for other's grief.

1904 THE LAND OF JAEGON 665

"Where the ash is strewn about
Lies the dear old fiddle, lone ;
And the crazy song ran out
With a sudden sound of moan.

Strong and earnest, unafraid
Rose the song, and clear and high.
Ring the bell — the piece is played !
Hushed the laughter, hushed the cry.

In the land where, free from pain,
Thou, dear soul, art gone to live,
One assurance still retain,
All the comfort we can give.

This, while yet there lives a Jew,
Through the many coming years,
Shall thy songs be sung anew,
Some with laughter, some with tears.

Sleep, thou spirit sweet and rare,
Where the leaves of life are shed !
Thine own songs shall be the Pray'r
Spoke in blessing o'er the dead.

THE JEWISH CHILD

In the airless gloom and darkness
Where no sunlight falls,
Dost thou mark the blindworm yonder
Where he crawls ?

In the earth the worm in darkness
Had his birth,

And his lot — to crawl for ever
In the earth.

Wormlike, in the dark and helpless,
All the undefiled

Years of childhood thou art passing,
Jewish child !

By the cradle-side thy mother,
Rocking thee,

Sings no song of peace, of gladsome
Liberty ;

Of the gardens, of the valleys
Where, the livelong day,
Free as air, the rosy children
Laugh and play.

Nay, a bursting tide of anguish
Flows along,

Ever welling — oh, the bitter
Cradle song !
VOL. LVI — No. 332 Y Y

666 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

Deep-drawn sighs and tear-drops scalding,
In a rushing stream,
Night and day are sounding ever
Through thy dream ;

Deep-drawn sighs and tear-drops scalding,
Cold and pain,

Drag their weary length, like spectres,
In thy train.

And from cot to grave, unbroken
All the long, long way,
Stretch whole forest-leagues of trouble,
3rim and grey !

SAND AND STAIiS

Shines the moon, the stars are glowing,
The night sweeps on o'er hill and plain,
In the tattered book before me
I read, and read them once again,

Ancient words of promise holy,
And loud, at last, they speak to me :
' As the stars of heaven — my people,
And as the sand beside the sea ! '

Lord Almighty, Thou hast spoken,
Unchanging is Thine holy will,
Ev'rything at Thy commandment
His own appointed place shall fill.

Yes, dear Lord, we're sand and pebbles,
We're scattered, underfoot are trod,
But the stars, the bright and sparkling,
The stars, the stars — where are they, God ? 15

Space forbids me to say more of Dienesohn, whose work bears
some resemblance to that of Spektor, or to speak of S. Kabbinovitsh.

The latter, besides some good stories, has done excellent work as
a critic, in which he is seconded by Frishman.

In spite of their unceasing efforts, sensational trash is still piled
high in the Jewish book-market. It seems, however, to be more
harmful for its unfaithfulness to life and utter worthlessness as
literature than for any other reason. It is mostly written in a
corrupt Germanised Yiddish of no interest to the philologist. This
form of the language was introduced, with the best intentions, by one
or two north-western writers early in the last century.

If, again, I dwell on the poet Morris Kosenfeld, I shall be led
to speak of others who, likewise of Eussian birth, have made their

15 These translations are reprinted, by kind permission, from the Jenisli Quarterly
Review of April, 1902.

1904 THE LAND OF JARGON 667

home in America. They belong to what, for the convenience of the
moment, I have termed the Yiddish group of writers. This group
is of no small significance, but it lies beyond the limit of this
sketch.

The American writers have been active in the translating line.
The Jargon library of translations, if I may so call it, now includes
David Copperfield, Don Quixote, Anna Karenina, certain works of
Jules Verne and Zola, stories by Maupassant and others.

The Yiddish literature of the eighteenth and preceding centuries
was either religious or partook of the nature of folklore.

The Maisse Buck of the year 1602 was intended to wean
Jewish womenfolk from the Grentile tales over which they pored to
the displeasure of the Kabbis. The stories and legends in this
volume are mainly of Jewish origin. Meanwhile, unwritten fables
and fairy tales, fantastic children of every nation, age, and clime,
were circulating by the thousand. Quantities have since been com-
mitted to print. The rest continue to lead a winged existence,
which becomes more precarious from year to year.

The educated Jewish public in Russia is presumably out of touch,
for the most part, with the Jargon language and literature.

Whether this is to be regretted, as making for a want of fellow-
feeling between rich and poor; whether the passionate appeal of
Perez for ' the help of the really intelligent ' will find any response —
these are questions which I must leave to others. One thing is
certain : the cause of Jargon literature is the cause of the Jargon-
s' peaking people in a very special sense, because of the scarcity of
t ay but religious instruction.

Those by no means ' men of leisure,' therefore, who have gladly
given time and talents in its interest deserve the gratitude of Jew
and Gentile alike.

If no individual can be better or worse without influencing the
rest of the world for evil or for good, how much more is this true of
a whole people ?

And if true of any race, it is very specially so of the one whose
recent literature we have been hastily considering.

What civilised nation can afford to be indifferent, at the
present day, (to the moral and intellectual condition of the Polish
Jew?

HELENA FKAKK.

V Y 2

668 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

A
REMINISCENCE OF COVENTRY PATMORE

IN 1870, when a student of medicine, a natural affinity to literature
led me to form the acquaintance of another student, possessed of,
as possessed by, considerable originality both of phrases and ideas.
A friendship began which, I am happy to say, still continues, and
which led me to another lasting pleasure — an invitation to his
father's house in the Easter of 1872.

Coventry Patmore was to me until then a nominis umbra,
though for a boy my knowledge of literature was fairly extensive.
I remembered how I had been told that his verse was a healthy
reaction against the morbid Byronic influence, and at that time it
seemed to me that one might as well attempt to drown fire with
cups of milk-and-water instead of with pump and hose. I had a
quick receptivity (a quality injudicious friends are wont to mistake
for ability), and, though deeply interested, I started on my journey
that Easter both critical and prejudiced. That my recollection of
that visit remains most clear and vivid is not strange. Nothing
more curious than the personality of my host could be presented to
a boy of my temperament.

At Uckfield my friend and I met by chance a good priest, who
acted as chaplain to the establishment at Heron's Grhyll. His
' Would you like to walk ? ' was accompanied by such a pleasant
smile of invitation that we thought we could not decline. For
some reason we young ones were already tired out. The walk
flagged, and conversation dropped. After some miles the poor priest
looked so weary that we expressed a regret for not having driven,
when he exclaimed, with half-assumed distress, ' Ah ! if I had only
known ! You should not be so shy of expressing your preferences
in the presence of your elders.' It was not in this way that I was
shy.

Heron's Grhyll, I believe, was formerly named 'Buckstead,'
though I see that Mr. Edmund Grosse calls it ' Brixsted.' It was an
improved, and rather obviously improving, estate, with new planta-
tions and new paths, very effectively arranged and well kept. The

house also looked new, though much of the old building remained.
The windows had stone mullions, and the whole house was fronted
with a warm-coloured stone.

It stood naked and clean in the landscape. The interior of the
hall, with tiled floor and bare walls, was airy and cool, like a model
dairy. It was a thoroughly good and comfortable house, well
arranged, and manageable with few servants. The arrangements
everywhere were simple, but never primitive; a simplicity with
distinction. The absence of the ordinary water-drainage system I,
rightly or wrongly, took to be the suggestion of the well-known
Sir John Simon, whom I met there during my visit.

A lady, very winning and gracious and kind, met us in the hall.
She was dressed in a long dark robe narrowly edged with blue, made,
I thought, somewhat like a religious habit. I am, throughout this
reminiscence, recalling my impressions of the time, and earnestly
trust that these may, when unworthy of my subject, in no wise be
taken as representing my maturer and later judgment, which, as
regards everyone I met in that kind household, is wholly grateful
and affectionate. I was steeped in Shelley, romantically Kadical in
my sympathies, and somewhat of a ' prig.' Moreover, I knew
nothing of my host and hostess, who lived in a certain higher and
more rarefied atmosphere. I thought I lived on richer soil, more
prodigal of flowers, than theirs.

Later, when I was in the dining-room, Coventry Patmore entered.
My most vivid recollection of him is as he stood in that door-
way. It was a living picture. His clothes seemed too loose for
his spare frame. He wore a comfortable black velvet ' shooting '
coat, and light check trousers. A thin, rather untidy wisp of black
necktie made more distinct the large ends of his upright linen collar,
apparently not separable from his shirt, all spotlessly clean and
white. He seemed as erect as an arrow, and lithe as an osier ; the
eyes shone on me brilliantly like a bird's. The lower part of his
face, which was devoid of hair, seemed small in comparison with a
large and very broad brow, wide at the temples. But the lower part
of his face was made ever memorable by his mouth, shaped like a
Cupid's bow when fleetingly at rest, but almost incessantly changing
in outline. The lips rarely apart, perhaps more rarely to me as one
unworthy of his speech, often pressed together by some inward
thought, then shooting forwards with a sort of prehensile rapidity !

But his eyes were kind, and had wit and humour. He shook
hands and at once I was at ease. Never perhaps did grey hairs
seem so young.

Two girls slipped in, shy and silent. The younger, fragile and
more like her father than the elder, looked extremely interesting';
the elder was beautiful. Shyly they sat down at table, and all we
younger ones looked down at our plates, speaking only when spoken

670 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

to. This was the type of our first meals. After two or three of
them the silence grew to be oppressive. An effort to say something,
perhaps to shine, took possession of me. I had just been reading
Romola. Greatly daring, I hazarded some criticisms which elicited
a response from Mrs. Patmore, who, smiling, said that it was strange
how completely George Eliot had misunderstood and almost laugh-
ably travestied the character of St. Theresa, which the authoress
had cited as a parallel to that of Dorothea in Middlemarch. No
Catholic would have thought of such an absurd comparison. It was
a complete misunderstanding of the mind of the saint.

I felt at once dreadfully out of my depth. But, knowing nothing
of St. Theresa, it did not follow that I had nothing to say. Perhaps
I said something in ignorant defence. No doubt it was something
foolish. The table grew more silent ! I spoke again, and looked
at the velvet-coated figure away to the right — a long way it seemed
— at the head of the table, with an expectation of sympathy.

The lips shot out and quivered, like a snake's tongue at a
fascinated rabbit, and I felt a blow was coming. ' Have you read
any of St. Thomas a Kempis ? ' said the snake.

I had seen the book on the table of a Positivist. There was an
undercurrent of humour at the conjunction, which emboldened me
to smile and say, ' Yes ' — hoping the undercurrent would bear me to
safety and conversation.

Then all my nerves, conversational and other, were paralysed by
the quiet remark, ' He says, " Talk little, especially with young
people." '

It was a direct blow, and the room whirled. Then a wound of
shame began to throb. I stole a look at the son ; his eyes were on
his plate. Did he faintly smile? — I could not tell. The elder
daughter gazed with unnatural firmness at her plate, a faint rose
blush pervading her. The younger ? — she also looked at her plate.
They all had their hands in their laps. Was conversation tabooed
at meals ? The silence lasted until we rose. Oh, the relief, when
the study door closed, and we emancipated boys escaped into the
open air !

The poison rankled in the wound all day. Not till night
fell, with its inward illumination, did full relief come. It was
born of revenge. I was young and ignorant, and had been beaten.
But the longed-for sense of power came back. I elaborated the
sentence, ' Coventry Patmore's poems are the Drivelling Domesticity
of an Uxorious Simpleton,' and fell asleep happy. So might a
savage slumber satisfied, having shot his arrow at the sun's
eclipse.

The next morning a fine view of the Weald of Sussex was to be
seen from the windows, the house was bright with sun, all was clean
and fresh and happy. My friend and I spent the forenoon bird's-

1904 REMINISCENCE OF COVENTRY PATMORE 671

nesting in the woods which, forming part of his father's property,
stretched downwards to the left. Our deep enjoyment of an irre-
sponsible freedom had its contrast in the afternoon, when we all,
including a Miss Kobson, who was staying in the house, went for a
walk with the poet — one never to be forgotten. The striking
personality of the previous day was manifested in a new aspect out
of doors. The tall erect figure was bent, the head projecting for-
wards ; a grey-and -black plaid shawl was thrown over the back,
accentuating the stoop of the shoulders. For the time the poet
was a valetudinarian. We walked slowly, conversing with the
gardeners, and visiting the newly planted shrubberies, in which the
poet took a great pleasure, and of which I was reminded when,
years after, I was reading of Sir Walter Scott. He said little, and
seemed to be warming himself in the sunshine, full of thoughts into
which we dared not break. Slowly and gravely we reached the
sportive woods of the morning, and visited a pool whose margin
was imprinted with the feet of many small birds. These, he told
me, were the footprints of the heron, from which the domain took
the name, conferred on it by himself, of ' Heron's Crhyll.' Country-
bred, I knew these were not the marks of herons, but of smaller
birds. I hazarded an unheard whisper of water-wagtails. I was in
a half-illumined state of mind ; the poet seemed to live in a dream,
' where nothing is but what is not.' I thought, * To what's unreal
thou coactive art, and fellow'st nothing.' To accuracy of fact in
the scientific sense he then, and often afterwards, seemed to me to
give no allegiance : that which he himself thought things to be was
the more important truth. The beauty of a thought was, in a
way, objective to him. From it he seemed to derive the same sense
of satisfaction which to plainer men is derived from the contempla-
tion of a seemingly concrete world. What this world of mine might
be to him was a mystery to me ; that the world was mystic to him
was plain. The fascination which his power exercised on me grew
to a liking for him as I began faintly to understand him.

That evening we had a service in the chapel, where we all knelt
and prayed.

During the days we boys played as boys do. A new light by this
means was thrown on the poet's gentle nature. We took a grey horse
out of the stables, and hunted the fields, and the usual misfortune of
a borrower pursued me. I wrenched the grey's shoulder in a rabbit-
hole and, temporarily I trust, lamed him. I told my host, like a good
boy, expecting another quotation from Thomas a Kempis, but was
met with a smile, many movements of the lips, but no remark, nor
did he once refer to my meddlesomeness in any way whatever. It
was true kindness, for I was much distressed. I felt he did not
dislike me in the least, so, less shy, I was encouraged to speak to him
occasionally.

672 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

In the evenings we sometimes had music from his wife and elder
daughter. He liked simple airs, and said that modern music was
abhorrent to him. One evening we played at impromptus in the
manner of Lear's nonsense verses. The poet sat reading. After a
while someone gave out the word ' Cadiz,' and with a smile he looked
over his paper and said :

There was an old fellow of Cadiz

Who lived in a place where no shade is ;

So he lighted his cloak, and sat under the smoke,

That clever old fellow of Cadiz.

After that he often made nonsense verses, which, alas ! I have
forgotten.

We always spent the evenings together, the poet mostly reading.
He disliked tobacco, and told me that Ruskin said perhaps the worst
thing about smoking was that it enabled young men to do nothing
contentedly.

The conversation turned one evening upon ghosts and apparitions^
Suddenly he told me a most extraordinary story in detail, with place,,
time, and circumstance complete.

He said that one evening he was staying in a house together with*
Mr. Holman Hunt. They were in a room with double folding doors,
and were sitting alone together, when, looking through into the-
further room, which was lit up, he saw a little figure seated on the
corner of the table. It was alive and looked about, and was dressed
in a quaint dress with a little peaked hat shaped like a harebell, and
with pointed shoes. He called Holman Hunt's attention to the
figure seen by himself, and Holman Hunt saw it equally distinctly.
Taking some paper, the latter made a sketch of it exactly as it seemed
to him to sit there, the sketch corresponding in every particular with
Coventry Patmore's vision of the same. On looking for it again the
figure had disappeared. I remember thinking it strange that the-
figure was so like that of the conventional gnome of the story-books^
and I suppose that my host looked on me as a child, and told me a,
fanciful story. But it was told in a way to impress me with its
veracity, and some time afterwards I endeavoured to find out if Mr..
Holman Hunt remembered anything of the circumstance or possessed
the sketch, but was told there was absolutely no foundation whatever.
for the story. Documentary evidence, as I think Professor Huxley
once took the trouble to prove, is always absent in such cases.
Happily Mr. Holman Hunt is still with us to delight us, and, should
he think it worth while, could clear up the mystery.

I was asked one evening what of George Eliot's I had been reading.
Eeferring at once to poetry, I named Armgart and the Spanish Gypsy
and the headings of some chapters of Middlemarch. ' Ah ! ' said
the poet, with infinite meaning of depreciation, ' that is what I call
" important " poetry.'

1904 REMINISCENCE OF COVENTRY PATMORE 673

A remarkable saying of his is treasured in my memory as the
best definition I have ever heard of the elusive term 'gentleman.'
' A gentleman,' said he, ' is one who does everything with the least
possible expenditure of force.' The extreme felicity of this definition
is not of a kind to startle the hearer at once, but it is extraordinarily
accurate. The ' gentleman ' is not, of course, necessarily an idler :
he may ' do everything.' Yet all he does is done in this way ; the
great loss of force in mechanics through friction can only be reduced
to a minimum by extreme skill, and the analogy will be clear to the
student of manners : the subtleties of manner and of speech charac-
terising a gentleman were never so surely brought under a general
term. It is too good to be fully appreciated by any but those
experienced in society and in human nature.

When my visit was drawing to its close the poet's son told me
that his father wished to have some little private talk with me before
I left.

The message was conveyed as if it were a mark of great favour
shown to me, and I took it as such. But I was nervous and shy,
feeling I was about to be weighed in the balance and found wanting.
At the hour named I entered his study and found myself alone with
him. The room was at the further end of the house, and he was
seated at his writing-table. I sat at the side of the table, and he
talked a little of my aims in life. Then of my tastes in poetry,
which were very catholic, but tending towards the obscurely psycho-
logic and inchoate ; towards wayward expressions of deep feeling and
wild growths ; towards Shelley, Browning, and Kossetti. He thought
my taste should be more reserved and chastened ; and I was greatly
interested by a remark of his that the final and supreme art of poetry
was to be extremely simple and clear — that I might be misled into
thinking this was easy, and that I might mistake Art's greatest reach,
simplicity for poverty. I glanced at the neat papers on his desk,
and thought he was thinking of himself and defending his own work.
In saying this I am trying to observe the simplicity he inculcated.
It was a feeling I do not mind acknowledging to my shame, since
' my conversion so sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.' That this
was his own high aim, and that he greatly succeeded therein, no one
of critical faculty can doubt.

He asked me if I liked Tennyson. I was full of the Palace of
Art, and spoke of it with enthusiasm. He drily remarked that Maud
was Tennyson's greatest poem, and would ultimately be thought so.
At that time I admired Maud so much that I knew it all by heart ;
but the golden moment for saying so was gone. After most kind
expressions from him, the little interview came to an end.

That it was of pure intent to influence me for good is obvious,
and I am ever grateful to him for that unforgotten hour. After
many years I take his words more to heart, though still without

674 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

entire assent. But for his direction I might never have seen the
perfect intricacy in simplicity and the extreme artistic finish of
such a poem as The Toys, and have been touched only by its pathos,
which is limitless — an example of profound effect gained by the
employment of apparently simple means. I never read it now with-
out being lost in admiration. It is sure and unerring, and shows the
hand of a master. The pathos is even terrible, for it referred to his
much-loved son Henry, whose great promise faded with his early
death.

A long walk ended the visit. His son and I walked with him
from Heron's Ghyll to Bridge Park. Occasionally again that curious
inaccuracy of fact peeped out. I was fond of running and jumping,
and would jump the hedges and gates ; for this he checked me,
saying I should not jump, as it was a frequent cause of rupture.
I have never known it occur in intentional jumping: a sudden slip
of a valetudinarian on orange-peel is much more vicious : and sports
are the saving of a boy.

We left him at a charmingly situated house on the farther side
of Eridge Park, overlooking that beautiful and almost feudal extent
of proud wild country in the heart of domestic Sussex. He was kind
enough to entertain me several times in London, but I never saw him
again in intimacy. His poems are on the shelves of a convert.
The response to the influence of his penetrative mind grows with
increasing years.

PAUL CHAPMAN, M.D., F.R.C.P.

1904

THE NEXT LIBERAL MINISTRY

AMID accustomed controversy on political problems there is a rare
consensus of opinion that the result of the next General Election will
place a Liberal Ministry in power. Whether the shifting of the
burden will follow upon a Ministerial rout at the poll, or whether the
majority will be of ordinary proportions, is the only point of difference
in the forecast. Up to May 1903 Mr. Chamberlain, a shrewd judge
of electoral chances, avowed the opinion that the Liberals would come
in with a majority under fifty, and, after ineffectively struggling along
through a Session or two, would suddenly collapse as did Lord Rose-
bery's Ministry in 1895. But a great deal has happened since May
1903. The country has had placed before it, personally conducted
by a powerful statesman, a programme involving return to Protec-
tionist principles. An early result was the disruption of the Unionist
party. Later came a series of by-elections which, almost without
variation, testified to distrust by the electorate of the proposed new
departure. By-elections are not to be accepted as infallibly indicat-
ing the drift of public opinion. But it is a simple mathematical pro-
position that, if the proportion of Unionist disasters at the poll indicated
through the last twenty months be spread throughout a General
Election, Liberal candidates will be returned by a majority recalling the
triumphs of 1880 and 1885.

By the exercise of constitutional courage and display of a dex-
terity that occasionally verged on disregard of Parliamentary tradi-
tions, Mr. Balfour succeeded in falsifying the general expectation that
a dissolution would interrupt the progress of last Session. There was
in the actual situation no reason why the Prime Minister should
voluntarily dismiss Parliament. It is true his majority was steadily
decreased by the operation of by-elections. But what was the turn-
over of a score of votes among so many ? Whenever the problem of
fiscal reform cropped up in the House of Commons the Ministerial
majority ran down below the half hundred. On questions of general
policy a majority of fourscore was the minimum result. Why should
a Minister thus supported go to the country ? Nor was impetus in
that direction given by evidence of decrepitude accompanying old age
on the part of the sitting House. When the first Parliament of King

675

676 THE NINETEENTH CENTURA Oct.

Edward the Seventh reassembles next February it will be on the
threshold of its fifth year. It is true it met for a dozen days in Decem-
ber 1900. But that was for merely formal work, and does not count
as a Session. As far as years are concerned there is nothing in practice
or usage that should prevent Parliament quietly proceeding through
the coming Session, deferring dissolution till the year 1906.

Will effort be made in that direction ? Here again the potent
personality of Mr. Chamberlain intrudes itself. With characteristic
frankness he has publicly proclaimed his plan of campaign. Admitting
the inevitable succession of a Liberal Ministry, he is content to stand
aside during its term of life, awaiting the opportunity of its downfall
to take the field with his programme of Preferential Tariffs. That
would be all very well if the propagandist were in, say, his fiftieth
year. But when the shadow of his seventieth year looms over a
statesman, months become as precious as are years to careless
youth. Mr. Gladstone, as his private friends can testify, felt this
acutely when in 1886 he espoused a cause not less revolutionary
than that Mr. Chamberlain has abruptly made his own. With a
coarseness of phrase that did not detract from the accuracy of the
diagnosis, Lord Randolph Churchill described the author of the Home
Rule Bill of 1886 as ' an old man in a hurry.' At that period, sped
nearly nineteen years, Mr. Gladstone was not much older than Mr.
Chamberlain will be at the date when, after a moderate interval of
Liberal administration, he counts upon finding himself in a position to
dethrone Free Trade. With a majority starting at forty, steadily wear-
ing away to nothing, the Ministry placed in power in 1892 lived on
till 1895. The next Liberal Ministry will certainly have a majority
exceeding forty, and, free from the disintegrating influence of a Home
Rule Bill, may reasonably expect to run into their fifth Session. How-
ever that be, Mr. Chamberlain can ill afford to be lavish in the matter
of years. Contemplating the stupendous task assumed towards the
close of a strenuous life, he must come to Macbeth's conclusion,
arrived at in quite other circumstances :

If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly.

It was a marvel to many that he withheld his hand throughout
last Session. With a following of 200 in the Ministerial camp, he
was master of the situation, and might have decreed dissolution at
any time, so hastening approach to his final opportunity. Actuated
by whatsoever reason, he was content to leave his old colleagues in
office. It is exceedingly improbable that patience will be extended
through the coming year. The time may, therefore, be opportune
briefly to review the achievements of Mr. Balfour's first Administration
and contemplate contingencies that may follow on its dismissal.

In the matter of the number and magnitude of legislative accom-

1904 THE NEXT LIBEEAL MINISTRY 677

plishments it will not fill large space in history. If it attains distinc-
tion in that direction it will be by reason of its singular barrenness.
Its first complete Session, running with brief interval from the 16th
of January to the 18th of December, 1901, was the most productive.
But in respect of anything approaching first-class measures the record
does not go beyond the reform (left incomplete) of Parliamentary
procedure, the passing of an Education Bill for England and Wales,
and the carrying of the London Water Bill. One searches in vain
through the journals of the first Session opened by the King in per-
son for anything that might rank as a legislative measure of prime
importance. The Session of 1903 saw the Irish Land Bill added to
the Statute Book, the prize of this year's Session being the Licensing
Bill. With an overwhelming, up to the introduction of the tariff
controversy a docile, majority, the aggregate is not much for four
years.

With one Session still in hand, Mr. Balfour has the opportunity of
adding to his list of legislative achievements a work that would bring
up the average to a level more nearly approaching that reached by
some of his predecessors. In a recent number of this Review Sir H.
Kimber set forth the case for a measure dealing with the redistribu-
tion of seats. It needs only to be stated to demonstrate the gross
absurdity of a system patched up at intervals during the last seventy
years. The assumption underlying it is that all duly qualified electors
enjoy equal privileges. The fact — one among many — is that the vote
of an elector of Newry counts for eighteen times as much as the vote
of a Romford elector. Of the nearly seven million electors on the
register, two and a half millions return 370 out of the 670 members
constituting the House of Commons. The remaining four millions and
a half are perforce content with returning 300 members. Thus the
minority of the electorate are in a position to settle affairs of State
against the will of the overwhelming majority.

That such a state of things should continue to exist is evidence of
the conservatism that, in spite of Reform Acts, underlies the tempera-
ment of the nation. Mr. Balfour is in a position, rarely occupied by
a Prime Minister, of grappling with this stupendous anachronism.
He still has an irresistible working majority in the Commons, and has
no fear of overthrow in the House of Lords. Actually, the matter
is not one of party politics. In the readjustment of electoral force
Liberals and Conservatives would equally win and lose. Ireland
would chiefly suffer. Her Parliamentary representation, settled in
proportion to population, would be reduced by thirty out of 103.
But there is no reason in mathematics why Ireland should continue to
be favoured at the expense of England and Scotland. Certainly,
there is nothing in the average of Irish representation at Westminster
that insists upon continuance of exceptionally favoured circumstance.

JMr. Balfour is further fortunate in having at hand at this particular

678 THE NINETEENTH CENTUJRY Oct.

juncture an instrument that, dexterously used, would smooth the
way of settlement. The Irish members would, naturally, protest
against having their number, with its potentiality of good or evil,
reduced. Assuming them to be inspired solely by patriotic desire,
they would welcome a chance of bartering over-representation at
Westminster for the devolution of Irish local business upon local
authority. I have personal reason to believe that the Prime Minister
has for some months had under consideration the possibility and
desirability of grappling next Session with the question of the re-
distribution of seats. A deal with devolution is not a necessary
corollary. The combination would, in truth, form a colossal task,
alluring to Gladstone in his prime or to Disraeli in his desperation.
There are, nevertheless, what some regard as portentous signs abroad
of dallying with the question. The programme put forward by the
new Irish Reform League, under the presidency of Lord Dunraven,
if it serves no weightier purpose, acts admirably as a kite to test the
current of the wind. It will not be forgotten that the action of an
analogous body meeting in Dublin under the same presidency directly,
to the marvel of mankind, led to the introduction and enactment of
the Irish Land Purchase Bill. However that be, whether with or
without devolution, Mr. Balfour may brace himself up to the pitch of
devoting the last Session of the Parliament supporting his First
Administration to the great work of making the representation of
the people in Parliament a veritable thing.

Since the, secession from the Cabinet of Mr. Chamberlain and the
Duke of Devonshire, Mr. Balf oar's Ministry has more than ever been
a one-man Administration. Almost in equal degree, though in varying
fashion, the Premier of to-day centres upon himself the attention of
the House and the country as in their time did Disraeli and Gladstone.
It has of late grown to be the fashion to accuse Mr. Balfour of failure
as a Leader of the House of Commons. Certainly, if success in that
office be measured by the number of Bills added to the Statute Book
in the course of a Session, failure must be admitted. With supreme
intellectual gifts Mr. Balfour lacks something of the qualities of a
business man, notable, for example, in the character of his pre-
decessor William Henry Smith. Mr. Smith got Bills through. Mr.
Balfour witches the House with charm of manner, extorts admiration
by the dexterity with which he skates over thin ice. But turning
over the ledger of the Session in search of business done, the record,
as we have seen, is disappointingly meagre.

During the last two Sessions Mr. Balfour has found himself
handicapped by a state of things for the initiation of which he has
no responsibility. Possibly with the advantage of retrospection he
may be convinced that it would have been better in the interests of
himself and the Unionist party had he put his foot down when Mr.
Chamberlain first raised the flag of Preferential Tariffs, plainly declaring

1904 THE NEXT LIBERAL MINISTRY 679

that he would hold no truck with the thing. A mind constitutionally
prone to subtleties, a disposition that shrank from open hostility
to an old colleague, led him into the dubious course that has marked
his attitude on the question. He has tried to walk on both sides of
the road, declaring against taxation of food, whilst protesting that,
after all, there can be no harm in inquiry into the bearings of Free
Trade at the commencement of a new century. Meanwhile he relies
upon the efficacy of that blessed word Retaliation. This concatena-
tion of circumstances created perennial difficulty, through which Mr.
Balfour has steered with brave assumption of light-heartedness. In
a familiar passage in his Life of Lord George Bentinck Disraeli describes
Peel sitting on the Treasury Bench watching the flower of his party
pass by to join in the division lobby the Opposition bent on wrecking
his Ministry. So time after time, during the past two Sessions, Mr.
Balfour has seen a section of his following, important by reason of
character and intellect, withdraw from his side when the question at
issue involved the sanctity of the principle of Free Trade. The con-
clusion of the matter was frankly set forth by Lord Londonderry
addressing a meeting of Primrose Leaguers gathered in the autumn
in his Northumberland park. ' I do not hesitate to say,' he declared,
* that if the dissentients from the ranks of the Unionist party over
the fiscal question are allowed to continue, we must look forward to
the next General Election with feelings of the greatest possible appre-
hension.'

This brings us back to the road whither all portents point, the
near succession of a Liberal Administration. Who will undertake
to form it, and how will the more important posts be distributed ?
In a narrow circle likely to be acquainted with Mr. Balfour's feelings
on the subject, it is understood that if, on surrendering the seals of
office as the result of a General Election, he be invited by his Majesty
to suggest the name of a successor, he will submit that of Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman. Of course it. does not inevitably follow that,
in such circumstances, the Sovereign should seek the advice of the
retiring Minister. When in March 1894 Mr. Gladstone tendered his
resignation to Queen Victoria, he, in conversation with Mr. John
Morley, frankly admitted he expected the Queen to consult him on
the subject of his successor. Her Majesty made no advance in that
direction. Acting solely on her own initiative, she sent for Lord
Rosebery and pressed on his acceptance the seals of office. Had
Mr. Gladstone been consulted, he avowed that he would have advised
the Queen to send for Earl Spencer.

Earl Spencer's claim to the Liberal Premiership is established on
the basis of long and conspicuous service. It can never be forgotten
how, carrying his life in his hand, he undertook residence in Dublin
and the government of Ireland during the turbulent times of 1882-5.
Remembering protests made from below the gangway on the Liberal

680 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Oct.

side against the nomination in the person of Lord Rosebery of a peer
to the Premiership, recurrence of revolt might be expected in the
event of Lord Spencer's attempting to form a Ministry. The objection
to Lord Rosebery was, however, in great measure personal. The
Radicals would still prefer to have the Premier seated in the Commons.
But, remembering old days, there would probably be no repetition in
the case of Lord Spencer of the acrimonious Radical protest that
hampered Lord Rosebery during his brief term of Premiership. The
general idea with a section of Liberals anxious for a truce is that
Lord Spencer should form a Ministry ; that Sir Henry Campbell-
Bannerman should join him in the House of Lords with the portfolio
of Secretary of State for War ; and that Mr. Asquith should lead the
House of Commons with the style of First Lord of the Treasury. It
is hinted that the arrangement would be more easy of accomplish-
ment if tacit understanding were arrived at that Lord Spencer, grati-
fied with having, howsoever tardily, received the well-earned prize
of faithful self-sacrificing servitude, would not regard his tenure of
the Premiership as a permanency. The long-racked Liberal Party,
settling down for a year under placid leadership, might at the end
of that term find it desirable to seek younger and more vigorous
captaincy.

This arrangement assumes acquiescence on the part of Sir H.
Campbell-Bannerman, an assumption it might not be well to count
upon. Cynics may discover in Mr. Balfour's preference for the present
Leader of the Opposition's promotion to the Premiership suspicion of
the idea that such an arrangement would at the outset of its career
introduce a germ of disintegration into a Liberal Ministry. It is
quite true Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's lot as Leader of the
Opposition has not proved a happy one either for himself or his party.
To those who recognise his equable temper, his sound sense, his wide
knowledge of affairs, and a certain pawky humour helpful to a public
man, his failure to dominate dissensions within the Liberal party,
that for years have made it impotent in Opposition, has been a sur-
prise. It would be idle to affirm that as Leader of the Opposition
he commands the respect of his political opponents or the obedience
of his party friends. This is, however, only the House of Commons'
aspect of the case. Throughout the country Sir Henry has a support
as wide in range, as hearty in character, as in the House of Commons
it is limited and lukewarm. The country elector, regarding the scene
at Westminster with the advantage of perspective, has convinced
himself that the nominal captain of the Liberal Parliamentary forces
has not received fair treatment. Undertaking at a critical period in
the fortunes of the party the thankless task of leadership, he, from
the outset of his career, found his authority flouted, not only from
the back benches, but notably on that where he sat with ex-colleagues
in a former Administration.

1904 THE NEXT LIBERAL MINISTRY 681

He has borne the discipline with imperturbable good humour,
has rarely made complaint, has come up smiling after repeated rebuffs.
That is the kind of man the country elector respects, and when it
comes to the choice of a Liberal Premier, the country elector who
has made the occasion possible will expect to be heard in debate
upon personal claims. The friendly scheme cherished by affectionate
colleagues on the front Opposition bench, whereby after life's fitful
fever, represented by thirty-six years in the House of Commons, Sir
Henry may rest well in the House of Lords, will, for its realisation,
require Sir Henry's more or less cordial acquiescence. If he insists
on reversion of the Premiership it will be difficult to withhold it.

Whosoever be the next Liberal Premier, he will find himself in
the more or less fortunate position of having at his disposal many
high posts upon which there is no personal lien. In the nine
years that have elapsed since Lord Rosebery returned the seals of
office, death has been unusually busy with his colleagues. His Foreign
Secretary was the Earl of Kimberley. Lord Herschell sat on the Wool-
sack. Lord Cork was Master of the Horse. Lord Kensington and Lord
Playfair occupied minor offices in connection with the Court. Mr. Scale -
Hayne was Paymaster-General, Mr. Thomas Ellis Chief Whip, Mr.
Woodall Financial Secretary to the War Office, and Sir Frank Lockwood
Solicitor-General. All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. In
addition, other circumstances have removed members of the last
Liberal Administration from the list of competitors for appointments
in the new one. Lord Rosebery himself, who in 1895 combined with
the Premiership the Lord Presidency of the Council, with occasional
excursions persists in occupancy of his lonely furrow. Sir William
Harcourt, who ten years ago left an indelible mark on the records of the
Exchequer, has, after a long career spent in the public service, taken an
honoured seat at the Scaean Gate. Sir George Trevelyan, his colleague
as Secretary for Scotland, has happily given up to literature what
was never meant for the hurly-burly of politics. Mr. Shaw-Lefevre,
President of the Local Government Board in Lord Rosebery's Ministry ;
Mr. Arnold Morley, Postmaster-General ; Mr. Acland, Vice-President
of the Council ; Sir John Hibbert, Financial Secretary to the Treasury ;
Sir U. Kay-Shuttleworth, Secretary to the Admiralty ; Mr. George
Russell, Under-Secretary for the Home Office ; Mr. J. B. Balfour,
Lord Advocate ; Mr. George Leveson-Gower, Comptroller of the
Household, are for divers reasons all out of the running. Here are just
a score of offices, from the Premiership to a Lordship-in- Waiting, at
the disposal of the next Liberal First Minister of the Crown untram-
melled by a claim of vested interest — a start almost unique. It means
that there is an opening for at least twenty new men.

In the case of the Woolsack, for example, one of the most prized
gifts at the disposal of a Prime Minister, the appointment on the
formation of a Ministry is as a rule practically predestined. Lawyers,

VOL. LVI— No. 332 Z Z

682 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

a tough trained race, live long. There is rarely lacking one whose
personal position and his claims upon the gratitude of his party do
not make his succession to the Woolsack a matter of course. The
next Liberal Premier will find himself in this respect with a free hand.
It is true that, following precedent, Sir Robert Eeid, Attorney-General
in Lord Rosebery's short-lived Ministry, might look for preferment.
But the mind refuses to realise the prospect of this almost pragmatical
Radical presiding over an assembly of hereditary legislators supple-
mented by a body of bishops. A sound lawyer, an upright man,
an honest politician strongly imbued with sentimentality, Sir Robert
Reid is much too good for the daily food of party controversy. He
would make an admirable judge. But it is understood that aversion
to the contingency of having from time to time to condemn a fellow-
being to death closes against him that avenue of promotion.

There is one post Sir Robert Reid seems predestined to fill. It is
exceedingly improbable that Mr. Gully will offer himself for re-election
as Speaker. Assuming the dissolution comes next year, he will have
completed ten years of distinguished, dignified service in the Chair.
In respect of years he will have reached the limit after- which man's
labour is but sorrow. It will be hard for any man to follow in
Mr. Gully's footsteps. Sir Robert Reid has many of the qualities
that promise success. Another name mentioned in connection with
the Chair is that of Mr. Lawson Walton. To cite it is to show that
in this important requirement the Liberal majority will have an
embarrassment of riches. There would not in the particular case be
embarrassment of other kind, since, if the Attorney-General of Lord
Rosebery's Administration becomes Speaker of the House of Commons,
vacancy would be made for Mr. Lawson Walton to accept office as
one of the Law Officers of the Crown. His colleague would undoubtedly
be Mr. Robson, who has during the existence of the present Parliament
steadily advanced to the position of one of the most powerful, per-
suasive debaters in the Opposition ranks.

It is certain that, whosoever may be called upon to form the
next Ministry, Lord Rosebery will decline any overtures towards
collaboration that may be made to him. His acceptance of the
Foreign Secretaryship would be a tower of strength to the Ministry.
But he will prefer his lonely furrow. He could not serve under Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and he would not work in Cabinet with
Lord Spencer. Failing Lord Rosebery, Sir Charles Dilke is the best
man available for the Foreign Office. He served an apprenticeship
as Under-Secretary, in which he displayed remarkable aptitude for
the delicate work of the Department. His return to Ministerial life
is inevitable. He would do well at the head of any of the great spending
departments. He is equally at home in the administrative details
of the Army or Navy. On the front Opposition bench he has only
one competitor for the seals of the Foreign Office. That is Sir Edward

1904 THE NEXT LIBERAL MINISTRY 683

Grey, whose sympathies are, however, more with the Colonial Office
than with Foreign Affairs. However that be, with Sir Charles Dilke
at the Foreign Office and Sir Edward Grey at the Colonial Office the
new Government would get a fair start.

Whilst personally Lord Rosebery will have no active part in the
new Ministry, it does not mean that it will contain no Roseberyites.
A Liberal Ministry will be the result of a coalition between men
who have been content to follow Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman with
modified discipline and enthusiasm, and others who have yearned for
Lord Rosebery to lead them to battle. When the Unionist Govern-
ment was formed, and throughout its existence, even up to the latest
reconstruction, the Liberal wing of the allied army had a share of
loaves and fishes disproportionate to their numbers. An analogy
will probably be found in the constitution of the next Liberal Ministry.
If Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman permits himself to be reverentially
shunted to the House of Lords, Mr. Asquith will take his place as
Leader of the party in the Commons. Whether Sir Henry is or is
not transmogrified, Mr. Haldane will most probably become Lord
Chancellor. He has gifts of intellect, temperament, even of personal
appearance, that mark him out for the Woolsack.

No name leaps to the lip of rumour in connection with the Chan-
cellorship of the Exchequer. Suggestion of Mr. Fletcher Moulton
may create surprise. On reflection it will be admitted that he has
special qualifications for the important post. That it should be
bestowed upon a member of the Bar in active practice is admittedly
unusual. After all, there is nothing prohibitive in the fact. Sir
William Harcourt sacrificed a lucrative practice at the Parliamentary
Bar in order to enter on the career that triumphantly led him to the
Treasury. The particular field in which Mr. Fletcher Moulton carries
on his practice provides admirable schooling for a future Chancellor of
the Exchequer. If Mr. John Morley be found desirous of again
emerging from the shaded groves of literary life, it is not likely he
would care to return to the Irish Office. The Presidency of the
Council seems a post specially appropriate for a man of letters. It
carries with it a comfortable salary and a seat in the Cabinet. Sir
Henry Fowler, who did admirable service at the India Office, is
understood to be desirous of continuing it under new auspices. Mr.
Thomas Shaw is one of the junior members of Lord Rosebery's
Ministry who have, in the shade of Opposition, come to the front.
Promotion to the Lord Advocacy seems the natural progress of the
ex-Solicitor-General for Scotland. Mr. Shaw might with confidence
be entrusted with the wider, more important range of duties con-
nected with the Home Office. Mr. Sydney Buxton's patient and
painstaking attendance on the front Opposition bench suggests
reward by proffer of the Presidency of the Local Government Board.
Of the few peers who rally round the Liberal flag in the House of

zz 2

684 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

Lords, Lord Tweedmouth is obviously marked out as Secretary for
Scotland. Lord Carrington would probably return to the dignified
post of Lord Chamberlain, and Lord Burghclere to the Board of
Agriculture. Lord Crewe, who gallantly suffered ostracism alike by
Unionists and Home Rulers whilst serving his party, has established
a claim to high Ministerial office. Assuming the recall of Lord
Curzon, he would well maintain the high traditions of the Indian
Viceroyalty.

Amongst members on the Liberal side new to office, the claim oi
Mr. Lloyd-George is undisputed. At a time when leadership was a
little limp, and the spirits of a distracted party faced by a yet
unriven majority of over a hundred were hopelessly depressed, he,
with much of the spirit and something of the manner of the light-
hearted street gamin, pegged away at the Treasury Bench. As
a free lance in the untrammelled state of Opposition he has proved
most effective. There is, however, world-wide difference between
the joyaunce of undisciplined attack and a seat on the Treasury
Bench with the care of a Department on one's shoulders. Time was
when a promising young member on either side selected for promotion
was proud to accept a Junior Lordship of the Treasury, was elate on
receiving proffer of an Under-Secretaryship. The House, whilst
grateful for relief from its chronic state of boredom, following on the
personal sallies of the member for Merthyr Tydvil, does not regard
with complacency the prospect of his being, as his countrymen and
friends prognosticate, pitchforked to the headship of a Department
with a seat in the Cabinet. Mr. Gladstone started his Ministerial
career as a Lord of the Treasury ; Mr. Lloyd-George might begin as
Under-Secretary to the Home Office. Seated there he will have
the satisfaction of reflecting that it was the jumping-off ground of
Lord Rosebery on his way to the Premiership. Other unofficial
members whom the framer of the next Liberal Ministry would do
well not to overlook are Mr. Reginald McKenna, Mr. Lambert, and
Sir Joseph Leese.

Cataloguing these conjectures, we arrive at an adumbration of the
next Liberal Ministry which thus resolves itself :

Premier . . . . . . Earl Spencer.

Foreign Secretary Sir Charles Dilke.

Lord Chancellor Mr. Haldane.

Lord President of the Council . . Mr. John Morley.
First Lord of the Treasury and Leader

of the House of Commons . . . Mr. Asquith.

Chancellor of the Exchequer . . . Mr. Fletcher Moulton.

Home Secretary ..... Mr. Thomas Shaw.

Colonial Secretary ..... Sir Edward Grey.

Secretary for "War Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman

(with a Peerage).

Secretary for India Sir Henry Fowler.

1904 THE NEXT LIBERAL MINISTRY 685

Secretary for Scotland .... Lord Tweedmouth.

President of the Board of Trade . . Mr. Bryce.

President of Local Government Board . Mr. Sydney Buxton.

President of Board of Agriculture . . Lord Burghclere.

It will be observed that, whilst omitting offices below Cabinet rank,
this does not include the full tale of Cabinet appointments. If the
Minister for War is seated in the Lords, the First Lord of the Admiralty
must necessarily be in the Commons, a reversal of the order of things in
the present Administration. Nomination to the offices of Lord Privy
Seal, the Lord Chancellorship of Ireland, the Chief Secretaryship, and
the Post Office may depend upon a fresh deal of the cards set out
above. Doubtless, objection will in some quarters be taken to this
list, on the ground that it deals tenderly with what Lord Randolph
Churchill, at an analogous period in the history of the Conservative
party, irreverently called ' The Old Gang.' There is a cry (especially
from below the Gangway) for new blood. Having given some thought
to the matter, I venture to predict that it will be borne in upon any
who may attempt to fill up the hiatuses, or to improve on the pro-
bability of appointments suggested, that the next Liberal Premier will
not find it easy adequately to allot the twenty surrendered places in
the Ministry which at first sight look like a happy heritage.

HENRY W. LUCY.

686 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Oct.

LAST MONTH

THE holiday month of September has been true to its own traditions^
It is the month when, according to the common idea and the voice of
the Press, nothing ever happens in public life. Ministers are out of
town, the permanent officials who, with due respect to the occupants
of the Treasury Bench, are sometimes of still greater importance than
their nominal chiefs, are taking holiday like ordinary mortals, the
clubs are shut, the West End is a wilderness, and we are always asked
to believe that, so far as public affairs are concerned, business is at
a standstill. This is the popular superstition, fostered, I imagine, by
newspaper editors, who are no more averse than other people to taking
their holidays in the recognised holiday season. The reality, as it
happens, is something altogether different, and September, the month
when we are told that nothing happens, has seen more happenings of
importance than most other months of the year. There was September
1870, for example, which witnessed the culmination of the tremendous)
drama of Louis Napoleon's attack upon Prussia, and the fall of the
Second Empire amid the ruins of Sedan. That was the most momen-
tous September of the last forty years, and everybody knows that,,
the holidays notwithstanding, it ' made history.' Six years later we-
had the September in which the clarion of Mr. Gladstone rang through
the land, and history was made again by the refusal of the British
people to support their Government in the attempt to uphold the
Empire of the Sultan in the Balkan peninsula. Even so recently as
last year we had an eventful September in this country over the.
fiscal question, and the endeavours of Mr. Chamberlain to capture
the Conservative party in the interests of his bread tax. So
far as domestic politics are concerned, last month, up to the
moment at which I write, had not come up to last year's record,
though there are still possibilities, even in the tranquil, sunlit days of
early autumn, as was proved to me but recently, when a very eminent
member of the House ot Commons proposed a wager that Parliament
would be dissolved before the end of the month, and frankly gave me
the reasons on which he based his apparently extravagant calculation.
That the dissolution is coming swiftly nearer every well-informed
person knows. It has been often predicted, and each prediction in

1904 LAST MONTH 687

turn has been falsified ; but now I am assured by those who ought to
know that the final term for the existence of this moribund Parliament
has been fixed, and it is not far distant ; though it is hardly likely to
come within the limits of the current month.

But for a parallel, so far as the affairs of the great world are con-
cerned, to September 1904 we must go back to September 1870.
Indeed, the events of last month have shown so close a resemblance to
those of thirty-four years ago that they have almost made an elderly
man seem young again. The first week of the fateful month witnessed
events in the Far East which bore an extraordinarily close resemblance
to those of that September which witnessed the bloody battles in.
Lorraine, and the fall of the Second Empire. Such fighting, suck
losses of precious human lives, and such grave results as those which
furnished the record of the month in Manchuria have certainly never
been witnessed since that earlier September of which I speak. The
world was making history again last month, and making it at a
startling pace ; but before I deal with the astounding progress of the
campaign in the great struggle in the Far East I must refer to those
political questions involved hi it which are of special importance to
our own country. At the beginning of the month grave trouble
between ourselves and Russia over questions concerned with contra-
band of war seemed still to be impending. It is unfortunate that our
painful experiences of Russian diplomacy in the Far East have en-
gendered in the British mind a deep suspicion of any professions or
promises that may be made by the St. Petersburg Government. The
feeling is not, perhaps, unnatural, but it is certainly one that, when
engineered by the Press of to-day, may be just as embarrassing to
ourselves as to our opponents. Our newspapers a month ago were
full of the wrongs we had suffered at the hands of Russia, and to
judge by their tone it might have been supposed that we were on the
verge of a war with that country. The worst of these newspaper
heroics is that they always meet with an echo from the other side,
and the Russian Press, it need hardly be said, was as vociferous on
the subject of English turpitude as our own newspapers were on that
of Muscovite perfidy. Happily the end of the month has in this
respect been better than the beginning, as even those journals which
sought to import party prejudice into a purely national question, by
inventing a so-called ' pro-Russian ' party in this country, must now
admit. The two Russian cruisers of the volunteer fleet, the Smolensk
and Petersburg, which, after their serious interference with our com-
merce in the Red Sea, and their subsequent disavowal by the Govern-
ment at St. Petersburg, had apparently disappeared into space, have
now been located by a British cruiser, which proceeded on its quest
at the desire of Russia herself. They have been informed of the
mandate of the Admiralty at St. Petersburg, and from them, at least,
it is reasonable to suppose that no further trouble need be anticipated.

688 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Oct.

Thus ends one chapter in the history of the international difficulties
springing from the war, and it must be admitted that it has ended
in a way entirely honourable to the Russian Government. The other
difficulty, out of which a vigorous attempt has been made to create
bad blood between the two nations, was of a more serious nature. It
was that caused by the Russian proposal to treat food as contraband
of war without regard to the fact of whether it was or was not intended
for the use of armies in the field. This, it need hardly be said, was a
question of paramount importance for this country. In time of war
we must necessarily depend to a large extent upon foreign sources
for our supply of food. It would have been impossible for the British
Government to acquiesce in a doctrine which would have exposed
the people of Great Britain to the risk of starvation in the event of
our ever being involved in a war with one of the great Powers.
Ministers recognised this fact, and at the close of last Session expressed
themselves strongly and clearly on the subject. The question became
one of immediate urgency, owing to the seizure of the Cdlchas, a
British steamer, by a Russian cruiser. The Cdlchas had a miscel-
laneous cargo for Japan and other destinations in the Far East. It
included nothing that we recognise as contraband of war, but among
it was a certain quantity of food, intended, not for the use of the
Japanese army, but for private consumption in Japan. The Russian
prize court at Vladivostok condemned this part of the cargo as
contraband, and thus raised directly the contention on which it is
the duty of Great Britain to insist. But here, again, after there had
been a momentary scare in our belligerent Press, Russia acted with
prudence and moderation. She called in Mr. Maartens, her most
eminent authority on questions of international law, and, after con-
sulting with him, formally accepted the British contention with regard
to food. I am not advocating the Russian cause in the present
terrible war. On the contrary, I am one of those who believe that
Russia has only herself to thank for that war, and for its far-reaching
consequences. But we shall forfeit our reputation as a just and
level-headed people if we allow ourselves to lose our self-control over
every untoward incident in a war of colossal dimensions, and impute
offences to Russia which it is clear, from the conduct of her authori-
ties, that she has no desire to commit. Sensational journalism could
hardly do more mischief at the present moment than by exaggerating
our real or imagined differences with a country placed in the tragical
situation that Russia now occupies. It is surely not too much to ask
that our own experiences three or four years ago, when we had to face
thelhostile public opinion of the world, should not entirely be forgotten.
Another political question associated with the war which has
agitated men's minds during the month has been the attitude of
Germany towards the belligerents. Suspicion of Germany, and ill-
will towards her, have, unfortunately, distinguished an important

1904 LAST MONTH 689

section of the Press and public in this country. No one will pretend
to deny that Germany herself, or, rather, the German newspapers of
a certain class, must be held to be in a large measure responsible for
this fact. It is, however, a misfortune to both countries that our
own newspapers should have been so ready to accept the taunts of
journalists as evidence of the feeling of a nation, and that they should
have poured oil, instead of water, upon the flaming embers of mutual
ill-will. What foundation there may be for the statement of the
Times that a secret agreement exists between Germany and Russia
which virtually gives the latter country most of the benefits of an
alliance with the former, and that certainly sets on one side the
obligations of neutrality, I do not pretend to say. What is, however,
clear is that as yet no tangible evidence of the existence of this agree-
ment has been furnished, and that the German Press, including the
most important semi-official organs, strenuously deny the allegation,
denouncing it as a mere invention. If the story were true, then it
would seem to show that the hand of the Berlin Foreign Office has lost
its cunning, and that Russia has gained a diplomatic triumph of no
mean order. Sensible men may well suspend their judgment upon
this difficult question, and wait at least for some substantial grounds
on which to base their condemnation of German policy. One cannot,
of course, forget that the German Emperor is now, as always, the
most energetic and resolute agent of the interests of his own people.
He does and says many things which are calculated to touch British
susceptibilities, and to arouse our suspicions, and undoubtedly in
commercial matters he has proved himself to be our keen and, possibly,
not over-scrupulous rival. We have to reckon with him everywhere
throughout the world ; but it is one thing to acknowledge him as a
formidable rival, bent upon getting the utmost advantage for his own
country in every international complication, and quite another to
denounce him as our secret foe, resolute upon bringing about our
ruin by any means, fair or foul. Here again British sang froid and
perspicacity should enable us to keep our heads, and to hold our own
even in the troubled waters in which we have now to fish. At all
events we pay a poor compliment to our Foreign Office if we doubt its
ability to deal successfully with such subjects as those which have
hitherto been raised by German action in the present war. It is the
duty of the Government — of any British Government — to see that
no other country obtains unfair advantages from one of the belli-
gerents to our detriment. If the present Ministry is unable to do this,
it is unfit to remain a day longer in office. Only let us beware of
raising false alarms, and inventing bogeys for our own affrightment.

After all, however, it is the war, and not any question of diplomacy,
that has riveted the attention of the world during the past month.
One almost shrinks from attempting to tell, however briefly, the
story of those weeks of carnage and historic struggle that have passed

690 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

since I last wrote. Human intelligence is baffled by records which,
though they are summed up in a few bald telegrams in one's morning
paper, present us with the most stupendous and terrible facts with
which this generation has had to deal. It is easy to write or speak
of 50,000 casualties in a single battle — a battle which lasted without
intermission for days at a stretch. But who can form even an imper-
fect picture of all that is involved in that brief statement — the agony
of physical pain, the wide-spread mourning in both the belligerent
countries, the fierce intensity of the passions that have been aroused,
and above all the real loss to our common humanity caused by such a
sacrifice of human life ? The Angel of Death has, indeed, been abroad
in Manchuria during the sunny days of our own holiday month.
When August drew to a close there was a general anticipation in this
country that we were about to witness a repetition of the events of
1870. The Russians under the leadership of General Kuropatkin had
failed so completely to win any success in their resistance to the
advance of the Japanese, and the latter had shown such masterly
precision in their tactics, that public opinion in England jumped to
the conclusion that a victory as dramatic and complete as that of
Sedan awaited Marshal Oyama and his army. It was known that he
aimed at cutting off the retreat of the Russians by throwing his forces
across the road from Liao-yang to Mukden, and there was a wide-
spread belief that he would succeed in doing so. When, after the
struggle of which I have spoken, he failed in this attempt, and Kuro-
patkin, by a stubborn heroism that can hardly be too highly praised,
succeeded in extricating his army from its desperate plight and in
installing it within the walls of Mukden, we witnessed a curious change
of front on the part of the professional critics of the war in this country.
Journals which had been most conspicuous by their ardent champion-
ship of Japan and their unswerving faith in its success suddenly
turned round, acclaimed Kuropatkin as the real victor in the terrific
combat, and spoke of Oyama as though he were a general defeated
in battle. This change of front was another proof of the worthless-
ness of the newspaper criticisms of the day. The amateur strategists
who insisted that the Japanese ought to have achieved another Sedan,
and that their failure to do so was equivalent to a great defeat, had
manifestly forgotten the conditions under which the original Sedan
was won by Von Moltke. I do not believe that the passing change
in the sentiment of the British Press was due to the fact that some
of the war correspondents sent out by this country to the Japanese
headquarters conceived that they had been very badly treated by the
military authorities, and even shook the dust of Manchuria off their
feet in testimony of their indignation. Great wars are not conducted
for the benefit of newspapers, and in nothing has Japan shown herself
more absolutely right during this campaign than in her stern refusal
to allow even the least of her interests to be sacrificed to the claims of

1904 LAST MONTH 691

an exacting foreign Press. One can sympathise with the correspondents
who find themselves hemmed in byjmany irritating restrictions, and who
consequently lose the opportunity of distinguishing themselves in their
own special work. But no reasonable man will blame either of the bel-
ligerents for their determination to conduct the campaign unhampered
by the attentions and possible indiscretions of an army of journalists.

But as to the allegation that the great battles at the beginning
of September were unfavourable to Japan, it is not one that will bear
a moment's dispassionate examination. True, there was no Sedan,
and it may be questioned whether, under the circumstances, a Sedan
was ever possible. But that there was a real, substantial, and almost
overwhelming defeat of the Russians is now evident. For many
months Kuropatkin had been engaged in preparing a position of
great strength at Liao-yang. It was a strong position naturally —
apparently the strongest on the long line from Port Arthur to Harbin.
It was made immensely stronger by the works with which the Russian
engineers protected it. Vast stores of arms, ammunition, and pro-
visions were accumulated in the place, and every preparation was
made for withstanding there the Japanese assault. The sanguine
Russian public had accepted readily the fanciful statements as to
Kuropatkin's strategy. His purpose, it had been said, was to lure
the Japanese forward, until he got them into the place which he had
prepared for their reception and there dealt them the crushing blow
by which they were to be utterly defeated. This curious theory even
reconciled St. Petersburg to the earlier defeats of the war and to the
continued retreat before the enemy. But there was no mistake upon
one point. The retreat was to be stopped at Liao-yang, and at that
place Kuropatkin was to accept battle. It was undoubtedly a place
which gave him immense advantages over his foe ; for not only was
its natural strength such as I have described, but it was in direct
railway communication with the base at Harbin. The Japanese had
to drag their supplies with infinite labour over the mountains and
quagmires of Southern Manchuria. The Russians at Liao-yang were
in easy reach of all that they desired. It was here then that, according
to St. Petersburg, the decisive battle was to be fought, and here that
every patriotic Russian expected Kuropatkin to win his great triumph.

It is needless to say that the triumph was never gained. After
more than a week of the bloodiest and most desperate fighting of
modern times, Liao-yang was captured by the Japanese, and Kuro-
patkin driven out of that place — north to Mukden. The accounts
that have been published of the actual struggle among the hills around
Liao-yang, and of the successive capture of one position after another,
show that the courage and energy displayed on both sides was magni-
ficent. No stones can be thrown at the Russians for the manner in
which they defended their carefully-prepared fortress. They died
literally by thousands, for a cause which they believed to be just and

692 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

holy, and all who admire valour and self-devotion must pay them the
honour which is their due. But no less brave or resolute were the
Japanese, and it is apparent from the story of the struggle that they
had two advantages over the enemy, the two advantages which they
have enjoyed ever since the beginning of the war. The first is the
absolute disregard for death, which is one of the most marked features
of the national character ; the second, the superior training of their
officers. It is interesting to note, in presence of the silly sneers that
have lately been directed against the tactics of Marshal Oyama because
of his failure to give us the spectacle of another Sedan, that in his
official account of the abandonment of Liao-yang General Kuro-
patkin acknowledges that he was driven out of the place by the strategy
of the foe. They did not succeed in cutting off his communications
with the North, but after a combat, in which he had suffered grievously,
he found his communications so seriously threatened that he was
compelled to abandon his own chosen battle-ground and to make a
hasty retreat upon Mukden, leaving among other things the important
coal mines of Yen-tai in the hands of the enemy. The truth about
the losses on both sides in this bloodiest of modern battles we shall
probably never know, but the latest semi-official account from
St. Petersburg gives us the following figures as those on the Russian
side : Two generals, 256 officers, 21,800 men, and 133 guns, besides
stores worth several millions of pounds. And these losses were
incurred by General Kuropatkin in fighting what some of our news-
paper critics declare was a really successful series of engagements !

The great success of the Russian commander-in-chief came after
he had sustained this decisive and costly defeat at Liao-yang. Once
more he showed the Russian capacity for making a forced retreat.
By almost superhuman exertions he succeeded in withdrawing his
beaten troops from Liao-yang, and in bringing them by road and rail
to_ Mukden. Some day we shall hear the story of that retreat and of
its . horrors ; at present we can only acknowledge the fine soldier-
ship, the tenacious heroism, by which it was accomplished, and the
vanquished army saved from complete annihilation. That the troops
on both sides were utterly exhausted after the fighting around and
inside Liao-yang is evident. Possibly, if the rains had not fallen
heavily at this time, the Japanese Field-Marshal might have been able
to" intercept Kuropatkin on his precipitate retreat to Mukden ; but
with roads no better than a quagmire, with soldiers exhausted by more
than a week of incessant fighting, and with all the difficulties of his
supply from his distant base, it was hardly a task that mortal man
could have accomplished, and Oyama failed accordingly. Looking
at the whole business from the sentimental point of view, it may
perhaps be conceded that the honours are divided, for Kuropatkin's
retreat was undoubtedly a masterly achievement. But it was to
Oyama that all the substantial spoils fell. He was able to beat his

1904 LAST MONTH 693

opponent in a fair fight, in which the advantages of position, defences,
and supplies were all on the side of the Russian. He was able to
subdue and occupy the great fortress encampment deliberately chosen
by Kuropatkin as the scene of the decisive battle, and he was able to
send the enemy flying northwards, leaving behind him immense stores
of ammunition and provisions, and more than a hundred cannon. It
is not often that a general succeeds so brilliantly as Field-Marshal
Oyama did in last month's fighting. True, he purchased his success
at a terrible cost. I have stated the figures given by the Russians of
their losses in little more than a week of fighting. It is probable that
the Japanese losses were still more severe. Lives were not spared in
this epoch-making combat, and it is not wonderful that on both sides
the belligerents were compelled to pause to recover breath after exertions
that almost overstepped the limits of human endurance. As I write
the indications for the immediate future are obscure. It is officially
announced in St. Petersburg that General Kuropatkin has received
instructions to defend Mukden, and a part of his force which had been
sent still further north to Tie-ling, where apparently another Liao-
yang is being prepared, has been brought back to the sacred city of
the Manchu dynasty. Field-Marshal Oyama is evidently preparing
to take the field again, and it seems possible that the next event in the
war will be the capture of Mukden. In the meantime both countries
are beginning to feel the severity of the strain which the great struggle
imposes upon them. The Czar is mobilising fresh divisions, and in
Japan the reserves have been called out in order to supply Oyama
with reinforcements said to amount to 200,000 in number. But
terrible as is the strain upon both combatants, there is as yet no word
of peace, and it is difficult to say whether Russia or Japan shows
greater indignation at the mere suggestion of intervention. Each
hopes to win in the end by virtue of its own special sources of strength —
Japan by its fierce power of attack, its contempt for mere death, and
its highly-developed military organisation ; Russia by its superior
weight hi numbers and wealth, and the stolid patience with which her
people can endure hardships that would be too much for more sensi-
tive races. Japan hopes to crush Russia before all the resources of
the latter have been brought into the field ; Russia to exhaust Japan
by evading as long as possible the final struggle. And each is filled
with a genuine patriotism ; whilst both lay claim to the special favour
of Heaven ! Truly, the gods of the old mythologies would smile if
they looked down on such a drama as that of September 1904 ; it is
the tragedy, not the comedy, however, which is perceptible to mortals.
It is not easy to sink from the study of these Homeric episodes in
the world's history to the comparatively trivial story of our own
domestic politics. As a matter of fact, indeed, there is hardly a story
to tell for last month. The ' raging and tearing agitation ' on behalf
of Protection and the food tax which was at its height twelve months

694 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct.

ago has been all but invisible. Even the newspapers have almost
ceased to discuss the ' new policy ' of Mr. Chamberlain, and the
nation as a whole seems content to await the pronouncement of the
ballot-box upon it. Two significant incidents have, however, happened
during the month which may be commended to Mr. Chamberlain's
followers. The first is the meeting of the Trades Union Congress, a
body whose importance as representing trained British labour is
beyond dispute. At this Congress the members once more indicated,
by a direct vote, their unconquerable hostility to the idea of any
taxation of food, and the President (Mr. R. Bell, M.P.) summed up
the attitude of the British workmen towards the Birmingham propa-
ganda in words which will bear quotation. ' Mr. Chamberlain,' he
said, ' did not seem to have convinced many workmen that by the
taxation of their food they would be able to get more of it, though he
had undoubtedly convinced many manufacturers of the advantage of
his scheme, for under it they would accumulate greater wealth in a
shorter time.' This seems to be the verdict which, after more than a
year of strenuous work on the part of the new Protectionists, the
working men of Great Britain have pronounced upon their proposals.
Until that verdict can be reversed — a process of which there is yet no
sign — the friends of Free Trade can sleep in peace. But even more
striking is the statement of Mr. Reid, the new Premier of the Common-
wealth of Australia, on the same subject. It touches upon that much-
disputed point the alleged ' offer ' from the Colonies to the Mother
Country. Mr. Reid declared that, with regard to the preferential
question, the Government of the Commonwealth would wait till some
definite proposal was submitted by the Imperial Government. ' The
British Government, however, had officially declared that it would
not accept any system of preference that would entail taxing the food
of the British people, and he believed that from the British point of
view this was a just and statesmanlike attitude.' This speech was
made some weeks ago, but we have yet to learn how Mr. Chamberlain
proposes to reconcile it either with his own repeated statements as to
offers of preferential treatment from the Colonies, or with his exposition
of the views of Colonial statesmen on the general question of prefer-
ences and the food tax. Lord Rosebery, who made the only important
political speech of the month, drew the attention of the country to this
curious contradiction between Mr. Chamberlain's affirmations and
the facts. The ex-Premier's speech was the most vigorous and
sweeping indictment of the Government that has as yet been framed
by any of our politicians, but its central point was its keen analysis
of the alleged ' Colonial offer ' and the declarations of Colonial autho-
rities themselves upon the subject. Something more may possibly
be heard upon this point at the forthcoming annual conference of
Conservative Associations, but in the meantime the ardent politician
has had to be content with an amusing controversy in the Press on

1904 LAST MONTH 695

the subject of the alleged ' disloyalty ' of those Conservatives who
have declined to accept the new gospel of Protection and have pro-
claimed themselves ' Free Fooders.' Fiscal reform, it is evident, is one
of the movements that have allowed themselves to be arrested by the
seductive holiday influences of September. As for the attempt which
has been made in certain quarters to raise afresh the fears of Unionists
on the subject of Home Rule in order to warn Unionist Free Traders
of the perils they may run if at the coming General Election they do
not support their party without regard to the fiscal question, it is
difficult to view it as anything but a political demonstration pour
rire. The men who are responsible for the rather half-hearted move-
ment in favour of ' devolution ' in Ireland are, almost to a man,
Conservatives and Protectionists, and there is no section of the Liberal
party, certainly none worth reckoning with, which is not pledged not
to raise the question of Home Rule in the next Parliament. If that
question should be raised at all it will be by those who proclaim them-
selves the friends and supporters of Mr. Chamberlain. Apparently,
however, it is not only in West Africa that the bogey is regarded as a
formidable weapon in the government of States or tribes.

To the great relief of the nation at large, and probably to the
equal relief of his Majesty's Ministers, our ' armed mission ' to Tibet
has completed its work, and has apparently secured an unqualified
success. If the published version of the treaty signed at Lhasa is to
be trusted, we have got all we desired — freedom for trade between
our Indian frontiers and Tibet, and the emphatic assertion of our
right to prevent any foreign intervention in a country whose independ-
ence is of such supreme importance to the security of our Empire.
Ministers may congratulate themselves on having brought an expedi-
tion, in many respects so hazardous, to so happy a conclusion ; nor
need they be greatly troubled by the threats in which some Russian
newspapers have already seen fit to indulge as to possible troubles
in Tibet in the future. The national prestige, it may be hoped, has
been vindicated and secured in a corner of the world in which we
have a peculiar and exclusive interest. Yet there have been adverse
criticisms on the settlement arrived at, chiefly on the ground that it
opens the way for that occupation or annexation of Tibet which the
Government declared was entirely outside its policy. It is too soon,
as yet, to say how far these criticisms are justified. Their fulfilment
or non-fulfilment will depend chiefly upon the ability of the Tibetans
to carry out the engagements into which they have entered.

Lord Rosebery's speech, to which I have referred, swept over
the whole ground of the Liberal opposition to the Government. It
spared ministers neither in their home nor in their foreign policy.
It treated them, indeed, as being not merely a drawback, but a danger
to the country, and it was specially critical on their policy with regard
to the army and education. Nothing, it must be confessed, has been

696 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Oct. 1904

done to strengthen the position of the Government on either of these
questions during the past month. We are still groping in the dark
as to the extent to which Mr. Arnold-Forster's well-meant schemes
have been, or are in process of being, carried out. The Secretary for
War may secure the credit of having laid the foundations of a great
scheme of reorganisation ; but it is evident that a stronger driving-
power than any to be found within the present Administration will be
needed to carry this or any other large scheme into effect, and Lord
Rosebery's oft-repeated suggestion as to the utilisation of Lord
Kitchener's unequalled strength of character and will is beginning
more and more to lay hold upon the public. As for the education
question, its story during the month may be summed up in number-
less prosecutions of passive resisters for their refusal to pay the educa-
tion rate, in the confused and directly contradictory decisions of
revising barristers as to the effect which these prosecutions have upon
the right of the passive resisters to retain their Parliamentary votes,
and in the progress which Mr. Lloyd-George and his friends have
made in their organised resistance to the application of the Education
Act in Wales. That measure is still a sword, and it cuts both ways.
The reigning families of Europe have, in some respects, been
fortunate during the last few weeks. Last month I had to chronicle
the birth of the long-wished-for heir to the throne of Russia, an event
which, for a few days at least, seemed to dissipate over the vast
Muscovite Empire the gloom of war. Since then Italy has had the same
reason to rejoice, and direct heirs have thus appeared to the Crowns
of two of the chief countries of Europe. Germany is rejoicing over
the betrothal of its Crown Prince, another event of distinctly happy
augury. In France there is increasing evidence of the fact that the
Ministry of M. Combes has the support of the vast body of the nation
in its anti-clerical policy. The French people themselves have been
sorely perplexed by the Russian reverses ; but more and more, as
time passes, it is made clear that the last thing which France desires
is war, and that she will avoid it at every cost, provided neither her
honour nor her most important material interests are affected. The
death-roll of the month is longer than usual, and contains some names
of importance. The unhappy ex-Sultan Murad, after a quarter of a
century of captivity, died at the end of August. Count Herbert
Bismarck, the son of the great Chancellor, who was at one time re-
garded as the heir of a possible Bismarck dynasty of statesmen, has
also succumbed. The Bishops of Carlisle and Southwell, and Mr.
James Lowther, the well-known Protectionist member of Parliament,
and a typical representative of a class once eminent in politics, have
also to be counted among the dead of the month.

WEMYSS REID.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake
to return unaccepted MSS.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTURY

AND AFTER

No. CCCXXXIII— NOVEMBER 1904
THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF NEUTRALS

PRESIDEN'l ROOSEVELT'S PROPOSED CONFERENCE

DURING the present war the dangerous state of uncertainty as to some
of the rights and duties of neutrals has been manifest. There have
been many irritating incidents, and more than once the tension in
the relations of this country and Kussia has been grave. Nor have
ithe differences been altogether ascribable to exorbitant demands by
one belligerent. The controversies which have arisen have revealed
the absence of precise rules and diversity of opinion as to their
meaning. Men of business have been amazed to find that the rules
.governing several matters of capital importance are clouded with
•doubts, and that some of those which are generally accepted, when
brought into the full light of day, seem framed with reference to
•circumstances unlike our own — to a world in which commercial
intercourse was on another scale and of another kind than what we
know — to isolated communities for which maritime trade was of little
moment, and in which each country produced its own food and raw
materials. If extremities have been averted, this has been owing to
VOL. LVI— No. 333 3 A

698 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

causes upon which neutrals cannot count in any war where one or
both of the belligerents possess a powerful and effective fleet. It is
probably a mistake to assume that in this war there have been wholly
exceptional grounds of offence to neutrals (the recent mad acts of
the Eussian Baltic squadron excepted) such as will not exist in
any future war. Incidents as irritating, though with altogether dif-
ferent circumstances, as the sinking of the Knight Commands and
the seizure of the Allanton and Calchas, have been known in almost
all wars in which belligerents had ample sea power. They might be
more numerous than they have been if the theatre of operations were
nearer home, or if the belligerents were, say, Germany or the United
States, with many cruisers patrolling all the great routes of commerce.

In these circumstances President Eoosevelt's promise to the
Interparliamentary Union to call a Conference to complete or con-
tinue the work of that of the Hague is to be welcomed. The
decision is marked by his usual courage. His advisers must have
warned him of the difficulties to be encountered, the conflict of
interests which exists, the traditional policies of certain Governments
in regard to matters as to which the United States have pledged
themselves. I think, however, that they would be justified also in
assuring him that America could with peculiar hopes of success con-
voke such a Conference. She is not disinterested or unpledged as to
several questions which may come before it. Successive Presidents
and Secretaries of State have taken as to the rights and duties of
neutrals a distinct line of their own — notably as to immunity from
capture of private property at sea. But for many reasons an invita-
tion which would be regarded with distrust if it came from, say,
Germany — which would certainly be denounced as veiling sinister
designs if it proceeded from England — may be accepted when the
invitation is by the President of the United States. It would be
inexpedient to meet while war was in progress : a useful discussion of
many points, and those among the most urgent and delicate, would be
out of the question ; as well might one calmly consider improvements
in the structure of a house while it was on fire. The representatives
of Japan and Russia could not attend ; their presence (if conceivable)
would freeze up frank debate ; and resolutions come to in their
absence might be of small value. Besides, as experience shows, the
close of a great war is favourable to the adoption of new principles
and the introduction of new practices : experience has accumulated ;
new questions are propounded ; old solutions have been found faulty ;
a new spirit enters on the scene ; and so the Congresses or Confer-
ences of 1815 (Vienna), 1856 (Paris), 1874 (Brussels Conference as
to usages of war), and 1878 (Berlin), introduced great changes in
international law.

The precise object of the proposed Conference has not yet been
defined. * Our efforts should take shape,' the President said, ' in

1904 THE EIGHTS AND DUTIES OF NEUTRALS 699

pushing forward to completion the work already begun at the Hague.'
' Whatever is now done should appear, not as something divergent
therefrom, but as a continuation thereof.' That is the only definite
announcement. In the final ' Act ' of the Hague Conference six
wishes for the future were expressed : (1) The revision of the
Geneva Convention ; (2) that ' the questions of rights and duties
of neutrals may be inserted in the programme of a conference
in the near future ' ; (3) an agreement, if possible, as to the
employment of new types of guns ; (4) the limitation of armed
forces ; (5) the inviolability of private property at sea ; (6) the
question of the bombardment of ports and towns. Each of these
subjects is important. The first need take little time. Whether
the third and sixth are ripe for discussion I do not know. There is
reason to think that the fourth proposal would not fare much better
at a Conference held this year or next than it did at the Hague. A
Conference called by the United States Government will be pretty
sure to be asked to consider the fifth suggestion — the proposal for
immunity of private property at sea from capture. The President
by his Message of last December showed that he agreed with his
predecessors as to this ' humane and beneficent principle ' ; and
both Houses of Congress passed last April a resolution in favour of
it. Of this much debated question, involving so many considera-
tions of policy and turning on high speculative matters, I will onJy
say that it appears to me that more and more the interests of
England become those of a neutral State, and that it would be to
her advantage on the whole that private property on sea were
exempt from capture. The arguments of Mr. Hall and others in
favour of this course have been greatly strengthened. For us the
capture of the sea-borne property of other countries is not the weapon
of offence which it once was, or was supposed to be. It is incon-
ceivable that the destruction of commerce at sea of any rival could
determine in our favour the issue of a war in which we were engaged ;
while the systematic harrying of our trade might in certain
circumstances be a serious blow to England. The conditions under
which a maritime war would in these days be carried on by or
against England do not resemble those existing when she was supreme
at sea ; on the contrary, as Mr. Hall says,

in some ways they are startlingly altered for the worse, and in none is it
clear that they are bettered. Her probable enemies are not more vulnerable
than before — perhaps they are less so — while she is herself far more open to
attacks upon her trade, and the consequences of attack may be grave. . . .
The fact is, whether we like to face it or not, that in a purely maritime war
England can reap little profit, and might find ruin.

And all this is seen by the jurists of other countries. I doubt much
whether at the present time the chief maritime States are prepared
to accept the proposal so often made at Washington.

3 A 2

300 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

The greatest service which the President could render in the
present circumstances would be to convoke a Conference at which
should be considered, as far as time permitted, the rights and duties
ef neutrals. It would be the first occasion upon which their
side of questions of importance to them received full attention.
Belligerents' interests have been always studied. It is high time
that those of neutrals were equally regarded. It would be foolish
to hope that at any one Conference a complete code of neutrality
could be framed ; in view of the diversity of opinion as to im-
portant points, the time has not come for framing any complete
statement on the subject. But some questions which it is probably
dangerous to leave open might be settled. To many the interest in
the Conference arises from the hope that the claims of neutrals will
for the first time be fairly and fully recognised. For them, as well
as for belligerents, some of these matters are of supreme moment.
For the first time, it is to be hoped, it will be assumed that, peace
being the normal state of things, it lies on belligerents to show cause
why their requirements should prevail, to the disadvantage of
neutrals. It is clear that, if real business is to be done, there
must be a precise statement of the objects and ecope of the Con-
ference. Upon this may depend whether certain Powers will enter
into it. The choice will be particularly difficult for this country.
Are we to decline, as in 1874 at Brussels and in 1899 at the Hague,
to join in a discussion of maritime rights ? It is putting the
same question in another form to ask, Are we prepared to uphold
in its entirety the system of rules which Lord Stowell expounded,
and which our navies enforced, in the French wars ? And so
we face the question, Are our interests in the main those of
neutrals? These are the initial questions. According as we
answer them the projected Conference may or may not prove a
failure.

In deciding as to the course to be taken one fact is of moment :
public opinion on the Continent, the conviction probably of the
bulk of those who will attend any Conference, is and has been that
the present maritime law is unduly favourable to England, and that
many of the customs or rights originated in her prolonged naval
supremacy. In every country, America excepted, that view, ex-
pressed by Hautefeuille, Gressner, Duboc, Dupuis, and a score of
other writers, is dominant. It may be assumed that the majority
of the representatives of Continental States will approach many of
the questions to be discussed in that spirit. And yet it would be
unfortunate, as it seems to me, if this country, in spite of the pre-
judice against her to be looked for in some quarters, were to hold aloof.
Only let us not enter into such a Conference until we know what
we want, what we are prepared to concede, and what is, on full
consideration of facts as they stand to-day, vital to national interests.

1904 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF NEUTRALS 701

And that brings back the question, Are they, on the whole, the
interests of a neutral State ?

Here may be mentioned some matters as to which, without any
serious sacrifice of our potential efficiency as a maritime Power,
peaceful discussion will be useful. One of these is the need of some
restriction on the right of search in the interest of peace ; in the
enlightened interest, I might add, of belligerents as well as neutrals.
We have lately seen what inconvenience may be caused by two or
three cruisers stationing themselves in a much frequented channel
and holding up passing vessels. Exercised by a country with a large
fleet at its command, and with cruisers in every one of the great
highways and at all the gates of commerce, this right might conceiv-
ably become an intolerable nuisance. The conditions of intercourse
by sea have wholly changed since the Napoleonic wars. The vessels
which were then overhauled and confiscated were generally of no
more than 200 or 300 tons. The articles which were seized
were cheese, barrels of tar, or ships' spars or masts. A treasure
galleon from Brazil might occasionally be snapped up. A rick
Indiaman might fall a prey to a French frigate or a privateer from
St. Malo. But the Surcoufsa.nd Paid Joneses inflicted small wounds.
They did not sever one of the arteries of a nation or cut off a limb.;
the existence of a community was not put in jeopardy by impeding
tbe importation of a prime necessary of life. Further — and it is a not
unimportant circumstance — when private persons were ruined by
the capture of their property the community might hear nothing of
it until it was a very old story. Nowadays the vessels which may
be stopped and perhaps confiscated may be of several thousand tons
burthen and of the value of half a million. To overhaul them,
if ships' papers are not deemed conclusive, may take hours ; to
bring them into port may be seriously to interrupt the intercourse
of the subjects of nations with no concern in the dispute ; to
stop mail communication and disorganise traffic ; to put to much,
it may be irreparable, inconvenience a multitude of innocent persons.
Suppose that in a war with Germany we were freely to exercise this
right of search against every American vessel which our cruisers met;
what must be the result ? Our experience in South African waters
suggests the answer. There is force in the remarks of Admiral
Reveillere : ' Le droit de fouiller les neutres est absolument incom-
patible avec les besoins de circulation des neutres. Le droit de
visite est un dernier vestige des temps de petite Industrie.-' [
Whether in these days any prudent belligerent dare exercise persist-
ently the right of search against the mercantile marine of a powerful
neutral is questionable. It might mean war ; its free exercise did
mean that, and no less, in the past ; and the peril is much greater in
these days when the uninterrupted flow of traffic by sea is of vital
1 Journal des Economlstes, September 1904, p. 395.

702 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

consequence to nations. The working plant of the modern civilised
world includes mail steamers, cargo boats conveying food or raw
materials, and telegraph cables. It may well be doubted whether
powerful neutrals will submit to this machinery being broken up
and their industries dislocated, in order that the ring may be kept
clear for the combatants, and the game of war be played out in the
old way.

It is not to be supposed that any Conference called by statesmen
would discuss visionary suggestions for the abolition of the right of
search, though probably its value as a weapon to belligerents has been
much overrated. But it is well worthy of consideration whether
a plan might not be devised by which shipowners who do not wish
to carry contraband — and those who will have nothing to do with
such business are perhaps not the majority — could obtain practical
immunity from search. Among the schemes which have been
suggested are these : The issuing at the port of shipment of a
certificate by the Consul of a belligerent which would be deemed
eonclusive as to the nature of the cargo ; immunity, at all events,
for mail steamers provided with such a certificate ; immunity
ef mail bags from examination — an immunity which would rarely
be seriously injurious to the belligerent ; international agreements
not to exercise the right of search except within certain areas in
waters adjacent to ports of belligerents. The practical objections to
»ne and all of these suggestions are pretty obvious, and their short-
comings not a few. Even if they were adopted they would not
remove some of the inconveniences which shipowners now experience.
Still it might be worth while to examine these and other suggestions
for restricting the exercise of a right which rarely fails to exasperate
neutrals.

Another matter to be considered is the sinking of neutral ships
«arrying alleged contraband. Hitherto in this country and in
most others it has been understood that, to quote the words of
Dr. Lushington in the Leiicade :

When a vessel under neutral colours is delayed, she has the right to be brought
to adjudication, according to the regular course of proceeding, in the Prize Court ;
and it is the very first duty of the captor to bring it in if it is practicable. . . . The
general rule is that if a ship under neutral colours be not brought to a competent
court for adjudication the claimants are, as against the captors, entitled to costs
and damages.

That is the rule expressed with some ambiguity and reservation
fry Lord Stowell in the Felicity. It is also the rule of plain
justice. But it is to be owned that, in conformity with the
tendency in the past to sacrifice everything to the interests of the
belligerent, certain writers seem to countenance destruction of
neutral property when it is very convenient to him. No high-spirited
or self-respecting nation could submit to such indignity; and

1904 THE EIGHTS AND DUTIES OF NEUTRALS 703

the sooner there is a universally recognised rule on this matter
the better for the peace of the world.

We have heard much lately about the necessity of denning
contraband and the perplexity of shipowners on the subject. I am
not very hopeful that a Conference will wholly remove the difficulties
which always arise as to this. There is the fact that there prevail
radically different opinions ; and unfortunately these opinions have
become identified with the supposed interests of particular nations.
It is not easy to see how to prevent indefiniteness on this subject.
Among the untenable proposals in the field is that of doing away
with accidental contraband. Any attempt to frame an exhaustive
list of articles of contraband or to eliminate altogether accidental
contraband is sure to be disappointing. It implies an impossible
degree of foresight ; it ignores the fact that articles which if sent to
one destination may be of no use except for ordinary purposes of
commerce may be of great value to an army or a fleet if they reach
another. So various are the circumstances of warfare that it is
hopeless to try to predetermine, by treaty or otherwise, what may be
of capital importance to a belligerent. One alleviation of the
inconvenience flowing from the present system may be suggested :
a freer, fairer use by the captor of pre-emption ; a further extension
of what was a humane accretion on the old system ; compensation
for seizing a neutral's goods alleged to be contraband, not on an
artificially low and inadequate scale, as given now, but awarded with
a liberal hand, as due to one whose property has been forcibly seized.2
I touch here a matter of wide significance. The creation of a
tribunal enjoying the confidence of both belligerents and neutrals,
to decide claims by the latter for damages, is much needed, not
only as to pre-emption, but as to cases of unlawful capture. A
Prize Court of the belligerent State is not the tribunal to assess the
injury which a belligerent has inflicted.

A point of importance which might be cleared up without much
difficulty is the extent and nature of the right of belligerent vessels
of war in neutral ports, the supply to them of coal and provisions,
and the carrying out of repairs. The matter was little regarded
until the English Grovernment, compelled by the operations of the
Alabama, Florida, and other Confederate cruisers to consider the
matter, laid down for the guidance of colonial Governors regulations
which have been generally followed. In the discussion with

2 After referring to the ' more mitigated practice of pre-emption,' Lord Stowell
remarks in one case : ' I have never understood that on the side of the belligerent
this claim goes beyond the case of cargo avowedly bound to the enemy's port or
suspected on just grounds to have a concealed destination of that kind ; or that on
the side of the neutral the same exact compensation is to be expected which he might
have demanded from the enemy in his own port. . . . Certainly the capturing nation
does not always take the cargoes on the same terms on which an enemy would be
content to purchase them.'— The Haabet, 2 C. Rob., pp. 182, 183.

704 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

reference to the Eussian vessels, the Diana at Saigon and the
Askold at Shanghai, it has appeared that there is still a good deal
of uncertainty on the point. Our rule on the matter is tolerably
clear, but it appears to differ from that recognised by France, which
fixes no definite time for a belligerent vessel remaining in neutral
ports. Much is to be said for the opinion that such a vessel taking
refuge in a neutral port, to escape pursuit or by reason of being
disabled so as to continue her voyage, should remain interned until
the end of the war. That agrees with the practice observed in land
warfare. It was recently followed in Chinese ports. It has much
to recommend it; and it seems in a fair way to obtain general
acceptance.

Hitherto this matter has been looked at almost exclusively from
the point of view of the belligerent. There has been solicitude on
the part of neutrals not to give him cause of complaint by allowing
the territory of the former to be used as a base of operations or the
place from which an enemy draws his resources and supplies. In
the course of this war it has been shown that neutrals may be well
advised in seeing that facilities for coaling and refitting are not used
to their disadvantage. To refuse supplies altogether would be to
break a well- settled custom, and might produce consequences
revolting to humanity ; it would be particularly offensive to States
with no colonies. On the other hand it is absurd — it is an abuse
of hospitality — that vessels should be free to coal at English ports
and then to sail out and overhaul, confiscate, or detain English
vessels. I see no reason why such supplies should be granted,
such repairs be made, only on condition that the belligerent
promised to allow the vessels of the State whose hospitality he had
enjoyed to be undisturbed within certain limits or within a certain
period — say, in the case of supply of coals, within such time as the
supply of coal will normally suffice. As Professor Westlake has well
said, ' the preservation of her commerce from any impairment is
quite as necessary to Great Britain as the retention of Manchuria is
to Russia.'

While Prize Courts are constituted as they now are — composed
of judges with commissions from a belligerent Government and sitting
in the territory of the belligerent — neutrals will have cause to
complain. The constitution of such courts has been condemned by
almost every writer from the time of Galiani to our own. Of the many
proposals of amendment all agree in suggesting the removal of the
anomaly of a purely belligerent court determining neutrals' rights.
One of the most reasonable of the suggested amendments is that
made by the Institute of International Law, which has worked out
with much care the organisation and procedure of an international
tribunal upon which neutral States are represented.

Another matter, subsidiary, it is true, but not unimportant, may

1904 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF NEUTRALS 705

one day have to be considered. There is need of a free examination
of a mass of traditional rules or customs which operate harshly
against neutrals, and certain, if they were ever put into operation
on a large scale, to be resented. I refer in particular to the rules
affecting the sale of ships or goods during war. In time of peace
people may agree that the property in such, whether on land or on
water, whether stationary or in transit, may pass at any moment.
True, the municipal law may require formalities as a condition of
valid transfer ; these complied with, the real intention of the parties,
broadly stated, governs the transaction. In a time of war neutrals
supplying belligerents with goods (I exclude for the moment con-
traband) might and often do agree that the property in them should
not pass, that the risk should be the seller's, until they reach a
belligerent port. Or belligerents who own ships might and often
do when war breaks out dispose of such as are at sea to neutral
owners. Examined in a court of law, such transactions would indeed
be viewed with suspicion ; the strict observance of obligatory forms
would suggest some unavowed design or some secret trust. If, how-
ever, the parties meant what they said — if there was a real, not
a formal, sale — their acts would stand. But this would not do for
a belligerent, accustomed to have it all his own way ; in some Prize
Courts a different rule is introduced ; a transaction is declared to
be ' fraudulent ' which may in good sense and morals not be fraudu-
lent ; the intention of the parties may be disregarded — and why ?
Because otherwise, as is cynically remarked, the belligerent would
have little to seize — the wolf would have nothing to pick up if the
sheepfold might be closed.3 Our courts have adopted a somewhat
more liberal principle, though, considering the difficulties placed in
the way of a neutral claimant proving his case, the concession does
not in practice amount to much. I note that the Supreme Court of
the United States has lately declined to follow the old rule.4 It is
possible that most civilised countries would do the same. But it is
scarcely safe to leave the matter in the present state of uncertainty.
It is to be hoped that at some Conference there will be a united
condemnation of the old form of the rule — ' the result,' to quote an
American judge, ' of political expediency, and as evincing a deter-
mination in the British Councils to destroy all commerce with their
enemy rather than as rules of international law ' — and that in future
the validity of such transfers will be always a question of fact to
be decided without any bias either way, suspicion and presumption
not being substituted for proof.

Many other questions of great importance to neutrals are ripe

3 See Arnould on Marine Insurance, 7th ed., s. 659, and Wheaton, 4th ed., p. 50, as
to English and American rule. A similar doctrine prevails as to mortgages. As to
the French jurisprudence, which apparently follows the old rule, Duboc on Le Droit
de Visile, p. 92, and Dupuis, Le Droit de la Guerre Maritime, p. 117.

4 See 176 U.S. 568.

706

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Nov.

for discussion, such, for example, as the restrictions which belli-
gerents may impose upon the use of wireless telegraphy by neutrals
in the vicinity of the scene of warlike operations. What is urgent
seems to be a full consideration of the rights and duties of neutrals ;
a Conference of a kind hitherto unknown ; one in which for the first
time the neutral side of the questions above mentioned should be
stated and should receive due weight, and concerted measures be
taken to see that neutrals' interests are respected, and the necessities
of peace as well as those of war recognised. Such a Conference
might leave many matters untouched or unsettled, and yet give the
world by peaceable discussion more than the Armed Neutrality of
the past ever promised.

JOHN MACDONELL.

1904

ENGLAND, GERMANY, AND AUSTRIA

IT is often assumed that English public men who explain the aims
and devices of the Foreign Office at Berlin are animated by feelings
of hostility towards the German people. There is no warrant for
this assumption. It would be more reasonable to accuse them of
overrating the political tenacity of the Germans and the solidity of
the German Empire. That Empire, as at present constituted, is appa-
rently threatened with serious trouble. But when the dangers which
menace it become pressing, German statesmen know they can be
conjured away in the outburst of enthusiasm with which war with
England would be welcomed from one end of their country to the
other. The attack on Denmark in 1864, the raid on Austria in
1866, the war with France in 1870, were all organised by Bismarck
to checkmate revolutionary movements at home, and to establish the
present German Empire. The war with England, for which prepara-
tions are now as openly made as they were previous to 1870 for the
war with France, will be undertaken with a view to consolidate and
expand that Empire. Those who wish to prevent this war are
merely obeying the call of duty when they urge the English people to
make it impossible. The initial step in this direction is to provide
for the maintenance of the Navy in such a state of efficiency and
strength as would render a German attack on this country too
hazardous to be attempted, even if it were supported by powerful
allies. To do so is certainly not beyond the means of Great
Britain.

It is only natural that leaders of opinion in Germany should
exhort their countrymen to strive with might and main to win the
foremost position in the world. They believe that, to gain this end, the
power of Great Britain must be broken, and they do not think this
would be so difficult a task as it appears to Englishmen. They hold
that the British Empire stands in the way of German world-power,
and that the English people of to-day have not the heart to defend
it. Their belief is confirmed by the conduct and speeches of persons
who occupy positions of responsibility at Westminster, and by
indications of a feverish desire to reduce and hamper the fight-
ing strength I of the country, both by sea and land. This found

707

708

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Nov.

expression in the debates on the Estimates during the last Session of
Parliament, and was particularly inopportune because complications
might at any moment arise out of the war in the Far East. A
general impression was created that Great Britain did not take
seriously her moral obligations to Japan, and that when the time
came for arranging the terms of peace she would not be ready to
give efficient support to her gallant and high-spirited ally. This
has tended to confirm the conviction of Germans that England is
unworthy of her place among the nations, that the simple, stern
patriotism which enabled her to acquire it is now paralysed by the
intrigues of political faction, her powers of endurance and self-
sacrifice weakened through habits of luxury, and her sense of national
honour impaired by the corroding action of cosmopolitan finance.
It seems clear to them that the break-up of the British Empire
would be followed by the creation of a greater Germany in Europe
and beyond the seas. They are not to be blamed if, holding these
views, they try to realise their ambitions. We, on our side, may
possess our souls in the certain hope that the great living forces of
the nation will, at the appointed hour, place some Chatham or Crom-
well at the head of affairs. This hope is strengthened by the faith
that the heart of England is as stout and true to-day as when she
crushed Napoleon, defeated Louis the Fourteenth, or when the great
Elizabethan mariners sailed for the Spanish Main.

Germany has a population of about 60,000,000, but large numbers
are annually lost to her flag. To hinder this, she seeks to extend her
influence in Europe and acquire extensive possessions beyond the
sea. To realise these aims, she must prepare for collision with
England, possibly with the United States, and certainly with Japan
if the policy inaugurated by the seizure of Kiao-chau is persevered
in. She therefore requires a fleet which would make her supreme
upon the ocean. To create a navy of such strength it is essential
that Holland should be brought within the German sphere of
influence, and become for practical purposes a vassal State of the
Empire. Bismarck himself acknowledged as much to Beust.1

Many people in this country persuade themselves that the next
movement of German expansion will be in the direction of Austria,
that being, they contend, the line of least resistance. But it is
almost sure that aggrandisement of Germany at the expense of
Austria would provoke the gravest international complications.
Neither France, Italy, nor, above all, Russia, could allow it without
fatal damage to their influence, and England would hardly look on
with indifference at the establishment of German power in the Adriatic.
I am convinced, moreover, that, notwithstanding formidable separatist
tendencies in Austria, the forces of cohesion in the dominions of the
House of Hapsburg are stronger than most people imagine.

1 Beust, Aus drei Viertel-Jahrhunderten, vol. ii. p. 481.

1904 ENGLAND, GERMANY, AND AUSTRIA 709

The situation in Austria is, no doubt, full of danger and difficulty,
but the true character of the perils that threaten her can only be
understood by those who have mastered the questions that agitate
the political feelings of Germans, Czechs, Magyars, and the other
nationalities that compose the Empire. Everyone remembers
the old epigram, ' Bella gerant alii, Tu, felix Austria, nube,' but
few reflect that the Austrian Empire is the outcome of marriages,
heritages, and artificial arrangements by which German counties,
Italian principalities, and kingdoms like Bohemia were joined
together. The link that bound them was allegiance to a common
sovereign. The Tyrolese obeyed the Count of Tyrol, the Austrians
the Archduke of Austria, who happened to be the same person, and
was also King of Bohemia. This personage held, however, an
exceptionally exalted position. He was for centuries, with short
interruptions, the Head of the Holy Roman Empire of the German
nation. There was a moment in the history of these countries at
which they might have been welded into a close political union.
This was at the time of the Reformation. The most ardent admirer
of the Reformation will hardly now deny that it had many drawbacks.
It paralysed the movement, represented by such men as Erasmus
and Colet, the Dean of St. Paul's, one of the last and greatest of the
ecclesiastics of the old pre-reformed Church of England, of whom
William of Wykeham, William of Waynflete, and Archbishop
Chicheley were such magnificent types. The Humanist influence
would have gradually but thoroughly destroyed superstitions and
obscurantist opinions, which derived fresh life and strength from the
action of Luther. In Germany, however, the Reformation was a
national movement in the deepest sense of the term, and it was a
far-reaching misfortune for that country that Charles the Fifth did
not grasp the situation. He neither appreciated Luther when he
met him at Worms in 1521, nor did he gauge the forces which were
working for the Reformer.2

The Reformation took as firm a hold on the countries which com-
pose the present Austrian Empire as it did anywhere else. This is
shown in the secret reports made to Rome by the confidential agents
of Clement the Seventh and Paul the Third. The priesthood seemed
at one time likely to die out. In one Austrian See only five priests
were ordained in four years. For over twenty years no candidate
from the University in Vienna presented himself for ordination.3
The Nuncio, Vergerio, could find no candidates for the priesthood in
Bohemia. Breslau became entirely Protestant.4 Instead of meeting
this movement with intellectual and spiritual weapons, the House of
Hapsburg, under evil counsel, suppressed it with the arm of the

2 For what took place at Worms, Wednesday and Thursday, the 17th and 18th of
April, 1521, see Armstrong's Life of diaries V., i. chapter 3.

8 Banke, EomiscJien Papste, ii. 14. * Armstrong, Charles V., i. 319, 320.

710 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

flesh. The whole nobility of Styria, with the exception of seven
families, were deprived of their property in consequence of their
adhesion to the Protestant cause.5 Wholesale confiscations in
Bohemia transferred the estates of the ancient families of the
country to a motley crew of foreigners — Spaniards, Italians, Walloons,
Portuguese, and Irish. This policy has been continued almost to
our own time, and men are still alive who remember the expulsion
of the Protestant community in the Zillerthal in 1837. Popular
expressions recall to this day the means by which ecclesiastical
orthodoxy was preserved. If a man has been brutally beaten in a
public-house, it is said that he has been made a Catholic. If a
mother intends to inflict severe corporal punishment on a naughty
child, she expresses her intention to make it a Catholic. This
ecclesiastical policy was injurious to the true interests of Church and
State. Men like Kepler and Comenius, when driven from the
country, could not be replaced as intellectual guides by persons
agreeable to the Court and to the Father Confessors of the sovereign.

The attitude of Austria towards intellectual independence was
the first serious cause of her estrangement from Germany, and at
the same time Prussia was becoming the representative of German
progress. Men like Leibnitz, Puffendorf, Thomasius, and Spener,
were drawn towards the Prussian State. Puffendorf and Spener
ended their days in Berlin, Thomasius lent enduring fame to the
University of Halle, and Leibnitz founded and was the first President
of the Berlin Academy.

The intellectual state of Austria caused her to fail in her duty
to Germany. The abdication of the Imperial office and dignity by
Francis the Second in 1806 is a great instance in point. That office
was held in trust, and its holder was not free to deal with it as he
thought proper, much less to act in a manner which involved the
annihilation of the office itself. It is true that just then the Empire
was in a state of confusion. Prussia was largely responsible for this,
and looked on with satisfaction. That rebel to the German nation
proceeded to invent a German patriotism of her own. When, in the
subsequent struggle for national unity, Germans, keenly alive to the
true greatness of their country, were forced to let this spurious
Prussian sentiment pass for patriotism and use it in the national
interest, the irony of the situation was complete. Firmness and
perseverance would have enabled Francis the Second to overcome
his difficulties. This is demonstrated by the facts of history.
The Note written at Vienna by Count Miinster on the 2oth of
November 1814 shows that the Elector of Hanover, who was also
then the King of England, never acquiesced in the validity of
the dissolution of. the Empire. Neither did the Cabinet of St.
James's till after the German Confederation was created. The
5 Bernkardi, Verniischtc Schriften, ii. 262.

1904 ENGLAND, GERMANY, AND AUSTRIA 711

attitude of Kussia may be gathered from the proposal which
Alexander made in 1812 to restore the Holy Eoman Empire, on
condition that Austria would co-operate against Napoleon. Such a
consummation, if accompanied by necessary reforms, would have
been received with enthusiasm throughout Germany. How strong
this feeling was at the time of the Congress of Vienna is well known
to readers of Flassan, Debidour, and Treitschke. The most dis-
tinguished patriots of the time longed for the restoration of the
old Empire under the House of Austria. In the autumn and early
winter of 1814, during the Congress of Vienna, representatives of
many German States and grand old German Houses persistently
besought the Emperor Francis to resume the crown and sceptre of
Otho the Great.6 He declined the offer, on the ground that it
would not be consistent with the interest of his own dominions.7

The real difficulty in the way of reconstructing the old Empire
under the House of Hapsburg was the creation of the new Austrian
Empire in 1804. In May of that year Napoleon assumed the Im-
perial title. Cobenzl made its recognition by Austria dependent on
the same title being assumed by Francis the Second in his capacity
of ruler of the hereditary dominions of his House. Thus the new
Austrian Empire came into existence. Shortly afterwards war broke
out between Austria and France. The battle of Austerlitz was fought
on the 2nd of December 1805, and the Peace of Pressburg was
signed by the Emperor Francis on New Year's Day 1806. In the
articles of that treaty he bound himself not to object to independent
sovereignty being assumed by any members of the German body
politic. This was practically the dissolution of the Empire. On the
19th of July following the Confederation of the Rhine was formed;
and on the 6th of August Francis the Second formally laid down the
sceptre of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Constitution of Germany
established by Charles the Fourth in the Golden Bull was finally
and totally destroyed. This was the inevitable consequence of the
Treaty of Pressburg. The existence of the Austrian Empire pre-
vented afterwards the restoration of the old German crown to the
Hapsburg dynasty, and committed Austria to the German and Euro-
pean policy which she followed throughout the nineteenth century.

In the transformation of the political order which has led to the
present condition of Europe, Austria and Prussia have had their con-
duct shaped by necessity. In their essential character both were
originally colonies. They grew out of conquests and settlements
founded for the purpose of protecting the frontiers of the Empire
from the inroads of hostile tribes. Both were military in origin,
and both became superior to their Mother Country in power. Had
they been divided from her by the sea they would probably

6 Debidour, Histoire diplomatique de V Europe, i. 57.

7 Flassan, Histoire du Congrcs de Vienne, ii. 271.

712 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

have separated. Their geographical continuity prevented this.
Some of their original provinces were parts of the Empire, and
this inspired them with the desire to extend their territory within
the Empire itself. So it came to pass that the colonies began to
take possession of the Mother Country. They were persistent in
their attempts to secure for themselves as much German territory as
they could. This is shown in the movements of Prussia in the
North, and in the constant endeavours made by Austria to acquire
possession of Bavaria. It explains the true inwardness of the Con-
federation of the Rhine. The idea of forming a South German
Confederation originated with Cardinal Richelieu ; Choiseul took it
up ; Talleyrand got it from him. The Confederation of the Rhine
could not, however, have been formed, even in 1806, if many Ger-
mans had not been reconciled to German territories being collected
together under French protection against the encroachments of
Austria and Prussia.

The Confederacy of States formed by the Congress of Vienna did
not meet the national requirements, but it was hoped that the defects
of its constitution would be gradually corrected by the intelligence
of statesmen, the patriotism of the people, and the goodwill of the
Princes. It soon, however, became apparent that the Princes, gene-
rally speaking, were hostile to the movement for national unity, and
an open rupture took place between them and the Germans who
favoured it. Moderate reformers were driven to exasperation by the
action of bureaucratic absolutism, directed against their most loyal
intentions to their sovereigns and their respective States. The hopes
of a satisfactory reform of the Confederacy were blighted, and a
revolutionary party came into existence determined to bring about
the unity of Germany at all risks and hazards.

In a very suggestive article, written by the late Due de Broglie,
that distinguished personage speaks of the difference between nation
and nationality. ' On disait,' he writes, ' autrefois une nation ; et ce
mot avait un sens tres-determine, puisque c'etait 1'appellation collec-
tive d'une reunion d'hommes soumis a un meme regime politique.
Nationalite veut dire apparemment quelque chose d'autre.' Nationality,
as now understood, is a pretension, based on the genealogy of races
•or tribes, to form a nation. This revolutionary principle could not
be adopted in Austria, because it would break up the Empire into a
greater number of States than the whole of Europe now contains.
Austrian statesmen were therefore right in considering it subversive,
and in looking on those who adopted it as political criminals. Prussia,
on the other hand, stood differently. She had nothing to fear from
the revolutionary principle of nationality except as far as her Polish
provinces were concerned, and her sins against the German nation,
black and grievous as they were, were forgotten or condoned. Gradu-
ally the idea of uniting Germany by the instrumentality of Prussia

1904 ENGLAND, GERMANY, AND AUSTRIA 713

acquired partisans. They grew steadily in number, and their wishes
came within the region of practical politics when Bismarck became
Prime Minister of Prussia in September 1862. Their policy involved
the expulsion of Austria from Germany, which was accomplished
four years afterwards, and a new chapter opened in the history of the
Dominions united under the House of Hapsburg.

These dominions were then divided into two groups called Cis-
Leithania and Trans-Leithania, separated south of Vienna by an
insignificant affluent of the Danube called the Leitha. Cis-Leithania
is made up of seventeen countries, different in size, race, history, and
culture. Each of these countries has a local Diet, and they send,
representatives to a Central Parliament in Vienna. The official
designation of this agglomeration is ' The Kingdoms and Lands
represented in the Parliament (in Vienna).' Trans-Leithania, or
Hungary, includes Croatia, which has also a local Diet. The Central
Parliament for this portion of the monarchy consists of two Houses,
and meets at Buda-Pesth. Foreign affairs, military and naval
matters, and finance are considered common to both halves of the
monarchy. The power to deal with these affairs rests with so-called
Delegations. There are two Delegations, each consisting of sixty
members, twenty being chosen by the Upper Houses of the two
Central Parliaments, and forty by each of the Lower. These Dele-
gations do not deliberate in common, but communicate with one
another in writing. If, after three interchanges of documents, no
decision can be arrived at, they meet together and vote without
debate. There are three Ministers for the affairs of the Dual
Monarchy. Knowledge of the political divisions of the Austrian
Empire will not, however, enable us to understand the problem*
which perplex Austrian statesmen, unless we master the aspirations
and feelings of the different nations which compose it, and which do
not find expression in its political divisions and subdivisions.8

According to the official statistics of 1901 the total population of
Austria is 48,000,000. There are 22,605,000 Slavs, 1 1 ,730,000 Ger-
mans, 8,610,000 Magyars, 3,020,000 Koumanians, 800,000 Italians;:
the remainder is mostly made up of Jews, Gypsies, Armenians, Alba-
nians, Ladins, and Frioulians. There is also a French colony in the
South of Hungary which was established about 1770. These colonists
no longer speak French and are devoted to the Magyar cause.
Statesmen should contemplate these various divisions not as ethnical
groups but as nations. The Slavs, for instance, are five or seven
nations, according as we classify them ; the Czechs and Slovaks are

8 Those who desire to master this intricate question should begin by consulting
Bertrand Auerbach's Les races et les nationality en Autriche-Hongrie ; Hugelmann's
Das Becht der Nationalitaten in Oesterreich ; Sax's Die Nationalita'tenfrage in
Oestcrreich ; Lavisse's Vue gendrale de Vhistoire politique de V Europe; Cheradame's
L 'Europe et la question d'Autricke ; Weil's Pangermanisme en Aulriche ; and Henry's
Questions d'Autriclie-Hoiigrif.

VOL. LVI— No. 333 3 B

714 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

7,920,000 in number ; the Poles 4,230,000 ; the Ruthenians
3,930,000 ; the Slovenes 1,275,000; and the Croat-Serbs 5,250,000.

The Austrian nationalities are not separated from each other so
sharply as the French, Germans, and Italians are in Switzerland.
There are 9,500,000 Germans in Cis-Leithania, and 2,220,000 in
Hungary. They form about 24 per cent, of the total population of
the Dual Monarchy; they are 36 per cent, of the population
of Cis-Leithania, and the great majority are Catholics. They
occupy the highland fringe of Bohemia, the valleys of the Eger and
the Elbe, a small district in the north of Moravia, the west of
Silesia, and the Valley of the Danube from the mouth of the Inn to
that of the Morava. They also inhabit Vorarlberg, the greater part
of the Tyrol, the country about Salzburg, and most of Carinthia and
Styria. There are, moreover, German settlements scattered about
Moravia, and there is a German community at Czernowitz, isolated
amongst Euthenians and Roumanians.

The Germans in the kingdom of Hungary form 1 1 per cent, of
the population. They are divided into three distinct categories. The
Saxons in Transylvania are a settlement of the twelfth century.
They have acquired special privileges in return for their services as
wardens of the frontier. They are almost all Protestants, energetic
and jealous of their independence, and they cling tenaciously to
their racial connection. In the Xorth of Hungary there are some
mrban German colonies, founded about the same time as that in
Transylvania. The third category of Hungarian Germans live in
villages on the Danube. They were settled along that river in the
eighteenth century to re-people and cultivate the region laid waste
by the Turks. They are a good-natured, robust race, Catholics in
faith, and the more southern communities of them were for a long
time organised as military colonists on the Turkish frontier. It will
be perceived that the German population in the Dual Monarchy is
not a concentrated force, but is divided into communities of various
forms of faith and clinging to different traditions. It therefore
cannot maintain the political influence which its numbers, taken as
a whole, would seem to indicate.

The Magyar nationality is divided into two groups of unequal
importance — the Szeklers, who occupy the eastern slopes of the
Transylvanian mountains, and the great body of the nation settled in
the region about Lake Balaton and in the great plain between the
Danube and the Theiss, which the Hungarians call the puzta. On that
plain they cultivate their cornfields, tend their flocks and herds, and
rear their famous horses. The Magyar loves his puzta with a feeling
similar to the Englishman's affection for the sea, and this has found
winning expression in the poetry of his race. The Hungarians
have the happiness of being an agricultural people. Their towns
have a distinctly rural character, with the exception of their metro-

1904 ENGLAND, GERMANY, AND AUSTRIA 715

polls, Buda-Pesth, which, on the right bank of the Danube, is an
historical Acropolis and on the left a conventional modern city.

The Eoumanians number 2,780,000 in the kingdom of Hungary.
There are 240,000 of them in the other portion of the Dual
Monarchy. Some of the Hungarian Roumanians belong to the
Orthodox Church, and some are Roman Catholic Uniates, with a
national ritual and a married clergy. They are an agricultural people
with strong tribal feelings, exceedingly hostile to the Hungarian
Crown, but professing loyalty to the Austrian Empire.

The Italians are scattered over the Dual Monarchy. They
number 384,000 in Tyrol. Trieste is almost entirely Italian, but
its outskirts are Slovene. In Groritz and Grradiska the Italians are
36 per cent, of the population, and in Istria 38 per cent. They
have the municipal government of Fiume in their hands, and in
the towns of Dalmatia there are Italian colonies established by the
Republic of Venice in the days of its power.

The Slav population of the Austrian Empire is split into two
great divisions, separated by the Grerman, Magyar, and Roumanian
settlements. In the north of the Dual Monarchy the Czechs,
Slovaks, Poles, and Ruthenians are situated, and in the south the
Slovenes, the Croats, and the Serbs. There are 3,000,000 Ruthe-
nians inhabiting Bukovina, Gralicia, and part of Hungary. They are
Roman Catholics with a national ritual, mass in the vernacular, and
a married clergy.

The Poles, as we all know, inhabit Gralicia. There are 4,000,000
of them in this province, and they are congregated towards the western
portion. Towards the east they are rarely found except in towns
and about the country houses of the nobility. There are about
200,000 Austrian Poles who do not live in Gralicia. These are settled
for the most part in Austrian Silesia and in Bukovina.

The Slovaks are a portion of the Czech nationality. About
2,000,000 of them inhabit the north-west of the kingdom of
Hungary, in the region dominated by the Tatra, and along the
Carpathians towards Pressburg. They are a people of agriculturists
and shepherds, partly Catholic and partly Protestant, with a pic-
turesque national costume and a beautiful ballad poetry. Though
they form part of the Czech nation, they do not contribute much to
its national force ; their very exaggerated provincialism keeps them
separate from the great body of their people.

A very insignificant portion of the Slovene nationality — only
about o,000 — is in Hungary. There are about 1,270,000 in Cis-
Leithania. They are for the most part mountaineers, agriculturists,
and Catholics. They are powerful in Carniola, form the immense
majority of the population of Laibach, occupy large districts in the
south of Styria and Carinthia, and are over 60 per cent, of the
population in Groritz and Gradiska. They are also very powerful in

3 B 2

716 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

Istria, where with the help of the Croatians they seem to be driving
the Italians steadily backward towards the Adriatic.

The Croatians and the Serbs are often counted as a nation.
They speak the same language, though their written characters are-
different. They are, nevertheless, two distinct peoples, often at
enmity. It has been supposed that the reason for their want of
sympathy with each other arises from the circumstance that the
Croatians are Eoman Catholics and the Serbs Orthodox. This is
not, however, a complete explanation, for their antipathy has its
roots in past history and complicated political circumstances.

The most important and powerful of the Slavs of Austria are the
Czechs. They inhabit Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. In Bohemia,,
out of a total population of 6,300,000, the Czechs number
3,960,000. They inhabit the centre of the country and have com-
pletely in their power the historic city of Prague. In Moravia, out
of a total population of 2,460,000, there are 1,730,000 Czechs. In
Silesia they are not so numerous, being only 150,000 out of a
population of 670,000. They form, on the other hand, a very large
portion of the inhabitants of the imperial city of Vienna. The Slavs
are loyal to the dynasty. Grillparzer's well-known line, alluding to

Radetzky :

In deinem Lager 1st Oesterreich

might be applied to the Austrian Slavs to-day.

These are the chief nationalities of the Austrian Empire, and it
is often contended that, on the death of the present Emperor, to.
whom they all look up with affectionate veneration, their action
will bring about the dissolution of the Empire. It is expected that
Roumanians, Italians, and Germans will clamour for union with
the great States of their people. It is difficult to follow politicians
into the region of prophecy. As regards the Eoumanians, I cannot
see that the movement towards Bukharest has presented, up to now,
indications of a formidable character. The Roumanians, it is true,
are disloyal to the Hungarian kingdom, but in all their public
manifestations they seem to expect satisfaction for their aspirations
from the Emperor at Vienna, and distinctly proclaim their attach-
ment to the Austrian Empire. The Italian danger is also much
exaggerated. We have seen that the whole Italian population of the-
Dual Monarchy is less than a million. Of these, the only true-
separatists are to be found among the 380,000 Italians who inhabit
the southern slopes of the Alps. At Fiume the Italians could not
hold their own against the Croatians without the assistance or
the Magyars. In Dalmatia they are overshadowed by the Slavs, and
Trieste, though an Italian city, depends for its prosperity on the
surrounding country, in which they have no place.

The Germans alone are a serious danger to the Dual Monarchy.
The pan-Germanic party makes no secret of its desire for the union

o,

'

1904 ENGLAND, GERMANY, AND AUSTRIA 717

of Austrian provinces with the German Empire. It has now twenty-
one representatives in the Parliament of Vienna, but this number
hardly represents its Parliamentary strength. The fifty-one deputies
of the popular German party (' Deutsche Volkspartei ') give it general
support. The old Grerman Liberal party looks askance at the
pan-Germans, but sympathises with them in their anti-clerical
fanaticism and in their hatred for the Slavs. I do not, however,
myself believe that the separatist party amongst Austrian Germans
is so strong in the country as the tendencies of the German groups
in the Parliament of Vienna lead many to believe. Just as it would
be a mistake to imagine that people in England who vote for Liberal
candidates do not condemn the discreditable language made use of
by leading members of the Opposition during the Boer war, or that
the revolutionary movement in Germany may be gauged by 3,000,000
votes cast for Social Democrats, so it would be an error to imagine
that Germans in Austria who vote for candidates advocating an
extreme German programme really wish that programme to be
carried out. Austrian Germans frequently support pan-Germanists
in order to offer vigorous opposition to the Slavs. Austrian Germans
-cannot bear the notion of being placed on an equality with that
nationality. But if annexation of Austrian territory to the German
Empire became a pressing danger, a different state of things would
be seen. The strong under-current of animosity to Prussia, which
exists in Vienna, in the Alpine territories of the Empire, and in the
rural districts of Upper and Lower Austria, would at once make
itself felt. The great Austrian German nobility, the German
Federalists, and the Christian Socialists are all bitterly hostile to
the incorporation of any portion of Austria into the German Empire.
I am quite certain that the number of Austrian Germans who really
and truly sympathise with the pan-Germans is in a small minority
everywhere, except in certain industrial districts in Bohemia.

That a serious German danger for Austria nevertheless exists is
quite certain. Although the German separatist movement in the
Dual Monarchy, estimated by its own inherent strength, is con-
temptible, it derives force from the encouragement it receives from
across the northern border. The people throughout the German
Empire have been taught to sympathise with it. Although not
openly aided, it is secretly encouraged by the Government at Berlin
with a view of being used should occasion serve. To estimate the
force of this danger to Austria, the policy of the German Empire
towards the Dual Monarchy has to be considered.

We all know that the governing idea of the policy of Bismarck
was the expulsion of Austria from Germany, to be followed by the
closest possible union between the Austrian Empire and reconstructed
Germany. But, as Dogberry says, 'An two men ride of a horse,
one must ride behind.' Bismarck was quite clear that the hindmost

718 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

position should be taken by Austria. For four years after Koniggratz
the Court of Vienna declined the mount. Men of leading in Austria
cherished the hope that another appeal to the iron dice might
alter the arrangement made in 1866. They looked forward with
apprehension to a future when, in consequence of final separation
from Germany, the disintegrating tendencies of the various
nationalities would work with dangerous energy. The German
element appeared to them to be the cement of the political con-
glomerate called the Austrian Empire. They considered it the
strongest binding force. Its power consisted in its intelligence
and industry, in its supposed love for law and order, and in the
circumstance that the dynasty was German. It was, however,
numerically in a great minority, and, though it appeared to them to
be the soul of the Empire, its influence must steadily decline unless
Austria reconquered her old supremacy in Germany. This convic-
tion led to the negotiations for a triple alliance between France,
Italy, and Austria, with the object of invading Germany in the
spring of 1871, and settling accounts with Prussia once for all.
This plan was defeated by Bismarck, who fell on France in July
1870, and crushed her before any Power could come to her
assistance.

The proclamation, in the palace of Louis the Fourteenth, an-
nouncing the formation of the new German Empire, strengthened
to such an extent the power of Prussia in Germany that the Emperor
Francis Joseph had to reconsider the whole position. He resolved
to turn for support to the Slav subjects of his Crown, and on the
4th of February, 1871, he charged Count Hohenwart to form a
Ministry for ' the kingdoms and lands represented in the Parliament
in Vienna.' This nobleman enjoyed the confidence of the Czechs,
and the consequences of his appointment were immediately felt.
The Czechs had ceased to attend the Parliament in Vienna from
1863. In 1867 they seceded from the local Diet at Prague, and in
1868 they published a declaration asserting the sovereignty of their
ancient kingdom and refusing relations with other parts of the
Austrian Empire, with which they contended they had no other
connection except common allegiance to the House of Hapsburg.
They claimed also that Moravia and Silesia, which formed a portion
of the old Bohemian Kingdom, should be reunited with it. When
Count Hohenwart became Prime Minister they resumed their seats
in the Diet of Prague. On the 14th of December, 1871, the
Sovereign of the country addressed a message to that assembly in
which he declared that, ' in consideration of the former constitu-
tional position of Bohemia, and remembering the power and glory
which its Crown had given to his ancestors and the constant fidelity
of the population, he gladly recognised the rights of the Kingdom
of Bohemia, and was willing to confirm this assurance by taking the

1904 ENGLAND, GERMANY, AND AUSTRIA 719

Coronation Oath.' It was at the same time clearly pointed out
and accepted by the Czechs that the constitution for Bohemia
must harmonise with the constitutions already in existence. The
Czechs proceeded to work out a constitution of the kind indi-
cated, and there is no reason to assume that the great difficulties
in their way might not have been overcome. Had this happy con-
summation been arrived at, a new bent would have been given to
the policy of Austria. An understanding with Russia, as regards
the Balkan Peninsula, would have followed in due course, and the
Foreign Office at Vienna would not have fallen under the dominating
influence of Berlin.

No one perceived this more clearly than Bismarck. He has
often been compared with the great statesman of Louis the Thirteenth,
but, in all his dealings, especially with Austria, he showed that he
possessed the craft of Mazarin as well as the energy of Richelieu.
In the summer of 1871, at Ischl, Salzburg, and Gastein, the Dual
Monarchy was inveigled into his toils. The Emperor Francis Joseph
was persuaded to renounce his policy of conciliating the Czechs.
On the 30th of October Count Hohenwart was suddenly dismissed
and a completely German Government was formed. A fortnight or
so afterwards Count Beust ceased to be the Chancellor of the Dual
Monarchy. Andrassy took his place, and Austrian policy ever since
has been largely directed from Berlin.

To maintain this state of things is the aim of German statesmen.
As long as Austria continues in German leading-strings they can
have no desire to see a change. In the first place it is obvious that
the annexation to Germany of a considerable portion of the Austrian
Empire would alter to a serious extent the balance of religious
division in the German Empire. Catholics and Protestants would
then be about equal in numbers, and this might produce unpleasant
political disturbance. Moreover, a strong latent antipathy still
exists between North and South Germany, and the incorporation
of large numbers of Austrians into the Empire would strengthen
the South German element to so formidable an extent as to en-
danger the existing hegemony of Prussia. Sooner or later, however,
Austria will claim her independence. It is out of the question that
so great an Empire, with its exalted dynasty and its proud traditions,
will indefinitely continue to do obsequious service to any other
Power. But when the moment of Austrian emancipation arrives,
and there are indications that it is not far off, the statesmen of
Berlin will have to consider the expediency of annexing large por-
tions of Austria, notwithstanding the risk of serious political compli-
cations at home and the danger of foreign war. The reason why the
pan-Germanic wreckers in Austria are not effectively repudiated by
the Government at Berlin is -because the Kaiser and his Ministers
wish to prepare for the contingencies of that anxious hour.

7-20 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

In 1896, the year in which Kaiser Wilhelm sent his telegram
to President Kriiger, he gave formal expression to the pan-Germanic
idea in a speech which was received throughout his Empire with
great enthusiasm by the unthinking multitude. It was accurately
described as a true pan-Germanic speech, and contained the following
passage :

Out of the German Empire a world-wide Empire has arisen. Everywhere
in all parts of the earth thousands of our countrymen reside. . . . Gentlemen, the
serious duty devolves on you to help me to link this greater German Empire
close to the Mother Country by helping me in complete unity to fulfil my duty
also towards the Germane in foreign parts.9

A German attempt on Austria would, however, now rouse Europe.
Italy would be at once affected. It is idle to imagine that she
might agree to the annexation of Austrian provinces by Germany on
condition of receiving that portion of her separated territory for
which she appears to long. But, as M. Weil has pointed out with
great force, the military and economic reasons which prevent Austria
from handing over to Italy an inch of ground inhabited by Italians
will continue to exist should that territory pass under German
domination; and even if Germany were willing to give Italy the
Trentino in exchange for her consent to a policy of brigandage, Italy
would not be less exposed to attack from the German Empire than
she is now from the Austrian. Moreover, if the Austrian Empire
were disintegrated, Germany would certainly seize Trieste, and also
establish a naval base at Pola. She would become then the Queen
of the Adriatic, and Italy would be definitely cut away from countries
m which she hopes to play a part by a much more dangerous rival
than Austria.

As for Great Britain, if Germany became absolute mistress of
Central Europe, with one foot in Hamburg and the other in Trieste,
and with great naval bases at Kiel and Pola, her position in the
Mediterranean would be seriously compromised. But there are few
who will deny that the grandeur and the power of England are
largely bound up with the interests of other nations whose prosperity
depends on the great ocean highway of the Mediterranean being at
all times available for the growing sea-borne traffic of the world.

The action of Russia, in case of German extension at the expense
of Austria, would be in ordinary circumstances absolutely certain.
Nothing is more sure than that on the day when Germany decides
to adopt openly a pan-Germanic programme as regards Austria
Russia must draw her sword. Political reasons, and the far stronger
forces of sentiment, will compel her to appear in arms on the
German frontier. The Czechs, as I have insisted, are loyal to the
House of Hapsburg ; if, however, they were compelled to make a

6 Pan-Germanic Doctrine, p. 13. Harper Bros.

1904 ENGLAND, GERMANY, AND AUSTRIA 721

.•choice between joining Germany or Russia, they would infinitely prefer
the latter country. They will offer the most determined opposition
to the German annexation of Bohemia. I surely need not enlarge on
the impossibility of Russia deserting the Czechs and permitting that
.annexation. On the other hand, it is impossible for Germany to
'bring Vienna and Berlin under the same sceptre without annexing
_Bohemia. There is no plainer situation in international politics.

The seizure of Austrian provinces by Germany would mark the
•end of French power and influence in Europe. Some Frenchmen
•dream of the restoration of Alsace and Lorraine following a French
•entente with Germany. Such persons must have read to little purpose
.the history of the relations of their country with Prussia. But the
.plain truth is that Germany, as at present constituted, can in no
•circumstances restore Alsace and Lorraine, because that territory is
the symbol of the conquest of France which made Germany one and
imperial.

Beust, when stating in his Memoirs that Bismarck informed him
that he desired the acquisition of Holland, goes on to say that
Bismarck assured Count Bylandt, whom many of us remember as
Dutch Minister in London, that Germany's object was to obtain, not
Holland, but the German provinces of Austria.10 The truth is that
Germany has her eyes on both. She wishes, for commercial reasons,
to obtain the mouth of the Rhine, and for purposes of naval supre-
macy to acquire the ports of Holland and weld together the Dutch
and German peoples, economically and politically, in a confederation
under the House of Hohenzollern. Her goal towards the south is a
position on the Adriatic.

In view of this situation it behoves the statesmen of Europe to
consider the position their respective countries should assume in case
of an Austrian crisis. It is quite possible this might come at a moment
when the various Powers were engaged in more or less bitter contro-
versies about matters of comparatively minor importance. In such
circumstances the Foreign Office at Berlin would certainly take
advantage of the situation, and the history of the nineteenth century
shows that Prussia owes her success as much to the ineptitude of
Europ ean statesmen as to the genius of Bismarck.

As far as England is concerned, her statesmen will only act with
•ordinary prudence if they bear steadily in mind that the determining
factor of the international policy of Germany is the desire to pro-
mote the disintegration of the British Empire. Those best acquainted
with the current political literature of Europe, and with the motives
•which shape the conduct of Prussian statesmen, have long realised
this truth. It has received striking illustration within the last few
weeks. On the 18th of October the Times announced that German
influence was used at Pekin to hinder the ratification by China of

10 Beust, Aus drei Viertel-Jahrhunderten, ii. 481.

722 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

our treaty with Tibet. A few days afterwards the statement was
denied in the North German Gazette, but although the Times,
quoting Prince Gortchakoff, remarked, ' On sait joliment dementir
a Berlin/ the contradiction deceived nobody. This effort to thwart
England in Pekin is only the latest among many manifestations of
the settled policy of Prussianised Germany. The leading journal
did not exaggerate when it stated that the Kaiser's telegram to
Kriiger in 1896 was not more unfriendly and unseemly than the
action of his diplomatists in China. Their recent conduct aims at
the destruction of the moral effect of the expedition to Lhassa, not
alone in Tibet but in Bhutan, more especially perhaps in Nepaul, and
throughout the East generally. German statesmen also desire to
keep alive sources of friction between England and Eussia, and to
strengthen their case for obtaining co-operation from the latter
Power in their future war with Great Britain. It is idle to contend
that they wish only to preserve the integrity of China, which
England does not threaten. It is Germany herself who initiated
the partition of that Empire by her seizure of Kiao-chau. As far
as Tibet is concerned, Germany has no more interest there than
England in Lippe-Detmold. Her interference with the negotiations
resulting from the expedition to Lhassa can only be explained by
her persistent animosity to this country. This hostility is Prussian
in origin and character, and has grown with the power of that State.
It seems likely to last while Prussian hegemony endures. How long
this will be is a secret of the future.

ROWLAND BLENNERHASSETT.

1904

MOTOR TRAFFIC
AND THE PUBLIC ROADS

FAST MOTOR TRAFFIC.

THE rapid increase of light motor carriages, and the wider use of
heavy self -driven vehicles to transport goods which must follow the
adoption of the Local Government Board Committee's Eeport J on
the subject, forces the question of road usage and construction to the
front.

The difficulty which engages public attention at the moment is
that of reconciling the conflicting interests of swiftly driven passenger
motors with those of other users of the highway. This burning
question of the hour may first be considered, though the prominence
that has been given it obscures, in some degree, the even more im
p ortant matters that he behind.

The pleasure to be derived from travelling at high speed along the
highway, protected by glass screens from the rush of wind, and by
goggled masks and cloaks from clouds of foul dust, may appear
doubtful ; but the fact that there are persons who find very great
satisfaction in it gives rise to the hostile feeling which has been so
freely ventilated in the Press.

It should be borne in mind that it is simply a question of pleasure,
so far as the motor-driver is concerned. The stoutest advocates of
fast driving have never ventured to urge that there is necessity to
travel at twenty miles an hour, or that any purpose other than the
motorist's gratification is served thereby. At the same time the
frequency of serious accidents stands for proof that rapidly driven
motors are a source of grave danger ; and the question thus resolves
itself into weighing the idle pleasure of motorists, on the one hand,
against public safety on the other.

MAXIMUM SPEED LIMIT SETTLED ON A WRONG BASIS.

The claim of the motorist to drive at a speed which has been
proved dangerous to others has been allowed by the authorities on

1 Eeport of the Departmental Committee appointed by the Local Government
Board to Inquire with regard to Eegulations for the Purposes of Section 12 of the
Motor Car Act, 1903.

723

724 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

grounds which seem at least open to question. The motor experts
represented that it is possible to construct cars which can travel at a
rate of sixty or eighty miles an hour ; therefore, they urged, twenty
miles an hour is an extremely moderate rate. The point was settled
on this basis, which other users of the highroad regard as radically
wrong — the question of maximum speed is essentially one which
should be decided, not upon the capacity of motors for fast travel, but
upon the character of our highroads, and the lawful uses made of them
by the public.

In coming to a decision the authorities apparently allowed them-
selves to be influenced by the latitude which is permitted to motorists
in France, forgetting that there are very wide differences between
English roads and French. English motorists, in point of fact, have
blindly followed the lead of France from the beginning. Untram-
melled by legal restrictions, the motor industry in France made con-
siderable headway before Parliament even released self-driven vehicles
from the disabilities which excluded them from our own public roads.
Those who were loudest in their complaints of tardiness at West-
minster forgot that a method of travel which is comparatively safe in
France is not so in this country.

Given roads such as the French National road, sixty feet in
width, running straight as a railway line for miles, without hedges to
impede the view of those who wish to avoid or prepare to meet the
flying motor, and a passion for speed may be indulged with a certain
degree of safety. Those who clamoured for licence to do in England
what motorists do in France forgot or ignored the fact that the vast
majority of English highways are seldom otherwise than narrow
(being, on the average, about sixteen feet in width), seldom running
straight for a furlong, and seldom lacking high banks or hedges, or
both. The hedges and banks which enclose our roads are a very
important factor in the case, for they serve, if the expression may be
used, as blinkers to limit the vision of the traveller to as much of the
highroad as he can see between them.

Motor racing became fashionable in France, and though even the
magnificent French roads did not make the amusement free from
fatal accidents, the champions of the English motor industry agitated
for licence to race in this country. The authorities, warned by the
fatalities which had shown the danger of the business on the Con-
tinent, placed sufficient restrictions on organised motor racing ; but
they followed the lead of France in sanctioning a racing speed of
twenty miles an hour because it is mechanically possible to drive a
motor at three or four times that speed, and because there is no
' speed limit ' on the open country roads in France.

In every French town and village, be it understood, the local
authority prescribes the speed at which the motorist may travel along
the streets.

1904 MOTOR TRAFFIC 725

SPEED OF HORSE-DRAWN CARRIAGES AND MOTORS.

The right of the coachman to regulate his speed by the capacity
of his horses was limited as long ago as 1820. When the talents of
Macadam and Telford were at last suffered to furnish the country
with hard and smooth roads, the speed of the mail and stage coaches
was increased. On every main road the rivalry was such that con-
sideration for other users of the highroad was set aside, and racing
coaches became a public danger. So many and serious were the
accidents from this cause that in 1820 an Act of Parliament was
passed to prohibit ' wanton and furious driving or racing,' under
which offending coachmen were made responsible under the criminal
law, and to make what the motorist would call an ' accident ' punish-
able as manslaughter.

It was the custom in the coaching days for rival stages to per-
form their journey at top speed on May Day ; and in these races a
fast coach was considered to have performed a feat deserving record
if it accomplished its journey at a rate of fifteen miles an hour. Such
was the speed which the Legislature forbade as dangerous ; and why
a speed of twenty miles an hour should be regarded as anywhere safe
for a motor it is impossible to understand.

No ANALOGY BETWEEN MOTORS AND TRAINS.

It would be waste of time to answer the plea that, even as horses
are become accustomed to the train, so will they become accustomed
to the motor. It has been pointed out, times beyond reckoning, that
the cases are essentially different ; that a parallel cannot be drawn
between trains travelling on tracks of their own and the motor sharing
the highroad with horse-drawn vehicles, pedestrians, and live-stock.
We need not deal further with the light motor traffic. The claim of
the motorist to travel at a pace which would properly render the
driver of horses liable to summons for furious and dangerous driving
cannot be sustained. The new Act prescribing the twenty-mile
maximum of speed has been given fair trial, and experience shows
that it has made the roads more dangerous than they were before.
It seems clear that the reckless minority of motorists should be re-
strained by more drastic legislation.

EARLY ENGLISH ROADS.

Having regard to the road requirements of the new heavy motor
traffic, which will be dealt with on a future page, it seems desirable
to look more closely into the conditions of our English highroads and
learn how they came into existence-

726 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

History shows us that new conditions of traffic have always brought
about new conditions of road-making; and it is worth briefly sketching
the history of travel to show the intimate relations subsisting between
the two.

The Saxons, and those who came after them for many centuries,
were not sufficiently civilised to use as models the magnificent roads
left them by the Romans, even had the circumstances under which
they lived made such roads necessary.

The traveller journeyed on horseback ; all goods, including coals
in the colliery districts, were carried on the backs of pack-horses,
led in long trains ; and in a land consisting almost entirely of waste
and woodland the traveller and pedlar chose their own route from
place to place. Hence the earliest roads were the merest tracks,
whose course was determined by the features of the country ; the
track thus chosen was ' the line of least resistance ' — that which
could with least difficulty be traversed by horses.

STREAMS USED AS ROADS.

Where he could the traveller took advantage of natural facilities,
and the Saxon horseman soon discovered that the gravel bed of a
stream afforded a firmer and better surface than he could find on its
margin. Hence it comes that many of our highways follow the
course of streams which have long since run dry. The origin of such
roads had been lost sight of so far back as Queen Elizabeth's time,
if we may accept as evidence in this sense the preamble of an Act
of Parliament 2 passed in 1562. This statute says :

forasmuch as the highwaj'S in sundry places of this realm be full of continual
springs and watercourses, by continual increase and sinking whereof into the
ground the said ways are not only very deep and dangerous, but also, for the
most part, impossible to be amended and repaired :

the supervisors of roads are empowered, at their discretion —

to turn any such watercourse or spring from the highways into any ditches on
ground adjoining.

The wording of this Act indicates that the very existence of the
stream had been forgotten in its adoption and use as a road. It is
not difficult to see how this came about. The diagram shows roughly
the original and present section of countless highways and byways all
over England. The dotted lines, A, A, represent the original banks
and bed of the stream ; B, B, the banks as they now are, having been
gradually cut away by the traffic, the dislodged soil, gravel, &c.,
contributing to raise the level of the road and compel a greater or less
volume of the native water to seek an outlet and a new channel. The

* 5 Eliz. c. 13.

1904 MOTOR TRAFFIC 727

higher and more evenly continuous the banks, the greater the difficulty
of finding such outlets, and, equally, the more troublesome those
* continual springs ' referred to in Queen Elizabeth's Act.

B /

\ /

i /

A"

The stream actually furnished a model for early sixteenth-century
roads. Fitzherbert 3 counsels his readers to ' see that there be no
water standing in the highway, but that it be always current and
running.'

EARLY ROADS SUFFICIENT FOB THEIR PURPOSE.

For many centuries these rough tracks continued to answer their
purpose. The able-bodied traveller rode, and ladies and infirm
persons were carried in the ' horse-litter ' — a species of chair or
hammock slung on poles secured to the pads or saddles of two horses,
one in front and the other behind. Owing, no doubt, to the wretched
character of the roads, the horse-litter survived for a hundred years
after coaches had come into tolerably general use.4

FIRST ENDEAVOURS TO IMPROVE THE ROADS.

It is a curious coincidence that the first Act passed to secure
improvement in the highroads as such :> should have been placed on
the statute book in the same year (1555) that Walter Rippon built
for the Earl of Rutland the first coach ever seen in England. This
law of 1555 enacts that inasmuch as the highways are become ' very
noisom and tedious to travel in and dangerous to all passengers and
carriages,' G surveyors were to be elected in every parish by popular
vote to take charge of the roads, and these surveyors were empowered
to exact four days' work on the roads from every parishioner every
year.

3 The Book of Husbandry, 1534.

4 William Lily, in the play Alexander and Campaspes, first printed in 1584, makes
one of his characters complain of soldiers ' riding in easy coaches up and down to
court ladies ' ; and in the Last Speech of Tlwmas Pride (Harleian Miscellany) occurs
mention of General Shippon coming wounded to London in a horse-litter, in the year
1680.

•' 2 & 3 Ph. & M. c. 8. Earlier Acts aim at the protection of travellers from
thieves, and sanction the making of roads by private persons.

* ' Carriages ' was the term used by legal draughtsmen of the period to describe
waggons and carts.

728 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov,

EFFECT OF THE INTRODUCTION OF COACHES.

' Chariots ' of an ornamental kind had been used in ceremonial
processions in England early in the sixteenth century ; but these were
essentially vehicles for show rather than for use. Queen Elizabeth
was the first English monarch to own a coach. In 1572, when she
visited Warwick, she made her entry in a coach. Again, in 1578,
when she went to Norwich, we have it on Sir Thomas Browne's
authority that ' she had a coach or two in her train.' Queen Eliza-
beth was famous as a horsewoman, and it is highly improbable that
she made long journeys over roads unworthy of the name in a heavy
springless vehicle when she could ride ; but it was during her reign
that coaches began to come into general use, and it was the fifth year
of her reign (1562) that saw the passage of an important Act 7 for the
amendment of the highways. By this Act the authorised super-
visors of the road were empowered to mend the roads by taking the
' loose rubbish or smallest broken stones ' 8 of any quarry within
their parish without leave of the owner ; and a very suggestive clause
requires owners of the ground to cut down ' all trees and bushes
growing in the highways'

The ' stage ' or ' long waggon ' came into existence about this
time. This early parent of the stage-coach was a roomy vehicle
with very wide tires to prevent the wheels from sinking into the
mud. Long waggons carried passengers and goods between London
and some of the chief towns in the East, South, and Midland counties.

Little more was done towards improving the roads until after
the Restoration, by which period the stage-coach had become a
regular institution, and passenger vehicles both in town and country
were common." By consequence, Charles the Second's reign is con-
spicuous for the legislation relating to roads and traffic. The first
important Act 10 was passed in 1662. This forbade any travelling
waggon plying for hire u to use more than seven horses or eight oxen,
or six oxen and two horses, and the tire of the wheels was in no case
to be less than four inches wide. The restrictions placed on loads
are eloquent of the state of the highways of the time. From the
15th of October to the 1st of May the seven-horse waggon might
carry one ton ; from the 1st of May to the 14th of October one and
a half ton !

7 5 Eliz. c. 13.

8 Fitzherbert, in The Book of Husbandry, 1534, recommends the use of gravel and
stones for the repair of the roads.

9 In 1660 the hackney coaches plying in London were so numerous that regulations
concerning their use were issued by a Eoyal Proclamation, which described them as a

common nuisance."

10 14 Car. II. c. 6.

11 Provisions of this Act extended to all vehicles by 15 Car. II. c. L

1904 MOTOR TRAFFIC 729

THE INTRODUCTION OF TURNPIKES.

The year 1663 saw placed on the statute-book the Act 12 under
which the first turnpike was established to levy tolls for the main-
tenance of a road. This Act also contained a clause to enable the
road surveyors to take gravel, chalk, sand, or stone from the next
parish or from private grounds without payment if materials were
wanted for repair of the roads.

ROADMAKING FROM CHARLES THE SECOND'S TO GEORGE
THE THIRD'S TIME.

It has seemed desirable to say thus much about our roads and the
traffic they carried in Stuart times because the method of road-
making then in vogue continued, with little alteration or none, until
the days of Macadam and Telford, while the change in the character
of traffic was insignificant, from the roadmakers' point of view, till
the introduction of springs in the latter part of the eighteenth cen-
tury. Vehicles of all kinds increased in number between the time of
Charles the Second and George the Third ; but the roads remained
much the same. The roadmaker spread on the surface gravel, chalk,
sand, and stone, or such of these materials as the locality afforded,
and his road was made. He left the passing traffic to grind it smooth.13
Sometimes he might dig ditches to drain off the water, but this would
depend on the circumstances governing each case, and was by no
means the rule. The result was that in course of time the surface was
ground into the soil, and the ' road ' became a quagmire.

ROADS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

The literature of the eighteenth century, when people began to
travel about the country more freely than had been the habit of their
forefathers, teems with references to the condition of the roads.
Daniel Defoe,14 referring to the great belt of clay soil which stretches
across the Midlands and is in places fifty miles wide, says :

After you are passed Dunstable . . . you enter the deep clays, which are so sur-
prisingly soft that it is perfectly frightful to travellers : and it has been the
wonder of foreigners how, considering the great number of carriages which are
continually passing with heavy loads, those ways have been made practicable.
Indeed, the great number of horses every year killed by the excess of labour in
those heavy ways has been such a charge to the country that the new building
of causeways as the Bornans did of old seems to me to be a much easier
expense.

12 15 Car. II. c. 1.

13 The road roller was first used about the year 1772.

14 A Tour through Great Britain, by a Gentleman (Daniel Defoe), 1724.
VOL. LVI— No. 333 3 C

730 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Nov.

In another passage he mentions having seen, at a country village
not far from Lewes, ' a lady of very good quality ' drawn to church
in her coach with six oxen, ' not in frolick or humour,' but simply
because the road was so bad that horses could not be used. It is
quite possible that the village referred to lies in the district through
which Macadam, a century later, built a very costly road (vide foot-
note, p. 732).

Forty-six years later Mr. Arthur Young 15 wrote in scathing terms
of the roads he encountered in Northern England. He could not,
in the whole range of language, find terms sufficiently expressive to
describe ' this infernal road,' one of the principal highways of the
country. He encountered ruts four feet deep by actual measurement
and floating with mud, and this the result only of a wet summer.
Mr. Young says that he ' passed three carts broken down in these
eighteen miles of execrable memory.'

ROADS UNDER THE TURNPIKE ' TRUSTS.'

It was about three years after this was written that George the
'Third's important Highway Act 16 was passed. The turnpike, when
established by Charles the Second, proved so unpopular that the law
became practically a dead letter. George the Third's Act altered
the system of road maintenance. It created ' Turnpike Trusts '
under popular control, and placed in the hands of locally-elected
trustees the duty of farming out the tolls and keeping the roads in
repair. These bodies were rapidly formed all over the country.
Between 1760 and 1777, 452 turnpike trusts were created under the
Act, and between 1785 and 1809 the number created was upwards
of 1,062.

It seems to have been assumed that the system of making roads
which had been in vogue since Charles the Second's time could not
be improved upon, and George the Third's Act sought to preserve
the ways from injury by regulating the build of vehicles to reduce
wear and tear. For example, a waggon with wheels having nine
inches width of tire might be drawn by eight horses, but not more ;
a waggon whose wheel tires were under six inches wide might be
drawn by not more than five horses. On the other hand, vehicles
running on rollers sixteen inches wide or more might be drawn by any
number of horses, and these last also paid less in tolls than waggons
with narrower wheels.

These measures produced varying degrees of improvement in the
roads in some parts of England. When Mr. John Palmer, after a
long struggle, succeeded in persuading the Post Office to send letters
by his mail coach from Bristol to London, the first journey (the

ls Tour in the North of England, by Arthur Young, 1770.
lf 13 George III. c. 78.

1904 MOTOE TRAFFIC 781

2nd of August, 1784) was accomplished in seventeen hours, or at a
speed of seven miles an hour. On other roads the speed of coaches
remained very low. In 1779 the coach from Edinburgh to London,
about 420 miles, took ten days over the journey, resting over the
Sunday at Boroughbridge, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

The turnpike system led to the making of many new roads, and
to change for the better in some old ones ; but the trustees were
generally farmers and small tradesmen, who were totally ignorant of
roadmaking as then understood. Where they laid out new roads
they followed no settled principle, and in most cases they continued
to use the ancient pack-horse tracks, with all their inherent defects.
Further, the system under which each trust maintained the roads in
its own district militated against success. For example, the eighty-
two miles of road through North Wales to Holyhead was under seven
distinct turnpike trusts, and, until taken over by commissioners
appointed by Parliament, was one of the worst roads in England.

THE MACADAM AND TELFORD ERA.

In 1818TJohn Loudon Macadam's system of roadmaking was
adopted, and this, in combination with Telford's methods, resulted in
the construction of the roads which still serve us. The work of these
two great pioneers of road-building must be considered together.
They broke away from the traditional method of following the ancient
pack-horse tracks, and, where possible, laid new roads over gentler
ascents, through cuttings, and clear of soft, low-lying ground.

Their joint system of constructing roads may be considered a
partial reversion to the old Roman method. Telford approved a firm
foundation. Accordingly he dug out the route and made a regular
' bed ' or ' pitch ' of rough, close-set pavement, with six inches of
broken stones, which was rammed hard, and over this was laid the
upper crust of ' macadam.' The result was a road at once hard,
smooth, and durable. The English roads made on this principle
compare in durability and smoothness — though not in width and
straightness — with the great national roads of France. There is all
the difference in the world between a road which has been built as a
road over a carefully selected and surveyed line of country, and a
road which has been fashioned out of an ancient stream-bed or pack-
horse track.

On the new roads made by Telford and Macadam coachmakers
and contractors were able to put into practical operation the im-
provements in vehicles which had been awaiting opportunity for
development. The general adoption of this system brought about
the ' golden age ' of fast coaching with remarkable rapidity.

3 c 2

732 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

FAST COACHING.

During the ' golden age ' of the road, which term is applicable to
the period about 1820-40, the fastest mail coaches ran at an average
pace of about ten miles per hour. The mail from London to Brighton,
fifty-one and a half miles, accomplished the journey in five hours
fifteen minutes ; that from London to Manchester took a little longer,
covering the 187 miles in nineteen hours. The London and Holyhead
mail ran its 261 miles in twenty-six hours and fifty-five minutes.
One of the fastest coaches was the ' Quicksilver,' from London to
Devonport, which on one occasion ran the 216-mile journey in twenty-
one hours fourteen minutes, giving an average of just over ten miles
an hour.

COACH AND MOTOR-CAR.

It seems worth pointing out that the danger to others from the
old fast coach was infinitely less than the danger from the motor-car
travelling at the same pace — ten miles an hour. The rumble of
wheels and thunder of hoofs proclaimed the approach of the former
from a long distance. On 364 days in the year, also, dwellers on the
coach routes knew to a minute when the mail would pass, so jealously
was ' time ' kept. On May Day, without doubt, there was danger,
but we may be sure that the coachmen driving their fastest did not
wholly forget that wholesome law which made them personally
responsible for injury caused to their passengers and to others on the
road. The dangers of the fast coach were regarded with a lenient
eye, for that vehicle filled a place in the social economy of our grand-
fathers very different from that occupied by the motor in our own.

CONDITION OF MODERN ROADS.

It goes without saying that the cost of making or remaking the
roads on the new system was very great. Macadam built one road,
from Lewes to Eastbourne, which cost 1,000?. per mile,17 and only the
main arteries of coach traffic were thus altered. There remains to
this day an enormous mileage of roads in England which have no
' bed ' — are, in fact, no better adapted to withstand the strain of
heavy traffic than were the roads of a century ago. When the Loco-
motive Amendment Act of 1898 came into force, an inquiry into this
question was held by the Middlesex County Council, with the result
that a very large number of district roads in the county were scheduled
and closed to traction traffic as unfit to bear the strain.

17 This was an expensive road to build, owing to the nature of the soil ; in some
places three feet of stones, &c., was laid on a foundation of fagots. The village
referred to by Defoe (p. 730) was no doubt in the district through which this road was
carried.

1904 MOTOR TRAFFIC 733

THE NEW HEAVY MOTOR TRAFFIC.

We have now to consider the heavy motor traffic which, if the
Local Government Board Committee's recommendations are adopted,
will soon take possession of our roads. Our highways, the reader
will bear in mind, have been constructed for horse-drawn vehicles.
The Local Government Board Committee has recommended that the
legal weight of an unladen motor shall be increased to six and a half
tons, and that the gross weight on any one axle when the vehicle is
loaded shall not exceed eight tons. This method of regulating the
weight was adopted with an eye to the possibility of building motor
waggons or drays with six wheels, successful accomplishment of which
was hoped for by at least one witness interested in the industry.
Thus we have to contemplate the need to reconstruct our roads to
carry any weight up to twenty-four tons, including the vehicle. Great
stress, naturally, was laid on the necessity of framing the new regula-
tions in such wise that they should admit the carriage of a ' paying
load,' and also on the necessity of throwing all roads without distinc-
tion open to these heavy motors.

As regards the first point, the greater expense of working motors
over that of working horse-drawn vehicles admittedly will oblige the
user of the motor to carry much heavier loads.

As regards the second point, it was urged by witnesses, and recog-
nised by the Committee, that to confine the heavy motor traffic to
specified roads or to a particular class of road would greatly impair
the utility of these machines and adversely affect our inland trade.

The Committee's Report includes one clause in the interest of the
roads. It recommends that a motor wheel three feet in diameter
shall have a width of tire not less than half an inch for every seven
and a half hundredweight of the gross weight carried. Now our
highways to-day are divided into three classes — main, secondary, and
district roads. In the first are the old main arteries of travel which
at an earlier day carried the fast mail and stage-coach traffic, and the
carriers' huge passenger and goods waggons from one large town to
another. To quote from the evidence of Mr. W. W. B. Hulton,
chairman of the Main Roads and Bridges Committee of the Lanca-
shire County Council, given before the Local Government Board
Committee :

The main road has a much stronger bed, has a thicker crust, and, where the
traffic requires it, is coated with three inches of granite macadam on the top.
The secondary road ... as a rule would not have a granite top to it — a good
bed, but not a granite top except in such cases as we find the traffic requires it.

Mr. Hulton's council was not hostile to the heavy motor traffic,
but it felt obliged to take steps to prevent destruction of the roads in

734 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

the county. In twelve months 8,OOOZ. had been spent in repairing the
damage done by heavy motor waggons travelling on the roads between
Blackburn and Preston. This is described as an ordinary macadam
road, well constructed in every respect. It was found that horses'
hoofs damage a road much less than the grip and bite of the wheels
of a motor waggon. As regards roads of the second and third classes,
Mr. Hulton said that if there were anything like an organised system
of motor-waggon traffic on these it would be necessary to raise them
to the rank of main roads — in other words, completely relay them.

Another witness, Mr. Howard Humphreys, who gave evidence as
representative of the Roads Improvement Association, said that those
counties in which the road material is not good would have to increase
the expenditure on their main roads. It would become necessary to
renounce the use of local stone and ' bring in Penlee, or basalt, or
something else.'

The case of the district roads was worse, and Mr. Humphreys
thought that these must be brought up to the same standard eventu-
ally. Some district roads, he added, would stand the motor traffic
as regulated at the time the Committee was sitting, but there were
others which would not — that is to say, there are some district roads
which could bear, without injury, a maximum load of four tons
travelling over them. The Committee's recommendations propose that
all the roads in the kingdom shall be open to vehicles which, with
their loads, may weigh upwards of twenty-four tons. It must be
observed that this gentleman held that our commerce would be
seriously affected were motor waggons not allowed ' a pretty free
run in the future,' and he thought it would be a disastrous thing for
the traffic to be restricted to specified district roads. In effect his
evidence points to the necessity of raising all roads to a standard of
strength capable of carrying heavy motor traffic.

Mr. William Weaver, Surveyor to the Borough of Kensington,
thought that the macadam road would be found ' utterly unsuitable
for motor traffic, and a new road surface will have to be found of
some material of an impervious character which will not break up or
lick up under the motor traffic.' He observed that ' a lot of country
roads are no more fit to sustain heavy motor traffic than our back
gardens.'

There are other consequences of heavy motor traffic which the
ratepayers must consider. A very large proportion of the canal and
railway bridges throughout the country, though quite equal to the
weight of any horse-drawn traffic, are not designed to bear such a
strain as the loaded motor will throw upon them. Mr. de Courcy
Meade, City Surveyor of Manchester, calculates that it would cost
150,0002. to rebuild the bridges in that city.

The consequences of vibration are also to be considered. Mr.
H. T. Wakelam, County Engineer and Surveyor for Middlesex, said

1904 MOTOR TRAFFIC 735

that his council had ' had a lot of complaints from people living in
suburban districts in the north of London where damage had been
caused to houses by reason of heavy vehicles going past.' These, no
doubt, are ' jerry-built ' dwellings ; but it is notorious that an enormous
number of suburban houses are so built. Are these to be rebuilt, and
at whose charge ?

Mr. Weaver, the witness already mentioned, also gave evidence
concerning heavy motor traffic in London. It has been found that
these vehicles travelling along the streets break gas and water mains.
The fact that the pipe has been fractured cannot be discovered until
the effects of the leak are detected on the surface, and the cost of
repair necessarily falls on the ratepayers. He cited a case of a broken
water main which occurred in the Old Brompton Road. The earth
subsided from the concrete foundation, and the wood-block surface
sank.

Can it be seriously urged that increased width of tire will do
away with risk of damage to roads of the secondary and district
classes ; that tires of any width will enable heavily laden motors to
use bridges without injuring them, and reduce the vibration which
causes damage to suburban houses ? Are we to believe that wide
tires will dispose of the risk of breaking gas and water mains in the
streets of our towns ? If this new traffic is to be let loose upon the*
country, free to use any road the convenience of the owner of each
individual vehicle may indicate, the ratepayers are entitled to ask
who is to pay for the alterations that must be introduced.

One more point which bears upon both the fast and the heavy
motor traffic, and I have done. Our country roads, other than the
great main roads, are, as already said, very narrow. It would be
possible for every reader of this Review to name a score of places
where ordinary carriages meeting must pass one another at a walking
pace to avoid risk of collision. The swiftly driven light motor on such
roads, particularly when they are winding roads between high hedges,
is a source of the gravest danger to horse-drawn carriages, pedestrians,
and live-stock. The heavy motor waggon, if the Local Government
Board's recommendations receive effect, is to be built with a maximum
width of seven feet six inches, or a foot more than that hitherto
allowed. A vehicle of this width in our narrow country highways
will literally close them to all but pedestrians ; in others, less narrow,
two such waggons meeting could not possibly pass.18 The increase of
width has been recommended in order to place the motor waggon on
the same footing as the horse-drawn vehicle ; but the latter makes
nothing of passing with its near wheels in the ditch or a foot or two

18 In course of an inquiry held at Kingston on the 28th of September last, it was
stated that a road which the Town Council desired to close to motor traffic varies from
16 feet to 13 feet 2 inches in width. The Cambridge Eoad entrance to Kingston is
15 feet 7 inches wide.

736 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

up the bank. Is the motor waggon, with its ten or fifteen tons of
weight, prepared to do the same ?

The cost of altering our district roads, then, will not be limited to
taking up and relaying on a firm foundation ; they must also be
widened to make them moderately safe for mixed light motor and
horse traffic, and possible at all for heavy motors.

The Local Government Board has dealt very tenderly with the
heavy motor waggon interest, even as it dealt with the light motor
interest when the question of speed was brought up for decision.
It seems fair to suggest that another inquiry is needed in the interests
of the vast majority, the ratepayers and the users of horses, who are
entitled to ask ' Who pays ? '

WALTER GILBEY.

Postscript. — On p. 732 reference was made to the enormous mileage of roads
in England which have no ' bed,' and are therefore quite unfit to bear the
strain of heavy motor traffic. The following figures, from the last complete set
of the Annual Local Taxation Eeturns (those for the financial year 1901-2),
show the mileage of main and other roads in England and Wales repaired in
that year, with the cost per mile of repairs.

Average cost of
repairs per
mile daring

Miles the year

£ s. d.

Main Roads under County Councils . . 16,202 67 0 0

Main Eoads under Urban Councils and

under Urban and Rural District Councils

conjointly 10,913 109 0 0

Main Roads under Rural District Councils . 7,325 58 0 0

Total mileage of Main Roads . . 34,440

Aggregate length of Roads, other than
Main Roads, under Rural District
Councils 95.205J 20 14 0

J9<>4

FREE THOUGHT
IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

SOME who look to me for pastoral guidance have been disquieted by
the article under the above title in this Review for September.
The writer of the article makes certain assumptions in which (to say
the least) I am unable to follow him, and he appears to have a very
inadequate apprehension of the position held by many intelligent
believers in the Christian revelation.

There are four points in particular at which I should traverse
Mr. Mallock's position.

The author refers to the cases of two clergymen who have
published opinions bringing down upon them the censure of their
bishops. He asks, ' Now, what is it precisely that these two clergy-
men have done ? They have merely ventured to apply to parts of
the New Testament those methods of scholarship, criticism, and
ordinary common-sense which the Bishop of Worcester has been
foremost in declaring that we must apply to the Old ; and as the
honest result ' of their methods they have arrived at certain
conclusions.

Here it is necessary to distinguish between the methods and the
results arrived at : because other students adopting the like methods,
with at least equal honesty, have arrived at different results. Have
these clergymen been censured for the methods they have used or
for the conclusions they have reached ? Mr. Mallock fails to make
this distinction, but his arguments are plainly based upon the
assumption that the methods rather than the conclusions have been
condemned.

If we thought this we should indeed be disquieted ; for if we
are not to use the methods of ' scholarship, criticism, and ordinary
common-sense ' in studying the credentials of our Christianity our
Church must be at once condemned as an institution of obscurantism.
Our position is indeed despicable if we dare not bring our documents
to the light, and study them with all the legitimate helps of
' scholarship, criticism, and ordinary common-sense.'

737

738 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

But 'scholarship, criticism, and ordinary common-sense' are
not instruments of such precision that everyone using them is led
to the same conclusion. Mr. Mallock makes the unwarrantable
assumption that the conclusions at which the two clergymen have
arrived are the necessary results of their method. But even these
two differ very widely as to their conclusions ; whilst other students,
confessedly their superiors in scholarship, certainly not less versed
in the art of criticism, and (as most people would judge) not
beneath them in common-sense, have reached by these methods
a very different position. It is plain that these two clergy
were censured not for their scholarship, not for their method of
criticism, but for the conclusions to which their scholarship and
their criticism, honestly, but perhaps unskilfully, applied, carried
them.

And if anyone thinks that the Church ought to be so wide as to
embrace or allow every opinion that is honestly held, let such a one
reflect that no Church can possibly exist without some symbol of
limitation to give raison d'etre to membership. A society must
have a rule. A Church must have a creed. No association can
exist unless membership in it means something. The members must
be bound together either by believing something or by doing some-
thing, and in a Church one can hardly have the doing without the
believing. Let the Church boldly invite scholarship, criticism, and
the judgment of common-sense ; but there will always be the risk
that the uncertain use of these faculties may bring the individual
into a position which the Church cannot endorse.

It is, therefore, no reproach to a Church to say that while she
encourages liberal thought and honest criticism, she draws a line
somewhere. There are conclusions which may not be taught in her
name. She has her formularies and her symbols, which may not be
transgressed.

II

Next, I demur to the position which the author of the article
assumes in regard o the Virgin birth of Christ. While he holds
the Church responsible for the speculations of mediaeval times upon
the subject, he appears to misapprehend altogether the place of
this doctrine in the scheme of the Christian faith.

There are some doctrines of Christianity of such supreme impor-
tance that we cannot conceive any preaching of the Gospel without
them. There are other elements of the faith which are rather
incidental and elucidatory. They may be accessory to the support
of cardinal doctrines. They may be accepted by the Church as
revealed truth, and yet, if they had never been revealed, the ethics
and the hope of Christianity would still have been what they are.
For example, we cannot think of any preaching of the Gospel that

1904 FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 739

did not tell of Christ as a supernatural person. He was not the
mere hereditary product of His age and generation. His coming
constituted a new departure in the relations of God to man. He
was in a unique sense the Son of (rod. The Godhead was incarnate
in Him. And when we say this we are at once implying a miracle.
Only by a miracle of some sort could He be what we have described.
And if miracle is to be admitted, one mode of miracle is as much
within God's power as another, and one form of miracle is as credible
as another. What particular form the necessary miracle took is of
quite secondary consideration.

In regard to the person of Christ, the essential fact is His
divinity. The precise method by which it pleased the fulness of
God to dwell in Him bodily is of comparatively little account.

Now, think of any Apostle preaching Christianity as a new
religion. From Christian premises what should we expect him to
say ? Certainly he would speak of Christ as the Divine Son of God.
But should we expect him in every sermon to describe the mode by
which the Godhead became incarnate ? The story of the Virgin
birth represents to us the process by which the Word was made
flesh. But the Divine Wisdom might have accomplished the same
end by other means. What is of importance is not how it was done,
but, in fact, that it was done. When, therefore, Mr. Mallock and
others dwell upon the circumstance that St. John does not mention
the Virgin birth, we say, But does not St. John insist upon the
divinity of Christ ? It is St. John who tells us that ' the Word was
with God, and the Word was God,' and ' the Word was made flesh
and dwelt among us.' It is, in fact, admitted that St. John gives
more prominence than any other writer to the divinity of Christ,
though he does not tell us by what particular intervention the Word
was made flesh. The result must have been accomplished in some
way. If St. John does not mention the Virgin birth as the way, at
least he does not suggest any other way.

The Virgin birth, says Mr. Mallock, is only mentioned by two
Evangelists. But, I ask, why do we care about the incident of the
Virgin birth at all ? Only because it witnesses to the divinity of
Christ. And if the divinity of Christ be the real doctrine in
question, St. John and St. Paul are at least as clear and explicit
upon this point as St. Matthew and St. Luke.

Mr. Mallock speaks of the Virgin birth as an alleged ' physio-
logical fact,' and he very needlessly discusses what he supposes to
have been the Christian hypothesis — that the imperfection of human
nature is due to the human father, and not to the human mother.
This is not a correct statement of the hypothesis of mediaeval
speculation on this subject. But really the question does not
concern us. The Church is not pledged to any mediaeval specula-
tion, and, from the Christian point of view, the fact that the Word

740 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

was made flesh is not a physiological fact, but a miracle, outside the
range of the laws of physiology.

On this account we give no encouragement to the essays of well-
meaning people who cite instances of apparent parthenogenesis in
nature as illustrations of the mystery of Christ's birth. Happily
there is no force whatever in these illustrations. If they had any
validity, they could only tend to establish the birth of the Sinless
One as an accident of nature rather than as the miracle of God.
But by whatever freak of nature a man might be born untainted
with the hereditary depravity of his race, it certainty could only be
by the miracle of God that the Eternal Word could be made
flesh.

Ill

Mr. Mallock represents the apologists for Christianity as having
thrown over all the miracles of the New Testament with the
exception of four: the Virgin birth, the Divinity of Christ, the
Resurrection, and the Ascension. All the rest, he says, ' are brushed
aside as legends or misconceptions of fact, either because the
evidences for them are worthless or contradictory, or because they
are inconsistent with facts as we now know them.' The Bishop of
Worcester (he says) 'leaves only four remaining; and can any
reasonable man believe that [the Bishop] has succeeded in showing
that the evidence for these is any better than the evidence for the
rest ? ' In another passage Mr. Mallock speaks with contempt of
clerical experts drawing nice distinctions between ' the mass of
unbelievable miracles and a privileged minority of four.' But
Mr. Mallock certainly misapprehends the distinction between the
four miracles and the rest. It is not that the rest are unbelievable.
We do not make more of the four because of the better evidence in
their favour, but because of their inherent importance in their
closer bearing on the Christian faith. This is seen in a moment
when we consider that if the incident of the walking on the sea, or
the feeding of the multitude, or the raising of Lazarus were blotted
out of the Gospel records, Christianity would still remain what
it is ; but if belief in the Incarnation and in the Resurrection were
surrendered, Christianity would be overthrown.

I prefer to speak of the four miracles as two. I have already
said that the Virgin birth is only an incident in the mode of the
Incarnation ; and the Ascension is a detail consequent upon the
Resurrection. When we speak of the Incarnation and the Resurrec-
tion we are practically covering the ground. These two miracles
are vital to Christianity in a sense that can be predicated of none
other. With the Incarnation of Christ Christianity (as we know it)
stands or falls, and with regard to the Resurrection we may say, with
St. Paul, ' If Christ be not risen, then your faith is vain.'

1904 FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 741

The miracles of the Incarnation and the Kesurrection are thus
distinguished from other miracles by their essential relation to our
faith, and not because of the stronger evidence with which they are
supported. Nevertheless (pace Mr. Mallock), critics must admit
that there is immeasurably stronger testimony for these two
miracles than for any other. Compare, for example, the evidence
for the raising of Lazarus with that for the Resurrection of Christ.

For the one we have a simple narrative written, perhaps, sixty
or seventy years after the event. There is no corroboration of the
story. It is not referred to in any of the Apostolic sermons or
addresses recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. It is not appealed
to in any of the Epistles. There is no reference to it (where we
might well expect such) in the Apologies of Justin Martyr. The
Resurrection of Christ, on the contrary, was the great subject of
Apostolic testimony. In the first chapter of the Acts Matthias was
chosen to be a 'witness of the Resurrection.' In the fourth
chapter : ' With great power gave the Apostles witness of the
Resurrection.' St. Paul, like St. Peter, ' preached Jesus and the
Resurrection ' ; and the Epistles are full of reference to the same
fact.

And as the first preachers of Christianity are represented as
habitually proclaiming the Resurrection of Christ, so they are said
to have proclaimed His supernatural personality. St. Peter, indeed,
treats the Resurrection as the necessary corollary of this. He being
what He was, it was not possible that He should be holden of death.
Thus we have testimony that from the very first the Incarnation
and the Resurrection were of the substance of the Gospel which was
preached.

But when once these miracles of the Incarnation and the
Resurrection are accepted, the other miracles fall into place and
become the more reasonable. For if Christ was God incarnate, and
His coming was an event unique in the history of the world, we
should expect His sojourn on earth to be attended by unique
phenomena. The credibility of any miracle depends, not on the
measure of its strangeness, but on the worthiness of the purpose
for which it was alleged to have been worked. So it is what we
believe of the personality of Jesus that supplies adequate motive
for His works. Given that He was the Son of God, what a
stumbling-block would have been presented to the faith if in His
life there had been nothing to indicate His Divine power ! When
we claim distinction for the miracles of His personality, we are not
relegating the other miracles to the category of legends or mis-
conceptions ; on the contrary, the miracle of His supernatural
Being makes the miracles of His ministry the more easily credible.

742 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

IV

Lastly, Mr. Mallock seems to misapprehend the place of the
Gospel narratives in regard to the foundation of Christianity. He
writes as if any inaccuracy in the narratives would be fatal to our
claims. He seems to overlook the fact that the Church existed and
flourished for thirty years — many think for fifty years or more —
before any of our present Gospels were written, and for fully a
century before they were received as canonical Scripture.

It is well, perhaps, for us to consider here how we should
present Christianity to an unbelieving world. We should not begin
by insisting on minute details of Gospels or Acts, nor should we
rely on isolated phrases in the Epistles of the New Testament.
This would only be to provoke quibbles of verbal criticism and an
endless controversy on the authority of the documents. We should
rather begin with the broad facts which no one disputes — the
admitted facts of history. Such historical facts are derived partly
from profane records, partly, also, from Christian literature ; but
this literature viewed not from the point of view of the theologian,
or even of the Christian, but from that of the expert historian.

We may take it as an admitted fact of history that about the
middle of the first century of our era a new religion was being
propagated with extraordinary rapidity and success in almost all
parts of the civilised world ; that the founder of this religion was
one Jesus Christ, who had been crucified at Jerusalem under Pontius
Pilate ; that His followers, to whom its first promulgation was due,
were, for the most part, illiterate men, but that there was something
in their message which caused it to spread like wildfire, so that by
the end of the century, in every city of the Koman world, there
were societies of men and women meeting in the name of this
Christ, singing praises to Him as to a God ; while in some provinces
the name of Christ became so powerful that, a year or two after the
close of the century, the most famous governor of his day writes to
the Emperor to complain that the temples of the national gods are
deserted, and asking what policy he is to pursue.

We might enlarge on the wonderful advance of the next two
centuries, in which the faith may be said to have overcome the world.
But, proverbially, it is the beginnings that are difficult. We may,
therefore, fix our attention on the first preachers of Christianity, who
inaugurated that success of which history tells. They must have
had a message of tremendous power to move mankind as they did.
It is nowhere suggested that they were themselves highly gifted
men, trained in rhetoric or in philosophy. All evidence concurs to
prove that Christianity was spread by the testimony of simple men
to simple men. The power was not in the men, but in the message.

1904 FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 743

What was the power ? We get the answer from our Christian
documents. But without the Christian writings we know that there
must have been the power, for its effect is a matter of history. Let
the Christian literature be reduced to its lowest terms in the crucible
of criticism, the fact still remains that the first preachers of the new
religion had a convincing message to deliver, a Gospel of power. If
the Acts of the Apostles be a forgery, and the Gospels be romances
of the second century, it must still be asked, What was the power that
so wondrously prevailed in the first century ?

What was the message which the disciples of Jesus had to deliver ?
Did they simply tell that they had known a peasant of Galilee who
spoke graciously and inculcated a universal charity ? Did they speak
of a mere man — though the best of men — but one who was now dead
and gone ?

Did they tell of an ordinary being like themselves or like our-
selves— His life attested by nothing supernatural, His death crowned
by no sign of victory ?

Surely no one is so insane as to suppose that this was the Gospel
that overcame the world !

Mr. Mallock asserts that belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures
is essential to the Christian faith. From the context of his article
I infer that he means such an inspiration as would secure the Scrip-
tures from the possibility of any inaccuracy of detail, however
unimportant. The Christian is not bound to believe in any such
inspiration. He believes that the Apostles and the Evangelists were
men full of the Holy Ghost ; but he knows that each wrote in his
own style, their science was that of their age, and in compiling their
memoirs they used the natural means at their disposal. The
Christian recognises inspiration again in the intuition of the Church,
in separating these books from other contemporary records, handing
down these, and these only, as setting forth the faith once delivered
to the saints. But even if we had to give up all thought of the
overruling influence of God's Holy Spirit (and in argument with
unbelievers we are compelled to treat the Christian documents as
any other literature), Christianity would still stand. It stood in the
first century, before the canon of the New Testament was formed, and
it can stand in the twentieth century, even though the Gospels were
proved to have no more than human authority. The historical fact
will still remain that the first propagators of Christianity had some-
thing to proclaim which proved itself of marvellous power to over-
come the world, and no other explanation of their power is suggested
or alleged save that which our sacred books afford. We do not base
our argument for Christianity first upon the sacred books, but we
base it upon admitted facts of history which the sacred books can
alone account for.

What, then, was the original Gospel of power which overran the

744 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

world with such astonishing success ? The precise answer can only
be found in the Christian literature, and, however much the testimony
of that literature be discounted by criticism, its general tenor and
effect remain undisputed.

' Christian literature,' we say. For it is thus that we regard the
New Testament, not as a collection of legal deeds in which every
word has a title to be construed as it stands without regard to ex-
ternal circumstances, but as a literature comprising works of different
character, works by various authors, in the interpretation of which
we must take account of the position and point of view of each
writer ; a literature, however, homogeneous in this respect, that all
its parts were produced under the influence of the convictions which
possessed the first followers of Christ ; a literature, therefore, which
reveals what those convictions were, as infallibly as the Elizabethan
literature exhibits the beliefs of the Elizabethan age. The New
Testament is, in fact, the literature of that Eevelation which, we
believe, (rod gave to the world by Jesus Christ, just as the Old
Testament is the literature of earlier revelations.

The earliest Christian writings which remain to us in their
original form are the Epistles of St. Paul, of the genuineness of
most of which no one has any doubt. Even those persons who deny
effective inspiration will admit these Epistles as evidence of what
St. Paul thought (rightly or wrongly) about Christianity.

In his view the Gospel was the power of God unto salvation, and
its message embraced at least these three points :

1. The supernatural personality of Christ as the Son of God.

2. The fact of the Resurrection.

3. Salvation, or the forgiveness of sins in the Name and power of
Christ.

The Acts of the Apostles is a book of later date, but at least it is
evidence of what Christianity was thought to be at the time when it
was written. It represents the preaching of the first disciples as
embodying the three points which we have named — the Divine Son-
ship of Christ, the fact that He rose from the dead, and the promise
of forgiveness through Him.

The preaching of Christianity was thus essentially the preaching
of Christ. Because He was the Son of God His words had Divine
authority. His Eesurrection opened a new prospect of eternity, and
men conscious of their own failures and sins found hope in Him as
the Saviour.

Every saying of His was, therefore, precious, and every act was to
be treasured as a revelation of the Divine character. Doubtless every
Christian who could write made his own memoir of all that he was
told of Jesus — his own collection of the sayings of Jesus. These
earlier memoirs, however, have not come down to us, except so far as
they are incorporated in our four canonical Gospels.

1904 FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 745

These four were accepted by common consent by the voice of the
Church, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit (as we believe) ; accepted
and handed down to future generations as embodying the faith once
delivered to the saints.

But it is probable that the earliest of these Gospels was not
written until some thirty-five years after the Crucifixion. And
though we believe the author to have been moved by the Holy
Ghost to undertake his work, and though we rely on the Divine
guidance in his presentation of the Gospel of Christ, we do not
regard him as an infallible annalist.

He had to use the materials that came to his hand, he had to
piece them together with such skill as he possessed, and to reconcile
as best he might the discrepancies of existing documents.

However well he did his work, we need not be surprised if details
are out of place. We are quite prepared to find in his records such
inaccuracies as Mr. Mallock refers to. Yet we are not disquieted.
We welcome the assistance of scholarship, criticism, and of common-
sense, yet we continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and are not
moved away from the hope of the Gospel which we have received.

W. ALLEN WHITWORTH.

All Saints' Vicarage, Margaret Street.

VOL. LVI— No. 333

746 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

MR. MALLOCK AND
THE BISHOP OF WORCESTER

[To the Editor of the NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Dear Sir JAMES, — I have seen an article in the NINETEENTH CENTURY for
September on ' Free Thought in the Church of England.' It gives so strange
a misrepresentation of my teaching and vieivs that it appears to be doing
mischief. A capable clergyman in this diocese, used to literary work, the
Kev. H. MAYNARD SMITH, Shelsley-BeaucJiamp Rectory, Worcester, proposes to
compile a brief article, chiefly, he tells me, consisting of extracts, showing that
my teaching is something quite different.

I would venture to ask that you should admit such an article.

Believe me, yours faithfully,

C. WlGOKX.

Bishop's House, Worcester,
Oct. 1, 1904.]

I. MR. MALLOCK'S ARTICLE

MANY of the unlearned have been shocked beyond measure in reading
Mr. Mallock's article on ' Free Thought in the Church of England.'
They know but little of the Bishop of Worcester. Those acquainted
with his writings have been shocked also. Mr. Mallock's article fills
them with amazement. The more charitable suppose that he has not
read the works he professes to criticise, and built up his theories as to
what the Bishop believes from isolated sentences supplied to him by
another.

We have long been accustomed to the way in which some Biblical
critics make an arbitrary selection of a certain number of texts,
reconstruct history from them, and assume that all which does not
square with their theories must needs be spurious. The methods that
have proved so destructive (?) to the works of dead Evangelists
Mr. Mallock has been bold enough to apply to a living Bishop. He
has selected, or been supplied with, a few texts ; he has fabricated
his theories. But is he prepared to go on, and contend that the fifteen
volumes and more that bear the Bishop of Worcester's name are not
of his writing and do not represent his opinions ? If not, we will
proceed to show that Mr. Mallock has been the victim of a most
delusive method.

1901 MR. MALLOCK AND BISHOP GORE 747

II. ME. MALLOCK'S METHOD**

*•

The right to handle quotations freely and quite apart from their
context is largely exercised by subjective critics ; and of this right,
or supposed right, Mr. Mallock has availed himself. He gives no
references ; but on p. 249 of Lux Mundi l I stumbled on the following
sentence :

All that is necessary for faith in Christ is to be found in the moral disposi-
tions that predispose to belief, and make intelligible and credible the thing to
be believed : coupled with such acceptance of the general historical character
of the Gospels, and with the trustworthiness of the other Apostolic documents,
as justifies belief that our Lord was actually born of the Virgin Mary, manifested
as the Son of God ' with power according to the Spirit of holiness,' crucified,
raised again the third day from the dead, exalted to the right hand of the
Father, the Founder of the Church and the source to it of the informing Spirit.

Such a sentence, apart from its context, is, we must admit, hard
to understand. We will hope that Mr. Mallock did not refer to such
context. He treats it in a way that would do credit to a professor of
exegesis in a Dutch university. He takes it to pieces, quotes it in
bits, builds up a theory, and arrives at a conclusion that is utterly
subversive of the Bishop of Worcester's teaching.

Keeping this sentence in mind, let us follow Mr. Mallock's argu-
ment. He maintains that, according to the Bishop of Worcester,

all the New Testament miracles may be explained away as ' ideas not coincident
with fact,' four only being excepted and placed on a different footing. These
are Christ's Virgin Birth, His Divinity, His Besurrection, and Ascension.

(The reader will discover in a moment Mr. Mallock's authority for
this statement.) He goes on :

The belief in the objective reality of these four miracles, which are for them (Drs.
Sanday and Gore) the irreducible and distinctive essence of Christianity, has,
they say, no direct dependence on the evidence of the Gospels whatsoever.
Belief in them rests primarily — to quote the Bishop of Worcester's words — ' on
certain moral dispositions which predispose to belief, and make acceptable and
credible the thing to be believed.'

There for the present Mr. Mallock stops short, for to quote the
clause ' coupled with ' the one he has quoted would nullify his inter-
pretation of the Bishop's meaning. According to Mr. Mallock the
Bishop's words refer to the four miracles. As a matter of fact, the
Bishop is in a periphrasis describing what St. Paul summed up in the
one word ' faith.' No matter ! By changing the subject of the
clause, and by isolating it from the rest of the sentence, Mr. Mallock
has a text ; from it he elaborates an apology for miracles, and attri-
butes it to the Bishop. He proves it to be absolutely absurd — as it

1 All the quotations are from the twelfth edition.

3 D 2

748 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

is ; but he lets the Bishop down lightly — it is ' less absurd than it
looks.' When Mr. Mallock has time he may read Dr. Gore's second
Bampton Lecture, and compare the Bishop's apology for miracles
with the one he has so obligingly invented for him.

But if Mr. Mallock has made much out of the wording of the first
clause, he does better with the rest of the sentence that should have
been ' coupled with it.' He represents the first clause as the Bishop's
apology for miracles, and quotes a part of the second clause as if it
were the conclusion of the Bishop's argument :

The Bishop of Worcester [he writes] will not allow it (the Christian faith)
to be tampered with ; it simply means, he says, after all — what ? 2 Nothing more
than ''such an acceptance of the Gospels, and the trustworthiness of the
Apostolic documents, as justifies the belief that our Lord was actually born of
the Virgin Mary, manifested as the Son of God with power according to the
Spirit of holiness, crucified, raised again the third day, and exalted to the right
hand of the Father.'

It will be noted how the purport of the sentence has been altogether
altered by the adroit insertion of the words ' nothing more than.' It
is an artistic triumph in the way of misrepresentation ! By the
insertion of these three words he commits the Bishop to the state-
ment that neither Gospels nor Apostolic documents are trustworthy,
except in as far as they justify what he calls ' the four miracles ' and
the Crucifixion. It will be noted, also, that he omits to quote the
conclusion of the sentence. Why ? Because it would prove the
Bishop to believe in six miracles, and not in four. Would the reader
be surprised to learn that Mr. Mallock has no other authority for
saying that the Bishop only believes in four miracles than this sentence
that he has so skilfully misquoted ? Yet such is the case. Would the
reader be surprised to learn that the sentence we have been con-
sidering has no reference to any argument as to miracles at all ? Yet
that is the case too. The Bishop is attempting to determine the
relation of Inspiration to the other doctrines of the Christian faith.
He maintains that the doctrine of Inspiration is not among ' the
bases ' of the Christian religion. The bases are faith in Christ
(Clause 1), and an acceptance of the historical character of the funda-
mental facts of the Creed (Clause 2). It is not, the Bishop argues,
until a man has got so far that he will be interested in determining
the mode in which the Holy Spirit has worked to present and to
preserve the evidence.

I have lingered rather long over this quotation ; but it is plea-
santer to trace the method of these ' critical ' ingenuities than to
deal with crude statements in flat contradiction to the truth. Alas !
to such we must come before we close.

* The italics are mine.

1904 MB. MALLOCK AND BISHOP GOES 749

III. THE BISHOP'S BELIEFS

Having given an example of Mr. Mallock's critical method, let us
go on to test how far he fairly represents the Bishop's views on
(1) the Old Testament, (2) the Fall, (3) the Gospels, and (4) the Miracles
of our Lord.

1. Here is Mr. Mallock's summary of the Bishop's views on the
Old Testament. It ' begins with mere myths and legends, and then
develops into very inaccurate history, associated with a series of
doubtful and negligible prodigies and prophecies, " whose (sic) inspira-
tion is consistent with erroneous prediction." '

This sentence does not express the Bishop's views as he would
like to have them stated ; but coming, as it does, from an unfriendly
controversialist, anxious to score points, it is only unfair, and not
untruthful. Mr. Mallock has only tampered with one word — the most
important — in making his short quotation. The word ' prediction '
is a substitution by Mr. Mallock.

The reader, however, may be advised to consult the essay on
Inspiration in Lux Mundi if he wishes to see how the Bishop defines a
myth (p. 262), how far the Bishop admits of inaccuracy in the history,3
and what the Bishop means when he says, ' prophetic inspiration is
consistent with erroneous anticipations as to the circumstances and
the opportunity of God's revelation, just as the Apostolic inspiration
admitted of St. Paul expecting the coming of Christ in his own life-
time ' (p. 254).

The reader would also do well to read the Bishop's preface to the
tenth edition of Lux Mundi, where he states his ' conviction that it
was with the more conservative of the recent critics, and not
with the more extreme, that the victory would lie ' (p. xvi). It is
also well to remember that these words were written in 1890, and
that critics whom the Bishop then condemned for ' controversial
arbitrariness and irreligious insolence ' are now looked on in advanced
circles as very moderate men. Has Mr. Mallock any evidence to prove
that the Bishop's views on Old Testament criticism have advanced
with the advancing years ?

3 The following quotation may be of interest : ' The revelation of God was made
in an historical process. Its record is in large part the record of a national life : it
is historical. Now, the inspiration of the recorder lies . . . primarily in this, that he
sees the hand of God in history and interprets His purpose. Further, we must add
that his sense of the working of God in history increases his realisation of the
importance of historical fact. Thus there is a profound air of historical truthfulness
pervading the Old Testament record, from Abraham downward. . . . But does the
inspiration of the recorder guarantee the exact historical truth of what he records ?
And in matters of fact can the record, with due regard to legitimate historical
criticism, be pronounced true ? ' To the latter question the Bishop replies, ' yes,' to
the former, ' no,' because ' inspiration did not consist in a miraculous communication
of facts' (Lux Mundi, pp. 258, 259).

750 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ffov.

2. The Fall.—M.T. Mallock first states that ' the Bishop of Wor-
cester notoriously admits the opening chapters of Genesis to be
mythical ' ; but, he goes on, these chapters

contain one incident at all events — namely, the Fall of man — which lies at the
root of all traditional orthodoxy. . . . Cardinal Newman says the whole ortho-
dox Christian scheme stands or falls with belief in some great ' aboriginal
catastrophe.' But what is the Church of England coming to teach to-day ?
As Mr. Beeby has pointed out, its clergy of all schools have united to throw
this old belief to the winds.

Then, on Mr. Beeby's authority, he proceeds to quote from some
fcook published by the S.P.C.K. Why did Mr. Mallock start with the
Bishop of Worcester's name, and then run off to deal with an un-
named book ? Whatever Mr. Beeby may assert, Mr. Mallock, as the
critic of the Bishop, should know that he, at least, has not ' thrown
this old belief to the winds,' but does believe in ' some great aboriginal
catastrophe.' Those who wish for proof of this are referred to ' The
Christian Doctrine of Sin,' appended to the later editions of Lux
Mundi ; to ' Evolution and the Christian Doctrine of the Fall,' ap-
pended to the second volume on the Epistle to the Romans ; and to
the sermon on the Fall preached in St. Philip's, Birmingham, last
Advent, which was fully reported at the time.4

3. The Gospels. — Mr. Mallock, on his own authority, states that
"* to most plain men .... the New Testament must bear to objec-
tive fact a position indistinguishable from that borne to the Old.'
I wonder if ' plain men ' can understand this sentence. If so, I
will give them another to consider at leisure : — the later books of
Livy must bear to objective fact a position indistinguishable from that
borne to the earlier. But I must not digress. If I took to examining
Mr. Mallock's reasoning I should never have done.

He goes on to complain that the Bishop of Worcester will not
allow the same principles to be applied to the New Testament as to
the Old, and subsequently tries to show that the Bishop has himself
admitted how thoroughly untrustworthy the Gospels are when not
referring to the ' four great miracles.'

4 ' Suppose, then, that the Holy Spirit breathes Himself again, in a new way, into
a single pair or group of these anthropoid animals. There is lodged in them for the
first time a germ of spiritual consciousness, continuous with animal intelligence and
yet distinct from it. From this pair or group humanity has its origin. If they and
their offspring had been true to their spiritual capacities, the animal nature would
have been more rapidly spiritualised in motives and tendencies. Development-
physical, moral, spiritual — would have been steady and glorious. Wlwreas there was
a fall at tlie very root of our humanity ; and the fall was repeated, reiterated, and
renewed, and the development of our manhood was tainted and spoiled. There was a
lapse into approximately animal condition, which is dimly known to us as primitive
savagery. So that the condition of savage man is a parody of what God intended
man in his undeveloped stages to be, just as the condition of civilised man in London
and Paris is a parody of what God intended developed man to come to ' (Gore on the
Epistle to the Romans, vol. ii. p. 230).

1904 ME. MALLOCK AND BISHOP GORE 751

As a matter of fact, the Bishop does assume that the same prin-
ciples are to be applied to the New Testament as to the Old, but that
when so applied they prove the Gospels to be thoroughly trustworthy.

One is bound to allow that the sentence Mr. Mallock quotes
from Lux Mundi 5 might give colour to the first half of his argument ;
and Mr. Moffat has preferred the same charge against the Bishop in
his Historical New Testament (p. 71). But the Bishop, in an article in
the Pilot, from which Mr. Mallock quotes (though, apparently, at
secondhand), has characterised this charge as ' an amazing misrepre-
sentation.' The Bishop goes on :

We [Dr. Driver and himself] both plainly assume that the same criticism
must be applied to the New Testament as is applied to the Old, but that,
becaiise the historical and literary conditions in the two cases are in general
very different, the result also will be in general very different ; just as, of course,
within the area of the Old Testament, the same criticism yields very different
results when applied to the Book of Genesis and when applied to Amos and
Nehemiah (The Pilot, 10th of August, 1901).

Having now dealt with the first assertion, let us go on to deal
with the second.

It is, no doubt, quite fair in controversy to make the most you can
of an adversary's admissions in your favour. What is not fair is to
turn exceptions that have been admitted into theses that have
been maintained. This Mr. Mallock has done. He has collected, or
had collected for him, all the admissions that can be found in the
Bishop's writings. They are few and unimportant. He has added,
in consequence, all the admissions that he can find in Dr. Sanday's
article on ' Jesus Christ.' He has mingled them together, and would
persuade his readers that he is offering but characteristic samples of
the Bishop's teaching.

The Bishop of Worcester not believe in the trustworthiness
of the Gospels ! Has Mr. Mallock ever heard of his most famous
book — The Bampton Lectures of 1891 ?

Here is the Bishop's testimony to St. Mark :

Let a man read St. Mark afresh ... let him read the Gospel as a connected
whole, and he will receive a fresh and vivid impression that the picture brought
under his eye represents no effort of imagination or invention, but is the
transcript of reality on faithful and simple memories (Bampton Lectures, p. 63).

And it is in this Gospel, as the Bishop says, that ' miracle is at its
height.'

5 The sentence in question runs : ' The reason is, of course, obvious enough why
what can be admitted in the Old Testament could not, without results disastrous to
tlie Christian Creed, be admitted in the New ' (Lux Mundi, p. 260). Noting the words
italicised, the meaning is clear. There is no question as to the critical principles that
are to be applied. The Bishop states a matter of fact. We may disbelieve in a
universal deluge, and yet be loyal to the Creed ; but to give up the Resurrection is to
give up the Creed.

752 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

Here is the Bishop's testimony to St. John :

I state simply, though with sincere conviction, based on the best inquiry I
can give, that it is those who deny, and not those who affirm St. John's author-
ship of the Fourth Gospel, who do violence to the evidence (Bampton Lectures,
p. 68).

Mr. Mallock writes that the Bishop ' discards, or is prepared to
discard, the whole of the Gospel miracles, as due to the imagination,
the superstition, or the defective information of the Evangelists.'
The Bishop, on the contrary, writes :

I feel sure that if ever such a book as the History of Testimony is worthily
and fairly written, the Apostles will take very high rank among the world's
witnesses (Bamptons, p. 74).

And again :

The more you consider the intellectual and moral character of the Apostles —
not imaginative men, even in the sense in which St. Paul was — the more you
will trust them as witnesses (p. 76).

In case Mr. Mallock should quibble over the words ' Evangelist *
and ' Apostles,' it may be well to state that the Bishop does believe
that the Evangelists have handed down to us the witness of the
Apostles.

But, it may be said, this was in 1891, and * criticism ' since then
has advanced by leaps and bounds. Let us turn, then, to his last
utterances on the subject — to his Advent sermons in St. Philip's,
Birmingham, in 1902. He concludes as follows :

Anyway, I have tried, so far as these short intervals have allowed, to bear
the witness of a man who is conscious that he has done his best to give all their
proper and legitimate weight to the arguments that are alleged against the
truth of our Gospel narratives ; and who from such examination re-emerges
always profoundly convinced that it is those who accept, and not those who
reject the evidence, who do violence to it ; and that a man has no reason to be
afraid of exact scrutinising historical inquiry.6

Of course it is true that the Bishop is not pledged to verbal or
literal inspiration ; neither does he maintain that the Gospels are
free from small errors in detail. He is at one with St. Chrysostom,
who explains ' how the discrepancies in detail between the different
Gospels assure us of the independence of the witnesses, and do not
touch the facts of importance, in which all agree ' (Lux Mundi, p. 263).
So, also, he admits that in ' Matthew xxi. 2 the " ass " is added to
" the colt " ; in xxvii. 15 the thirty pieces of silver are specified ; in
xxvii. 34 " gall " is substituted for " myrrh." ' 7 Mr. Mallock quotes

6 These sermons were fully reported at the time of delivery in the Birmingham
Daily Post, in the Church Times, and in the Fraternal Visitor. I quote from short-
hand notes corrected in the Bishop's own hand.

' The Pilot, 10th of August, 1901.

1904 MR. MALLOCK AND BISHOP GORE 753

these admissions, but forgets to tell us that they are the only three
instances the Bishop can find where prophecy has moulded the narra-
tive. To quote once more from the Bampton Lectures :

Discrepancies, if they are made the most of, do not approach the point at
which, according to the rules of ordinary historical inquiry, they would be
supposed to invalidate the record as a whole (p. 67).

So much for Mr. Mallock's sweeping and utterly untrue assertions
as to the Bishop of Worcester's views on the trustworthy character
of the Gospels.

4. The Miracles of Our Lord. — The following quotations from
Mr. Mallock are interesting :

(1) But he [the Bishop] and they [his friends] mean something by it [a
sentence in Lux Mundi], and that something is this. All the New Testament
miracles may be explained away as ' ideas not coincident with fact,' four only
being excepted and placed on a different footing. These are Christ's Virgin
Birth, His Divinity, His Resurrection, and His Ascension.

(2) We have seen with what conscientious boldness, up to a certain point,
he discards, or is prepared to discard, the whole of the Gospel miracles, as due
to the imagination, the superstition, or the defective imagination of the
Evangelists.

(3) As we have seen, when he [the Bishop] comes to the New Testament him-
self, most of its miracles once believed to be true, and celebrated by his Church
every day in her services, fare no better than Adam and the Old Testament
prophecies.

(4) We should have, in short, a Christ as natural as the Christ of Kenan if
it were not for the four miracles that our apologists refuse to abandon.

(5) Whatever nice distinctions may be drawn by clerical experts between
the mass of unbelievable miracles and the privileged minority of four, they are
certain to be quite disregarded by the plain common-sense of laymen.

Does Mr. Mallock think that his assertions become true by repeti-
tion ? It will be noted that he begins two of the sentences with
' we have seen ' ; but he never shows us. He gives no references ;
and that for the best of all possible reasons — he had none to give.
The following quotations are selected almost at random :

Miracles are described as ' His works,' they are the proper phenomena of His
person. In fact, the more we consider the character of the personality of Jesus,
the more natural do miracles appear in His case ; they are not arbitrary
portents, but appropriate phenomena (Bamptons, p. 48).

Miracle is there [in St. Mark] at its height ; its proportion to the whole
narrative is greater than in any other Gospel. . . . And the miracles are
exhibitions of supreme power, such as do not admit of any naturalistic inter-
pretation (ibid. p. 65).

[St. Mark] affords us no justification for supposing a process of accretion by
which a naturalistic Christ was gradually deified or became the subject of
miracles (ibid. p. 66).

We are able to repudiate as unhistorical the notion of a naturalistic Christ
hidden behind the miraculous Christ, the incarnate Son of God of the Church's
belief (ibid. p. 73).

754 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

In the Pilot for the 17th of August, 1901, will be found an article
by the Bishop containing a vigorous criticism on the way in which
Dr. Abbott had striven to explain away the raising of the widow's
son, and Dr. Cheyne had dealt with the cursing of the barren fig-
tree. The Bishop concludes :

I think the time has come to tell this class of critics, with very considerable
plainness, that their methods and its results on the one hand inspire us, as far
as our convictions are concerned, with no kind of alarm, and, on the other, give
us no real'assistance. Their explanations of the miracles are quite improbable.
They do not really emerge out of the historical situation. They are due not to
properly historical situations at all, but to dogmatic presuppositions as to the
incredibility of miracles.

Mr. Mallock waxes witty on the Bishop and Dr. Sanday explain-
ing away ' diabolic possession.' But does the Bishop do so ?
Romanes did in his Thoughts on Religion (p. 180), and his editor, the
Bishop, appended this comment :

Romanes' line of argument in this note seems to me impossible to maintain.
The emphasis that Jesus Christ lays on diabolic agency is so great that, if it is
not a reality, He must be regarded either as seriously misled about realities
which concern the spiritual life, or else as seriously misleading others. And in
neither case could He be even the perfect Prophet.

The following quotation is also necessary, for it disproves what
Mr. Mallock has asserted — that the Bishop is pledged to every one of
Dr. Sanday's beliefs :

Look at St. Mark's Gospel : Do you find there the class of miracles that you
could easily explain on a naturalistic basis ? No : you find the record is such
as yields to no naturalistic explanation at all. The miracle is at its maximum
first of all in the earliest Gospel, and we have there not only the healings of
demoniacs, though they excited at the time the greatest astonishment, of fever
patients and paralytics, of which you may have analogies in faith healings, but
you see the healing of the leper, the calming of the storm at sea, the raising of
Jairus's daughter, the healing of the issue of blood, the feeding of the five
thousand, the walking on the water, the healing of the deaf and the blind man,
and the cursing of the barren fig-tree. Now, what the limits of faith healing, as
conceivable on a naturalistic basis, are I won't presume to define; but anyone
who wants to investigate the trustworthiness of the fundamental Gospel
narrative should make a special study of these miracles recorded in St. Mark's
Gospel, and see how they defy any naturalistic interpretation, how interwoven
they are with the sayings of Christ which appear to be the most indisputably
authentic, and how a moral motive of mercy and judgment characterises them
all (Second Lecture on the ' Trustworthiness of the Gospels ').

To conclude, in his fourth lecture on the Trustworthiness of the
Gospels the Bishop says : ' I cannot believe in the redemptive work
and eliminate the miracles.'

IV. CONCLUSION

In this article no attempt has been made to defend the beliefs of
the Bishop. They have been stated in his own words to allay

1904 ME. MALLOCK AND BISHOP GORE 755

the widespread feeling of anxiety that has resulted from Mr. Mallock's
article. The Bishop holds an official position in the Church ; he is a
guardian of the Faith. It is, in consequence, of importance that no
falsehoods should be disseminated as to his teaching ; and few read
theology except in the pages of magazines.

No notice has been taken of Mr. Mallock's criticism of the Bishop's
dissertation in defence of the Virgin Birth, for it would involve a
discussion for which there is no space. It is enough to say that Mr.
Mallock gives an amusing travesty of a few pages in that essay. It
seems to have been Mr. Mallock's object to shock the orthodox by
proving the Bishop a heretic, and to amuse the heterodox by exhibit-
ing him as a fool. The charge of heresy has broken down, and the
imputation of foolishness may best be counteracted by reading the
Bishop's works.

We started with the assumption that Mr. Mallock had not read
the Bishop of Worcester's works, and it is charitable to conclude in
the same way. Mr. Mallock was probably furnished with his half-
dozen quotations and with a scrap or two from Canon Henson and
Mr. Beeby. For the rest he relied upon his inner consciousness and
the methods of ' constructive criticism.' In future, he may be
advised to keep these methods for dealing with ancient documents,
lest ' the plain men ' and ' sensible laymen ' to whom he appeals,
who know nothing of ' constructive criticism,' may characterise his
achievements in simple Saxon such as cannot appear in these pages.
Mr. Mallock, I am reminded, has ere now written much disagreeable
fiction. In future it is to be hoped that he will not associate it with
the well-known name of a living man.

H. MAYNARD SMITH.

756 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

THE EXHIBITION
OF EARLY ART IN SIENA

A GREAT national building that has been for ages the centre of the
political and civic life of a race endowed to the highest degree with
the power of artistic expression is a continuous record of their
deepest feelings and ideals. In the structure itself, as in the works
of art which decorate it, a people has externalised itself and eternised
itself. Those currents of social feeling that have stirred the
emotions of generations of artists and stimulated their inspiration
have there found ordered, rhythmic utterance. Of no building is
this more true than of the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena. The devotion
of the rich Gruelph burghers who built the palace to the city's
gracious sovereign Lady, and their ideals of government ; the gests
of the heroes who fought for the republic ; the squalor and
decadence of the age that followed the Black Death — the age when
Siena was brought low by foreign marauders and civic discord — the
brief return of prosperity that marked the early decades of the
Quattrocento and the alliance with Florence, typified in art in the
achievement of Jacopo della Quercia ; the temporary moral and
spiritual revival brought about by S. Bernardino ; the superficial
splendour of the age of the Petrucci ; the nation's subsequent fall
and enslavement — all these things are recorded in and about the
walls of the rose-red palace with the Gothic windows a colonnelli,
and the tower whose tall stem is crowned with a white flower.

In this year of grace 1904, this pictured chronicle has been
graingerised for our delight. Aided by Dr. Corrado Eicci's fine
connoisseurship and contagious energy, the Syndic — himself a
learned and discerning lover of his city's art — and a band of willing
helpers have set in order between the leaves of this book of history
many works of the artists of old Siena, gathered from many places.
Pictures and objects of art from remote country churches and
distant villas, for a sight of which pilgrims of the beautiful have
made long and arduous journeys, have been made accessible to those
who have r,o time for such expeditions. Siena, too long criminally

1904 EXHIBITION OF EARLY ART IN SIENA 757

careless of her children's fame and her own glory, has at last set a
splendid example to her neighbour cities.

Of the ten thousand objects that have temporarily found a home in
the Palazzo Pubblico many, of course, are historical or archaeological
illustrations, and nothing more. Concerning these things, interest-
ing as they are, we cannot speak here. We must content ourselves
with a brief survey of the more important works of art exhibited at
the Mostra Senese. Even to the student of history such a survey
may not be unprofitable ; for the most purely artistic work of art
is at the same time an illustration of history in the widest and
noblest sense of the term.

In the collection of sculpture the great Sienese masters of the
Trecento are of necessity unrepresented, for of Lorenzo del Maitano,
Tino di Camaino, and Cellino di Nese no work was procurable. Of
the sculptors of the Quattrocento several important examples have
been brought together. It is necessary to emphasise the fact that
in such works as these the heart of Siena has found its most
consummate expression ; for the tendency to overrate the importance
of Tuscan painting has nowhere revealed itself more clearly than in
recent writings upon Sienese art. It is necessary to insist again and
again that in painting Siena has nothing to show that is of the same
significance as the works in sculpture of Jacopo della Quercia or
even of Lorenzo del Maitano and Neroccio. That is to say, no artist
realised as fully the possibilities of paint as a medium of ordered
expression as these three great artists realised the possibilities of
stone. For the ' Ilaria del Carretto ' we would not take in exchange
all the loveliest works of Simone Martini. And all Neroccio's
giraffe-like ' Madonnas ' are not worthy of being weighed in the
balances with one statue of his — the ' St. Catherine of Alexandria.'

By far the greatest of the works of art in the exhibition is
Jacopo della Quercia's ' Fonte Graja,' which at last has found again
a fitting home. All that remains of it has been reverently recon-
structed in the loggia of the Palazzo Pubblico. If Dr. Corrado Kicci
and his assistants had done nothing else, for this one act they would
merit the gratitude of all lovers of fine things. The compilers of
the catalogue have been refreshingly liberal in their attributions to
Quercia. At one time, in the early days of scientific criticism, it
would have been necessary to oppose such a tendency. But the
pendulum has now swung the other way, and some of the great
masters have been robbed of works which legitimately belong to
them. A wider study of the achievement of modern artists would,
I think, correct this tendency. What undistinguished renderings
of landscape we sometimes find even amongst the authentic works
of Corot and Monet, what weak* etchings that bear the mark of
the butterfly ! An'd in the field of great allegorical illustration

758 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

is there not some skimble-skamble stuff that is adorned with the
name of its noblest modern master ? Nevertheless critics take from
the leading masters of the Quattrocento works which have their chief
characteristics, but which are, perhaps, a little laboured and
uninspired, and lacking here and there in fineness of quality. In
the opinion of the present writer several works now vaguely
assigned to his school are by Jacopo himself. I can find no grounds
for supposing that any other hand than the master's own designed
the Madonna and four saints from the church of S. Martino l which
are amongst the collection at the Mostra. At the same time I
cannot agree that the two interesting wooden figures of St. Anthony
and St. Ambrose,2 so happily rediscovered by Dr. Corrado Kicci, are
by Jacopo's own hand. The futile exaggeration of a master's most
pronounced mannerisms is one of the common marks of the work of
a pupil. A figure formerly assigned to Quercia is Vecchietta's
gilded wooden statue of St. John the Baptist from the church of
Fogliano.3 Here as elsewhere his naturalistic tendencies have led
him to select a hard, uncomely type. The ' St. John the Baptist '
from Montalcino,4 an altogether feebler work, is obviously by one of
Vecchietta's imitators.

A master with very different ideals was Neroccio. The only
undoubted work by his hand in this section is the ' St. Catherine of
Siena,' 8 a painted wooden statue, from the Chapel of the Contrada
dell' Oca. The catalogue has assigned to the artist three other
statues, the ' St. Mary Magdalen ' from S. Spirito 6 and an ' Angel
Grabriel ' 7 and ' Virgin Annunciate.' 8 Moreover, Mr. Berenson has
attributed to him the bust of St. Catherine from the Palmieri-
Nuti9 Collection, a work which Dr. Kicci, following the greatest
living authority on Tuscan sculpture, Dr. Bode, has given to Mino
da Fiesole. The ' Annunciation ' from Santuccio, though not by
Neroccio himself, reveals his influence. The ' St. Mary Magdalen '
is undoubtedly a work of Giacomo Cozzarelli. The question of the
authorship of the bust of St. Catherine is a more important and a
more difficult problem. This work certainly possesses some of the
qualities of Neroccio's Madonnas. In the long neck and narrow
shoulders, as in the lines of the veil that covers the saint's head, it
is possible to trace resemblances to a type common enough in the
artist's pictures, a type which is remarkable for a fragile and
mannered gracility. But, just because it possesses these peculiari-
ties, we cannot give it to Neroccio ; for one of the most obvious
facts concerning Neroccio is that his sculpture is as different as
possible from his painting in aim and feeling. Take, for instance,
two of the master's most typical works — the panel of the Madonna

1 Sala, ix. 15-19. - Ibid. viii. 34, 35. 3 Ibid. ix. 4. 4 Ibid. viii. 32.
5 Ibid. ix. 1. 6 Ibid. ix. 8. ' Ibid. ix. 7, 8 Ibid. ix. G.

• Ibii. ii. 287.*

1904 EXHIBITION OF EARLY ART IN SIENA 759

with S. Bernardino and ' St. Catherine ' in the Siena Gallery 10 and
the statue of St. Catherine of Alexandria, before alluded to, which is
in the chapel of St. John the Baptist in the Duomo. In this one
work, as in almost all Neroccio's presentations of womanhood in
painting, is a graceful, slender woman with an abnormally long thin
neck. The modelling throughout is very slight, and for its aesthetic
effect the picture depends upon its beauty of line. It breathes of
the Trecento. It takes us back to Simone Martini. Could you find
anywhere a greater contrast to this figure than in the ' St. Catherine '
of the Duomo, a woman more massive than Palma's ' St. Barbara ' ?
Her hair is arranged in heavy masses above an Olympian brow. Her
neck is as broad as that of the Lemnian ' Athene ' and much shorter.
About her fine shoulders and nobly moulded form the heavy drapery
hangs in large folds. She has quite a Roman solidity and stability.
Not grace but grandeur, not sweetness but strength are her pre-
dominant qualities. Worthy is she to be one of the mothers of an
imperial race, whose function it is ' to war down the proud.'

In form, as in feeling, nothing could be further removed from
this figure than is thePalmieri ' St. Catherine,' with the wan, pensive
face, the sloping shoulders, and the thin, emaciated body. If we
wish to understand Neroccio's style as a sculptor in marble we must
fix our attention upon his works in that medium and forget for the
time his Madonnas in tempera. We shall then see that he is a
faithful follower of Quercia's manner, and the pupil and rival of
Antonio Federighi, in whom the spirit of old Roman art lived
again. To attribute this bust to Neroccio, Jacopo's imitator, is
certainly to make a mistake similar to that of the old critics who
gave the work to Quercia himself. For it has nothing of the classical
spirit. It is as poignantly pathetic, as intimate, as subtly emotional
in conception as a Madonna of Botticelli or an infant of Andrea
della Robbia. In its ascetic grace, as in some of its morphological
features — the sensitive mouth, the heavy eyelids, the high cheek
bones, and the low brow — this bust seems to justify in a measure
the attribution to Mino da Fiesole. But yet to me its authorship
remains an insoluble problem. Whoever the sculptor may be, this
is one of the most impressive works of its period.

Federighi himself is represented by three works. The earliest in
date, an imposing wooden statue of the school of Quercia, is his
' St. Nicholas of Bari,' a work given in the catalogue to Jacopo
himself. Of scarcely less interest is his ' Moses,' 12 a figure in stone
which once adorned the Piazzetta of the Ghetto. The young
' Bacchus ' 13 of Count Achille d'Elci is in his most advanced ' Roman '
manner, and recalls the works of the master in the Siena Duomo.

The exhibition of painting, through no fault of the committee,
10 No. 285. » gala, ix. 12. " Ibid. Staircase, 45. I3 Ibid. ii. 311.

760 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

is not sufficiently representative of the best periods of Sienese art.
The permanent decorations of the Palace compensate, however, for
some deficiencies in the list of panel pictures in the galleries of
painting. Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Taddeo di
Bartolo and Vecchietta are but meagrely represented by paintings
in tempera. But in the frescoes of the Sala della Pace and Sala
del Mappamondo, the Chapel and the Ufficio di Anagrafi are to be
found some of their noblest works. There are some great artists,
however, who do not appear in the catalogue, or who are represented
by only one genuine picture. Duccio, for instance, is only repre-
sented by one panel, Francesco di Giorgio only by paintings of his
pupils ; and of Domenico di Bartolo, certainly a rare master, there
is no single work.

Unfortunately for the reputation of Siena the artists most fully
represented are not those who do her most credit. Of the weaker
followers of the masters of the golden age there are literally scores
of examples. Bartolo di Fredi, the representative of an age of
decadence, occupies many square yards of wall space. And,
amongst his numerous panels, there is not one of those small
miniature-like pictures in which is his finest work ; there is nothing
that has the flower-like charm, the delicate quality of the ' Adoration
of the Magi,' lately in Mr. Charles Butler's collection. Sano di
Pietro, certainly not one of the greatest of the Sienese masters of
the Quattrocento, occupies half a room, and only four of his works
there exhibited rise above the level of the religious pot-boiler.

In quality, as distinct from quantity, the total exhibit of panel
paintings does not compare very favourably with that recently seen
at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. Most of the really great
masters of the school were at least as satisfactorily represented in
the smaller exhibition. Duccio, Ugolino, Simone Martini, and
Francesco di Giorgio could be better studied in London. And of
Beccafumi we prefer Mr. Benson's two pictures to any of the works
shown in the Palazzo Pubblico, not excepting the ' St. Michael ' of
the Carmine. Save the ' Paradise ' of the Palmieri-Nuti collection
there is nothing by Giovanni di Paolo that is of the same exquisite
quality as his four ' Scenes from the Life of St. John the Baptist '
and Mr. Benson's ' Annunciation.' But for the frescoes on the
palace walls and the beautiful setting in which the imported works
of art are placed, the Mostra Senese would have no enormous
.advantage in the section of painting over the little exhibition in
London. It is in sculpture and in certain of the minor arts, such
as goldsmith's work, that the ' Mostra ' is memorable and unique.

Of Duccio, as we have seen, there is but one example, the
little Madonna of Count Stroganoff,14 an interesting work of the
•close of the master's first period, and of about the same date as the

14 Sala, xxvii. 37.

1904 EXHIBITION OF EARLY ART IN SIENA 761

small triptych in our National Gallery. Of Duccio's pupils there
-are many examples at Siena. Probably some day we may be able
to identify the handiwork of ' Giorgio di Duccio, dipintore/ of whom
I have lately found mention in the accounts of the Hospital of
S. Maria della Scala.15 But at present we know little or nothing of
•several of the master's followers. Of Segna, however, Duccio's pupil
and relative, we have some interesting examples, such as the
Madonna of Signor Giuggioli 16 and the repainted panels of the
Madonna, St. John the Baptist, and St. James 17 from the ' Pieve '
of S. Giovanni d' Asso, which are catalogued as ' Maniera di Duccio.'
These works show that, though a follower of Duccio, the artist was
strongly influenced by Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi. A late
work of Segna is the Madonna of Fogliano,18 which, but for its
quality, might be by the hand of his son Niccolo.

The greatest of Sienese painters, the master who had the
profoundest influence upon the school, is only represented by one
work entirely by his own hand, the little ' Virgin Annunciate ' of
the Stroganoff collection.19 It is distinguished by a marvellous
rhythm of line, a love of bright, pure colour, and an exquisite
scrupulousness of technique. It is at once a song, and a prayer,
and a delicate flower. And no blossom of art that sprang up in
later days within the sheltering rose-red walls of old Siena had
the grace of form and the brilliancy and subtlety of colour of these
blooms of the spring.

Simone's artistic ideal is attained, in a measure, in the panels
of the polyptych of Orvieto,23 which, though signed by the master,
were executed, at least in part, by his assistant, Lippo Memmi. That
ideal, too, is realised in a scarcely less degree in Lippo's ' Madonna
del Popolo ' from the church of the Servi,21 and his Madonna from
S. Francesco at Asciano,22 here attributed to Sano di Pietro, but
identified by me some years ago as a work of Simone's great assistant.

The Lorenzetti, as we have seen, are somewhat inadequately
represented in the loan collection. Of Pietro there is only one
fine panel, the Madonna of S. Pietro Ovile.23 Of Ambrogio there
is only the terribly repainted Madonna from Monastero 24 and
another injured Madonna from Rapolano,25 which is perhaps not
entirely by his own hand. In the case of Ambrogio the frescoes of
the Sala del Mappamondo make up for the deficient representation
of his art in the temporary picture gallery above.

In the period that followed the golden age of Sienese painting —
a period of commercial depression and intermural strife, a period

ls Archivio di Stato, Siena, ' Spedale, Entrata e Uscita,' Marzo 13, 1343 (i.e. 1344
present style).

16 Sala, xxvi. 14. 17 Ibid, xxvii. 15-17. I8 Ibid. xxvi. 11.

19 Ibid, xxvii. 38. 20 Ibid, xxvii. 8-12. 21 Ibid, xxviii. 10.

--' Ibid, xxvii. 39. -3 Ibid, xxiii. 11. 21 Ibid, xxvii. 28.

25 Ibid, xxviii. 4.
VOL. LVI— No. 333 3 E

762

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Nov.

when the companies of adventurers turned many of the country
districts in the Sienese territory into a wilderness, a period of war
and pestilence and famine — the arts languished. The degeneracy
of this age is well illustrated on the walls of this exhibition by the
works of Bartolo di Fredi. His preference for lean, aged, and
misshapen types is characteristic of a master of a period of
decadence.26 In his smaller panels, however, he succeeded in
reproducing something of Simone's charm of colour.27

The name of his son, Andrea di Bartolo, does not appear in
the catalogue, and he is unnoticed by any of those critics who have
written about the Mostra Senese, and yet there are no less than seven
panels in the exhibition by his hand. Two of them are signed,
and although the signature is now somewhat indistinct it can still
be made out with the assistance of the old works of reference in
which it is given in full. In these two signed panels are represented
the angel Grabriel and the Virgin Annunciate.28 From them, and
from another unpublished signed work in the Liechtenstein Collec-
tion, we can gather the chief peculiarities of Andrea's style. In his
panels the ear is very characteristic, being curiously round in form ;
the mouth has thick lips and is slightly turned down at the corners ;
and the hair is arranged in thin, wavy locks. Andrea's modelling
is slight, but his work is distinguished by considerable grace of
line. In his love of a golden brown tone, as in certain morpho-
logical peculiarities, his pictures superficially resemble those of
his fellow pupil Paolo di Giovanni Fei. There are, however, certain
well denned differences between the styles of the two artists. In
Andrea's works, for instance, the eye is larger, more fully open, and
has a larger iris than in Fei's pictures ; and the hair, too, is treated
differently. In Fei's panels it is much stiffer and more curly, and
the high lights are more exaggerated than they are in those of his
master's son.

Bearing Andrea's peculiarities in mind we can identify his five
other panels in the gallery, the ' Madonna ' from the priest's house at
S. Pietro Ovile,29 one of the heterogeneous collection of works recently
given to Andrea Vanni, the ' St. Anthony ' and ' St. Mary Magdalen '
from Buonconvento, which bear the official attribution ' Maniera di
Pietro Lorenzetti,' 30 and the half-figures of ' St. Augustine ' and
' St. John the Baptist ' from Montalcino, labelled ' Siena School.' 31
These last I judge to be early works of the master.

*6 This tendency is especially marked in some of his works from Montalcino, such
as the ' Baptism of Christ,' the ' St. John led into the Desert,' and the two scenes
from the life of St. Philip, all in Sala, xxix.

27 I have found in the Archives of the Hospital the date of Bartolo's death. It
occurred in February 1409-10 (' Spedale, Conti Correnti,' H, f., 195 t).

28 Sala, xxix. 17, 20. These works are from the Church of SS. Pietro e Paolo,
Buonconvento.

29 Sala, xxix. 19. 30 Ibid, xxvii. 26, 27. 31 Ibid, xxvii. 21, 22.

1904 EXHIBITION OF EARLY AET IN SIENA 768

Of Paolo di Giovanni Fei himself there is only one work, the
great altar-piece from S. Bernardino outside Porta Camellia. It is
curious how little is known of Fei's achievement even by those who
have written about him. In Siena itself there are authentic pictures
by him which have not been included in any list of his works. Of
these I may mention here the beautiful ' Assumption ' of the Mar-
chese Chigi and the ' St. Peter and St. Paul ' which he painted in
the year 1409 for the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala.32

The revival of Sienese painting began with Taddeo di Bartolo, a
prolific artist who reached a fair level of attainment both in panel-
painting and in fresco, and who is somewhat meagrely represented at
the Siena Exhibition by one characteristic work, his ' St. John the
Baptist,' 33 a signed panel from the church of Ginestreto, near Siena,
and by a charming panel of his school, a small ' Madonna and
Saints.' 3* But the true leaders of the new movement were Stefano
di Giovanni, called Sassetta, and Domenico di Bartolo. Of Domenico
there is no picture at the Mostra. Sassetta, however, is represented
by no less than six authentic works — the ' Nativity ' from Asciano,
the S. Pietro Ovile ' Annunciation,' the Grosseto ' Madonna,' the
little 'Adoration of the Magi' from the Saracini palace, and two
panels belonging to M. Chalandon, which once formed a part of the
great ancona of Borgo San Sepolcro. In addition to these pictures
by the master there are certain panels which, like Vecchietta's ' St.
Lawrence ' and Sano di Pietro's little ' Assumption,' both in the Siena
Gallery,35 were executed by Stefano's pupils under his direct influ-
ence. Amongst these last is the ' Madonna ' of Sano di Pietro from
Montalcino,36 in which the six angels above the Virgin might be by
Sassetta's own hand, a ' Madonna and Child ' belonging to Count
Mignanelli,37 and a cassone panel, in which are represented Judith
and Holofernes, Delilah and Samson, and Solomon adoring an idol,
by the same unknown master as Count Mignanelli's picture.

Sassetta was in some sense a follower of Bartolo di Fredi. His
true masters, however, were the great artists of the best period of
Sienese painting ; and he was especially indebted to Simone. His
indebtedness to Bartolo di Fredi is demonstrated in his ' Nativity of
the Virgin ' from Asciano.38 Those are mistaken who imagine that
he derived from Fei rather than from Bartolo the design for this
picture. In order to prove this it is only necessary to place by the
side of a reproduction of the Asciano altar-piece photographs of
Fei's ' Nativity of the Virgin ' in the Siena Gallery and of Bartolo di
Fredi's presentation of the same subject, which is in the Church

32 Archivio di Stato, ' Spedale, Conti Correnti,' H, f. 386 t. I intend shortly to
publish this and other documents relating to Andrea di Bartolo and Fei.

33 Sala, xxvii. 35. 34 Ibid, xxxiv. 6. 3S Nos. 227 and 577.
36 Sala, xxix. 8. 8; Ibid, xxxiii. 8. 3S Sala, xxxiii. 7.

3 E 2

764 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

of S. Ago&tino at San Gimignano. It is then seen at a glance that
in the general design of the picture, as in the single figures, Stefano's
' Nativity ' follows closely Bartolo's, and has little direct relationship
with that of Fei. The position of the bed, of the nurse and the child,
and of St. Joachim and his companion is identical in the Asciano and
S. Grimignano pictures. And in Sassetta's panel the figure of the
maidservant who enters the chamber by a door in the centre of the
picture is a reproduction of a figure of Bartolo's.

Sassetta, in fact, descends direct through Bartolo and Lippo
Memmi from Simone Martini. Unlike Giovanni di Paolo, he owes
little to Fei. Simone is his exemplar ; he strives to revive Simone's
decorative ideals.

Stefano di Giovanni's most beautiful work at Siena is his
' Annunciation ' from S. Pietro Ovile, a work which though unmistak-
ably of the Quattrocento is at the same time an imitation of Simone.
I need not now recapitulate my reasons for giving this picture to Sas-
setta. When this attribution was made I did not imagine that in
the very period to which, for stylistic reasons, I assigned this picture
Stefano lived near the church of S. Pietro Ovile, and held high office
in the parish. Only within the last few weeks have I discovered that
in the fourth decade of the fifteenth century he was gonfalonier of
S. Pietro.39 He is, moreover, the only painter who is recorded as
living in the parish at that time.

Many pictures at the Mostra bear the name of Sano di Pietro,
but of these a fair proportion are works of his school turned out
according to pattern. He was primarily a miniaturist, and the best
qualities of his art are seen in the early ' Madonna ' to which I have
just alluded, and in Mr. Loeser's beautiful little ' Assumption.' Of
his larger pictures the most interesting is his ' St. George,' from
S. Cristoforo, of which we have in the catalogue the traditional attri-
bution to Salvanello, but which was given to its true author in a
recent article in the Rassegna cT Arte.4Q

As in the exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, Giovanni di
Paolo is well represented. Here are to be found none of those panels
in which he so closely imitated Sassetta, and yet here, as elsewhere,
he shows himself to be Sassetta's follower. Amongst Giovanni's works
at the Mostra are two beautiful examples of those small pictures
in which the best qualities of his art are fully displayed. Giovanni, as
I have remarked elsewhere, was very sensitive to influence. The little
' Paradise ' 41 of the Palmieri-Nuti collection reveals the influence of
Gentile da Fabriano, not only in several of the types, but also in his
predilection for flowers and fruits, which he rendered with the minute
accuracy of detail of a Memlinc or a Van der Goes. In certain other

39 Archivio di Stato, Siena, ' Eiformazioni, Concistoro,' 2372. The leaves of the
book are not numbered. See under ' S. Petri ad Ovile inferioris.'

40 Sala, xxviii. 7. 41 Ibid, xxxiv. 12.

1904 EXHIBITION OF EARLY ART IN SIENA 765

pictures of his — such as, for example, one of the ' Scenes from the Life
of St. John ' — he followed Gentile in adorning the framework of the
picture with carefully studied representations of flowers.

His ' Expulsion from Paradise,42 lent by M. Chalandon, and his
' Voto per Tempesta di Mare ' 43 prove that he had a vivid and
fantastic imagination. In the 'Expulsion' is also manifested his
power of rendering the nude, a quality which is more fully displayed
in his ' Hell ' in the Siena Gallery 44 and in his ' Christ Suffering and
Christ Triumphant.' 45

The beautiful ' Madonna ' 46 from the Conservatorio Femminile
is the only picture in the Exhibition that can be given to Vecchietta,
and this attribution, though probably correct, is by no means fully
established.

I will enumerate but three reasons which incline me to accept
the attribution of this work to Vecchietta. In the first place this
type of face is to be found in his other works, and notably in the
' Madonna del Manto.' Secondly, with the single exception of
Sassetta no other artist of this period succeeded so well in painting
flesh illuminated by strong rays of sunlight. Of Vecchietta we
recall the ' St. Lawrence ' in the Siena Gallery, and certain angels in
the altar-piece of Pienza. Thirdly, I know no other Sienese artist
of the Quattrocento who could have been the painter of the folds of
the white scarf above the Virgin's breast. Vecchietta's masterly
treatment of white drapery is one of the notable technical features
of the Pienza ' Assumption.' At the same time, whilst I am inclined
to accept provisionally this attribution, I fully realise the difficulty
of the problem that this picture presents. It is in a way unique
and exactly resembles nothing in the whole range of Sienese art.
Neroccio is represented by a Madonna and Child from the SS. Trinita,47
again a difficult work, regarding which only the charlatan or the
neophyte could be very dogmatic. Those certainly have some
reason for their belief who hold that it is by Francesco di Giorgio.
The attitude of the Madonna and the types of the saints vividly
recall to us Francesco's S. Domenico altar-piece. The beautifully
designed tabernacle with the base adorned with dancing children
also favours the attribution to Francesco. But regarding the work
as a whole, and noting especially its general colour scheme, I am
inclined to hold that this is a work by Neroccio, painted under
Francesco's influence, and but shortly before they dissolved their
partnership.

We do not hesitate to give also to Neroccio the two panels
representing S. Bernardino preaching and a miracle of S. Ber-
nardino.48 They belong to an earlier date than the Madonna

42 Sala, xxxiv. 13. 4S Ibid. xxxv. 7. 44 Siena Gallery, No. 172.

45 Idem. No. 212. 4« Sala, xxxv. 3. « Ibid. xxxv. 6.

48 Ibid. i. 41.

766 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Nov.

of the SS. Trinita. Some of the types in these pictures are, as is
natural, common to the works of both of the partners of this period ;
but other figures, such as the group of women, the left in the ' Saint
Preaching,' the fourth figure from the right in the upper row of
listeners in the same scene, and the man who is supporting the
demoniac woman in the other picture, are peculiarly characteristic
of Neroccio. The drawing of the architecture and the treatment of
perspective make it impossible that Francesco should have executed
these works. They belong to Neroccio's early period. He had
already developed a partiality for blonde hair, for nearly every
head in both paintings is crowned with masses of it. But charming
as are several of his single figures, he had not yet learnt how to draw
architecture, nor how to compose a picture.

By Neroccio too are the decorations of a tabernacle that frames
a Madonna of Sano di Pietro,49 and which was painted for some
member of the Spannocchi family. On the base of this tabernacle,
in five tondi, he has painted five figures representing an Annunciation
and a ' Pieta.'

Francesco di Giorgio is also represented by two pupils' works.
One of these panels, a much restored Madonna from Monastero,50 is
by the same hand as a Madonna, ' St. Jerome,' and ' St. Antony ' in
Mr. Butler's collection ; 51 the other picture, a Madonna of Count
Mignanelli, is much nearer to the master ; but it has none of the
quality of small panels by his own hand, like Sir Frederick Cook's
'Nativity.' Of the third of Vecchietta's followers, Benvenuto di
Giovanni, there are two pictures, one an early panel, the other a
late work. The early picture is the charming little Madonna from
the church of S. Sebastiano.52 The later panel represents the
return of Gregory the Eleventh from Avignon.83 Benvenuto's son,
Girolamo, is best represented by his large 'Assumption' from
Montalcino.54

Perhaps the greatest of the Sienese painters of the Quattrocento
was Matteo di Giovanni. Every period of his artistic career is well
represented here. His earliest works are the two side panels
formerly attached to Sassetta's * Annunciation,' but which now flank
Pietro Lorenzetti's Madonna.55 These panels manifest the influence
of Vecchietta rather than of his master, Domenico di Bartolo. The
' S. Bernardino ' and the * Crucifixion ' are both imitated from the
doors of the press formerly at the Hospital and now at the Siena
Gallery. It is not to be wondered at that the ' St. John Baptist '

49 Sala, xxix. 35. This tabernacle belongs to the Barone Sergardi Biringucci.

50 Ibid. xxix. 11.

51 Burlington Fine Arts Club, Catalogue of an Exhibition of Pictures of the
School of Siena (London, 1904), p. 73.

" Sala, xxxiii. 17. M Ibid, xxxiii. 12. 54 Ibid. xxv. 6.

54 Dr. Eicci was, I think, the first to point out that these panels were formerly
attached to the ' Annunciation.'

1904 EXHIBITION OF EARLY AET IN SIENA 767

and the two side panels catalogued ' Maniera di Vecchietta ' have
been given by one critic, Dr. E. Jacobsen, to Vecchietta himself.
They were probably painted in a rather obscure period of Matteo's
career, when he resided in the parish of S. Pietro Ovile.58 Of his
middle period there are two large examples, the ' St. Jerome ' of Signer
Cassini, an imposing but somewhat laboured work, and the Madonnas
of ' S. Eugenia ' and of S. Sebastiano. His last period is well repre-
sented by the 'Massacre of the Innocents' from S. Agostino, a
picture which has not received the attention it deserves. It reveals
to us Matteo as a master of portraiture ; and we can well understand
how it came about that he was ordered to paint the portraits of
Sienese ladies.57 There are at least three portraits in this picture.
The two inen who are sitting to the right and left of Herod are
taking no part in the action and are obviously representations of
living people. Dr. Jacobsen has suggested that one of them, who
wears a red berretta, is the artist himself. The other may well be
the painter's patron who ordered the picture. These portraits are
in harmony with the rest of the picture. Excited by reports of
Turkish atrocities, and by blood-curdling dramatic representations
of infidel cruelty, this painter of ethereal Madonnas and visionary
saints in his ' Massacre of the Innocents ' indulges in orgies of
naturalism.

Cruidoccio Cozzarelli, Matteo's pupil, is represented by a number
of characteristic works. In the ' Madonna of Montefollonica,' as in
Signer Placidi's ' Madonna ' (catalogued ' Maniera di Matteo '), he
appears as a close imitator of his master, as he does also in a
charming predella from Buoncbnvento. The drooping eyelids in
this picture, the weakness of some of the figures, and the general
note of languid sentimentality reveal the pupil's hand, who notwith-
standing was never stronger, never nearer to his great master than
in these small miniature-like panels. The large ' Baptism ' 58 from
Sinalunga exposes the failings of this charming miniaturist.

Pietro di Doinenico and Andrea di Niccolo carried into the
sixteenth century the aims of the early Sienese masters. In his
best work in this collection,59 an ' Adoration,' Pietro appears as an
imitator of Benvenuto. At the same time he reveals his artistic
kinship with Fungai and Pacchiarotto. Of Andrea there is nothing
quite so archaic at Siena as the ' Madonna ' of the Fitzwilliam Museum
— a work inspired by Neroccio. But in his latest works, in pictures
like the ' Shoemaker's Madonna,' 60 painted when the Cinquecento
was already a decade old, the artist still reveals himself as incurably
Sienese in his artistic aims, notwithstanding the manifestation of

58 Arch, di Stato, Siena, ' Spedale, Conti Correnti,' H. f, 375.
67 In a MS. volume in the Chigi Library, a contemporary sonnet upon a portrait
of a lady by Matteo. Codex, M.V., 102.

M Sala, xxiv. 7. " Ibid. xxxv. 6. «° Ibid. xxiv. 13.

768 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

Umbrian influence in the landscape and in the face and form of
the Madonna.

At last in the Cinquecento the old ideals of the Sienese were
forsaken. Throughout the Quattrocento Siena had not indeed
proved entirely impervious to foreign influences. In the works of
Giovanni di Paolo are traces of the influence of Gentile da Fabriano
and Fra Angelico. Vecchietta in one of his later works introduced
two figures imitated from Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. One at least of
Francesco di GKorgio's pictures shows that his art was not unaffected
by the presence in Siena of Girolamo da Cremona.61 Matteo in
his later period owed something to Botticelli.

But though Sienese artists were not uninfluenced by great masters
of other schools they were loyal on the whole to the decorative ideals
of Simone until the dawn of the Cinquecento. At that time Siena was
visited by Sodoma and Pintoricchio, Signorelli and Perugino. Pin-
toricchio and Sodoma made the city their home. Thus was brought
about an artistic revolution. Fungai — who in his youth had been
influenced by Giovanni di Paolo, Vecchietta and Francesco di Giorgio
— and Pacchiarotto — who in his early career had been an imitator of
Matteo — deserted the old Sienese manner. They and their contem-
poraries and followers in Siena became eclectics, now following Sodoma
and now Eaphael and other Umbrians. Of Fungai we have here two
characteristic examples of his later or Umbrian manner, Mr. Loeser's
decorative ' Sibyl ' 62 and the great ' Coronation ' from the church
of Fontegiusta.63 Pacchiarotto may be seen at the Exhibition in
all his chief artistic phases. In the Madonna with St. Sebastian
and St. Margaret 64 he appears as a follower of Matteo. In the
large altar-piece from Buonconvento,65 although there are still strong
traces of Matteo's influences, the picture has something of an
Umbrian character. In the beautiful ' Holy Family and Angels ' £6
of the Palmieri-Nuti collection Pacchiarotto comes before us as alto-
gether a Sienese-Umbrian, and there is no more trace in his works
of the influence of Matteo.

Of the two foreign artists who exercised so profound an influence
on the Sienese school, Pintoricchio is only represented by two school
pictures, and of Sodoma's achievement there is no really fine example
in the galleries. But in the case of Sodoma the altar-piece of the
chapel of the Palace and the frescoes of the Sala del Mappamondo
and the Gabinetto del Sindaco make up the deficiencies in the
temporary collection.

Sodoma's assistant Pacchia, that most consistently mobile of

61 See Burlington Fine Arts Club, Catalogue of Exhibition of Pictures of the School
of Siena, 1904, p. 56.

82 Sala, xxxiv. 35. 63 Ibid. xxv. 4. w Ibid, xxxiii. 18.

85 Ibid, xxiii. 4. •• Ibid. xxxv. 15.

1904 EXHIBITION OF EARLY ART IN SIENA 769

eclectics, is admirably represented in the Exhibition, although there
is nothing here so fine as his Raphaelesque 'Madonna' in the
church of S. Cristoforo, or his altar-piece at Sinalunga. In the
' Coronation of the Virgin ' of S. Spirito 67 and the ' Ascension ' 68 of
the Carmine Eaphael's influence predominates ; in the ' Annuncia-
tion ' from Sarteano that of Fra Bartolommeo.

Of Peruzzi it was not possible for the committee to acquire
any fine or authentic example. Being first of all an architect
and after that a great decorator of architecture, he is never seen
at his best in a panel painting. Moreover, some of the pictures
attributed to him are by his pupils and some have nothing to do
with him. In this collection he is represented by a Madonna69
from S. Ansano a Dofana, a work of some brilliant follower who had
become imbued with Peruzzi's classical enthusiasm, and had some
skill as a draughtsman, but who was a far weaker colourist than his
master.

Beccafumi, the last of the great Sienese, is represented by the
Michaelangelesque ' St. Michael ' of the Carmine, by several Holy
Families of varying quality and interest, and by one or two smaller
works. The ' St. Michael ' is undoubtedly one of the masterpieces
of its school. But none of the other works of the master exhibited
here are very interesting or significant. We look in vain in the
galleries for one of those works of his in which he rivals Fra Barto-
lommeo in his treatment of landscape.

It is natural that a people whose decorative ideal was a hieratic
sumptuousness, a people who loved rich colours and splendid
materials, and whose artists showed singular niceness and refinement
in the perfection of detail, should have excelled in those minor arts
which add so much to the beauty and comeliness of civilised life.
Of the minor arts of the Sienese that which is most adequately
represented in this exhibition is the art of the goldsmith.

In this art Siena in the later middle ages knew no rival. In
the thirteenth century one of her artists helped to make beautiful
Dante's sagrestia dei begli arredi at Pistoia, and in the following
age Sienese goldsmiths were employed both by Pope and Emperor.
Lando di Pietro made the crown of Henry the Seventh, and Magister
Torus was the official goldsmith of the Papal Court. Of these artists
the only work at the Mostra is the reliquary of Santuccio, which
now helps to make more sumptuous the shadowy splendour of
the chapel of the Palazzo Pubblico. This masterpiece is tradi-
tionally attributed to Lando di Pietro. By the great contemporary
of Lando and Torus, Ugolino di Vieri, is the fine reliquary of
S. Savino, which he made with the assistance of Vivo di Lando.
Ugolino's masterpiece, the great reliquary of the Corporale, Orvieto
" Sala, xxv. 2. « Ibid. xxv. 13. 6D Ibid, xxxvii. 14.

770 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

could not spare. A curious and interesting piece is the ' Tree of
Jesse,' a signed work of Gabriele d' Antonio. But it is inferior in
artistic quality to the great reliquaries of Lando and Ugolino,
belonging as it does to a generation when the flood tide of Siena's
art was already ebbing fast.

Of the great Sienese goldsmiths of the Quattrocento, Groro di
Neroccio and Francesco d' Antonio, several beautiful works are to be
seen at the Palazzo Pubblico. Amongst a variety of authentic
works by Groro is the curious reliquario a braccio from the Hospital
of Santa Maria della Scala, and another reliquary from Massa
Marittima. Francesco's two masterpieces have both been secured for
the Exhibition. The reliquary of St. John the Baptist (1466), from
the Duomo, and the smaller, simpler reliquary from the Osservanza
(1467) are amongst the beautiful things in the Cappella del Consiglio.
Unfortunately the men of the later Kenaissance could appreciate
neither the refined simplicity of such a work as the Osservanza
casket nor its absolute Tightness of proportion ; consequently it is
now surmounted by a tabernacle and two ill-placed, brawny angels
in dishevelled robes. The Grolden Koses given to Siena by two of
her sons who climbed to St. Peter's chair, ^Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini
and Fabio Chigi, serve to illustrate the patent truth that from the
middle of the fourteenth century the art of the goldsmith in Siena
had been travelling down an inclined plane, broken by a short rise
in the middle of the fifteenth century, but of which, after that date,
the gradient became steeper and steeper, until at last it reached the
lowest abyss of vulgarity in the productions of ' 1'Art Nouveau.'

The exhibition of illuminated books and leaves of books is large
and fairly representative. The series begins with a remarkable
Bible of Montalcino, a work of the first half of the thirteenth century,
by the same hand, I think, as an illuminated letter in the Beckerath
collection.70 One of the three great Sienese miniaturists of the
Trecento, Niccolo di Ser Sozzo, is represented by his wonderful
frontispiece of the CalefFo dell' Assunta. But neither to Lippo
Memmi nor to Lippo Vanni can any work in this section be assigned,
unless it be an Antiphonary from the Public Library 71 which has
some of Vanni's peculiarities.

The most disappointing section of the Exhibition is that of
majolica. But of this and of the fine collections of vestments, lace,
and embroideries which illustrate the Sienese love of beautiful
pattern and splendour of service I have not space to write.72 Nor
can I give any account of the fine collections of armour, furniture,
and historical and archaeological illustrations. Of the book covers

78 Burlington Fine Arts Club, ExMbition and Works of Art of tiie School of Siena,
1904. See p. 81 of the Catalogue,

71 Sala, vii. 25.

72 Although in Siena itself are several fine Sienese plates, not one of them was
shown at the Mostra.

1904 EXHIBITION OF EARLY ART IN SIENA 771

I can only note in passing four from the Archivio di Stato. Of these
covers three are decorated with much injured paintings by Vecchi-
etta,73 hitherto unidentified; and the fourth bears a painting by
Giovanni di Paolo.74

To him to whom one of the chief uses of collections of works of
art and archaeological objects is that they help him to reconstruct
the environment of the men of a past age, and to read their deepest
emotions, Siena may seem to have less need of an exhibition of this
kind than any other European town ; for the city itself is a museum,
and every street an abode of the Muses. No work of art that adorns
Siena is more lovely, more eloquent of feeling than herself — fair,
untamed queen, for ever young. No archaeological illustrations are
more interesting than the palaces which line her narrow ways.

To meet Grian Graleazzo Visconti, or even Leonardo da Vinci or
Matteo Bandello, among the network of electric tram-lines in the
Great Piazza of Milan, the Piazza del Duomo, would seem an incon-
gruous encounter even to the most imaginative traveller ; but if on
some summer night we were to catch sight of Provenzano Salvani
in the great Sienese piazza, the Piazza del Campo, or were to meet
S. Bernardino in the frescoed hall of the Hospital, or to descry Cecco
Angiolieri talking to Becchina down by Fontebranda, would his
presence give us any feeling of incongruity ? would any one of them
seem to be entirely out of harmony with his surroundings ?

Nevertheless, for the credit of Siena, and for the assistance of her
own and other students, the Sienese ought to see to it that from this
exhibition a permanent museum shall take its origin, a museum
which shall illustrate, as far as is possible, the history of her sculp-
ture and her splendid triumphs in the minor arts. With the
generous help of the heads of her ancient families it is yet feasible
for the Sienese to form such a collection ; but every year it will
become more difficult to do so. A serious and united effort is neces-
sary, and it ought to be made at once.

LANGTON DOUGLAS.

»» Sala, viii. 5, 6, 9. " Ibid. viii. No. 8.

772 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

THE LITERATURE OF FINLAND

IT is a common saying among Finlanders that their hope for the
future lies in their language and their religion, because it is only
by means of these that they can claim to possess a separate
nationality. It was probably for this reason that in the spring of
1901 their literature suddenly assumed an aspect of political import-
ance, when a professor from Helsingfors, who had signified his intention
of giving a lecture on the subject at Christiania, was prohibited from
doing so by the Russian Government. It is doubtful whether any
action could have been better calculated to arouse public interest in
Finland or to increase the demand for Finnish novels, and the follow-
ing sketch is the outcome of a study which was primarily undertaken
for the purpose of satisfying the writer's curiosity. More than a
sketch it cannot claim to be, for even the most cursory study was
sufficient to show that, as regards works of fiction, Finland is able to
hold her own with Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, while as regards
the traditional poetry of the Kalevala she occupies a position which
is in all respects unique.

The Kalevala, as we have it in Crawford's excellent translation,
is one of those rare productions of which it is impossible to speak too
highly. The majority of books which boast of a similar history are
of the kind to be read with effort and perseverance, content if here
and there some striking sentence is discovered, but the reading of the
Kalevala calls for no such strenuous effort ; no one who has heard it
can ever forget the story of the encounter between the rival poets of
Finland and Lapland, and the wondrous glimpse it gave him into
bygone days when sledges were made of gold and whips were enamelled
with pearls. The gorgeous descriptions of Wainamoinen's magic
vessel and the beauty of the Lapp maiden, Aino the Golden-haired,
are so unlike anything that could have been expected from the land
of ice and snow that it is not surprising if the publication of the Kalevala
in 1833 should have attracted the attention of students in all parts
of the world, and brought about a revival of Finnish, a language
which had hitherto been regarded as that of the lower orders only,
no books being published in it except such as were intended for reli-
gious or educational purposes. The formation of the Finnish Literary

1904 THE LITEBATUBE OF FINLAND 773

Society was one of the first signs of change, and before long the
language question began to give rise to serious dispute. A newspaper
was started to uphold the interests of the Finnish-speaking population,
and in its columns Swedish was alluded to as a foreign tongue and
blamed for being the cause of the low educational standard which was
at that time prevalent in Finland ; but it was not until 1860 that the
' Young Fennomans,' as they were called, entered the field of practical
politics with their watchword, ' One people, one language,' a saying
which has recently been changed for another, now that the nation's
misfortune has drawn the conflicting parties together : ' Of one mind,
albeit of two languages.'

Meanwhile the opposite party, consisting of the ' Svecomans,'
had started a rival association called ' the Swedish Literary Society
in Finland,' which, besides numerous other publications, included
the works of three of their own writers who had flourished at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, whose names were Franzen,
Runeberg, and Topelius. The first-named was the author of the
Selma Songs, inspired, like many other poems of that period, by
Macpherson's Ossian ; Runeberg was one of the most celebrated
poets of his day, and his prelude to Ensign StaaVs Tales has since
become the Finnish national song, which is now forbidden to be sung,
although it contains nothing more political than an expression of
affection for the land of the thousand lakes, the ' Fosterland,' as the
Swedish population are wont to call it, in contrast to the 'Fatherland'
of their Finnish brethren. Runeberg's longer poems are mostly
written in hexameters, Hannah, The Elk Hunters, and The Grave in
Perrho being among his best. Topelius, the third writer belonging
to this period, although possessed of less originality than the others,
was famed for the beauty of his style, and his novels are said to bear
traces of the influence of Dickens, Bulwer Lytton, and Alexandre
Dumas.

The works of the above-mentioned writers may be said to repre-
sent the Finnish classics, and from them we shall pass on to six writers
of contemporary fiction, divided into two groups, representative of
the two races to which they belong, although as regards the literature
of the present day there is scarcely any characteristic distinction to
be observed between the two ; a fact which is not surprising when we
consider that difference of race cannot be very strongly defined after
generations of intermarriage. Karl August Ta vasts tjerna, whose
name occupies the foremost place among the Swedish writers, was a
member of one of the few remaining families belonging to the old
Finnish nobility, and a descendant of the famous Eric Tavast, who
was raised to the peerage in the seventeenth century. The author
was born in 1860, and died of consumption a few years ago, leaving
a large and varied selection of literary works, consisting of poetry,
plays, novels, short stories, and sketches. There was scarcely any

774 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

form of belles-lettres which he did not attempt, although it was with
his novels that he attained the greatest success.

His early years were spent on his mother's property, and the
misery which he witnessed at the time of the great famine left an
indelible impression on his youthful mind, which was afterwards to
bear fruit in a novel called Hard Times, where he describes his mother
in the person of Fru von Blume, who dies of fever while nursing the
poor on her estate.

Tavaststjerna was twenty-six when he published his first novel
in two volumes, called Friends from Childhood, of which four thousand
copies were sold within two years. It is a story of university life at
Helsingfors, and the principal characters in the book are Benjamin
Thomen and his self-righteous friend, Syberg. Benjamin is engaged
to a girl named Sigrid, whom he eventually throws over, and goes
to Paris to enjoy hfe in the quartier latin. Sigrid consoles herself
by joining the great body of emancipated women whose ideal it is
to become self-supporting whether their circumstances require it or
not ; she earns a good salary, and when after the lapse of many years
Benjamin returns like the prodigal, having squandered his substance,
there seems to be some likelihood of a reconciliation. Unfortunately
Sigrid allows herself to be cajoled by Syberg into lending money to
her f ormeT fiance, with the promise that he shall never know it. Syberg,
who is himself in love with her, betrays the secret, knowing that Ben-
jamin will never wish to look her in the face again when he discovers
that it is to her that he is indebted. Benjamin is furious, returns
the money, and Sigrid dies of consumption, leaving him her savings.

Tavaststjerna delights in contrasts, and is never so happy as when
he can find two opposite types of character and set them face to face
to work out a problem. In this story the contrast is drawn between
a man and woman of types which are neither exaggerated nor uncom-
mon : the man sacrifices his career to the enjoyment of the moment,
while the woman goes to the other extreme and sacrifices hfe itself
for an idea, and dies because she has worked too hard and practised
too great economy in food and necessary comforts. In his next book,
A Native, he contrasts the man who has always lived at home, with
the cosmopolitan. Vahlin is the name of the former ; he is the editor
of a liberal paper, an earnest democrat and idealist. His friend,
Haard, is a man who spends a great part of his time in travelling,
and prides himself upon being a man of the world ; he despises Vahlin's
simplicity, and judges life from an entirely different standpoint. As
we read the story we are made to feel that the author's sympathies
are struggling with his common sense : Vahlin is the type he loves,
and to which he returns again and again ; he is the man who allows
himself to be guided by the instincts of his heart, believing that good
is destined in the end to overcome evil ; he is Tavaststjerna's better
self, while Haard is what the world has tried to make of him.

1904 THE LITEEATUEE OF FINLAND 775

The two men go together to a music-hall which bears the ominous
name of ' Perdition,' and there they both fall in love with a girl named
Hilma, who is one of the singers. Vahlin's intentions are strictly
honourable, Haard's are not ; but Hilma understands Haard because
he is just the sort of man whom she has been accustomed to meet,
whereas Vahlin differs so completely from any with whom she has
come into contact that she is quite at a loss to understand him. His
offer of respectable lodgings and a good education does not appeal
to her, but she accepts because it appears to offer wider prospects
than her other alternative, which is to marry the fat and somewhat
elderly proprietor of the music-hall.

Vahliii pursues his course with enthusiasm: he gives her two hours'
daily teaching, the subjects being the history of civilisation and the
Swedish language, varied by readings from Thackeray. Hilma is
grateful, but does not enjoy the lessons; she respects her teacher but
does not love him, and is never at her ease in his presence. She finds
Haard's society, on the other hand, extremely amusing, and they
meet in secret. Haard, with his ' upper-class philosophy,' as Vahlin
calls it, cannot grasp the fact that his friend can seriously contem-
plate marriage with a girl of Hilma's standing, and when he finally
does marry her Haard will neither overlook her past himself, nor
allow others to do so, in spite of the fact that it is he himself who is
chiefly to blame in the matter. ' Of course,' he says, ' when Vahlin
is married he cannot expect his friends to receive his wife.' And he
was right, as their first dinner party only too plainly proved. The
description is painfully realistic : the reader is made to feel the shame
that Vahlin suffers during those hours of tension, when his wife shows
herself utterly incapable of behaving with decorum and appearing
at her ease at the same time, while the men — for the visitors are all
men — are apt to overlook the respect that is due to their hostess.

It is an unhappy book, because the idealist is condemned to dis-
illusionment, yet not to failure. Vahlin was not altogether mis-
taken when he recognised the existence of good qualities in Hilma :
she has a warm heart, and soon learns to love him in spite of the
lessons which he continues to inflict upon her ; and as the book closes
we are left to believe that, although she never acquires the ease of
manner which belongs to the best society, there is hope for improve-
ment and a better mutual understanding.

It has been said of Tavaststjerna that he is ' the most melancholy
writer in the most melancholy country in the world,' but the saying
is unfair : in the first place there is no evidence to show that Finland
is a melancholy country ; as regards literature it might almost be
said to rise above the average in optimism, while as to the author in
question, though melancholy, it cannot be said that he is ever morbid.
His last novel, A Regiment of Women, deals with the language question
and the conflict between the two races. In Doctor Udde we have

776

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Nov.

Vahlin, the idealist, over again; but fate deals more kindly in pro-
viding him with a fiancee after his own heart, an independent young
woman who attends her ' office ' with the regularity of a city man.
Dr. Udde is an aspirant who has failed as a poet, but gained some
success as a literary critic owing to the boldness with which he has
criticised the ethics of Ibsen in a certain celebrated lecture. He is
of Finnish descent, but through long habit has adopted the Swedish
language, and knows no more of the Finnish peasantry than such
ideas as can be gleaned from Runeberg's Cottage Girl — a romantic
idealised description which bears no more resemblance to the reality
than such descriptions generally do. The story is one of disillusion-
ment. In order to enlarge his acquaintance with the habits and
character of the Finnish peasant and to improve his knowledge of
the language he goes as lodger for six months to Manola Farm, where
he hopes to live with the family and to become one of them for the
time being ; but he finds that this is not to be, and is distressed at
the lack of friendliness shown him, and disappointed because they
insist on treating him as a grand gentleman from Helsingfors. The
ugliness of the house and the sparse comforts of the overheated rooms,
no less than the extreme shortness of his bed, are a continual source
of trouble. The hostess, as the mistress of a house is always called
in Finland, thinks that he must be mad for wishing to decorate the
bare walls of his room with pieces of old harness ; and the maid-servant,
on entering suddenly one morning while he is practising gymnastics,
believes him to be a member of the sect of Shakers engaged in devo-
tional exercises !

Manola Farm is forty-two miles from the nearest railway station,
and Dr. Udde finds the life very monotonous after Helsingfors. The
stillness of the winter depresses him ; not only is there no one to
whom he can talk of his interests, but he does not feel in the least
inclined to work. The fact is that the prosaic nature of his sur-
roundings has raised the ghost of doubt ; he has begun to wonder
whether his work is as important as he had imagined, whether literary
labour has any real value at all ; while as for his doctor's degree —
what was that worth ? At last his despondency becomes so great
that he even begins to doubt the importance of his celebrated lecture
on the ethics of Ibsen. His discouragement leads him to form a very
unfavourable opinion of the ' hostess ' and her son' ; the latter is
described as being

quite unable to see himself in the light of circumstances, in which respect,
alas I he was not singular. He had no more self -consciousness than a child —
severe critics and lovers of truth might say than an animal. But then the
ninety-nine hundredth portion of mankind arej like him, they live without self-
consciousness, and we are not worse than others by being the same as they are.
The lack of self-consciousness is held to be a sign of health, and Heaven knows
if it be not really so.

1904 THE LITEEATUEE OF FINLAND 111

Only one logical thought has taken root in the young man's mind,
and that is ' that one must never place confidence in a woman.' With
that he is perfectly satisfied.

The crass materialism of the peasants is a subject which is alluded
to again and again, and the question arises, whether the difference
is really one of class or whether it is to be sought for in a more far-
reaching distinction, i.e. difference of race ? The question is one
which often occurs when reading books about Finland, where the
sense of class distinction appears to be abnormally acute compared
with other northern countries, with the exception, of course, of
Kussia.

Apart from its social problems A Regiment of Women is an exciting
novel, and the adventures of Ida, the maid-servant, are most thrilling,
especially when she consults the witch, visits the churchyard at the
fatal hour of midnight, and almost makes her young master sick by
administering magic love potions mixed with his morning coffee.
Finally she succeeds in borrowing a little waif from a gipsy woman
in order to keep her lover true, but fails in her intrigue because the
paternity is foisted on Dr. Udde, the result being that his disappoint-
ment in the rural Venus is tenfold intensified.

The plays are the least successful of Tavaststjerna's literary works,
and next in importance to the novels may be classed a small volume
dedicated to his wife bearing the title of A Wedding Journey (1893),
and consisting of letters from a young couple on their honeymoon.
The bride is a character with whom we are already familiar, only
that in this case her ambitions are literary, and she is busily engaged
in writing a book on men, women, and marriage. At first the husband
is inclined to raise objections to his name, as he expresses it, appearing
on the title page ; but his objections are soon overruled, and she is
able to write confidently to her sister that ' our marriage promises
to be an ideal relation between two modern individuals.'

The best letter in the book is the one which the husband writes
to an old friend whom he congratulates upon his approaching marriage,
and tries to encourage with an account of his own experience, telling
him that marriage nowadays is a very different thing from what it
used to be, judging from the old-fashioned novels. It no longer
entails settling down, being buried alive, and all that sort of thing ;
but, on the contrary, it is the beginning of a new kind of life with
fresh experiences, and full of what is called psychology. He warns
his friend that the young lady whom he is about to marry takes a
great interest in social questions, and is an admirer of Ibsen ; that she
idolises Nora, and is writing a treatise upon Hedda Gabler. He
strongly advises him to read the last-named piece, and to bear in
mind that he is about to play the part of Tesman in a new drama.
' This kind of literature,' he says, ' is of decided importance for us
men, we can make use of it in conversation as a kind of lexicon,

VOL. LVI— No. 333 3 F

778 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

and we ought to be grateful to the authors instead of abusing them,
because they throw light upon the dark places of undeveloped brain
cells.' He goes on to say that his own literary sympathies were not
great in former times, but all that is changed since he made the
discovery that his wife is a budding authoress. Of course it was a
great blow at first, as it doubtless will be to his friend, but after all
it isn't as bad as it seems. The principal thing is to try to under-
stand these women ; it doesn't in the least matter if you don't succeed
so long as your wife is aware that the effort is being made. He under-
stands his wife sufficiently to realise that a study of Ibsen is absolutely
needful, and has sent for six volumes of his works in order that she
shall find him intent on reading them ; that will do for the present.
But, of course, one must never allow oneself to be drawn into a
literary discussion with a woman, for it would never do to betray
ignorance.

It is a noticeable fact about Tavaststjerna that he wrote in a
lighter and more cheerful vein as he neared his end, and he was not
forty when he died.

Jacob Ahrenberg, born 1847, began his literary career by writing
some short stories and character sketches descriptive of life in the
east of Finland, where his business as an architect took him. His
first novel, The Heehoolites, was published in 1889, having for subject
a religious sect which derives its name from the groans that were
supposed to accompany the prayers of its followers. The person of
Adam Pihlhjerta, the lay preacher, affords an opportunity for one of
those vivid character sketches in which Ahrenberg excels. Adam
is a lodger in the house of an innkeeper, who for eighteen years has
cherished a tame snake which makes its appearance regularly every
evening at sunset, when the family feed it with milk ; they call it
* household luck,' but to Adam it is nothing less than the personifica-
tion of the Tempter in the garden of Eden, to feed whom is to offer
sacrifice to the Evil One, while to believe in it as a luck-bringer is to
worship the Devil and all his works. Adam takes the opportunity
while the creature is sipping milk to stamp on its head with the heel
of his hobnailed boot and fling it into the fire, where it writhes in
agony on the glowing coals. The innkeeper is beside himself with
indignation ; but Adam silences him, exclaiming : ' Child of Belial !
You have forsaken the Lord your God, and have sacrificed to the old
Serpent.' With a torrent of impassioned words he calls down judg-
ment upon the innkeeper and his family, creating a great sensation
among his hearers, some of whom are heard to murmur, ' Adam is
right.'

Hours pass, and still the little crowd that have gathered round
him are intent on listening to his interpretation of the Scriptures,
joining now and again in prayer and song. Even miracles are not
wanting to prove the integrity of the new preacher : the lame walk

1904 THE LITERATURE OF FINLAND 779

without crutches, the sick are healed, and the excitement caused by
religious enthusiasm is intense. Enemies of long standing are seen
to shake hands and exchange the kiss of peace, debtors pay back
their old debts, drunkards resolve to lead a new life, and many are
the sins confessed while Adam Pihlhjerta pronounces absolution.

Days pass, and then comes the dreadful scene when, by a pure
accident, the shameful discovery is made that Adam is an escaped
convict, and while insisting that others should make a public
confession of their sins he has failed to confess his own. Years ago
he had been sentenced to life-long imprisonment for a murder com-
mitted in a moment of passion ; he escaped, and was converted by
a Heehoolite preacher, and spent many weary years in repentance,
yet never confessed his crime before the assembly of believers, fearing
lest they should betray him, and now it was too late — he was to be
handed back to the officers of the law. The powerful description
of the anguish which ensues when he remembers his converts, who
will evermore be hardened in their sin, shows that his remorse for the
evil consequences of his crime is greater than his regrets for lost
liberty.

It is a far cry from the scene of this story to that of Ahrenberg's
most popular novel, The Family at Haapakoski, with its vivid descrip-
tion of the cosmopolitan society at a fashionable health resort in the
Crimea, contrasted with the no less life-like picture of a melancholy
little government town in Finland in mid- winter. There is no attempt
to disguise the dull monotony of the latter, which, in addition to the
almost hopeless task of learning two entirely different foreign languages
at the same time, makes it practically impossible for the young Russian
wife to feel anything but a stranger in her husband's country. Her
difficulties with the Swedish and Finnish languages are well described,
and here, as in the other society novel, Our Countryman, the story
seems intended to convey a warning against a tendency which often
results from military service in Russia, i.e. marriage with a Russian
wife, together with its inevitable accompaniment — the gradual Russi-
fication of the Finnish nobility. Yet in none of his books does Ahren-
berg ever give vent to a single expression of bitterness against Russia.
On the contrary, he calls attention to much that is good in her. The
appeal is made solely to his own countrymen that they should do
their duty to the Fosterland and not forsake it.

It would be difficult to name any writer whose works present
more variety than Ahrenberg's, he is equally at home no matter
where the scene is laid ; the character of the artist's model in Youth
is no less convincing than that of Adam Pihlhjerta or Helena Nicho-
laievna. Youth is the story of an artist who falls in love and is bitterly
disillusioned when he discovers the girl's true character. He had
expected to find her natural, simple, naive ; he would not have minded
a lack of education, but Alice is seldom natural and never original ;

3 r 2

780

THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY

Nov.

and the worst of it is that she can never converse on any subject
without breaking forth into quotations from the minor poets of a past
generation whose fame has not outlived them. Her pseudo-culture
has rendered her impossible as wife to a man of common sense, and the
end is tragic for no other reason than that the artist cannot bear to be
reproached in iambics and dactyls.

Ahrenberg's style shows traces of TurgueniefE's influence. He
knows Kussia well, but his descriptions are doubly interesting because
they depict the life as it strikes a foreigner ; for instance, in both his
society novels he draws attention to a circumstance which we do not
remember having read of elsewhere, although it doubtless exerts a
great influence on social life in Russia, and that is the Asiatic element
which the naturalisation of Eastern princes has been the means of
introducing into society. The heroine in The Family at Haapakoski
is a Tartar princess, and although charming in herself her father is
described as little better than a barbarian, while Dodo in Our Country-
man is a Caucasian prince. It is worth noting that Ahrenberg is the
only writer of any importance in Finland whose novels bear traces
of Russian influence ; the majority appear to be better acquainted
with the works of English, French, and Scandinavian authors.

Helena Westermarck (born 1857) is the sister of Professor Edward
Westermarck, whose name figures among the honorary associates of
the Rationalist Press Association ; he is best known in England as
the author of the History of Human Marriage. Helena Westermarck
tried for many years to combine authorship with painting, but rinding
that it was, as she expressed it, impossible to serve two masters she
gave up painting and devoted herself entirely to literature. She
edited a woman's paper called The Contemporary, and wrote several
novels and short stories ; for one of the former, called Life's Victory,
the Government awarded her a prize, and with the money thus obtained
she was able to undertake a journey abroad. It was the old story of
a fashionable lady who is expected to live in the country where she
suffers terribly from ennui and lack of occupation, with the result
that she consoles herself in her husband's absence by running away
with a young lieutenant. Judged as a novel it has the great weak-
ness of allowing the reader to guess what is going to happen long
before the crisis takes place, but the fascinating portrait of old Miss
Henrietta, who has the second sight, goes a long way towards atoning
for the rather commonplace nature of the plot. But it is to be regretted
that in her novels, as in Tavaststjerna's, one notices a want of sym-
pathy with the poorer people which seems so strangely out of keeping
among a northern race. Miss Henrietta's opinion that the labouring
classes are, ' like the ugly black soil, necessary, but of an unpleasing
smell,' is a saying worthy of D'Annunzio, and it goes a long way
towards explaining a fact which is mentioned later on, i.e. that the
peasants are wont to regard the gentlefolk with a suspicion which

1904 THE LITERATURE OF FINLAND 781

they have inherited from their forefathers. The same sentiments are
to be found in Helena Westermarck's first novel, Onwards, where
Marta, the young and enthusiastic heroine, whose ambition it is to
•encourage the higher education of the people, complains that she has
found a dark and impassable gulf between herself and them.

The title of the book is based on an argument which takes place
•between two of the characters, one of whom, a doctor, is made to speak
for his native country : —

' Finland was Finland,' he said. ' It was true that it was a little country, but
he had his own views with regard to the smaller nations. It was they who
•were to lead the world onwards. One had but to read the world's history with
due care and attention in order to draw the obvious conclusions. Think of the
Greeks and Hebrews, and the influence which they exerted on humanity at
large ! The people of Finland had a great civilising mission before them ; it
was they who were to lead the world.'

' No, come now ! you cannot mean it seriously,' John exclaimed, as the
doctor hesitated. ' Think of all that the great nations have done for the progress
of the world, think how the English and Americans have spread civilisation far
and wide. Yours are just the kind of ideas that do so much harm in our
-country ; we live on fine poetic thoughts and dream dreams in which our
own land is something apart, something wonderful, and each one believes
himself to be a hero ; the consequence of it all is that we waste our strength,
while our country— our poor, remote, insignificant little country, is isolated
more than need be by this accursed struggle between two languages. What
does a language signify ? Nothing at all. It is by far the best to speak one of
the great languages that open the door to the culture and experience of
great nations.'

These arguments represent in a most characteristic manner the
two classes of opinion which prevail, not only in Finland, but through-
out Scandinavia — a striving on the one hand to maintain a separate
nationality, and on the other the consciousness that their own language
cannot suffice as the medium of a widespread culture. But of these
opinions the author favours the more idealistic of the two.

John dies of an accident in Paris, and Marta returns with his
brother to Finland. As the ship approaches Helsingfors an English
tourist, who is on his way to fish in northern waters, makes the remark
that the times are bad for Finland, and Marta answers eagerly : ' If
we each do our utmost there is still hope — we may still march onwards.'
The tourist looks surprised, and with a doubtful shake of the head,
he murmurs, ' Visionaries ! '

This was written in 1894, and the Czar's rescript did not appear
until five years later, but coming events had already cast their shadows
before. The two passages quoted are intensely characteristic of the
present attitude of the Finnish people : they give us their politics in
a nutshell. There is no thought of revolution. The Czar is as safe
in Finland to-day as any constitutional monarch could be, safer there
than in any other portion of his vast dominion. Education, patience,

782 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

hope, these are the watchwords of the people, for not by the sword
are the greatest victories won.

Thus far we have dealt only with authors who represent the
Swedish-speaking population ; in order to find the real Finn we must
look to Paivarinta and Minna Canth, with the aid of whose writings
we are able to picture to ourselves the chief characteristics of the
race. More melancholy than the Scandinavian, the Finns are perhaps
more religious, certainly more poetic ; and if the world has not heard
much of their poetry since the Kalevala, it is because they, like the
Celts, have sung in a language which very few can understand.

Pietari Paivarinta was born in 1827, the eldest son of poor parents,
so poor that on more than one occasion little Pietari was sent out to
beg. His parents taught him to read, and somehow or other he
picked up a knowledge of writing. From the age of ten onwards
he was able to earn his own living, and at twenty-two he married the
daughter of a poor farmer and borrowed a sufficient sum of money
to purchase a piece of uncultivated land in the forest ; a few years
later he received the appointment of parish clerk, and in 1882 he
became a member of Parliament. From his earliest childhood he
had always shown a great predilection for books, which he contrived
to buy in spite of his scanty means. His reading was chiefly confined
to newspapers and 'belles-lettres ; he read Dickens, and the book called
Myself and Others is said to have been suggested by David Copper-
field. His first attempt at writing took the form of newspaper corre-
spondence, and it was not until he had reached the age of forty that
one day, while ploughing, the idea suddenly occurred to him that he
would like to write a book. His first works were, however, of no
great importance ; he collected and edited the letters of certain
Pietist leaders addressed to their followers, and he wrote a play which
was never published. He had little time to devote to writing, until
one day in 1876 he had a fall and broke his foot, and during the period
of enforced idleness which ensued he began to write his autobio-
graphy, which was afterwards published by the Finnish Society for
the Education of the People, and for it he received the sum of 24L
Encouraged by this success, he wrote a great many books and short
stories, most of which have been translated into Swedish and some
into German. His main object was to address himself to the class to
which he belonged, and when he describes the everyday life of the
working people he does it in order to interest them and without
any thought of appealing to a different class of reader. In his short
story called A Frosty Morning he gives an account of the same terrible
August frost which Tavaststjerna described in Hard Times, and he
tells us of a young man called Matti, a peasant's son, who is consumed
with a thirst for reading, who quotes Runeberg, and treasures the
poems that appear in the daily paper, preferring those which cast a
halo of romance around a daily life of toil like his own. Matti is no

1904 THE LITEBATURE OF FINLAND 783

fancied character, he is one whom Paivarinta has met, and it was
probably in some such way that the thought came to him to devote
his pen to the description of the scenes with which he was most familiar.
His writing is that of an old man with a large experience of life, and
his stories are like the old-fashioned pencil drawings of two genera-
tions ago, careful in every detail and true to Nature in her everyday
aspect, but entirely void of passion ; they present no varying moods,
and differ strangely from the modern style which is as impressionist
in literature as it is in painting. The one is satisfied with the habitual,
the grey day of human life, while the other goes out of its way to seek
the fantastic, till often like a rainbow on the painter's canvas it pro-
duces the unreal effect of giving permanency to something that is by
nature transient.

Paivarinta's books bear traces of a strong and healthy tempera-
ment combined with a capacity for clear, straightforward reasoning ;.
his tendency is essentially democratic ; in him there are no signs of
that spirit of excessive humility, approximating to the Slav type'
which allows itself to be crushed and downtrodden, such as we find
depicted in the characters of Minna Canth's dramas.

In Minna Canth's case a great deal of her despondency was due
to the outward circumstances of her life. Weighed down by poverty,,
hard work, and the anxieties of a large family, she was never given
the chance of developing her talent to the full extent of its possibili-
ties, and unfortunately she allowed her art to become, what art should
never be, subservient to a purpose. Drink, poverty, and laws un-
favourable to women were the evils which she saw around her, and
these she described with unfailing zeal, and in the face of opposition
which amounted to something allied to persecution. Those who have
had the advantage of seeing her plays acted maintain that she was
the greatest woman dramatist who has ever lived, and if further
testimony is wanting it may be had in the fact that people went to
law with her because they recognised a likeness of themselves in what
she had written.

Minna Johnson was born in 1844 in the town of Tammerfors,.
where her father was superintendent of a large cotton factory. At-
the age of five she was looked upon as an infant prodigy because she'
could not only read, but also sing hymns and play her own accom-
paniments. At nineteen she discovered that it was her mission in.
life ' to teach the people.' She accordingly entered a seminary for
school teachers, but left it the folloAving year in order to marry Johan
Ferdinand Canth, a teacher of natural science, after which all her
aspirations were laid aside for the duties of housekeeping which her
soul hated. In later years, when she looked back upon this period
of her life, she was forced to confess that her troubles had been greatly
increased by the morbid sensitiveness of her conscience, which inter-
preted the duty of a wife's subjection in such a manner that she never

784 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

allowed herself to give vent to a single original thought, and denied
herself all pleasure, even that of reading. It was not until eight
years after her marriage that she was able to give her mind to litera-
ture without doing violence to her conscience. Her husband had
been appointed editor of a newspaper, and in order to assist him in
his work she wrote powerful articles against the sale of brandy,
forgetful of the fact that the proprietor of the paper was also the
owner of a large distillery, with the result that the editorship had to
be given up, while she was forced to return to her sewing-machine.
She would probably have ceased writing altogether if it had not been
that a few years later the Finnish Theatrical Company gave several
representations in the town, which suggested to her the idea of writing
a play ; and the result of this first attempt was The Burglars, in which
a girl is unjustly accused of theft. The play proved an immense
success, and the Finnish Literary Society awarded her a prize. In
the meantime her husband died, and she was left with seven young
•children to provide for. In order to do this she set up a shop for
cotton goods, which proved a complete financial success, and also
wrote another play called At Roinila Farm, which was as successful
as the first had been. At this period of her life she seems, strangely
enough, to have had more leisure for reading, and the books which
she quotes as having influenced her are Brandes's Main Currents
and works by Taine, Herbert Spencer, Stuart Mill, and Buckle. She
used to say that these had been the means of freeing her soul from
bondage.

Her next work was a problem play called The Workman's Wife,
which is probably the best thing she has written. A workman marries
a woman for the sake of her savings, spends the money on drink,
nearly starves the child, and ends by causing his wife's death. The
characters are very life-like, and are not without a certain grim
humour. The following is an excellent argument on political economy
from a drunkard's point of view. Risto, the husband, has just
made the remark that men such as he and his friend are not of much
good in the world, to which the friend replies : —

Toppo. As drinkers, you mean ? But that is just the point. Don't you
see that here, in this country, things are so wisely arranged that we are by no
means useless members of society ? We may live as we like, in any case we
are doing something towards the welfare of the country. If we work, well and
good. If we drink it does no harm either. If there were no brandy drinkers
there would be no brandy distilleries, and if there were no brandy distilleries
there would be no brandy taxes, and then where would they get the money to
build schools and railways ?

Risto. Yes, upon my soul, that's true 1 I wonder that I never thought of it
before. You are no fool, Toppo.

Toppo. Now, on the other hand, look at the gentry. They drink expensive
foreign wines, they wear foreign clothes, and their food and household stuffs —
everything, in fact, down to the most insignificant details has to be fetched
from abroad. Do you suppose that that doesn't do harm to the country?
How is it all to be paid for if not by the sweat and labour of the people ?

1904 THE LITERATURE OF FINLAND 785

This play was acted at Helsingfors, and also, in a Swedish trans-
lation, at Stockholm. By some it was praised to the skies, by others
violently abused, and even by the writer herself it has been severely
criticised. It contained much bitter satire, she said, but nothing of
any psychological depth, nor could it be called matured art. She
was never satisfied with any of her writings, but always hoped to do
better in the future ; she died leaving that hope unfulfilled. She
wrote three or four plays later on, besides two novels and several
short stories and articles, but it is doubtful if any of them were equal
to The Workman's Wife. The amount of literary work which she
achieved is astonishing when one considers how much she did besides ;
she translated all the six volumes of Brandes's Main Currents into
Finnish, but owing to the representations made by the clergy to her
publishers the publication was stopped after the issue of the first
volume. People began to hold her up as an atheist and accused her
of leading the young astray, they pitied her children for having such
a mother, and so exaggerated were their accusations that it required
no little moral courage to be a friend of hers. It was only to be
expected that this want of sympathy should have a corresponding
effect upon her character, and it is not surprising if she never attained
to all that she might have been amid more favourable surroundings.

The writings of Paivarinta and Minna Canth present a wide con-
trast to those of Juhani Aho, whose style bears so much resemblance to
that of modern Swedish writers that it is often difficult to realise that
he is not a Scandinavian. Juhani Aho (J. Brofeldt, born 1861) is
the son of a clergyman of Savolaks. His first book was a collection
of short stories descriptive of the lives of the country people, and one
of these, called When Father BougJit the Lamp, is reckoned a little
masterpiece. A later work has been translated into English under
the title of Squire Hellman l and other Stories, but his best book is
a novel in two parts called The Clergyman's Daughter and The Clergy-
man's Wife. Like Bjornson, he introduces his characters as children,
describing early influences which explain the gradual development
of his heroine from a lonely little girl, who delights to climb high
trees where she can sit unseen and indulge in daydreams, to the
grown woman in whom daydreams have absorbed the best part of
life.

The account of Elli's childhood and schooldays is very vividly
given, and so, too, is the description of her first ball, where she finds
herself the only girl in a grey homespun dress, without gloves, and
with her hair done in a pigtail. Then follows the account of her
return home, and the reading of forbidden books, The Talisman and
Runeberg's Hannah — forbidden because they treat of love, for
although Elli has been taught that marriage is to be the chief object

1 Translated by Nisbet Bain, and published by Fisher Unwin in the Pseudonym
Library, 1893.

786 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

of her life all thought of romance is excluded. Elli's mother is a
woman with strict religious views who has accustomed herself to
accept all things in life with the same unquestioning faith as the
dogmas of her religion. She never loved her husband, yet she got
on well enough, and she cannot see why her daughter should not do
the same ; so when a fat elderly clergyman with a pronounced squint
comes to stay some weeks in their house, accompanied by a young
student called Olof Kalm, and when he, the clergyman, ends by
proposing to Elli, the mother is ready with the same old argument
which her own mother had used to induce her to marry : * You do not
love him now,' she says, ' but with time you will learn to do so. He
is a good and honest man. Besides, what else can you do ? Some
day you must marry.' No one alludes to the subject again, and as
Elli has not the courage to start it, the others appear to take her
tacit consent for granted. Time passes, and the situation becomes
more and more difficult, the unwelcome suitor shows no signs of
leaving, and at last it seems to Elli that she has forfeited her right
to a choice in the matter. She becomes engaged to him, and there
the first part of the story ends.

In the second volume Elli has become The Clergyman's Wife.
She lives in a picturesque, old-fashioned red house amid scenery
which is not unlike that which surrounded her old home, except that
the fjord is a highway for the tourist traffic during the summer season,
and the large passenger steamers pass within view of the windows.
It is the kind of place at which the world-wearied stranger throws
a longing glance. ' What a peaceful spot ! ' he exclaims, ' how
delightful it would be to live there.' Elli, who has lived there during
the five years of her married life, does not find it so pleasant. There
is a feeling of melancholy that pervades the atmosphere, induced
partly by the sound of waves splashing against the shore, partly by
the quivering leaves of the aspens, and maybe by the glare of the
sun against the window panes, displaying the utter absence of life
within. There is no sound of children's voices, no lowing cattle, and
not even the sound of oars upon the water.

Elli is sitting close to the fjord under a birch tree, in a place
which she has dedicated to her daydreams, where both her happiest
and unhappiest hours are spent — happy because here at least there
is no one to disturb her, unhappy because here she realises the full
burden of her solitude. As she sits watching the ships sail by, ' look-
ing out into the world,' as she calls it, she develops a superstitious
belief that her life will not always go on as it has done, but that some
day something will happen which will change the whole course of
her existence. Perhaps someone will come in a boat and fetch her
away. Elli has met only three men in her life : the first was scarcely
to be called a man, he was little more than an overgrown schoolboy ;
the others were Olof Kalm and her husband. She had not realised

1904 THE LITERATURE OF FINLAND 787

that she loved Olof when she first met him, but since those days he
has somehow become idealised in her fancy as the embodiment of
what might have been. Sometimes he takes the guise of a deliverer,
and then she allows herself to think — for there can be no harm in
thinking — how it would be if he were to come over the fjord and fetch
her away.

I Come as you are,' he says, and gives her a kiss on the forehead.
' How did you know that I loved you ? ' she asks.

I 1 saw it in your eyes.'

' And you have come to fetch me ? *

1 Yes, for I have thought of you by day and dreamed of you by night.'

' Where shall we go ? '

' Away from here. The wind is with us ; let us sail over the waters of the
fjord.'

' Then it is true that you love me ? '

' It is true.'

' And you will always love me ? '

' Always ! Come with me. No one will look for you ; they will think that
you have gone for a swim and are drowned. Hold up your shawl, it will make
a sail.'

Away they go over the waves, away, away ! The red house dis-
appears in the distance, and she is on her way to a far country, where
Olof lives in a little house on the edge of a steep hill.

Such dreams as these are supposed to belong only to girlhood ;
but Elli indulges in them still, and when at last she hears that her
husband's former travelling companion is actually coming to spend
the summer with them as a paying guest she believes that he has come
only for her sake, and that her secret wishes have had some strange,
inexplicable power of drawing him towards her.

Olof comes, and the former acquaintance ripens. He finds Elli
charming now that she is another man's wife, and wonders why he
had not thought so before. He is busily engaged in writing a book
on ' Woman in the Realistic Literature of France,' woman being, as
he says, a very popular subject at that time. He discusses all manner
of social questions with Elli, unhappy marriages being one of them,
and gives it as his opinion that all ill-assorted couples should separate.
He knows that she is unhappy by a kind of instinct when on first
entering the house the appearance of the dining-room oppresses him.
The colourless walls and worn-out furniture bear the stamp of uni-
formity and boredom ; he knows that they sit, year in, year out, each
in his and her own place, gazing at their plates with nothing to say,
while from time to time the silence is broken by a request to pass the
bread or the remark that there is no more butter.

Olof's artistic temperament enables him to see and to feel this
as though he had been actually present, and he encourages Elli to
tell him how she has spent her time, while he in turn confesses to her
many things which cause her to admire him for his honesty, little

788 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

realising how easy a matter it is for a man to confess faults of which
he is not in the very least ashamed. She tells him how she used to
go out alone on ski after everyone else had gone to bed, how she
wandered through the pine forests by moonlight and returned so
tired that she was cured for the time being — cured of the terrible
feeling of loneliness that haunted her.

To all that she tells him he listens with a sympathetic interest, and
gradually he teaches her to share his interests — a thing which her
husband had never attempted to do — and they read together Tolstoy's
Anna Karenina, Ibsen's Doll's House, and some of Runeberg's poems,
lingering over his lines on friendship in The Swan.

' Do you believe in a friendship such as that ? ' Elli asked, and he replied :
' I believe that it is the only thing of any value, the only thing that remains

when all else is lost and done for. It is the beginning of love, and it is love's

heir, ^yhen love dies friendship remains.'

This was exactly what Elli thought too ; she believed in it as the
realisation of the life which she had sought after, and she believed
that Olof really meant what he had said.

The italics are ours ; they emphasise the knowledge of human
nature contained in those words. If Juhani Aho describes the woman's
inner life with unflinching realism, neither does he spare his own sex,
and Olof's colossal selfishness looms large in all its cold-blooded
deformity. He realises that she must have loved him long ago in
the days before her marriage, and the thought flatters him : ' How
grandly tragic ! How she must have suffered ! ' The pity which
he might have felt for her is swallowed up in an aesthetic sense of the
fitness of things. He had read many French novels, and had felt
attracted by the passionate manner in which women of the South
expressed their feelings ; even the most ordinary revolver tragedy
delighted him ; but here was something grander still — a silent suffering
which knows nothing of the relief to be obtained by a passionate
outburst, a soul weighted by a sense of duty, a life spent in suppressing
itself. It gave him an artistic satisfaction to compare the women
of the South with the women of the North, and now for the first time
he did so to the advantage of the latter. Sometimes he, too, would
let his imagination wander, thinking how pleasant it would be to have
a secret love affair in a beautiful spot like this. What a delightful
relaxation during the intervals of work and study ! He was fully
convinced that she loved him so much that she was practically his ;
he had but to stretch out his arms and she would come ; but when he
asked himself, ' Do I love her ? ' he decided that he did not do so
sufficiently to devote himself entirely to her, while on the other hand
he loved her too much to disturb her outward peace. He thinks that
he understands her, but in reality he understands her only up to a
certain point, while she, for her part, entirely fails to understand

1904 THE LITEEATUEE OF FINLAND 789

him. She is a far simpler character than the women writers of
* human documents,' and it is a terrible shock when she discovers
that although he is not satisfied with the friendship which they have
so often discussed together he does not care for her sufficiently to be
burdened for life ; and when at last the awakening comes, and Olof
sails away in a ship without her, she is left in the old place by the
fjord, lonely as ever and more unhappy than before, because now
even her daydreams have been taken from her.

There is something restful about Juhani Aho's style ; his characters
are made to stand out against a beautiful background of never-ending
lakes and distant low-lying hills overgrown with dark pine forests.
In his next book, Panu (1898), he gives the story of the last struggle
between Christianity and heathendom. Panu, the Seer of Korpivaara,
is a picturesque figure with his long, thin, straggling black hair, and a
worthy descendant of the old magicians. His followers are large-
limbed, bearded men, clothed in furs and armed with bows and arrows,
their names having a strange sound, uncouth as themselves — Ilpo,
Kuisma, Jouko, and others. They are camping out in the snow on
their way to a fair with skins of animals for sale, their snow-shoes (ski)
are standing upright in the snow round the camp fire, and before
starting on their day's journey the men gather in a half-circle round
their leader, who half sings, half chants, a prayer to the forest god.

The book is a beautiful panorama from beginning to end, with
this peculiarity, that the scene is always laid out of doors and it is
always winter. Aho is one of the few writers who know how to
describe a northern winter without making their readers long for the
fireside, and is able instead to make them conscious of the beauty
and stillness of a great pine forest carpeted with snow where men on
ski glide noiselessly in and out among the trees, bearing torches on a
dark night.

Here ends a sketch of six authors whose works may be allowed to
speak for them. They seldom dwell on politics, have never exhibited
a revolutionary tendency, and it is extremely doubtful whether any
nation in Europe can produce six representative writers who show
less inclination to overthrow the foundations of Church and State ;
their ideals, both social and political, are based on all that is best in
Western Europe ; for ' the Finlanders have,' as a French writer puts
it, ' idealised us, and in so doing they have striven hard to live up to
their ideal.'

HERMIONE KAMSDEN.

790 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

TABLE-TALK

It was a dinner where there could not be two conversations going on, and
where even the silent take their share in the talk by their sympathy. — Lotliair.

IT was rather solemn, the Victorian dinner, and the diners felt that
they were discharging a serious function. Solemn was the old butler
with his stiff white cravat, magnificent the air with which he announced
the feast or asked you to take wine. The dinner was somewhat over-
substantial, but it was good ; and like all artistic things, it grew and
culminated when the white cloth was removed, and the feasters were
left round the mahogany to their dessert, their gentle reminiscences,
their wine, and their conversation.

Where is the solid old dining-room furniture ? Gone to make
ancient marquetry ? or is the wily collector at work quietly preparing
a boom in Early Victorian pieces ?

The dinner-table of mahogany, fine in grain, beautiful in colour,
and lustrous with much elbow grease, was a thing to see and to remem-
ber, decked with an array of dishes and wine-glasses of cut glass which
sparkled bravely, and were reflected in the board ; the decanters,
stately in their silver stalls, the collars of their respective orders
reposing on their ample breasts. Those were the days of Madeira,
not to be drunk until it had made its sea voyage ; but every wine
had its history, and the host would personally superintend the taking
down of some crusted bottle to celebrate the advent of an old friend.

The table recalls an old-fashioned hospitality, hard to beat at its
best, and much good talk. Do people talk now ? Is conversation
going out of fashion ? There is plenty of chatter, plenty of rattle,
plenty of one man's or one woman's insistence on some instrument of
two sous, with abundance of tags and rags and little baby talk. But
do people talk in the sense in which they talked at the poet Rogers's
breakfast parties, or at the late Lord Houghton's table, or round
George Eliot's simple board ? We very much doubt if they do. Good
conversation implies the ability to listen, the desire to understand,
the desire to strike sparks out of good metal ; it demands a lively
interest, a real sympathy, and at its highest is surely the most delight-
ful of intellectual stimulants. Like all good things, restraint is of its

1904 TABLE-TALK 791

essence, and all participants should be alert, sympathetic, and
modest.

Those who are actively engaged in the fray can nardly judge of
the consummate art with which the skilful host or hostess throws the
shuttle from one to another, checks the refractory man, and changes
the venue if the subject grows stale or the discussion overheated,
leading the eager coursers, without perceptible break, down a fresh
alley after new game. It is a pretty sport in which women far
excel men : they have a tact, a nimbleness of wit, a spontaneity, as
cooling and refreshing to table-talk as the dew after a burning day,
and they are helped to this by a sense of irresponsibility. Not that
all women are equally gifted in this matter. All women have not
sympathy, nor have all women understanding, and the hostess who
leads the conversation round her table must be a woman of parts.
But there are other types. There is the hostess, ' the most delightful
woman in London to talk across.' That is the type receptive ; it
demands an ' air,' and is perhaps somewhat languorous and over-
appreciative, but it is sympathetic and the conversation flourishes.
The hostess who cavils at everything that is said cuts off the timid
little shoots of speech made by her guests, and effectively prevents
them from being merry, entertaining, or interesting.

But why is it that conversation has gone out of fashion ? The
first thing that must occur to everyone is that no one can possibly
talk in a restaurant, and as the fashion now is to dine in restaurants,
with the clatter of other tables about you, and the clash of music to
boot, no one desires to talk himself, or, indeed, can hear if anyone else
talks.

There are two things which should be intimate and secluded — a
garden and a dinner-table. There cannot be a garden — a true garden
— without trees to act as shelter and a screen. The more completely
the garden is enclosed and sheltered from outside observation the
more perfect a garden will it be, and so with a dinner-table. It should
be private, as secluded as possible ; set in surroundings as individual
as possible. The hangings and pictures on the walls, the colour of
the curtains, the ware on the table, the very chairs, all enter into the
flavour of th,e dishes, and assist or injure the conversation. That the
table should Tbe on a luxurious scale is not at all necessary. Simplicity
and luxury are both good in their places and on occasion, but the values
must be kept right, or the sense of harmony will be destroyed. A soupe
maigre and a dish of turtle have almost equal merits, but each of them
strikes a definite note which must be considered throughout the repast.
Doubtless the experienced diner-out will have his anecdotes attuned
to the one or the other. It is quite certain that potage bonne femme
suggests a different type of conversation from clear turtle, while canvas-
backed duck requires something exuberant and exotic. Here one
may be permitted to say that whatever the scale of the dinner, whether

792

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Nov.

simple or elaborate, anecdotes need to be kept in strictest restraint, like
the airs in a modern opera. Anecdotes are the bane of conversation,
which requires two, three, four, or even more performers, and is more
like a fugue in four or in eight parts than a solo. This, however, is a
counsel of perfection.

Every dinner-table then should have a personal note, ranging it
may be from the bit of curly mutton and the custard apple to the
feasts on an elaborate scale. But if restaurant dinners have dealt
a serious blow to conversation, there are other causes of decay. ' Shop '
has always been the greatest foe to good talk — shop of any kind,
legal, parliamentary, or artistic. But a new kind of shop has arisen
more engrossing and crushing than any yet known. I mean the
' shop ' of sport. How many families there are in England in which
nothing is heard round the dinner-table but chatter of cricket and
football averages or the ' kill' with rod or gun. The mother is often to
be seen painfully acquiring these wearisome statistics, which she does
to please the young people. But she makes a great mistake, for
leaving out of consideration the stranger within her gates, to whom
all this can afford but poor entertainment, the mother should be
hostess at her own table, and can make the talk gay and interesting
if she will take the trouble and keep the schoolboy shop within reason-
able limits. Boys and girls, brought up never to hear anything else,
cease to be able to talk rationally on any subject, and the disability
continues into mature life. The writer once heard a tradesman say
to his wife a propos of some entertainment to which both were invited :
' What's the good of your going ; you can't sustain a conversation,
you know you can't.' * That's true,' answered the wife with a
sweet smile. ' I know I can't, but I like to listen to those as can.'
A pretty reply on the part of the wife ; but since that episode it is
impossible not to divide the world into those ' as can ' sustain a con-
versation and those ' as can't.'

The French have some dinner-table conventions which to us would
seem strange. At any small gathering of eight or ten persons the talk
is always supposed to be general, the individual who should try to
begin a tete-a-tete conversation with the person sitting next at table
would soon find out his mistake. Conversation, general conversation,
is part of the repast, like the bread, the salt, or the wine, and is common
to all. What admirable talk you will hear at the table of the smallest
bourgeoisie, bright, sparkling, full of mother wit and good sense ; and
the delight in a happy saying runs round the table and stimulates
afresh. This in spite of the presence of the children, who are not
always well behaved, and the evident cares of bread which possess the
hostess. The French love to speak well, and rightly consider their
language to be a most beautiful and flexible instrument for social
purposes. They take pains therefore to pronounce the words well,
and to play on them with grace and dexterity. You may often hear

1904 TABLE-TALK 793

after such an entertainment as I have described, Ce n'est pas bien
parler, in criticism of an awkward, ugly phrase.

But how can good conversation be defined ? like many other
good things, it is easier to say what it is not than what it is. It might
seem that the man with a subject must certainly' talk well and be
interesting. Alas ! he is often inarticulate, and, if he can talk, talks
only too well. A solo on the trombone is not conversation, though
it may be used as a leitmotif in skilful hands. But besides the inter-
esting topic and the wise saying, there is the shrewd hit, the happy
rejoinder, and on all sides lie the graceful, the unexpected, the fan-
tastic. Conversation has its allegro, as well as its penseroso, its andante
and its scherzo. Perhaps the essential elements of good table-talk are
these :

That the talkers should themselves feel an^interest in what they
say.

That they should be able to talk, i.e. to make expression clear,
brilliant, and effective.

Here, perhaps, lies the difficulty with the English people. The
mangling of our poor mother tongue has reached great lengths ; not
only in pronunciation, by the clipping of words in the upper classes,
and by the loss of the th and the r in the uneducated, but by sheer
impoverishment of speech. In the streets of our great towns there
is but one adjective to express all shades of feeling ; there are not
very many to be heard in gilded circles. Lord Beaconsfield, we know,
limited the English language to four words, ' to which some gram-
marians add fond.' That, to-day, would be a large vocabulary.

What a pleasant shock it gives one to come to the country and
hear some real old English spoken with individuality and conviction.
What a rich spice and flavour it gives to speech, and of what impor-
tance it must be to the mental processes. Mr. Wells warns us ' That
a gap in a man's vocabulary is a hole and tatter in his mind ; . . .
words he has not signify ideas that he has no means of clearly appre-
hending ; they are patches of imperfect existence, factors in the total
amount of his personal failure to live.' And again, ' In England,
at any rate, if one talks beyond the range of white-nigger English
one commits a social breach.' It would certainly seem that at the
time of England's greatest vitality her superabundance of life found
expression in the greatest of her poets with his amazing wealth of
words. But is not life tingling to-day with emotion, with the strange
sense of impending events and unexpected discoveries ? Why have
we lost the gift of verbal expression ?

Travellers must have noticed that Americans, men and women,
always arrest attention when they speak. They pitch the note of
speech in high tones commonly, and speak with deliberation : but
in what they say there is simplicity, freshness, conviction ; there is
no pattern of stale slang words to be copied, but every individual

VOL. LVI— No. 333 3 G

79-1 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

chooses his expressions to suit his mood and the occasion. They
manage to put simple things freshly ; as when the American lady
said that ' though she had crossed the Atlantic nine times she had
never called for a storm pan once.' Our indolence in speech is the
reason why so many good old words which we could ill spare have
gone to America and are lost to us. Who knows to-day what are
the devels of an orange or the strigs of a bunch of grapes ?

But we must go to the French if we want sage advice about the
art of table-talk. Ne pas pontifier : ne pas trop appuyer : are counsels
which lead up to the famous aphorism Uart d'ennuyer c'esl de tout dire.
Ne pas souligner is advice to actors, but may very well be applied
to private life. But, on the other hand, lest the courtesies and graces
of life should be curtailed by these stringent criticisms, we have
Tout ce qui va sans dire, va encore mieux en le disant. II s'ecoute trop
is a delicate warning to the sententious ; as also II chante quand il
parle. These are admirable antidotes to the over-emphatic, the
insistent, or the dominating. There is a still more suggestive phrase
which we quote in English, ' That the man who never says a foolish
thing in conversation will never say a wise one.' To be simple,
natural, easy, gay, might be a shorter catechism for beginners until
they reach those higher planes for which age and experience alone
qualify. They would be spared such a rebuff as the following :

A young Parisian at lunch had been holding forth for the good
half of an hour on a play he had seen, the story, the socialist tenden-
cies of the piece, the acting. Everyone round the table had seen the
play, which failed to interest them. They were naturally bored.

' Mais, mon cher monsieur,' said the pretty young hostess, ' c'est
done une conference votre piece.'

A neatly turned ' mot ' which extinguished the orator.

After all, we need good table-talk from a literary point of view.
The spoken word and the written word are two distinct influences ;
in the spoken word we have that which can hardly bear the formality
of pen and paper. Judgment of men and things, delicacies of feeling
and criticism, most precious in themselves, will easily evaporate in a
paragraph. Writers who have tried to give to the general public
some idea of the charm of the conversation of the late Lord Bowen
must have felt how all that was graceful and fantastic in it eluded
them, how despairing a task it was to set it down in black and white.
Why is it that to-day, when there is so much skill in the written word,
the spoken word is neglected — that we make articulate noises, but have
given up talking ?

A great French critic, in making the eloge of La Fontaine, said of
him, quoting the poet's own words :

Sa muse aimable et nonchalante
Laisso tomber les fleurs et ne les rcpancl pas.

1904

TABLE-TALK

795

That surely is the right note for conversation. If men talked in
paragraphs, with commas, colons, and semicolons, in set pieces of
pyrotechnic brilliancy, conversation would become a bore and the
dinner-hour a nightmare. But that men and women should give us
of their best, their charm, their gaiety, their humour, and their wisdom,
that is the ideal of table-talk ; and as the English are apt to be some-
what heavy-handed, we would add that the petals from the flowers of
speech should fall lightly, naturally, not be scattered broadcast or
hurled at our heads. We want no battle even of flowers.

ETHEL B. HARRISON.

3 a 2

796

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Nov.

SJJR ROBERT WILSON

A FORGOTTEN ADVENTURER

AMONG the minor characters crowded upon the stage for the perform-
ance of the Napoleonic drama few are to be seen so incessantly in
action as Sir Robert Thomas Wilson ; none seems to be so perpetually
on the brink of violent death by land or sea in the service of his country.
Was there a risky reconnaissance to be made upon the line of the
enemy's advance ? Wilson was the officer appointed to the task.
Did a minister stand in need of a secret emissary to a foreign court,
who so ready as Wilson to run the hazard of being captured and shot
as a spy ? It is tantalising to think what romance Alexandre Dumas
might have woven out of the bare narrative of his adventures. The
mine haa never been rightly worked ; for, although Wilson's nephew,
the Rev. Herbert Randolph, compiled from his uncle's voluminous
journals and correspondence what was intended to be his full biography,1
he only carried the narrative down to the year 1807 ; whereas Wilson
lived till 1849, and some of the most exciting episodes of his career
must be searched out of a variety of scattered records. The third
volume, which Randolph promised should ' fitly commence the history
of ministerial wrong in the distribution of the rewards of service,'
never was published. Better so, perhaps, seeing that no subject
affords less attractive reading than exhumed grievances.

The name standing at the head of this paper revives, in the minds
of most Englishmen, no distinct personality. The present generation
may almost claim to feel personal acquaintance with many of Wilson's
contemporaries and employers — Canning, of flashing wit and uncertain
temper; Sir John Moore, that fascinating blend of gentleness and
fiery impatience ; Wellington, with his curt, cold interrogatives ;
Picton, with his quaint expletives and uncouth headgear; kindly,
homely, ' Daddy ' Hill ; icy, inflexible Craufurd ; so clearly have these
and other individualities been brought out in history and memoir.
But Wilson they have dismissed from remembrance ; or, at least,
they forget how various and how valuable were his services, recollecting
little more than the disfavour and professional disgrace which he
incurred by indiscreet zeal in the cause of Queen Caroline.

1 Life of General Sir Robert Wilson (Murray, 1862).

1904 SIB BOBEBT WILSON 797

Yet nobody can have stirred the records of the first quarter of the
nineteenth century without constantly coming across Wilson's name
and work, nor have failed to speculate in passing why Wilson, although
loaded with titles and decorations by foreign sovereigns (in days
when these honours were far more charingly bestowed than they are
now), never received the slightest recognition of that kind from his
own king. Even the knightly prefix ' Sir ' before Eobert Wilson's
name was of exotic origin, indicating the knighthood conveyed with
the cross of the Order of Maria Theresa, bestowed upon him, at the
age of twenty-one, by the Emperor Francis the Second for gallant
conduct in the field. This distinction also carried with it the here-
ditary rank of Baron of the Holy Roman Empire, and subsequent
promotion in the Order raised Wilson to the degree of Count, had he
cared to claim it.

Other foreign orders followed thick and fast, bringing into striking
relief the omission of Wilson's name from the honours list of his own
sovereign. , •• >>»]

1801. Knight of the Turkish Order of the Crescent, for the Egyptian Campaign
under Abercrombj-.

1806. Cross of the Russian Order of St. George, for services at the battle of
Eylau.

1811. Knight Commander of the Portuguese Order of the Tower and Sword,
with war medal, for services in command of the Lusitanian Legion.

1813. Knight Commander of the Russian Order of St. George ; Grand Cross of
the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle ; and promotion to Knight Com-
mander of the Austrian Order of Maria Theresa ; all for services at the
battles of Ltitzen and Bautzen.

Grand Cross of the Russian Order of St. Anne and the Moscow Medal
(which no other British officer was ever entitled to wear), for services
as British Commissioner with the Russian Army during Napoleon's
invasion of Russia.

Mr. Randolph, in the introduction to his uncle's Life, attributes
Wilson's ' exclusion from the customary rewards of conspicuous
merit ' to the ' determined and systematic injury of successive Govern-
ments on party grounds ; ' but this can scarcely be reconciled with
Wilson's frequent employment by Canning on confidential missions,
and by Castlereagh after Canning's resignation in 1809. Wilson
continued a keen Canningite in politics till 1827, when he was busily
employed in helping Canning to form an administration. Canning,
therefore, had every reason to befriend his follower ; yet Randolph
can mean no other than Canning in his allusion to ' the man who
resented it [party spite] with vehement indignation, and denounced
it with impassioned eloquence when it was the act of political adver-
saries against a political and personal friend, inflicted the same injury
when those relations were altered in after years, and when he had
himself succeeded to ministerial power.' But by that time Canning,
however anxious to befriend his follower, had to reckon with George

798 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

the Fourth, whom Wilson had irremediably offended by his champion-
ship of Queen Caroline. Canning's own part in connection with that
deplorable affair was too recent, and too little to his sovereign's liking,
to make it prudent for the Minister to refresh his master's memory on
the subject.

A review of Sir Robert Wilson's career, one of the most adventurous
in the history of any nation, does not help much to an explanation of
the mixture of confidence and distrust shown to him by his employers.
Born in Bloomsbury in 1777, he was the son of Benjamin Wilson, a
man of many attainments. Benjamin was simultaneously portrait
painter, sculptor, electrician, and theatrical manager, while his pro-
ficiency in chemistry, and especially in electrical research, won for
him in 1760 the gold medal of the Royal Society, whereof he had been
elected a Fellow. Robert Wilson was educated at the public schools
both of Westminster and Winchester. At the age of seventeen he
presented in person to George the Third a memorial recalling the
favour shown to his father by his Majesty, and praying for a commission
in the Guards. The King took the memorial as he was going into
chapel at Windsor, and sent reply by an equerry : ' Tell him Frederick
will provide for him.'

Now Frederick was the Duke of York, at that time (1794) con-
ducting one of his inglorious campaigns in Flanders ; and to Flanders
the lad betook himself, despite the remonstrance of his guardian and
friends. The British Army at that time had become sorely discredited
as an opening for steady young men. The Duke gave him a cornetcy
in the 15th Light Dragoons ; and, before Wilson had time to get his
uniform fitted or learn his drill, he was engaged at the storm and sack
of Fremont on the 17th of April, which opened his eyes to the nature
of real work, as it was then understood and practised.

Fremont having been carried by assault, I was told that the lives of the
survivors, the persons of the women, and the property of everyone, became the
lawful spoil of the conqueror. . . . The distress of the poor children, amidst
the tears of their parents and their burning homes, the carnage, roar of cannon,
confusion and violence, particularly moved my pity.

For twenty years to come Wilson was to pass his life among such
scenes, and worse ; yet his heart never hardened against the victims
of war.

He had not been a month in the King's service before he earned
his first distinction in a gallant affair. On the 24th of April two
squadrons of the 15th and two squadrons of the Leopold Hussars
were sent forward under the Hungarian General Otto to reconnoitre
the enemy near Cambray. They found him in unexpected force of
all three arms at Villiers-en-Couche ; and it was clear that the Emperor
of Austria, then on his way to Catillon, must be taken unless the
French left could be forced back. Not a moment was to be lost ;

1904 SIB ROBERT WILSON 799

Otto had demanded reinforcements, but they had not come up. He
ordered an immediate charge. The four squadrons dashed upon the
French infantry and artillery with such suddenness and momentum
as to shatter the line ; passed through it, routed a column of cavalry
in rear, and drove the fugitives four miles, till Bouchain's guns
arrested the pursuit. Otto's 300 sabres accounted for 1,200 killed
and wounded of the enemy ; three "guns were taken ; the French
posts were withdrawn, and Francis the Second passed on his journey
in safety. In recognition of this brilliant exploit, the Emperor caused
nine gold medals to be struck : one was consigned to the Imperial
Cabinet, the others were bestowed upon the eight British officers of
the 15th (Wilson being one of them) ; a decoration which George the
Third granted them permission to wear ' as an honorary badge of
their bravery in the field.' 2 In addition to this, as mentioned above,
these lucky officers received from the grateful Emperor crosses of the
Order of Maria Theresa. It would be difficult to find another instance
of the fortune of war being so free of her favours towards the ' boots '
of a regiment.

This was one of the few bright lights upon a very gloomy canvas.
In truth the British Army, during this dismal campaign, was at the
lowest ebb of efficiency and prestige. The men were of sterling stuff ;
but the officers, taken as a whole, were a scandal to any service.
Wilson frequently expresses disgust at their almost universal drunken-
ness.

At that time it was the fashion to drink as drunkards daily, and the drink
was strong port wine instead of the pure vintage of France. . . . What shocked
me most was to see courts-martial adjudging men to be punished for an offence
of which the members themselves had often been guilty at the same time, and
from which they had frequently not recovered when passing sentence. I hope
the day will come 3— and it seems to be advancing — when such a statement will
be deemed the assertion of an impossibility, or, in plain English, an outrage
against truth and the honour of the army.

This may seem an exaggerated impression upon the sensibilities
of a lad fresh from home ; but there was another young soldier with
the army, who has never been accused of yielding to emotion, yet
who tells much the same story. Arthur Wesley, to be better known
as Wellesley and Wellington, was in command of the 33rd Regiment,
being of the fine age of five-and-twenty. He has testified that, during
this campaign, he often saw despatches, brought in to officers at table,
flung aside till the drink was finished, when they received such atten-
tion as their recipients might be in a condition to give.

Like Charles Napier, and probably many other humane and
cultivated British officers, Wilson never overcame the horror he

- London Gazette, June 9, 1798.

3 To this passage in his fragmentary narrative Wilson appends the following note :
' It has almost come. October 14, 1824.— B. W.'

800 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

experienced on becoming acquainted with the sickening methods
which were then thought essential to discipline.

At the same time that the British soldiers were maintaining with such
devoted fortitude the glory of England, their camps daily presented the most
disgusting and painful scenes of punishment. The halberds were regularly
erected along the lines every morning, and the shrieks of the sufferers made a
pandemonium, from which the foreigner fled with terror and astonishment at
the severity of our military code.

Wilson returned to the subject in his Inquiry into tJie State of the
British Army with a view to its Reorganisation, published in 1804.

Educated in the 15th Light Dragoons, I was early instructed to respect the
soldier. That was a corps before which the triangles were never planted ; where
each man felt an individual spirit of independence, and walked erect as if con-
scious of his dignity as a man and a soldier. . . . Corporal punishments never
yet reformed a corps, but they have totally ruined many a man who would have
proved under milder treatment a meritorious soldier. They break the spirit
without amending the disposition.

It may easily be imagined that a young officer, bold enough to
proclaim in print such revolutionary views, earned disapproval and
distrust at the Horse Guards, which may account for the military
authorities having withheld from him all honorary distinction ; but
the cause of his cold treatment by ministers, who constantly made
use of his zeal and intrepidity in later years, must be sought elsewhere.

After the affair of Villiers-en-Couche, Wilson's regiment was en-
gaged in all the numerous actions which took place until the disastrous
retreat of the Allies upon Templeuve on the 18th of May, during
which Wilson commanded the rearguard. It was a terrible affair ;
the Duke of York was within an ace of being captured ; and so dire
was the extremity of the Allies that, as Wilson records with horror,
they slaughtered all their prisoners. The victory at Pont-a-Chin on
the 22nd of May, where the French had about one hundred thousand,
the Allies eighty thousand engaged, turned the tide of the campaign
for a while.

On the 22nd of July Captain Calcraft and Lieutenant Wilson, having
been directed to patrol with a squadron of the 15th in the direction
of Boxtel, rode right into that town, where Pichegru had his head-
quarters. Pichegru himself was absent, but the little peloton scattered
his staff, captured an aide-de-camp and two gendarmes, mounted them
on the general's horses, and brought them safely to the British camp,
hotly pursued by two French cavalry regiments. Exploits like this,
though they contributed little to the fortunes of the Allies, kept up
their spirits and brought Wilson into notice as a most daring, cool-
headed officer.

The Duke of York having been recalled from the command in the

field of which he had proved so wofully unfit,4 and the British Army

4 This was the campaign in which the Duke of Wellington told Lord Mahon he

1904 SIR ROBERT WILSON 801

having been driven out of Holland, the 15th remained in Germany
till the spring of 1796, when they embarked for England. Wilson
purchased his troop, and became engaged to the beautiful Miss Jemima
Belford. She was a ward in Chancery and under age ; Wilson, also,
was only twenty ; wherefore, with full consent of their guardians and
friends, the young couple made formal elopement to Gretna Green,
where they went through a provisional marriage ceremony, to be
ratified the following year by the rites of the Church of England in
St. George's, Hanover Square.

Wilson, although devoted to his wife, remained faithful to his
first love — his profession. Scarcely was the second marriage ceremony
over, than he went off on General St. John's stafi to Ireland, and
acted as brigade-major and aide-de-camp during the suppression of
the rebellion. No sooner was that grim service discharged, than he
rejoined the 15th, then under orders for service at the Helder, and
shared the laurels won by that fine corps at Egmont-op-Zee. Wilson
was back in England in November, but, hearing that Sir Ralph Aber-
crornby was about to lead an expedition against the French in Italy,
he purchased the majority of Hompesch's Hussars.

Abercromby's destination having been altered to Egypt, Wilson,
with all the ardour of two-and-twenty, pressed on at speed to overtake
him. Travelling through Italy was no child's play. Twice he was all
but lost at sea — once, when his impetuosity and guineas persuaded
some fishermen to put out in a gale, and the boat was cast ashore at
Messina — again when, having taken passage in a brig, she was saved
by a sudden change of wind from imminent shipwreck. He landed
at last in Aboukir Bay in time to take command of his hussars, and
lead them at the battle of Alexandria (on the 21st of March 1801),
where Abercromby received his death wound. He was present at the
siege and capitulation of Alexandria in August, and returned to
England after the French evacuation of Egypt. He published a
history of the campaign, which ran through several editions, attracting
much attention by reason of the charges of cruelty which it contained
against Bonaparte, accusing him of having poisoned his prisoners at
Jaffa wholesale, and of maltreating his own soldiers. These state-
ments have been vehemently repudiated ; but it is not likely that
Wilson would have made them unless he had been satisfied of their
truth, seeing that he ever had a sympathetic leaning towards revolu-
tionary and imperial France. Indeed, he sometimes expressed com-
punction about fighting for the restoration of the Bourbons, whom he
heartily detested. ' Perhaps,' he wrote in his account of the Nether-
lands campaign, * I am framing a charge against myself for engaging
in a service which aimed at the re-establishment of an unlimited
monarchy . . . but my sense of the injustice of reimposing such a

had learnt 'what one ought not to do; and that is always something.' — Stanhope's
Conversations, p. 182.

802 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

government on France was not so strong as to control my martial
inclinations.' In writing to Wilson acknowledging the gift of his
book, Nelson passed a characteristic encomium upon Abercromby.

Your gallant and ever to be lamented chief proved, by the manner in which
he fell, what an old French general said when asked what made a good or bad
general. He replied : ' Two words — allons — allez ! ' Your chief and myself
have taken the first, and victory followed; and the medal [for the affair at
Villiers-en-Couche] which you so deservedly wear proves that you have imbibed
the same sentiments.

Returning to England after the Egyptian campaign, Wilson spent
two years as inspecting officer in the south-western district. Having
purchased a lieutenant-colonelcy in the 20th Light Dragoons, he
sailed in March 1805 for the Cape of Good Hope to reinforce Sir David
Baird. The fleet, under command of Sir Home Popham, steered for
Brazil. A furious gale drove three of the ships upon the Pimental
reef, two of them becoming total wrecks. General Yorke was drowned,
and the frigate in which Wilson sailed made marvellous escape from
shipwreck. Wilson landed with his regiment in Table Bay, too late
for the decisive action of Blaauwberg, but in time to enter Cape Town
when it was taken by Sir David Baird. This brought about the
capitulation of the Dutch General Janssen and the end of the war. The
heat was very trying to the troops ; for it had not yet occurred to the
Horse Guards to attempt any adaptation of the soldier's dress to
extremes of climate, and the garb in which men and officers marched and
fought under a tropical sun was after the traditional pattern invented
by Frederick the Great for temperate regions. However, there had
been a gleam of considerate sense in a recent order by George the Third,
exempting soldiers on active service from obligation to wear the black
leather stock. When Wilson asked Sir David Baird whether his men
might discontinue this instrument of anguish, leave was peremptorily
refused. Upon Wilson referring to the King's order, Sir David
replied :' I am his Majesty here, sir ! ' * Very well, King David ! '
answered Wilson, bowing low, ' your Majesty's commands shall be
obeyed.'

By this time Wilson had run such narrow escapes by sea that he
prayed that it might be his fortune in future to serve his country on
land ; but his maritime mishaps were far from an end. In returning
from the Cape to England, he attempted to pass at nightfall when in
mid- Atlantic from one ship to another, which was not hove to as he
thought she was. Darkness came on with a rising wind ; the men
fired their last musket shot without gaining attention ; without food
or water, their situation seemed desperate ; when, by a lucky chance,
one of the convoy which had got out of her course passed near, heard
the hail, and picked up the party.

Historically, the most interesting part of Wilson's service begins
at this point in his career. He had been in England only three months

1904 5122 EGBERT WILSON 803

when he was appointed, in November 1806, on Lord Hutchinson's
staff, to proceed on a special mission to the King of Prussia. ' Surely,'
he remarks in his journal, ' there is a peculiar ill fortune that per-
secutes me in navigation.' The Astrcea frigate, in which he embarked
with his chief on the 4th of November, battled with continuous adverse
gales till the 30th ; when she was driven ashore on the island of Anhalt,
and was only got afloat again, after twenty-four hours with heavy
seas breaking over her, by the sacrifice of her masts, guns, and stores.

Thereafter Wilson's journal abounds in vivid sketches of the
various personalities with whom his duty brought him in contact.
Thus at Konigsberg :

* As Hutchinson and I were talking, a tall lean man with his hands
in his pockets rushed bolt up to us and began to speak before we
discovered that he was the King [of Prussia]. He was very civil,
but awkward in address and general manners ; and I observed a
wildness of look that I could have imagined denoted an insane state
of mind.' But Wilson adds the tantalising words : ' I shall reserve a
memorandum of characters for a separate and very private manu-
script.' Unhappily, this document, if it has been preserved, has never
been published.

Sir Robert was sent as British Commissioner to the Russian head-
quarters at Jarnova, where the commander-in-chief, Kamenskoi, had
gone mad in command of 140,000 troops, and had been replaced by
Bennigsen. He was present at the battle of Eylau on the 7th and
8th of February, taking an exceedingly active part in the Operations,
and claiming the result of that most sanguinary conflict as a Russian
victory. The first note of coming trouble sounds in his journal on
the 30th of March.

I cannot express the anxiety felt by the Eussians for some active co-operation
on the side of England. If we do not assist her with troops, in the case of con-
tinuing the war, we shall become in her eyes a despicable ally and a mercenary
people, seeking colonies for private advantage, instead of assisting the common
cause of Europe. I really am often exposed to much mortification by their
reflections on our supineness.

Both the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, oppressed
with a sense of hopelessness in their struggle with the tremendous
power of France, had begun to entertain a deep resentment against
Great Britain, on account of her inactivity by land. Forgetting the
supreme value of England's mastery of the sea, the cost at which she
had won and was maintaining it, not to mention the copious subsidies
by which King George's Ministers had enabled them to keep the field,
these crowned heads were preparing to betray the alliance and make
their own terms with Napoleon. This feeling grew ever more bitter,
until Bennigsen was outgeneralled and his army destroyed at Fried-
land on the 14th of June ; when negotiations were opened, leading to

804 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

the famous treaty of Tilsit, when England was thrown over and her
Ministers rigorously excluded from all knowledge of its secret clauses.

The means by which Canning obtained information of the tenour
of this agreement has ever remained an attractive mystery, whereof
many explanations, more or less fanciful, have been offered. He had
been but three months at the Foreign Office when he received warning
that the secret clauses bound the Emperor of Russia and the Emperor
of the French in hostile alliance against England ; and that Sweden,
Denmark, and Portugal were to close their ports and declare war
against her also. Canning took action upon this information with a
lightning vigour that has contributed more to his renown than all his
wit and eloquence, or his later influence upon European politics. The
evidence was not complete ; nothing could be laid before Parliament
to justify his action ; but by the 5th of September Copenhagen was
in the hands of Lord Cathcart, and the British ensign was flying at
the peak of every Danish man-of-war. Had he hesitated Great
Britain was lost ; for the old Northern confederacy was on the point
of revival, without a ray of hope from the action of Austria.

Canning's promptness implies perfect confidence in his informants.
Who were they ? Not Lord G. Leveson-Gower nor Lord Hutchinson.
Their despatches may be searched in vain for any light upon the
source of Canning's knowledge of the purport of the secret clauses.
He was made aware of the conference having taken place by Lord
G. Leveson-Gower's despatch from Memel dated the 26th of June,
which reached the Foreign Office on the 16th of July. On the same
day Canning received a letter dated Memel, the 26th of June, written
by one who had been present at the Battle of Friedland on the \kth, and
concluding in these words :

After the army had crossed the Memel, General Bennigsen sent Prince
Lobanoff to Bonaparte to propose an armistice, which has been agreed to ; and
yesterday an interview took place at Tilsit on a pont volant in the middle of the
river between Bonaparte and the Emperor of Russia. They separated on the
most amicable terms. As soon as the negotiation began, Lord Hutchinson left
the army.

The writer of this letter could hardly be another than Sir Robert
Wilson, who took a very active part in the Battle of Friedland.5
On the 21st of July Canning received more detailed information.

Intelligence reached me yesterday direct from Tilsit that, at an interview
which took place between the Emperor of Russia and Bonaparte on the 25th of
last month, the latter brought forward a proposal for a maritime league against
Great Britain, to which the accession of Denmark was represented by Bonaparte
to be as certain as it was essential."

4 Dr. Holland Eose argues that it must have been <a Eussian officer, because the
writer, in describing the battle, speaks of ' we ' [English Historical Keview, October
1901], but all the evidence points to Wilson.

6 Canning to Brooke Taylor, Ambassador at Copenhagen. — Foreign Office
Records.

1904 SIB EGBERT WILSON 805

Later, on the 5th of August, he mentions to Leveson-Gower that
he has received ' multiplied and concurrent intelligence ' which would
have ' left the British Government without excuse had they delayed
to take action. ' 7 It is certain that the Court of Portugal was one
source of this intelligence ; Talleyrand, who signed the treaty, was
quite capable of being another ; but who was the first to put Canning
on his guard ? Wilson left Tilsit for Memel on the 19th of June ; on
the 28th he mentions that a British agent named Mackenzie had just
' brought accurate reports of the proceedings of the dishonoured
Emperor of Russia and Buonaparte ; ' and on the 1st of July Lord
G. Leveson-Gower directed Mackenzie to be ready to carry despatches
to England. On the 8th Wilson, no longer able to restrain his im-
patience, disguised himself, first as a foreign private gentleman, then
as a Cossack, and entered Tilsit. Every Englishman had received
notice to quit that place ; had Wilson been discovered his shrift must
have been a short one. He would have suffered as a spy. Never-
theless, he swaggered about for a whole day among the French and
Russian officers who were fraternising there during the armistice.
His eager eyes were here, there, and everywhere.

About half-past seven, after a very long conference, the sovereigns appeared
on horseback. Buonaparte was in the middle, the Emperor of Russia on his
left, the Russian, French and Prussian guards intermingled in the same order.
Behind Buonaparte also rode many officers — marshals of France — but dis-
guised by their gingerbread clothes, and failing of the least resemblance to
warriors. Buonaparte was grossly corpulent. . . . his face was very pale and
unhealthily full. He was plainly dressed, with a cocked hat worn as the old
Frederick wore it ; and he had only a star to distinguish him. He was mounted
on a little black Arab horse. The Emperor of Russia was majesty itself. He
presented a nobility of air and mien which astonished me, and I heard all the
French express their admiration.

Murat ' was dressed exactly like our May-day chimney-sweepers,
except that the cloth of his coat was blue. ... So thorough a cox-
comb I never beheld.*

Wilson wrote a description of what he had seen to Count Woronsow,
in London, who, replying on the 4th of August, reproached him ear-
nestly for his rashness. * J'ai montre votre lettre a Mr. Canning, qui
en a ete tres content. Je puis vous assurer qu'il a beaucoup d'estime
pour vous.'

The conference of crowned heads being at an end, Wilson went
to St. Petersburg, and was employed throughout the winter of 1807-8
in carrying confidential despatches between Gower and Castlereagh.
One of his journeys was momentous in its consequences. Despite the
treaty and its secret clauses, so hostile to England, negotiations had
been maintained between the British and Russian Governments,
Wilson himself being received to several interviews with the Emperor

7 Canning to Brooke Taylor, Ambassador at Copenhagen. —Foreign Office Records.

806 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Nov.

Alexander, whom he regarded as a mere tool in Napoleon's hand.
On the 7th of November he received secret intelligence that Alexander
was about to invade Swedish Finland, and to fulfil his compact with
Napoleon by declaring war against Great Britain. Wilson at once
informed Leveson-Gower, who charged him with despatches to the
King of Sweden and to Canning. A Russian courier had got six-and-
thirty hours' start of him. It was important that Wilson should reach
Stockholm first, which he did by crossing the Gulf of Bothnia in a
small boat, under extreme stress of weather, as usual. He won the
race ; sent warning to the King, sailed in the Snipe gun-brig for
England, landed at Darlington on the 30th of November, posted
250 miles to London, and roused Canning from bed at four in the
morning of the 2nd of December. Next day he went to breakfast
with Canning, who warmly thanked him for his alacrity, which had
enabled the admiral at Portsmouth to seize a Russian frigate carrying
specie, and to send by a fast sailing frigate instructions to Sir Sidney
Smith to intercept the Russian fleet.

In the following year, 1808, the Lusitanian Legion was put under
command of Sir Robert Wilson. This was a corps formed in England
of 3,000 Portuguese refugees, under British officers, for service in the
Peninsula. Landing in Portugal in August, Wilson received the
Portuguese rank of Brigadier-General, and was constantly employed
with this force, which he brought to a high degree of efficiency, until
it was absorbed in the reorganised Portuguese army in 1810. The
services of the Legion are fully described in Napier's History. Welling-
ton warmly acknowledges Wilson as very ' active, intelligent, and
useful. Before the battle of the 28th [Talavera] he had pushed his
parties almost to the gates of Madrid, with which city he was in com-
munication, and he would have been in Madrid, if I had not thought
it proper to call him in, in expectation of that general action which
took place on the 28th of July. . . . Throughout the service he has
shown himself to be an active and intelligent partisan, well acquainted
with the country in which he was acting, and possessing the con-
fidence of the troops which he commanded.' 8 High praise, this, from
a general who was ever sparing in encomium. It obtained for Wilson
his promotion to the rank of colonel, and the only complimentary
distinction he ever received from his own Government, namely, the
appointment of aide-de-camp to the King.

Limitations of space compel me to pass very briefly over Wilson's
adventures during the two years following upon the absorption of
the Lusitanian Legion ; although during that time he took part in
the most appalling episode in the history of modern Europe. In
March 1812 he was attached, with the local rank of brigadier-general,
to the embassy of Sir Robert Listen at Constantinople, and was
charged with successive missions to the Grand Vizier at Schumla, to

8 Wellington's Despatches, v. 67.

1904 SIR ROBERT WILSON 807

Tchichagoff commanding the Russian army of the Danube, and to the
Emperor Alexander at St. Petersburg. In passing to the capital he
indulged his insatiable military ardour by taking an active part in
the Battle of Smolensk on the 16th of August. Having been received
by the Tzar on the 4th of September and executed his mission, Wilson
joined the Russian army near Moscow as British commissioner, having
Baron Brinken and Lord Tyrconnel as aides-de-camp. Kutusow, the
Russian commander-in-chief, soon forfeited the confidence of the
army, who suspected him of being in league with, or at least tenderly
disposed to, the French invaders. Bennigsen, therefore, ' with a
dozen generals,' sought an interview with Wilson, and charged him
to convey to Kutusow their determination not to permit the secret
interview which had been arranged between Kutusow and the French
general, Lauriston — an interview at which it was suspected Napoleon
himself was to be present. Wilson did not flinch from this delicate
mission. Kutusow, not unnaturally, received his communication
with ' some asperity,' but finally yielded ; and, instead of going at
midnight to meet Lauriston beyond the lines, directed him to be blind-
folded and brought to his quarters. There the Frenchman delivered
a proposal for an armistice ; which would have been all in favour of
the invaders, and which, Wilson was convinced, would have been
agreed to, but for his representation on behalf of the Russian generals.
It is difficult to refrain from quoting from Wilson's narrative of
the events of that awful winter, so vivid is his version of the oft-told
tale. The following passage from his journal written at Wilna on the
17th of December illustrates in a curious way how reluctant is human
society to abandon, even in the presence of direst disaster, those
ceremonial obligations to rank which many persons find intolerably
irksome at the best of times.

This morning I came into Wilna along a road covered with human carcases,
frozen in the contortions of expiring agonies. The entrance of the town was
literally choked with dead bodies of men and horses, tumbrils, guns, carts, &c.,
and the streets were filled with traineaus carrying off the dead that still crowded
the way. . . . Yesterday I saw four men grouped together, hands and legs
frozen, minds yet vigorous, and two dogs tearing their feet. . . . This evening
I went to the play, and was almost frozen. As it was a state occasion, I was
obliged to remain till the conclusion ; but my teeth chattered again, and when
I rose to go I could scarcely use my limbs. There was not a lady in the house,
which added to the wretchedness.9

As when the Russian army was falling back before the French
advance upon Moscow, so now, when it was hovering on the flanks
of the broken and starving host, Kutusow's generals were indignant
with their chief's half-hearted strategy. Wilson was commissioned
to convey to him a strong expression of their feelings, and to point
out that greater vigour in attack must bring about the utter

' Narrative of Events during the Invasion of Russia (Murray, 1860).

808 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

destruction of the enemy. Kutusow's answer, if Wilson is to be
credited, was as frank as it was startling to the British commissioner.
He agreed that the French army was at his mercy, ' but,' he said in
effect, ' who will benefit if I destroy the military power of France ?
Will it not be England, already mistress of the seas ? If France is
destroyed, England will be mistress of the land also.'

Not till after the campaign of 1813 do we get a hint that Wilson
does not stand so well with his own government as he does with
foreign rulers. Commissioner with the Russian army till the end of
August, when he was shifted to the Austrian headquarters in Bohemia,
our war eagle has shaken his plumes over all the great battlefields
of that most thunderous year — Liitzen, Bautzen, Dresden, Kulm,
Kraupen, and Leipzig. The Tzar had called him in front of his
Imperial Guard and with his own hands decorated him with a knight
commander's Cross of St. George. Suddenly comes an order from
London, directing Wilson to go as commissioner to the Austrian army
in Italy, making way for Lord Burghersh, who has been appointed
to Bohemia. Thereupon, mighty stir among the crowned heads
assembled for the final crushing of France. What ! remove our
Wilson, without whom we should have been vanquished at Leipzig
(so Schwartzenberg declared to Aberdeen) ? Wilson, whose craft and
tact in council have prevented us falling out among ourselves ? Wilson,
who, as Aberdeen wrote to Castlereagh, ' is able to do a thousand
things which no one else could do ? ' Surely you will not take away
from us our only man of brains and wit ! If Wilson, replied Castle-
reagh coldly, has the confidence of all other governments, he wants
that of his own. Moreover, he must begone before Burghersh arrives,
else will there be sparks flying. So at least seems imminent from the
terms of a private note from Castlereagh to Aberdeen, the 10th of
December 1813.

I forward by this messenger the official order to Sir Rt. Wilson to proceed
to the Army of Italy. If he is already gone, the letter will authorise what has
been done. If not, it will put an end to a state of things which I consider to be as
awkward by all the individuals as it is injurious to the authority of Government.10

Reason in all this, it might seem, for clean recalling Wilson to
England ; but not for sending a man who lacked the confidence of
his own government, with increased emoluments, to the Austrian
army in Italy, where affairs were at a peculiarly delicate crisis —
Murat coquetting with the Powers, feigning sickness, to avoid signing
away his allegiance to Napoleon. Wilson suspected his immediate
chief, Lord Cathcart, of poisoning Castlereagh's mind against him ;
but Cathcart had written to Castlereagh warm eulogy of his fiery
commissioner no longer ago than the 10th of November. Enclosing
Wilson's report of ' a gallant affair ' at Cassel, he says :

10 Foreign Office Records.

1904 SIR EOBEET WILSON 809

It has been the constant practice of the Major-General [Wilson] throughout
this and the last campaign to accompany every attack of consequence that has
taken place within his reach, and on this occasion he was with one of the storm-
ing parties. In adverting to this circumstance it is but justice to state that the
zeal, activity and intrepidity which he has displayed on every occasion have
conciliated for him the esteem of officers of every rank and nation, and have
certainly done great credit to his Majesty's service.11

Alison's reading of the riddle is probably correct. Castlereagh
was an excellent judge of the men he employed. Except his cardinal
blunder in sending Chatham to Walcheren Island, he never made a
bad appointment. He knew and valued Wilson's brilliant qualities
and extraordinary powers of observation ; but Wilson was strongly
opposed to the invasion of France. So was Lord Aberdeen, and so
were certain members of the British Cabinet. Castlereagh, on the
other hand, was resolute in his purpose of ending the Napoleonic
terror by the occupation of Paris — purpose in which he had a strong
supporter in Lord Cathcart, British plenipotentiary with the Russian
army. To Castlereagh, at all events, it appeared that Wilson, holding
views opposed to his policy, had obtained a dangerous ascendency over
the Emperors Francis and Alexander. Dazzled by his courage and skill
in the field, charmed by his wit and agreeable conversation, they listened
too readily to him when he dwelt on the marvellous recuperative power
of military France, on the terrible war which the attempt to dethrone
Napoleon must involve, and on the advantage of securing durable
peace upon the only terms to which Napoleon would listen — namely,
the integrity of France within the frontiers of the Rhine, the Alps, and
the Pyrenees. In short, Austria and Russia were on the point of
declaring their agreement upon this basis. Wilson must be removed
with all speed.

' I had promised Cathcart,' wrote Wilson, ' to come direct to Basle without
visiting Schwarzenberg, whose headquarters were on the left of the road at
Loerach. Burghersh's unhandsome remonstrances against even my appearance
in Schwarzenberg's presence induced rny commander, for the sake of keeping
peace, to urge this request. On coming near Basle I was told I must pass
through Loerach, as the guns of Hiiningen played, at half-grape distance, on the
regular chaussee ; but I preferred keeping my word. I confess that the passage
was nervous — more so than when running the Glogau gauntlet, as the distance
was less and our horses were knocked up. I calculated on leaving my carriage,
at least, as a target; but, fortunately, the enemy neither fired musketry nor
cannon against us, although they had before swept everything in motion from
the road, and although they had a good quarter of an hour's command of our
track. The people here would scarcely believe that we had passed as we
pretended.'

There was plenty of hot work for Wilson when he got to Italy. He
had to cut his way to his post, and rendered yeoman's service to the
Austrians at the Battle of Valeggio.

11 Foreign Office Records.
VOL. LVI— No. 333 3 II

810 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

' In the absence of Lord William Bentinck,' wrote Sir James Graham to
"Wilson, ' I cannot hesitate to declare that I know his impression to have been
that, on that trying occasion at Valeggio, by your signal personal courage you
saved the Austrian army. The post to be dei'ended was the key of the position
— the greater part of the Austrian army having crossed the Mincio. The
Hungarian guards were wavering: the French advancing with the utmost
energy. You walked backwards and forwards, I understood, between the
Austrian ranks ; and by your encouragement, and still more by your example,
you prevented them from giving way. ... As previously at Dresden and at
Leipzig, so on the Mincio with Marshal Bellegarde, in the face of contending
armies, your personal daring and cool courage were conspicuous, and greatly
contributed to turn the fortune of the day. I can say no more than repeat the
opinion entertained by Lord William Bentinck, that never was the honour of
the British army and character more signally upheld than by you at the battle
of Valeggio.'

Passing note may be made of evidence that Wilson was more than
merely beau sabreur. He possessed keen political insight. Fifty
years were to run before the idea of Italian unity should be realised ;
but here is what Wilson wrote in his journal six weeks after he crossed
the frontier.

I did not at first think the Italians concerned themselves much about their
political existence. I was wrong. They did feel the value of nationalisation.
Fifteen years' connection under a good government would have formed Italy
again into an independent and powerful State. The edict for its dissolution has
at length been issued. I lament the fiat, although I cannot wish its failure at
this time.

With the abdication of Napoleon, Wilson's active service came to
an end, and he was placed on half -pay ; but there was plenty of adven-
ture in store for this restless spirit. Henceforth he was a man with
a grievance. Whereas foreign Governments had made much of him,
and perhaps spoiled him, his own chiefs, civil and military, seemed
to ignore his services. In default of regular employment he got into
serious mischief. Being in Paris in 1816, he was deeply moved by
sympathy, first for Marshal Ney, on whose behalf he published a
passionate appeal to the British public, and next for General Lavalette,
who lay under sentence of death for an offence similar to Ney's.
Lavalette managed to escape from prison, like Lord Nithsdale, by the
time-honoured, always romantic, device of exchanging clothes with
his wife ; but out of Paris he could not get, for a minute descrip-
tion of his striking personality had been posted up at every gate and
circulated in the provinces. Wilson gave him asylum in his own
house ; and planned the fugitive's escape in concert with a civilian
named Michael Bruce and Captain Hely Hutchinson (afterwards
third Earl of Donoughmore), an officer on full pay in the Army of
Occupation. Wilson obtained a passport for Lavalette under a
fictitious name, lying often and boldly in the process, fitted him out
with new clothes and carried him safely to the frontier in his own
cabriolet. The offence was a very serious one ; for the plot must

1904 SIE EOBEET WILSON 811

have been detected had not Wilson availed himself of his rank and
influence as a British general. Nevertheless, popular sympathy was
all on the side of the offender. Wilson was tried before a French
tribunal ; the whole case against him was given away in a letter which
he wrote to Lord Grey,12 and which was intercepted ; he was sentenced
to and underwent three months' imprisonment.

Wilson's next scrape was a more serious one. Always a reckless
champion of the oppressed, he ardently espoused the cause of Queen
Caroline, and made himself conspicuous in the scenes caused by her
return to London in 1820.

The Queen died in 1821, but the unhappy ferment she had caused
during her troubled life was not allayed immediately. Her remains
were conveyed to Brunswick for burial, and their passage through
London was the occasion for dangerous rioting. At Cumberland Gate,
where the Marble Arch now stands, a barricade was thrown up, and
the escort was pelted with stones. The troops prepared to fire, and
did so, killing two men ; but not before Sir Robert Wilson had passion-
ately called upon the soldiers to disobey their officers. For this offence
he was dismissed from the army without trial. A Liberal historian
has denounced ' the folly of the Ministry in assenting to his dismissal ; ' 13
their reasons for doing so are fully set forth in a letter from the Duke
of Wellington to Lord Liverpool.14 An officer of the army cannot
claim the right of trial by court-martial, and recent instances abound
of the services of officers being dispensed with by the Sovereign. But
Wilson was not inclined to take his punishment ' lying down.' A
bold and fluent speaker, he had been member for Southwark since
1818. From his place in the House of Commons he challenged the
prerogative of the Crown to dismiss officers without trial. Failing of
redress, he sought relief for his injured feelings in those scenes in
which he knew so well how to find it — he took service as a volunteer
in the war in Spain of 1823.

When the Whigs at length came into power in 1830 Wilson's case
had long been a party question, and he was restored to the army with
the rank of lieutenant-general, antedated to 1825. But the same clear-
ness of conviction — the same scrupulous sense of obligation to proclaim
it — which had perhaps been the chief hindrances to his earlier career,
brought Sir Robert once more into misfortune. He denounced the
Reform Bill of 1831 as ' the initiatory measure of a republican form of
government,' and resigned his seat in Parliament. He found his new
patrons every whit as relentless in enforcing party discipline as his
old ones had been in military matters ; they deprived him of the
colonelcy of his regiment, worth 1,200Z. a year. However, this was
restored to him four years later by Lord Melbourne's Government ;
and in 1842 he received his last appointment as Governor and

12 See Annual Register, 1816. ls Walpole's England, i. 623.

14 Wellington's Despatches, 3rd series, i. 180.

3 H 2

812

THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY

Nov.

Commander-in-Chief at Gibraltar, whence he returned to die at a ripe
age in 1849.

He was buried beside his wife in Westminster Abbey — a place of
sepulture now reserved by the nation as the supreme honour for those
who have served her with most distinction. It had no special signi-
ficance in regard to Wilson, who, though he had never spared himself
and had done much splendid work, probably found a resting-place
among heroes only in virtue of his title as an old Westminster boy.

If I cannot claim to have succeeded in the purpose with which I
set out — namely, to trace to its source the secret of Wilson's disfavour
with his chiefs, military and political — I think cause has been shown
why the memory of this dauntless soldier should not be clean blown
away.

HERBERT MAXWELL.

1904

JAPANESE EMIGRANTS

COMMERCIAL success has generally been the dominating factor in
securing a nation's greatness. Its progress has been constantly west-
ward, first from Asia to Italy, then from Italy to Spain, France, and
England. Two hundred years after the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers
in New England their descendants had crossed the American con-
tinent, and President Polk, having obtained Oregon from England
and California from Mexico, began to think about trade between the
United States and China. In furtherance of this, and in order to
obtain a coaling-station and protection for the crews of shipwrecked
whaling ships, Commodore Perry was ultimately sent to Japan, with
the results that are so well known, though it was not then by any
means understood what a great opportunity for commercial enter-
prise was offered by the countries bordering on the Pacific, where about
two- thirds of the human race reside.

During the last generation the development of these countries has
been unexampled in history. Japan has become a world power,
whilst her imports from the United States alone have increased six-
fold during the last ten years. The trade of Shanghai has risen from
seventy-eight million to five hundred million taels annually, whilst such
towns as Seattle have grown from little more than a sawmill to a flourish-
ing city of over 100,000 inhabitants. Of late there has been an added
impulse given to this movement. The United States, in accordance
with their manifest destiny, have departed from their traditional policy
and annexed Hawaii, followed by the Philippine Islands. This has
caused a marked rise in land values. The value of land in San Fran-
cisco, after remaining for some time stationary, has during the last
year or two trebled in value, and the population of this town alone
increased in 1903 by 60,000 inhabitants. In fact, everything now
goes to show that the greatest commercial activity during the next
fifty years will be in the Pacific trade, instead of on the Atlantic sea-
board or on the shores of the Mediterranean.

In this development of trade the Japanese must inevitably play a
leading part, whether from their commercial foresight or forced by
the necessity of existence, for in Japan the increase of the means of
subsistence has by no means kept pace with the increase of the

813

814 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

population. It will be a surprise to most people that the calculations
of the Bureau of Agriculture of the United States show that the area
of Japan suitable for cultivation is about one-third of the size of the
State of Illinois, and yet so industrious and skilful are the Japanese
agriculturists that this limited area suffices for the support of nearly
forty-five millions of people, increasing at the rate of nearly five hundred
thousand per annum. Consequently, of all the civilised nations of
the world Japan most needs colonies. Formosa she has already
obtained, but she requires and is entitled to a more extended sphere.

At the present time, when the valour of the Japanese soldiers and
the foresight of their generals is engrossing so much attention, it may
not be out of place to consider what the Japanese emigrant is like
and what he is doing. In the first place it is necessary to clear our
minds of a very widespread misconception. The Japanese are not
Chinese. As a nation they have derived much of their arts and
literature from China, mostly by way of Korea, but they are only very
distantly related to the Chinese, from whom they are physically and
linguistically distinct. The Magyar and the Finn are their nearest
relatives in the great family of nations, and, like the Japanese, are
sprung from that great Samoyede race which still wander on the
shores of the Arctic Sea.

We have all of us heard of the opposition to foreign labour there
is in some of the countries washed by the Pacific Ocean. Parts of
Queensland have suffered severely from the restrictions enforced on
Kanaka labour, whilst many of us can remember the so-called
'* Sand Lot ' agitation against the Chinese in San Francisco, which
was probably as unfair an agitation as modern history records. The
Ohmaman had been accustomed to seek a livelihood on the Pacific
Slope, at any rate from the time following the conquests of Cortes, when
the Spaniard began to settle in the city of Mexico, and it was the
plodding industry of the Chinaman which resulted in the construction
of the railway which brought the Anglo-American. The objection
urged against the Chinaman is that he does not come to settle, and,
in addition, it must be confessed that whilst employers of Chinese
labourers admire their docility and profit by their unfailing industry,
the Chinaman does not appeal to those with whom he is brought into
the relationship which exists between Capital and Labour. He con-
tinues to wear Asiatic dress and to regard his employer and fellow-
workers with that calm and irritating superiority that is often shown
by the man who is conscious of his ancient lineage to the nouveau
riche. This exclusiveness renders it impossible to get on friendly
terms with a Chinaman, who always remains the same incomprehen-
sible Asiatic he was when he first landed in America. Chinese labour
is, in fact, a good bridge that most desire to forget as soon as it has
ceased to be useful. At the present time the Chinese in California
number about seventy thousand, of whom about thirty thousand are
in San Francisco ; from small beginnings many of them have gradually

1904

JAPANESE EMIGRANTS

815

risen until they have become large employers of labour ; but one and
all are only admitted into America under restrictive laws which are
stringently enforced.

In discussing the question of Japanese labour we are, however,
dealing with quite a new factor in the world's history. From the
time when the great Shogun lyeyasu withdrew Japan from all foreign
intercourse till within recent years the Japanese labourer was being
trained. Everything that surrounded him was regulated by a pre-
scribed ceremonial. In religion he was taught to be so tolerant that
at least once a year, in order to show his respect and sympathy with
others, he worshipped in the temples consecrated to a form of belief
that differed from his own. His natural love and veneration for his
country and its Sovereign were accompanied by gentle and respectful
treatment on the part of the rulers towards those whom they governed,
whilst the stern school of necessity made the labourer accustomed to
a life of exertion and hardship that was more severe than in most other
countries. After the time of lyeyasu till the expedition of Commo-
dore Perry none but those Japanese who owing to shipwreck or other
mischance had ceased to live in Japan were to be met with. Catha-
rine the Second of Russia appointed one of these shipwrecked mariners
Professor of Japanese at the University of Irkutsk in 1792, and three
Japanese who had drifted in a disabled ship to the shores of Canada
were brought to England in 1831. These were probably the first
Japanese in Europe since the gorgeous embassy from certain Japanese
feudal lords to the Pope in 1582.

After Commodore Perry's expedition it was some time before the
Japanese of the lower classes commenced to go abroad. In fact,
during the first twenty-two years after the signing of the treaty with
America not more than a hundred Japanese were to be found in
California. Since then they have come to America in ever-increasing
numbers, till there are at the present time, according to the Kev.
M. C. Harris, some 40,000 in California and some 80,000 in the Sandwich
Islands. The report, however, of Mr. Bellows, the United States
Consul-General at Yokohama, of those Japanese resident abroad,
taken from a return for the years 1889-1900 inclusive by Mr. Yama-
waki, of the Department of Agriculture and Commerce, is as follows :

JAPANESE SUBJECTS RESIDENT ABROAD.1

Year

Males

Females

Total

1889

13,815

4,873

18,688

1890

17,919

6,031

23,950

1895

34,332

11,945

46,277

1896

40,348

13,994

54,342

1897

43,707

15,078

58,785

1898

53,114

17,687

70,801

1899

76,633

22,406

99,039

1900

98,985

24,986

123,971

This and the following tab!c are from The Anglo-Japanese Gazette'

816

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Nov.

Whilst the destination and classification of the Japanese emigrants
in 1900 were :

Destination

On Official
Duty

Students

Merchants

Labourers
and others

United States and Colonies

46

554

3,361

86,689

Great Britain and Colonies

133

40

512

7,530

Russia and Colonies

15

65

286

3,587

Holland

4

2

—

—

France and Colonies

44

36

18

799

Portugal and Colonies

—

1

—

9

Germany

33

162

5

14

Belgium

10

5

5

1

Italy

7

—

—

6

Spain

2

—

—

—

Austria

8

13

10

5

Peru

1

—

—

693

Brazil

7.

—

—

2

Mexico

6

3

4

32

Siam

7

3

29

39

Korea

538

16

9,699

5,606

China

202

40

1,391

1,630

Total ....

1,063

940

15,320

106,642

From the first table it will be seen that in 1897 there were 58,785
Japanese, of whom 15,078 were females, residing abroad ; but three
years afterwards, in 1900, the last year for which returns are available,
the total had increased to 123,971. It will also be seen from the
second table that the great majority of these Japanese had taken up
their residence in Hawaii and California, Great Britain and her colonies
coming next with less than one-twelfth as many, followed by the
Japanese residents in Korea, Russia, and China, who are not nearly
so numerous as we should expect to find them.

As to the character of these Japanese emigrants, the Rev. M. C.
Harris, formerly of the 12th Ohio Cavalry, and now Superintendent
of the invaluable Pacific Japanese Mission, says: 'The outlook is
very hopeful. The Japanese emigrants are picked men, young and
ambitious. They are men who bring things to pass ; not a tramp
amongst them. They readily adapt themselves to local conditions,
and are all occupied and prosperous.' Mr. Bellows, the United States
Consul-General at Yokohama, confirms this, and says that the Japanese
farm labourers are able-bodied men, accustomed to a life of economy,
frugality, industry, and sobriety ; and he adds that from a Japanese
standpoint these labourers are strong, well developed, of good physique,
and healthful in Appearance. Many of these men, as was to be ex-
pected, have served as soldiers ; but in spite of their possible useful-
ness to the State in this particular the Government of Japan is disposed
to encourage emigration, and there is seldom any difficulty in obtaining
passports. Emigration companies examine the intending emigrants
to see that they can pass the requirements of the laws of the United

1904 JAPANESE EMIGRANTS 817

States, but no pecuniary help is given. Mutual assistance is common
amongst family and village communities. All the emigrants wear
the clothing of an ordinary American labourer.

The testimony of the actual employers of Japanese labourers is
also greatly in their favour, though the farm labourers from the
Southern Provinces of Japan, who form four-fifths of the Japanese
emigrants, do not present that marked intelligence which we are
accustomed to regard as the birthright of all Japanese. They are,
however, anxious to do their best, scrupulously clean in their
persons and in their dwellings, and good reasonable fellows that the
American foreman understands and sympathises with in a way that
he never could with the Chinese.

The remaining one-fifth of the Japanese emigrants belong probably
to the old Samurai class, the blood and brains of old Japan ; and whilst
they have all the qualifications of good labourers, their greater intelli-
gence soon causes them to rise, and they quickly become prosperous
and respected.

On arrival, to whatever class they belong, one of their first objects
is to learn English, and for this purpose they attend some of the self-
supporting schools of the Pacific Japanese Mission, which have an
annual attendance of about three hundred students, amongst whom
Japanese young women are by no means rare. Anyone acquainted with
the merest rudiments of the Japanese language will know of the great
difficulty which it presents to foreigners owing to the total dissimi-
larity in the expression of ideas. Consequently it is not to be wondered
at that the Japanese of the farmer class do not as a rule get much grip
of Anglo-American. The American foreman is confronted by the
difficulty that nearly every Japanese labourer knows the word ' yes,'
and is prepared to use it in reply to every question that he is asked.
The foreman's first object is consequently to find out in each gang
the Japanese whose knowledge of Anglo-American is the most exten-
sive, and then to explain what is required, leaving it to him to inter-
pret. Not infrequently after a somewhat lengthy explanation the
Japanese gang, through their interpreter, will answer, ' We understand
now what you require, and will try to do better.' And the best is that
they obviously do try — and succeed.

As for those labourers who come of the old Samurai race, they as
a rule come over in order to pay their expenses for that college educa-
tion which has been so graphically described by Mr. Lafcadio Hearn
in his Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. It takes them two or three years
to save out of their earnings the 2001. which they require; and generally,
after this is accomplished, the American foreman, to his regret, sees
these gentlemen of Japan no more. A certain proportion of them,
however, find good and distinctly remunerative employment in Cali-
fornia. These become overseers of from 200 to 300 of their countrymen,
and enter into a bond with the American foreman for the supply of

818 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

Japanese labour. Every Japanese for whom they find employment
pays them 10 cents per day, which amounts to an income by no means
to be despised. The writer was present when one of the Japanese
overseers was introduced by an American foreman to a director who
had been specially sent out from England. ' Tabe,' said the American,

* this is a big boss sent out from England to see what we are doing.'

* Glad to see you, but excuse me,' said Tabe, ' I am very busy.' The
way Tabe hurried off to superintend his countrymen in loading up
fruit-cars was a sight that was good to see, and which all who saw it
will long remember. His heart was in his work. Whilst the men
are employed in picking, hauling, and doing the heavier sort of work,
the Japanese women are sometimes employed in wrapping fruit and
deftly packing it in boxes. This is labour by which considerable
money can be earned, and seems to be coming into favour amongst
them.

A visit on a Sunday afternoon to one of the so-called bunk-houses
where the Japanese reside is a pleasant experience. The small self-
governing colony is provided with its own kitchen and bath-house,
and everything is as clean and wholesome as fresh air and scrubbing
can make it. The bunks are all scrupulously clean, and not a few are
ornamented in the way to be expected from such an artistic and
loyal nation, in some cases a special place, or Tokonoma, having
been constructed, in the limited space available, for portraits of the
Mikado and Empress of Japan, in front of which fresh flowers are
placed daily. Their loyalty, in fact, is a pleasure for the patriotic
Anglo-American to witness. They celebrate the Mikado's birthday
with a gathering in some public hall, to which they invite their Ameri-
can friends, concluding with loyal speeches, and have contributed
generously to the funds for the war in Manchuria.

Outside the bunk-house on a Sunday afternoon the Japanese will
be, for the mere fun of the thing, practising feats on their bicycles;
in fact, all of them are apparently regarding life as ' a joke that's
just begun.' But on the morrow all this will end, and no one can be
more staid than the Japanese when at work, and striving to do their
best to earn their 1.60 dollar to 1.75 dollar per day of ten hours,
during which time they accomplish as much as labourers belonging
to any other nation. Perhaps one of the most extraordinary things
is the organisation of the labourers. Almost before the American
foreman realises that he is in want of extra labour a gang of neatly
dressed Japanese arrives, each with his bicycle, their advance agents
having sent for them on the chance of their obtaining employment,
and their arrival in the district being as unexpected as a flight of
birds. But in spite of their migrations they are companionable and
fraternise with Americans, and the result, as stated by the Rev. M. C.
Harris (and no one can know better), is that there is now a tendency
towards permanent residence in America on the part of the Japanese.

1904 JAPANESE EMIGRANTS 819

From letters now before me written by Americans who are some
of them paying as much as 16,OOOZ. annually in wages to Japanese
labourers engaged in various occupations, I can gather nothing but
unstinted praise for their many good qualities.

We are growing accustomed to reading newspaper accounts of
Japanese foresight and bravery ; but these qualities have too often
existed amongst nations with military instincts, who, when the need
for active exertion was over, were incapable of turning their attention
towards that organised and plodding industry which should secure
them the fruits of that peace their powers in the field had won. What
the Japanese can do in this way has been shown by the progress they
have made in comparatively a very short time towards establishing
a wise and firm government amongst the lawless tribes in the island
of Formosa. A better example could perhaps not be found than in
the Report of Mr. Consul Playfair on the trade of North Formosa,
in which he states that the methods pursued by the Japanese in
regulating the smoking of opium have resulted, it is reckoned, in a
decrease of about 1,000 opium-smokers each month since 1900, the
year when the register of opium-smokers is believed to have been
for the first time complete. It is, however, not the excellence of
the administrative power alone which can ensure permanent success
of this sort, but the qualities possessed by those who, compelled
for the most part by economic necessity, take advantage of the
opportunity offered of a fresh start in a new country.

I believe that in the character of the Japanese labourer there exists
a force that will not only add materially to the inevitable prosperity
of the countries bordering on the Pacific, but will also be for the good
of the whole civilised world as soon as it is properly appreciated.

W. CREWDSON.

820 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

WOMAN IN CHINESE LITERATURE

THE Chinese symbol for man is a picture of a human biped, and this
symbol includes woman. A Chinese female says, equally with a
Chinese male, ' I am a man.' If it is necessary to emphasise sex,
another word is added to ' man,' for men as well as for women, in
order that the gender may be clear.

One of the oldest allusions in Chinese literature to women is the
much-exploited verse of the Odes which tells us that when a girl is
born she should be couched upon the ground in token of humility,
have a tile to play with in token of the weight which will some day
hold the distaff, and indulge in no thoughts beyond her cookery and
a constant desire to spare her parents pain. Such was the simple
view of woman's sphere which appealed to the ballad-writer of China
nearly three thousand years ago.

In the Book of Rites, a comparatively modern compilation, dating
only from the century before the Christian era, but embodying the
precepts and practices of earlier centuries, we find explicit regula-
tions as to the daily life of women, many of which are in full force at the
present day. Therein we are told that men and women should not
sit together, nor use the same clothes-horse, towel, or comb, nor pass
things to one another, lest their hands should touch. Even at sacri-
fices and funerals a basket should be used by the woman as a recep-
tacle for things handed by and to her. Brothers- and sisters-in-law
must not ask one another questions, not even, so says one commentator,
as to the state of each other's health ; the brothers of a girl who is
betrothed may not sit on the same mat with her, nor eat out of the
same dish.

In ancient times it was not etiquette for a woman to stand in a
chariot ; this, says one commentator, was in order to make a distinc
tion between men and women. But another commentator, a descen-
dant of Confucius, gives a more kindly reason : ' Woman has a delicate
frame ; she cannot stand in a chariot. Men stand, but women sit.'
They sat on the left hand of the driver, next to the hand which was
occupied with the reins. This, we are told, was a measure of pre-
caution, lest the driver should put his arm around the lady's waist !

The life of a woman was divided under three phases, known as

1904 WOMAN IN CHINESE LITERATURE 821

the ' Three Obediences ' ; while young she was to obey her father
and elder brother, after marriage she was to obey her husband, and
after her husband's death she was to obey her son. She was to put
up her hair at fifteen and to be married at twenty — the age has been
lowered in modern times — choice of a husband resting entirely in the
hands of her parents, aided always by a third person to carry com-
munications between the two contracting families. So say the
Odes:

How do we proceed in splitting firewood ?
Without an axe it cannot be done.

How do we proceed in taking a wife ?
Without a go-between it cannot be done.

Passing into her husband's family and taking his name at marriage,
the wife is henceforth to wait upon his parents with the same devo-
tion that she has shown towards her own. At cockcrow she must
be up and ready with warm water and towels beside her father- and
mother-in-law's bed ; together with many other similar observances
which still exist on paper, but have long since fallen into desuetude.

There are five classes of men to whom a Chinese girl will not be
given in marriage ; viz., to the son of a rebellious family, to the son
of an immoral family, to a man who has been convicted of a criminal
offence, to a man with a loathsome disease, and to an eldest son who
has buried his father, i.e. the son being of an age at which he could
have already contracted a marriage before his father's death.

There are seven reasons which justify divorce ; viz., bad behaviour
towards father- and mother-in-law, no children, adultery, jealousy,
loathsome disease, garrulousness, and stealing. But there are three
conditions under which the above seven reasons fail to justify divorce ;
viz., if the wife has no home to go to, if she has twice shared the period
of three years' mourning for a parent-in-law, and if she has risen
with her husband from poverty to affluence.

We read in the Rites that a married woman is called fu, to denote
her submission (fu ' to submit ') to her husband ; but the Po Hu T'ung,
a work of the first century A.D., tells us that the wife is called ch'i, to
denote that she is the equal (ch'i, ' level ') of her husband. The latter
book also says that a woman cannot hold independent rank of her
own. but that, in the quaint Chinese idiom, ' she sits according to her
husband's teeth ' (seniority).

In Chinese numeration the odd numbers are regarded as female,
and the even male ; not because they are so absolutely, but because
the female and male principles predominate, with varying per-
centages, in the odds and evens, respectively. Seven is the female
number par excellence, containing, as is supposed, a larger percentage
of the female principle and a smaller percentage of the male principle
than any other unit. At seven months, according to the Su Wen,
an ancient medical work, a girl begins to teethe ; at seven years her

822 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

milk teeth fall out ; at fourteen she reaches puberty ; at twenty-one
she cuts her wisdom teeth ; at twenty-eight her bones are hard, her
hair is at its longest, and her body is in full vigour ; at thirty-five
her face begins to tan and her hair to fall out ; at forty-two her face
is withered, her complexion has gone, and her hair is grey ; at forty-
nine comes the change of life and the first years of old age.

The -K rliest Chinese work devoted to women's affairs, entitled
Advice to Women, is by the distinguished lady who flourished in the
first century A.D., and carried to its conclusion her father and brother's
history of the first Han dynasty when death had removed the latter
in A.D. 92. In her preface the authoress, Lady Ts'ao (nee Pan Chao),
modestly asserts that she was ' born without intelligence, but enjoyed
the favour of her father and the teachings of her mother until she
was fourteen years old, now forty years ago, when she took up the
dust-pan and broom in the family of the Ts'aos.' ' Boys,' she adds,
' can shift for themselves, and I do not trouble my head about them ;
but I am grieved to think how many girls enter into marriage without
any preparation whatever, and entirely ignorant of what is becoming
to a wife.'

The Lady Ts'ao arranges her advice to girls under appropriate
headings, such as humility, husband and wife, general deportment, etc.

Be humble and respectful ; put others in front and yourself behind ; do not
boast of your successes, nor excuse your failures ; bear contumely and swallow
insult ; be always as though in fear and trembling.

A wife should be as the shadow and echo of her husband.

Woman's energies have a fourfold scope : behaviour, speech, appearance, and
duties. For right behaviour, no great mental talents are needed ; for right
speech, no clever tongue nor smart repartee ; for right appearance, no great
beauty ; and for right duties, no special cunning of hand. In simplicity, in
purity, in a sense of shame and of propriety, will right behaviour be found. In
choice of language, in avoidance of bad words, in seasonable and not too pro-
longed talk, will right speech be found. In thorough cleanliness of apparel, and
in regular use of the bath, will right beauty be found. In undivided attention
to spinning and weaving, without laughing and playing, and in seeing that food
and wine are properly served, will right duties be found. These four offer scope
to the energies of woman ; they must not be neglected. There need be no diffi-
culty, if only there is determination. A philosopher of old said, ' Is goodness
really so far off ? I wish for goodness, and lo ! here it is.'

A highly educated woman herself, the Lady Ts'ao pleaded for
education for her sex, and a return to the practice of ancient days
when girls between the ages of eight and fifteen were taught the same
subjects that were taught to boys.

Yen Chih-t'ui, a famous scholar and statesman who flourished
A.D. 535-595, left behind him a work entitled Family Instructions,
which has come down to us intact.

Let the wife (he says) look after the cooking and attend to the ceremonial
connected with wine and food and clothing. She should not interfere in the
government of the State, nor meddle with the family affairs. If she is clever

1904 WOMAN IN CHINESE LITERATURE 823

and talented, acquainted with the conditions of ancient and modern times, then
she should be employed as an aid to her husband, supplying that in which he
may be deficient ; but there must be no crowing at dawn in the place of the
cock, with all the sorrow that this entails.

Yen complains that in certain parts of the Empire ' women's
equipages block the streets, silks and satins throng the public offices
and temples, while mothers and wives beg posts for their .ms and
promotion for their husbands.'

In another place he points out that the varied products of the
loom have proved a curse to the female sex, and he quotes the old
saving : ' There is no thief like a family of five daughters.' On the
other hand, he strongly denounces infanticide, cases of which he
quotes as occurring in the family of a distant relative of his. ' There,'
he says, ' if a girl is born, she is immediately carried away, the mother
following with tears and cries, but all of no avail ; truly shocking ! '

This is perhaps the earliest recorded protest against a crime which
seems to have been always practised more or less in all countries,
but not more in China than elsewhere, as the following argument
will show.

Every Chinaman has a wife ; high officials and rich merchants
often have two or three concubines ; the Emperor is allowed seventy-
two. If, then, female children are destroyed in such numbers as to
constitute a national crime, it must follow that girls are born in an
overwhelmingly large proportion to boys, utterly unheard of in any
other part of the world.

Between A.D. 785 and 830 lived five remarkable sisters named
Sung, all of whom possessed considerable literary talent, and especially
the two elder ones. They refused to marry, and devoted themselves
to literature, being finally received into the Palace, where in due
course they all died natural deaths, with the exception of the fourth
Miss Sung, against whom charges of accepting bribes were trumped
up, the result being that she was forced to ' take silk ' — in other words,
to strangle herself. The eldest sister wrote a book called Discourses
for Girls, based upon the famous Discourses of Confucius. It is in an
easy style of versification, and is generally suited to the comprehension

of the young.

When walking, do not look back ;

When talking, do not open wide your lips ;

When sitting, do not rock your knees ;

When standing, do not shake your skirt ;

When pleased, do not laugh aloud ;

When angry, do not shout ;

Do not peep over the outside wall ;

Do not slip into the outer court ;

When you go out, veil your face ;

When you peep, conceal your body ;

With a man not of the family

Hold no conversation whatever.

824 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

The authoress then proceeds to inculcate submission and obedience,
filial piety, diligent performance of household duties, etc., etc., coupled
always with a certain amount of book-learning, not so much as might
perhaps have been expected from such a literary lady.

Miss Sung was at no great interval followed by one Madam Cheng,
who produced a Filial Piety Classic for Girls, in imitation of the semi-
canonical work which has come down to us from about the first century
B.C. This lady boldly embraces in her injunctions all classes, from
the Empress and Imperial concubines down to the peasant woman
of the village. ' Strike a bell in the palace,' she says in warning,
' and the sound will be heard outside.' Virtue, she points out, is a
question of environment :

If a child is surrounded by good influences, he will be good ; if by evil in-
fluences, he will be evil. Even before birth his education may begin; and,
therefore, the prospective mother of old, when lying down lay straight, when
sitting down sat upright, and when standing stood erect. She would not taste
strange flavours, nor have anything to do with spiritualism ; if her food were not
cut straight she would not eat it, and if her mat were not set straight she would
not sit upon it. She would not look at any objectionable sight, nor listen to
any objectionable sound, nor utter any rude word, nor handle any impure thing.
At night she studied some canonical work, by day she occupied herself with
ceremonies and music. Therefore her sons were upright, and eminent for their
talents and virtues ; such was the result of ante -natal training.

In China too, as in the West, prospective mothers are warned not
to eat hare's flesh, nor even to see a hare, lest she, as in the striking
lines by Mr. Yeats,

. . . looking on the cloven lips of a hare
Bring forth a hare -lipped child.

From what has been already said, it might be supposed that the
ordinary Chinese wife would hardly be able to call her soul her own —
a condition of affairs altogether at variance with the real position of
women as seen in China at the present day. The following extract,
however, from an article by a writer of the T'ang dynasty (618-906),
named Yii I-fang, and entitled ' A Charm against the Black-Hearted,'
would seem to suggest that Chinese women more than a thousand
years ago knew very well how to take care of themselves, and success-
fully held their own, as they still continue to do, against the brutality
of men.

If the wife does not rule, the family can be properly governed, just as a State
can be properly governed if the Minister does not rule the Prince, and the Empire
can be properly governed if the Prime Minister does not rule the Emperor. For
if husband and wife occupy their proper places, the Empire will be correctly
organised ; and if families are correctly organised, the Empire will be at peace.

The Lun Yii teaches us that women and servants are difficult to deal with ;
if you are familiar with them, they lose their respect for you ; if you are distant
to them, they lose their tempers.

The Boole of History tells us that for the hen to do the crowing at dawn
brings ruin upon the family. The Book of Changes warns ns that the wife's

1904 WOMAN IN CHINESE LITERATURE 825

chief business should be to look after the cooking. And in the Odes wives are
exhorted to observe regulations, so that the spirits of ancestors may be duly
honoured and they themselves be admitted to the sacrificial banquet.

Duke Wei allowed his wife Wen-ch'iang to have her own way, the result
being that he lost his life and jeopardised the State of Lu. The Emperor Kao
Tsu was afraid of his consort Lti, the result being disturbances which nearly
brought the Han dynasty to an end. The Emperor Wen Ti fell under the in-
fluence of his Empress, and by changing the succession caused the downfall of
his line. The Emperor Kao Tsung became enslaved by the beauty of Wu Chao,
and so lost all power. And if rulers of 10,000-charioted States will do these
things, what will not one of the cotton-clothed masses do ?

Then, again, there is the remarriage of widowers and widows. In the latter
case the absence of all sentiment, such as is evoked when the hair is put up for
the first time, often means that the marriage is a mere question of personal con-
venience. How can such auspices prove favourable ? In the former case we
know how Madam Min clothed her step-son in rushes only, and how Madam Hsu
beat hers with an iron pestle ; and such instances are common enough.

As to the ordinary husband, enslaved by his wife's good looks or cajoled by
her cunning talk, he degenerates beyond all hope into mere uxoriousness. The
wife gradually gains ground, while his power is gradually whittled away, until
at length he is as though pincers closed his mouth, not allowing him to utter a
sound ; as though a halter were around his neck, not allowing him to turn his
head ; as though fetters were upon his body, not allowing him to have the
slightest freedom of action. Even personal questions of heat and cold, hunger
and satiety, incoming and outgoing, uprising and downsitting, are no longer
matters for him, but for her, to decide. If she says he is to be untruthful,
wanting in duty, disloyal, or unkind, it only remains for him to obey. Even if
she bids him do things which the lowest barbarians and even dogs and pigs
would not do, he must do them. If she orders him to slay anyone, he must be
annoyed only that the head is slow in falling ; if she tells him to kill himself, he
must fear only lest there be slowness in fetching the knife. When she curses
and abuses him, he must receive her with a smile ; when she beats him with all
her might, he must repeatedly admit his fault. Whenever he offends her, he
must fall down on his knees and beg pardon ; whatever service he performs for
her must be done unflinchingly. He may not recognise the authority of elder
relatives ; no, only the authority of his wife. He may not recognise the claims
of younger relatives ; no, only the claims of his wife. His friends and neigh-
bours may say that such behaviour has never been heard of since the world
began, yet all the time there he stands, with the sweat trickling down to his
heels, with blood running over his chest, in fear, in abject terror, quivering and
quaking at every harsh word and severe look from his wife. What help is there
for him ? Having a home, he lets his wife be the head of it ; if he had a State,
he would let his wife rule it ; if he had the Empire, he would let his wife be the
Son of Heaven ! As Magistrate or Prefect, he allows her to appear in public
and sit with him on the bench, discuss cases, vigorously assert herself, and flit
about from hall to hall — powder and paint deciding rewards and punishments,
petticoats and bodices holding in their folds the issues of life and death.

Now, although the world is getting old, we still recognise some distinction
between right and wrong ; and although our morals are decaying, we are still
able to distinguish the wicked from the good. And if a Minister were to behave
as these women do, his sovereign would slay him ; if a friend behaved thus, his
friend would discard him ; if a neighbour behaved thus, his neighbours would
get rid of him ; if an ordinary citizen behaved thus, the authorities would punish
him ; if a son behaved thus, his weeping parents would turn him adrift ; if a
brother behaved thus, his brothers would unite against him ; if a father, grand-

VOL. LVI— No. 333 3 I

826 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

father, or uncle behaved thus, sons, grandsons, and nephews would change their
manner and flee north, south, east, and west in order to avoid them.

But now, when the wife says 'tis misty, there is a fog ; when she says there
is thunder, it peals ; if she stretches herself, it lightens ; if she turns around, it
blows. At her whim spring becomes autumn, black is white, here is there, and
a woman is a man. She is never happier than when setting everybody at cross-
pui'poses, and this sort of thing goes on for years, sometimes more, sometimes
fewer, until teeth and hah1 are gone, and the span of life is exhausted. All the
time she is laying hands on whatever property and valuables she can secure,
and at length it becomes self-evident that such a matrimonial alliance is nothing
better than a dismal failure.

Meanwhile the besotted husband ceases to be employed by his sovereign, to
be received by his friends, or to be recognised in his parish. His brothers are
cool to him, and his children and grandchildren no longer flock around him ; so
true is the saying that if a man is not more lofty than a mountain, the devils
will sink him lower than the abyss. And now, when too late, he mourns over
the desolation of his home. His very grave stinks ; but there is still more dis-
honour to come. His widow marries again.

The famous historian Ssu-ma Kuang, A.D. 1019-1086, published
a short work on Family Decorum, in which he enlarges upon the
behaviour of a daughter-in-law. In addition to constant attendances
upon her husband's parents, waiting upon them at meals and in the
bedroom, she is bidden to show them the greatest respect, to answer
their questions in lowered tones, and reverently to support or aid
them when walking about. She may not spit nor shout in their
presence, nor sit, nor leave the room, unless permitted to do so by
them. When they are sick, she must not leave them except for some
urgent reason, and all their medicines must be prepared and adminis-
tered by her. If she has to leave the women's apartments, she must
veil her face, as also in any case when men approach.

Chu Hsi, the great statesman, commentator, and historian,
A.D. 1110-1200, also had his say :

According to Ssii-ma Kuang, a woman either makes or mars the family into
which she goes. If a man marries for money and position he will get the money
and position, but his wife will hold him cheap and be rude to his parents. She
will develop a proud and jealous disposition, than which there can be no greater
curse. How can any self-respecting man bear to become rich with his wife's
money, or rise to high positions through his wife's influence ?

According to Ting Hu, a man should marry his daughter into a family some-
what above his own, for then she will perform her duties respectfully and with
care. On the other hand, he should get his daughter-in-law from a family
somewhat below his own, for then she will serve her husband's parents as befits
a wife.

Asked if a man should marry a widow, Chu Hsi replied : ' The
object of marriage is to get a helpmeet ; if a man marries for that
purpose one who sacrifices her reputation, it simply means that he
sacrifices his own.' Further asked, if a poor lone widow without
means of subsistence might marry again, he replied : ' What you are
afraid of for her is cold and starvation ; but starvation is a compara-
tively small matter, and loss of reputation is a great one.'

1904 WOMAN IN CHINESE LITERATURE 827

Yiian Ts'ai, of the twelfth century, wrote a treatise on social life
in which he has a good many remarks about women, who, he says,
are the causes of all bickerings, ' and whose views are neither broad,
nor far-reaching, nor catholic, nor just.'

In dress (he says) women should aim at cleanliness, and not try to le
different from others. All such persons as Buddhist and Taoist nuns, pro-
fessional go-betweens, female brokers, and women who pretend to peddle
needles, embroideries, &c., should be rigidly excluded from the house ; for to
their presence may be traced the disappearance of clothing and other articles,
not to mention that they often lead young girls astray.

The Empress Consort of the Emperor Yung Lo of the Ming dynasty
in A.D. 1405 committed to paper her thoughts on the behaviour of
women, under the title of Instructions for the Inner Apartments, i.e. for
Women. These are arranged under twenty headings, with an addi-
tional chapter on the education of girls. The Empress lays much
stress on gentleness, good temper, economy, kind treatment of the
young and of relatives, but thinks that speech unrestrained is the
real rock upon which most women split.

If your mouth is like a closed door, your words will become proverbial ; but
if it is like a running tap, no heed will be paid to what you say.

In her additional chapter on education, which is really a more
or less doggerel poem of about 350 lines, our authoress will be con-
sidered very disappointing by some. So far from pleading for higher
education for Chinese women, she urges only that a girl's governess
should teach her pupil to practise filial piety, virtue, propriety, deport-
ment, good manners, and domestic duties, as a preparation for her
entry into married life. Then, if she has no children to continue
the ancestral line, she is not to show jealousy, but rather satisfaction,
if her husband takes a subordinate wife. Supposing that he dies
before her, she will be left like Earth without its Heaven, and must
transfer her dependence to her son, and summon up her resolution
to face widowhood until death. Mount T'ai may crumble away, or
she may have to walk over sharp-edged swords, but this resolve must
not pass from her. Examples are given of heroines of all ages who
have died by hanging or drowning themselves rather than violate
their marriage vow :

Their bodies indeed suffered injury in life, but their names will be fragrant
for ten thousand generations.

Before Marriage and After is the title of an anonymous work which
brings us down to the close of the Ming dynasty in the middle of the
seventeenth century. Besides repetition of the usual injunctions,
we find here that girls are specially warned not to be greedy, and
on no account to drink wine, ' which destroys all reverence and caution ,
and encourages unseemly behaviour.'

9 i 2

828

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Nov.

A girl (we are told) need not necessarily be a scholar. The girls of ancient
times, however, invariably familiarised themselves with such works as The
Classic of Filial Piety, The Discourses of Confucius, Advice to Women, and.
Instructions for Women, and there is every reason why these should be studied ;
but book-learning is not meant to be women's speciality, and as for poetry and
songs, these are altogether out of the question.

A volume might easily be compiled from Chinese literature of
uncomplimentary references to women and indignities which have
been heaped upon them.

Nine women out of ten are jealous.

When a woman is young she is a goddess, when old a monkey.

Three-tenths of beauty is beauty, seven-tenths is dress.

The tooth of the bamboo-snake and the sting of the hornet cannot be com-
pared for poison with a woman's heart.

The goodness of a woman is like the bravery of a coward.

A woman may attain to high rank, but she will still be a woman.

Women should have nothing to do with government.

During the winter months Yang Kuo-chung (a dissipated ruffian who was
massacred A.D. 756) would often cause a selection of the fattest ladies from his
seraglio to stand about him, in order to keep off the draught. This was called
his ' flesh screen.'

It has often been pointed out that most of the characters in the
Chinese language which have a bad meaning contain the symbol for
* woman.' There is, at any rate, one striking exception, and that
is the common character for ' good,' which is composed of ' woman '
and * child.'

Of course there are some points to be quoted on the other side,
such as the fact that in ancient days women were not made to kneel,
even in the ancestral temple ; that at the present day they are spared
the indignity of the bamboo, etc., etc. Tso-ch'iu Ming, the annalist
of the fourth or fifth century B.C., was not quite sure that women
were wholly bad, as witness his saying,

The goodness of women is inexhaustible ; their resentment is everlasting.

Then, again, the hundreds, nay thousands, of beautiful poems, funeral
orations, panegyrics, and mortuary inscriptions which have been
written by bereaved sons and husbands in various ages, and which
may still be read, place it beyond doubt that the position of women
in China, notwithstanding cookery and domestic subordination, has
always been a very high one. But the sum total would still leave
a heavy balance against the women were it not for certain considera-
tions which will perhaps enable us to leave off with a slightly better
taste in the mouth.

Apart from the fact that the mother in China plays a part equal
in importance to that of the father, sharing his honours and the
deference and obedience of their children, and enjoying in the same
degree the consolations of worship and sacrifice after death, not to

1904 WOMAN IN CHINESE LITEEATUBE 829

mention three years' mourning, it remains to be stated that the
Chinese people have carefully embalmed in their extensive litera-
ture the names and lives of distinguished women for many centuries
past. A rough survey of a single collection of women's biographies
has yielded the following results, the paragraphs within quotation
marks being short translated extracts which caught the eye.

Of the fourteen headings under which women have been classified,
the first is Shu, a term which includes high-principled, good women,
especially wives and mothers. Over 400 examples are recorded.

A certain scholar being asked ' why he composed a funeral oration '
[these are burnt at the grave] ' on his mother and not on his father,
replied that a man can make his virtues known by his actions, whereas
but for a funeral oration a wife's virtues would remain concealed.'

A mother who was ' one day inspecting the treasury of her son
(a high official) noticed that it was well filled with money. Then,
turning to her son, she said, " Your father held high posts for many
years in the capital and in the provinces, yet he never collected such
a sum as this ; from which you can see how immeasurably inferior
you are to him."

The second heading is Hsiao, which is restricted to filial piety.
About 775 examples are given.

The third heading is /, which includes self-sacrificing, chivalrous
women, with whom duty is a first consideration. About 475 examples
are given.

A certain man being killed in battle the general sent an officer
to condole with his mother. ' Our family,' said the latter, ' consisting
of 300 souls, have long battened on the Imperial bounty. Complete
extermination would scarcely repay the favours we have received ;
shall we then grudge a single son ? Pray think no more about it.'

The fourth heading is Lieh, which includes all women who heroically
prefer death to dishonour, and even suicides who prefer death to
outliving their husbands. Of these, about 6,000 biographies are
recorded.

The fifth heading is Chieh, which includes women who have refused
to enter into second nuptials, sometimes acting in strenuous opposition
to the wishes and even orders of parents. Many of the ornamental
gateways scattered over China have been erected to the chaste widow,
who, as popular opinion goes, should have been under thirty at the
death of her husband, and have maintained her widowhood for thirty
years.

The sixth heading is Shih, which includes wise and capable women,
examples of whom number over 300.

One of these ladies would not allow the women of her household
to dress in the prevailing fashion. Another bade her daughter on the
latter's wedding day ' not to be a good girl.' ' Am I then to be a
bad girl ? ' asked the daughter, who mistook the sense of the Chinese

830 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

word ' to be,' which also signifies ' to do,' * to play the part of.' * If
you are not to be a good girl,' replied the mother, ' it follows naturally
that you are not to be a bad one.'

The seventh heading is Tsao, and includes women who have made
themselves eminent in any department of literature. About 510
examples are given, mostly poetesses. One of these, a deserted wife,
whose husband had gone off to his post with a favourite concubine,
leaving her to herself, achieved a feat which certainly has not been
surpassed even in monastic annals. She wove a handkerchief, about
a foot square, containing 841 Chinese characters (29 x 29) arranged in
a symmetrical design of five colours, red, blue, yellow, green, and
purple. These 841 words formed a kind of palindrome, which could
be read in so many different ways as to form more than 200 quatrains
of Chinese poetry, bearing on the injustice of her position, and
correct in all the intricate details which belong to the art. This she
forwarded to her husband, with the result that the concubine was dis-
missed and she herself restored to her proper position. This happened
in the fourth century A.D. It was first published by Imperial order
in A.D. 692 and has come down to the present day.

The eighth heading is Hui, which includes witty and clever women.
Only seven examples are recorded.

The ninth heading is Chli, which includes all remarkable women,
such as those who have put on man's dress and have gone to the wars,
great huntresses, and even one who was distinguished at football,
also women who have risen from the dead, who have been taken
up to heaven, who have been buried alive, who have had large families
(in one case twenty-one children, including seven sets of twins),
women with no arms or with a short allowance of fingers, hairy women,
bearded women, hermaphrodites, etc., etc. About 250 examples are
given.

The tenth heading is Ch'iao, which includes artistic women, distin-
guished for music, painting, etc. Of these only twenty-six examples
are given, a number which is far below the mark in any one branch
of the arts.

The eleventh heading is Fu, which includes women who have been
exceptionally blessed in this world. Of these twenty examples are
given. The first was wife of a descendant of Confucius ; she flourished
at the beginning of the Christian era, and had eight sons. The
second had nine distinguished sons, known as the Nine Dragons.
The third was the mother of two sons, one of whom (Li Kuang-pi)
was a famous general, d. A.D. 763, and the other also rose to eminence.
As an additional but to Western eyes a more doubtful blessing, this
lady * had a beard of several tens of hairs over five inches in length.'
Other examples are those of women who lived long and useful lives,
in one case reaching an age of 120 years.

The twelfth heading is Yen, which includes women of great beauty.

1904 WOMAN IN CHINESE LITERATUEE 831

Of these only forty-five examples are given ; to make up for which
there is quite an extensive literature on beauty in the abstract, essays,
panegyrics, and ballads, useful and otherwise, made to the (moth)
eyebrows of mistresses.

Some idea of the standard of beauty in ancient China may be
gathered from an account which has come down to us of the young
lady who was married in A.D. 148 to the young Emperor, then sixteen
years of age.

Her face (we are told) was a mixture of glowing sunrise clouds and snow,
and of such surpassing loveliness that it was impossible to look straight at her.
Her eyes were like sparkling waves ; she had a rosy mouth, gleaming teeth,
long ears, and a tip-tilted nose ; her jet-black hair shone like a mirror, and her
skin was glossy and smooth. She had blood enough to colour her fat, fat
enough to ornament her flesh, and flesh enough to cover her bones. From top
to toe she measured 5 feet 4 inches ; her shoulders were 1 foot 2f inches, and
her hips 11TV inches, in breadth ; from shoulder to fingers she measured
2 feet 0^ inches ; her fingers, exclusive of the palm, were 3f inches in length,
and like ten tapering bamboo shoots ; from the hips to the feet she measured
2 feet 4f inches ; and her feet were 7J inches in length.

These measurements are English equivalents of Chinese measure-
ments.

Add to the above ' eyes like split almonds, teeth like shells,' ' teeth
like the seeds in a water melon,' ' eyebrows like those of the silkworm
moth,' ' waists like willow wands ' but no stays, ' lips like cherries,'
and you have a fair picture of what the Chinese admire in a woman.

A writer of the twelfth century (already quoted) recalls his lady-
love in ten quatrains, as he has seen her under ten conditions, viz.,
walking, sitting, drinking, singing, writing, gambling, weeping, laughing,
sleeping, and dressing. She walks — it is the poetry of motion ; she
sits — it is the harmony of repose ; she drinks — and the wine adds a
lustre to her eyes ; she sings — and black clouds turn to white ; she
writes — about turtle-doves ; she gambles — and smiles when she loses ;
she weeps — at parting ; she laughs — in golden tones ; she sleeps — like
a fragrant lily ; she dresses — limning her eyebrows like those of the
silkworm moth.

The Chinese themselves are not agreed as to the origin or reason
of foot-binding. Authorities vary between the second century A.D.,
the fifth century A.D., and about A.D. 970, the last-mentioned oeing
in all probability correct. It was well pointed out so early as the
twelfth century that none of the great poets of the T'ang dynasty
(606-918) make any allusion to the custom. Only in one instance
is there a reference to a lady's foot of six inches in length ; and although
that may be reckoned small, the T'ang foot measure being shorter
than that of the present day, still, the writer adds, there is absolutely
no mention of the employment of artificial means. In the Lang
Huan Chi we read of a little girl who asked her mother why women's
feet were bound. ' Because,' replied her mother, ' the sages of old

832 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

valued women highly, and would not have them gadding idly about.
So they bound their feet to keep them at home.' This is the reason
for the practice of foot-binding which is most generally accepted among
Chinese and foreigners, coupled of course with the fact that the men
admire bound feet ; but there is also a possible physiological reason
which can hardly be discussed here.

The thirteenth heading is Hen, which includes women who have
been the victims of great misfortune or injustice. Of these over
200 examples are recorded.

The fourteenth and last heading is Wu, which includes women
who have ' awakened ' to a sense of religious inspiration, and those
who have come in any way under religious influences. For instance,
the daughter of one of China's great poets, Liu Tsung-yiian,
A.D. 773-819, was attacked with a serious malady. As she did not
get better, her name was changed from ' Harmony ' to ' Handmaid
of Buddha ; ' and on her recovery, attributed of course to the change
of name, she shaved her head and became a Buddhist nun. Another
lady is immortalised because, when her husband was contemplating
an essay entitled ' There is no God,' she stopped him by aptly observ-
ing, ' If there is no God, why write an essay about him 1 '

The number of separate biographical notices under the above
fourteen headings reach a total of over 24,000, i.e. nearly as many
as all the lives, mostly of men, included in the Dictionary of National
Biography. Like those, they range in length from a few lines to
several pages ; in any case, these lives form a monumental record,
built up chiefly in honour of women, such as no other nation in the
world can pretend to rival.

HERBERT A. GILES.

1904

THE CHECK TO WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN
THE UNITED STATES

WOMAN suffrage, as exercised in the United States, is, broadly speaking,
in four forms :

(1) Tax-paying Suffrage. — This privilege has been granted in
four States, Montana, Iowa, Louisiana, and New York. It does not
carry with it the choice of officers. Neither does it involve a share
in the control of ordinary expenditures, which are regulated by town
or city authorities. It becomes operative only when some special
question of an appropriation for a given purpose, or the borrowing of
money for some public improvement, is submitted to the vote of tax-
payers.1 An effort has been made of late years so to extend this
privilege that women who pay taxes shall have the same right to vote
for the election of city and town officers that men have, but in no
State has this effort been successful.

(2) School Suffrage. — Seventeen States which do not give women
any other form of suffrage permit them to vote at elections for school
officers. In Kentucky the right is restricted to widows, and in Dela-
ware to taxpaying women, but usually women vote on equal terms
with men for these particular officers. One State, Montana, gives to
women both school and taxpaying suffrage. The grant of the school
ballot is nowhere strenuously opposed ; and there is no good reason
why it might not be extended to other States if women really cared
for it. But the number of women who avail themselves of this privi-
lege in States where it has been granted them is so small that no

1 The Louisiana law provides for submitting propositions to incur debt and issue
negotiable bonds to the vote of property taxpayers, and that ' resident women tax-
payers shall have the right to vote at all such elections without registration, in person
or by their agents authorised in writing.' In Iowa the statute reads : ' The right of
any citizen to vote at any city, town or school election, on the question of issuing any
bonds for municipal or school purposes, and for the purpose of borrowing money, or
on the question of increasing the tax levy, shall not be denied or abridged on account
of sex.' The Montana law declares that upon all questions submitted to the vote of
the tax-payers of the State, or any political division thereof, ' women who are tax-
payers and possessed of the qualifications for the right of suffrage required of men by
the State Constitution, equally with men, have the right to vote.' In New York
the law provides that ' a woman who possesses the qualifications to vote for town
officers, except the qualification of sex, and who is the owner of property in the town
assessed upon the last preceding assessment-roll thereof, is entitled to vote upon a
proposition to raise money by tax or assessment.'

833

834 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

ground seems to exist for asking its extension. In Connecticut the
proportion of women voting at school elections is about 1 per cent.
In Massachusetts, under ordinary conditions, it is not more than 3 or
4 per cent. I say under ordinary conditions, because occasionally,
when questions arise which appeal to the emotions, and those especi-
ally in which religious antipathies are involved, the women's vote
attains large proportions. In Boston, for example, at the election in
1882, only 498 women voted. Six years later, when questions were
at issue between Catholics and Protestants, the vote of the women
rose to 19,490, a level which never has been reached since, because
there has been no other year in which sectarian passions were so
aroused as in 1888. But, in general, the fluctuations of the women's
vote in Boston might almost serve as a barometer of sectarian or
personal controversies. Conservative Americans regard with appre-
hension a vote which fluctuates between such extremes, and which
comes out in force only when mischievous issues are raised.

(3) Municipal Suffrage. — This is found in Kansas only. That
State, in 1887, gave to women the right to vote for all city and town
officers on equal terms with men, and to be elected to such offices.
The woman-suffragists claim that the experiment has worked satis-
factorily. But none of them are at any pains to explain the fact that
Kansas, since the grant of the municipal ballot, has steadily refused
to enlarge the rights of women at the polls. In 1891, four years after
municipal suffrage was given to women, the Kansas Legislature rejected
a Bill to confer general suffrage upon them and also a proposition to
give the right to them by constitutional amendment. Three years
later a constitutional amendment conferring full suffrage upon women
was submitted to the people and was defeated by a majority of
34,827. In nearly every legislature since some proposition for a
fuller franchise for women has been defeated. This obduracy of
public sentiment in Kansas is a phenomenon which deserves more
attention than the advocates of woman suffrage have given it. A
State which had become accustomed to the spectacle of women con-
tending on equal terms with men at city elections might naturally
be expected to be favourably inclined towards an extension
of their privileges, all the more so because the political power
acquired by them in municipal affairs should make them a body
whose desire for a larger franchise could not be treated as a negligible
quantity. To find some explanation for the contrary state of senti-
ment which is consistent with the declaration that municipal suffrage
by women in Kansas has worked well and has the approval of the
public, should be the first duty of those who wish other States to
follow the example of Kansas in giving to women the municipal
ballot.

(4) Futt Suffrage. — This privilege has been given to women in
four States — Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah. In those States

1904

WOMAN SUFFEAGE IN THE U.S.A.

835

women vote for all officers and at all elections on equal terms with
men. These States are all in the West. They are of large area and
sparsely settled. In all of them, with the exception of the Mormon
State of Utah, the male population largely predominates. In Utah,
for obvious reasons, the difference between the male and female
population is less marked, but it is still considerable. In none of them,
with the exception, in some particulars, of Colorado, are the conditions
at all such as obtain in the longer-settled States. Wyoming is a State
of vast cattle ranges. Idaho is a State of mining camps. In Colorado
also mining is the chief industry. In Utah the Mormon Church
dominates everything, and it is a powerful political force in Idaho.
When Utah was admitted into the Union, as a State, in 1896, it was
on the condition that the practice of polygamy should be for ever
prohibited. The Mormon Church issued a decree in compliance with
this requirement, but it has been only imperfectly observed. Natur-
ally the Mormon Church was not indifferent to the strength it might
derive from the vote of its women, and when the State came into the
Union full woman suffrage was embedded in its constitution. In
1898, with the aid of the women's vote, a leading Mormon, Mr. Brigham
Henry Roberts, who was possessed of three wives, was elected a
member of the national House of Representatives. Under the pressure
of strong popular resentment and indignation, which found expression
all over the country, the House excluded him from its membership
by a vote of 268 to 50. The last Utah Legislature, elected in part by
women's votes, chose as United States Senator Mr. Reed Smoot, an
apostle of the Mormon Church and a member of its Presidency.
The Senate has been flooded with petitions for his unseating, which
are now under consideration.

A few comparisons of areas and populations will serve to show
how far these four States are from being representative of the United
States as a whole. Wyoming is nearly eight times as large as Holland,
but it has less than one-fiftieth of the population of that country.
It has less than one inhabitant to the square mile, and of all the States
it has the largest ratio of male population. Idaho is about two-fifths
as large as the whole German Empire in Europe, but its population
is only about one-twelfth that of the city of Berlin. The following
figures, relating to these States, from the United States Census of 1900
are suggestive :

;

Density—

Females of

Population
—Male

Population
— Female

square
miles

to the
sqnara

Males of
Voting Age

(estimated on
same ratio as

mile

Males)

Colorado . . 295,332

244,368 103,925

5-2

185,708

153,661

Idaho . . . 93,367

68,405 84,800

1-9

53,932

38,462

Utah . . . 141,687

135,062 i 84,970

3-4

67,172

64,031

Wyoming

58,184

34,347 97,890

0-9

37,898

22,201

836 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Nov.

As to the practical results of woman suffrage in these States reports
differ. Even if the reports were wholly favourable it would be hasty
to conclude that what was wise and practicable in four States which,
all together, have less than one-third of the population of the city of
New York, would be adapted to the large cities and populous rural
districts of the longer-settled States. But there is no accord of favour-
able testimony. The witnesses cited by the suffragists to attest the
beneficent results of the ballot in the hands of women in these States
are most of them public men who either are now in office or who hope
to be, and who could not be expected, in either case, to speak ill of a
large body of their constituents. On the other hand, there is dis-
interested testimony to the effect that the experiment has worked
ill, and that it has been especially disastrous to women themselves in
blunting their finer sensibilities, and in bringing to the front a political
type of woman, whose conduct and characteristics are repellent to
those who cherish conservative and reverent ideals of womanhood.

More interest attaches to the reports from Colorado than to those
from the other suffrage States, because there, in some sections at
least, the conditions and the character of the population more closely
resemble those of the longer-settled States. To quote one impartial
witness, Judge Moses Hallett, who has been United States district
judge for the district of Colorado for the last twenty-seven years, and
who was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Colorado when the
State was a Territory, said in an interview, as reported in the Denver
Republican of the 6th of April 1902 :

Our State has tried the female-suffrage plan a sufficiently long time to form
a fair idea of its workings. I am not prejudiced in any way, but honestly do
not see where the experiment has proved of benefit. The presence of women at
the polls has only augmented the total votes ; it has worked no radical changes.
It has produced no special reforms, and it has had no particular purifying effect
upon politics. There is a growing tendency on the part of most of the better
and more intelligent of the female voters of Colorado to cease exercising the
ballot. They still go to the polls, but need to be urged by some of their male
relatives. I do not believe that there will be any abrogation of the suffrage-
right of the women of our State, for the reason that no man who aspires to office
would risk their displeasure by advocating the repeal of the law. At the same
time, if it were to be done over again, the people of Colorado would defeat
woman suffrage by an overwhelming majority.

As to legislation, no one pretends that the statutes of these States
are up to the level of those of the longer-settled States ; and it is
not even clear that in any important particular they are in advance
of those of neighbouring States, of similar population, where women
do not vote. Wyoming, for example, after thirty years of woman
suffrage, kept on its statute-books until recently a law licensing
gambling-houses and collecting a revenue from them for the public
treasury.

These, then, are the fruits of more than half a century of persistent

1904 WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN THE U.S.A. 837

agitation for woman suffrage in the United States — a country hospit-
able toward all experiments, peculiarly susceptible to appeals in the
name of liberty, and so free in its bestowal of the ballot that in some
of the States it gives it to aliens who have been in the country only
six months and have merely declared their intention of becoming
citizens. Of the forty-five States in the Union, twenty do not give
women any form of ballot ; twenty give them the lightly-regarded
school ballot or the still less important and infrequently-exercised
ballot, on questions submitted to taxpayers ; one admits them to
municipal suffrage, but refuses them anything more ; and four give
them the full ballot.

This is a meagre showing. Still more significant is the fact that
the suffrage movement seems to have come to a standstill. The
agitation, indeed, has not ceased nor even perceptibly diminished.
There are local and State organisations and a national federation
which lay annual siege to the Legislatures, and to constitutional con-
ventions, when they assemble. But so far as practical results go
these organisations are accomplishing nothing. No gains are being
made, and none for some years have been made in legislation favour-
able to woman suffrage. Utah came in as a suffrage State in 1896,
under conditions which have been described. In the same year
Idaho adopted a suffrage constitutional amendment by a narrow
margin which, though it represented a majority of the votes cast on
the proposition, was less than half the total vote at the election at
which the amendment was submitted. Since that year not one
important gain has been made for the cause. In 1898 Delaware gave
the school ballot to taxpaying women, and in two States a minor
form of suffrage on taxpaying propositions has been conceded, but
that is all. In five States suffrage constitutional amendments have
been defeated at the polls : in California in 1896, in South Dakota
and Washington in 1898, in Oregon in 1900, and in New Hampshire
in 1903. In 1903 the Legislatures of thirteen States rejected woman
suffrage Bills of one type or another.

The explanation of this check to the woman-suffrage movement in
the United States is not far to seek. The movement has been brought
to a halt by the discovery that the American women who ask for the
ballot constitute only a small minority of their sex. Americans have
a certain chivalry which prompts them to go to the very verge of
peril, or beyond it, in giving to women, politically, what they think
that women want. Until a comparatively recent date the advocates
of woman suffrage professed to speak for the sex, and legislators
have assumed that they did so. But it is no longer possible to make
that claim unchallenged. Coincident with the decline in the suffrage
movement, as measured by legislation, and undoubtedly largely the
cause of it, is the development and formal organisation among women
themselves of a sentiment actively opposed to the grant of the ballot

838 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

to their sex. The increasing hostility of women to the suffrage has
been manifested mainly in two ways :

(1) By the organisation of associations of women for the purpose
of directly antagonising suffrage measures in the legislatures of their
own and other States. The Massachusetts Association Opposed to
the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women, which now, according
to the statement of its president, Mrs. C. E. Guild, at a legislative
hearing in Boston, the 27th of January, 1904, numbers 10,691 women,
and has branches in 222 cities, towns, and villages in the State, was
fully organised in 1895. In New York an association of similar name
and purpose was organised in the same year. The Illinois Associa-
tion was formed in 1897. In each of these States volunteer com-
mittees had been at work for some years in opposition to suffrage
measures, but the first formal organisation was in 1895. Similar
associations or committees exist, or have been called into activity as
emergencies arose, in Maine, Rhode Island, Iowa, Oregon, Washington,
and other States. They print and distribute appeals, arguments, and
remonstrances against suffrage measures, and through their officers,
or otherwise, appear personally before legislative committees to urge
adverse action on suffrage Bills. The report of the Massachusetts
Association for 1903 shows an expenditure of nearly 3,000 dollars
and a distribution of 32,000 leaflets and pamphlets.

The literature published by these associations would make an
interesting collection if it were brought together. The arguments of
these remonstrating women are numerous but consistent. They urge
that, while merely to deposit a single vote is a momentary act,

the consequences of thousands and millions of votes so deposited |by women
will be to weaken the force of family life, to bring Church matters into politics,
to lessen chivalry and tenderness between men and women, and to bring politics
into each question of philanthropic, social, or educational organisation which
should be decided solely on its own merits and not for any effect it may have on
party zeal.2

They point to many laws improving the status of women,3 and
show that these substantial gains have been accomplished without
aid from the suffragists and in States in which women do not vote.4
They urge that the functions and duties of the two sexes are well
and clearly defined — to the strong physique of man, the labours and

* Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells, in a letter read before the Massachusetts Legislative
Committee on Election Laws, February 1, 1900.

* Rights and Exemptions which by Law are given to Women and not to Men.
Published by the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of
Suffrage to Women.

4 Woman's Progress versus Woman Suffrage. By Mrs. Helen Kendrick Johnson.
Published by the New York State Association Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to
Women.

1904 WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN THE U.S.A. 839

duties of the outside world ; to the finer and more spiritual nature of
woman, the labours and duties of the home and society ; and that

if ever the day arrives when women cannot in the long run depend upon men,
to be the support and protection of their weaker physical nature, and when men
cannot depend upon women for the tender offices and ministrations which
belong sacredly and indefeasibly to the home, it will be high time for the race to
take account of itself and square its course anew.5

They insist that

it is not the tyranny but the chivalry of men that we American women have
to fear. The men of America want to give us everything we really need, and the
danger is that they will mistake a minority for a majority.8

They argue that women are already bearing their full share of the
burdens of society, and that it is unjust to impose upon them duties
for which they are not fitted by experience or training :

It is hard for experienced men to follow intelligently the conduct of a great
municipality, to understand the departments of official work, the subdivisions of
labour, the financial problems, and then to decide who has honestly performed
these great duties. It is a poor argument to say that women would do as well as
many men : they must do better to have their votes of any advantage to the
city ; for addition to the number of voters is no gain, but, on the contrary, an
added trouble and expense. It is surely a better quality of voters rather than an
increased number of them that our country needs.7

(2) The other manifestation of the indifference or active hostility
of the great majority of American women to the imposition of the
ballot was made in connection with the so-called ' Referendum ' in
Massachusetts in 1895. This expression has been so influential not
only in that State, but in others, where it has been rightly interpreted
as representative of the attitude of women in general, that it cannot
be overlooked in any consideration of the present status of the suffrage
movement in the United States. A municipal suffrage Bill narrowly
missed passing in the Massachusetts Legislature in 1894. It was
acted on favourably by the House and defeated in the Senate. The
effort to secure its passage was renewed the next year ; and the Legis-
lature, after first rejecting the Bill, conceived the idea of getting a
mandate from the people, or at least some light as to public senti-
ment. It therefore passed a Bill providing for the submission to the
men voters of the State at the election in November, and also to
women possessed of the qualifications necessary to entitle them to

5 Letter of Mrs. Caroline F. Corbin, of Chicago, to the Hon. Oliver W. Stewart,
Member of the Illinois House of Representatives, February 12, 1903. Published by
the Illinois Association Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to Women.

d Miss Emily S. Bissell, of Delaware, in an address before the United States Senate
Committee on Woman Suffrage, February 13, 1900.

1 The Present Status of Woman Suffrage in the United States. By Mrs. Charles E.
Guild, President of the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension
of Suffrage to Women. Published by the Association.

840 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

vote for school committees, the question — * Is it expedient that
municipal suffrage be granted to women ? ' It was further provided
that the vote of the sexes should be recorded separately. The Bill
was opposed by leading suffragists, who seemed to shrink from such
a test of public sentiment, and even after it had been passed several
of them waited upon the Governor and asked him to veto it. The
suffragists, however, made an energetic campaign. They formed
local organisations and made a thorough canvass ; and several weeks
before the election their spirits were so far revived that the Woman's
Journal of Boston, the suffrage organ, declared hopefully : ' After
next November suffragists will probably have a right to claim that
they speak for a majority of the women.' On the other hand, the
women represented by the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the
Further Extension of Suffrage to Women did not recommend women
holding their views to go to the polls, but urged them to use their
influence to increase the vote of men against the proposition.

The result of the vote was startling to the suffragists. Of the
men who voted, 86,970 expressed themselves in favour of giving the
municipal ballot to women, and 186,976 against it — an adverse
majority of 100,006. But the vote of the women was more sur-
prising. There were, in round numbers, perhaps 575,000 women of
voting age who might have registered and voted if the question had
appealed to them ; but of these only 22,204 went to the polls and
recorded themselves in favour of municipal suffrage, and 864 women
voted against the proposition. The total women's vote cast in favour
of the proposal was actually smaller than has sometimes been polled
at school elections. There were forty-seven towns in which no woman
voted ' Yes,' and in 138 other towns the women who voted ' Yes '
numbered fifteen or less.

It will be perceived that the situation presented to the American
legislator to-day, when he is asked to extend the suffrage to women,
is very different from what it was a decade ago. Then the claim for
suffrage was put forward in a general way for ' the women,' and
legislators who did not give it respectful consideration were charged
with lack of chivalry and generosity. When hearings were given upon
proposed suffrage measures, ordinarily only the petitioners appeared,
and legislative committees were justified in concluding that they
expressed the desire of practically all women. But now legislative
hearings upon this question resolve themselves into a kind of joint
debate between women who want the ballot and women who do not
want it ; and the women who appear to remonstrate against the
extension of suffrage to their sex are not only as intelligent, as sincere,
and as earnest as those who seek the ballot, but they are able to point
to evidence, the nature of which has been already indicated, to justify
their claim to speak for an overwhelming, though hitherto silent,
majority of their sex.

1904 WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN THE U.S.A. 841

To comply good-humouredly with what was supposed to be the
desire of all or nearly all women was one thing ; to vote to force the
ballot upon 96 per cent, of women who are either indifferent or
earnestly opposed to the proposal at the clamour of 4 per cent, who
want it is quite another matter. Americans have great respect for
majorities, and majorities count in this matter as in others. There
are two considerations, either or both of which might warrant the
extension of suffrage to women. One is the conviction that the
condition of women would be thereby improved ; the other is the
belief that the State would be benefited by woman's exercise of the
suffrage. But these demonstrations of woman's hostility to the
ballot strike at both these considerations. It is hard for legislators
to believe that, if the ballot were likely to be a benefit to women, less
than 4 per cent, of them would ask for it. It is equally hard for
them to believe that the ballot, imposed upon a body of voters so
reluctant to accept or use it, could be an instrument for the improve-
ment of politics or the regeneration of society. It seems, therefore,
not rash to conclude that the check to the woman-suffrage movement
in the United States, following closely, as it has, upon the organised
opposition of women to it, represents not a coincidence merely, but
cause and effect. In this case post hoc is propter hoc.

FRANK FOXCROFT.

Boston, Mass.

VOL. LVI— No. 333

842 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Nov.

THE RUSSIAN SOLDIER

ONE of the most pathetic figures of modern times is the Russian
soldier. Before he was ordered to present himself at the voinskaja
pavinost (the conscription tribunal), whilst he was yet a civilian, he
laboured under disabilities which are well-nigh incredible to the
dwellers in lands where liberty is the right of all men. But when on
the Pelion of civil bondage is piled the Ossa of enforced service under
a revoltingly barbarous military system the acme of human misery
would seem to be attained. The fireside philanthropist exclaims :
' Hush ! Do not tell him that he is wretched and he will not realise
it. It is a mistake to suppose that a man who is the heir to centuries
of oppression feels the degradation of his position ; and, therefore,
it is only necessary to keep him in ignorance and bondage and he
will be quite contented.' I have seen this argument solemnly advanced
within the last few weeks in the columns of a respectable British
journal in defence of the Tsar of Russia keeping the vast majority
of his subjects in a state of illiteracy and ignorance. But, unfortu-
nately, the Russian soldier and his family, ignorant as they are, lie
under no misapprehension as to the miseries which await a man
during the term of his service in the army. The voinskaja pavinost
is a terror which overshadows the youth for years before he arrives
at man's estate. It is not dispelled by the reports which he hears
from reservists who have come back to their homes from the active
army, nor by the treatment which the old soldiers receive at the
hands of the community. It does not fire his breast with martial
ardour to see them shunned and despised, or to hear from their
lips the simple story of their treatment whilst they were in the ranks.
It is not wonderful that he seeks to evade the ordeal through which
they have passed by quitting his country for ever, or by maiming
himself for life. I have already referred briefly to this subject in
* Russia as It Really Is.' I shall now give some further particulars.

In Smolensk I was slightly acquainted with a young fellow who
was the son of a leather and iron merchant in the town. He was
just over twenty years of age when he called to see me one day in
April, and began to ask me questions about his health. Could I tell

1904 THE EUSSIAN SOLDIEB 843

him what he could do to reduce his chest measurement, he asked at
length. I was surprised at the question, and replied light-heartedly :
* Dissipation and starvation, riotous nights and hungry days.'

My answer did not seem to satisfy him.

* Is there no drug I could take to disable me for a few years,
so that I should be rejected as medically unfit at the voinskaja
pavinost ? '

I became serious in a moment when I understood the drift of
his questioning, and cautioned him severely to dismiss all such notions
from his mind. I knew that there were doctors in Smolensk who
could give him what he wanted, and who would do so if he went to
them for advice ; and in telling him this I warned him that he would
almost certainly ruin his constitution for life.

The poor lad looked the picture of misery. If I could not help
him in the way he suggested there was another way out of the diffi-
culty, which I had no hesitation in recommending to his notice.

' Why employ such dangerous means to avoid service ? ' I asked.
' Why not leave Russia altogether and be a healthy man in some
other country ? You have a good physique and bodily strength.
You would have no difficulty in earning a living.'

' I know that well enough,' he answered, with tears in his eyes ;
' but my home is here, and my father, and mother, and friends. If I
went to another country I should never see them again. I cannot
do it ! '

He rose to go, with an expression of utter dejection on his face.
As he was passing the window he paused and looked out at the green
fields.

' I would rather live on black bread and water, and sleep out
there,' he said, pointing to the fields, ' than be a rich man in a country
which is not my home.'

At the voinskaja pavinost in the following autumn he was rejected
by the doctor as medically unfit, and told that he need not report
himself again, as he was in the second stage of consumption.

Another instance of the same kind I came across in Orel about
four years ago. Two weeks before the voinskaja pavinost a young
man had his right eye removed. Another, in the same government,
chopped the toes off his right foot, performing the operation himself
on a butcher's block. When the military authorities found out what
he had done he was arrested and packed off to Siberia. On an
occasion when I was invited by the medical officer to accompany
him to the voinskaja pavinost in Simbersk a young man who was
being examined suddenly fell to the ground and died within a quarter
of an hour. On examination it was found that he had taken poison.
The most usual form of mutilation is the amputation of three fingers
of the right hand, which effectually prevents the man from using a
rifle.

3 K 2

844 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

I think I have given enough examples to convince the impartial
reader that mutilation and kindred acts are frequently resorted to by
young men in Kussia to enable them to escape the ordeal of military
service. Horrors of such a kind clearly indicate the dread which
exists throughout Russia of the service of the Tsar. Unless this
terror of the voinskaja pavinost were founded on the most convincing
evidence is it likely that young men would resort to such horrible
extremes to avoid their obligations ? The fact is that the official
brutality which exists in all departments of the Government service
culminates in an orgie of wanton cruelty in the army. The official
attitude is one of uncompromising severity : it recognises no reason ;
it is relentless in operation ; it is bound down with the most imbecile
restrictions ; but it is always amenable to corruption. In civil life
this state of things is bad enough, but in the army, where the un-
fortunate private soldier is the slave of many masters, from the
colonel to the corporal, it is positively unendurable to any man with a
spark of real manhood in him. I do not wish to be misunderstood on
this point. I am well aware that strict discipline is an absolute
necessity in every army worthy of the name. I recognise the fact
that injustices are inevitable under any system of military administra-
tion, where the welfare of the whole body must be placed before the
interest of the individual ; but I maintain that the treatment meted
out to the Russian conscript is a scandal and disgrace to humanity,
and has no parallel in the annals of civilisation.

Denunciation unsupported carries no weight ; but if we follow the
Russian conscript through his career in the army we shall get a clearer
view on the subject of his treatment than is to be obtained by
generalisations. He has presented himself at the voinskaja pavinost,
drawn from the ballot box a fatal number, and the doctor has pro-
nounced him godin (fit). He is then taken into a room where the
tcheroolnik (hair-cutter) awaits him, scissors in hand, and his matted
hair is shorn off close to the scalp, at the Tsar's expense. Thereafter
he is sworn in and becomes the property of the Tsar and his officers.

The recruit has no say in which branch of the service he is to
serve, neither has he any choice of locality. It is rarely that he serves
in his own government ; as a rule he is transferred to a distant part
of the Empire. The recruit from Courland may be sent to Poltava,
or from Saratov to Esthonia, or from Bessarabia to Kovno. If he
has a trade he is regarded as a prize, and his talents are turned to
account in the regimental workshops. If he has none he is quickly
converted into a machine to do the bidding of his officers. He must
have no individuality, and no ideas of his own, but he is allowed to
retain his name to distinguish him from his comrades.

As to the educational status of the Russian soldier, various figures
have been advanced lately as to the percentage of illiterates in the
army. From my own observations I maintain that not 10 per cent.

1904 THE RUSSIAN SOLDIER 845

can read and write. The standard of education varies enormously
in different parts of the Empire. In European Russia — in Archangel,
Astrachan, and Bessarabia — not 2 per cent, can read and write.
Against that in Courland nearly all can read and write ; and the
same holds good in Esthonia. In the Don Cossacks region about
10 per cent, are literate. In Ekaterinoslav, Kaluga, Kostroma, Penza,
Perm, Padolia, and Ryazan 90 per cent, are illiterate. In Ufa,
Tver, Tula, and Tambov the percentage is about the same. In
Vitebsk and Yaroslav there are some 8 per cent, who can read and
write. In Poland and Finland the educational standard is far higher,
the illiterates not amounting to 20 per cent. Against this in Northern
Caucasia, omitting Baku and the Black Sea littoral, not 1 per cent,
are educated. In Asiatic Russia the percentage of literates is very
small, perhaps 2 per cent.

The Russian recruit is as stupid as he is illiterate ; but he is taught
his first lesson when he joins the army. He learns it like a parrot,
repeating the words after his instructor laboriously.

* Whom do you serve ? ' he is asked.

* The Little Father.'

' Correct. But how is he called ? '

The recruit does not know, and he is made to repeat the titles of
the Tsar until he has them by heart —

'Evo Imperatorskoe Velitchestvo Gosudar Imperator Nicholai
Alexandrovitch, Samoderjets Vserossieskie.'

The words convey about as much to him as they do to the British
reader who has not studied Russian. But that is only the first part of
his lesson. There are the name and titles of the Tsaritsa to follow, and
of various other members of the Imperial Family. It is quite possible
that, in the intervals of his ' retirements ' before the Japanese armies
in Manchuria, he is being taught by what names and titles he is to
speak of the infant Tsarevitch. But his education is not completed
when he has made himself familiar with the members of the House of
Romanov ; there are the generals and officers under whom he serves,
who also have names and titles, and he must learn them all down to
the sergeant of his section. The time spent in teaching him these
purely ceremonial details might with more advantage be applied to
instructing him in the elements of tactics ; but since he is never allowed
to think for himself, or to know the reason of the various manoeuvres
which he is ordered to carry out, it would be useless waste of time to
explain such things to him. But he has long hours of drill in the
barrack square under instructors who maltreat him if he is more
than usually stupid, and often when he is not. He is also taught
the care of arms and musketry practice. The sighting of his rifle is
a great stumbling-block to him, for the little figures on the back
sight convey nothing to his mind, and the trajectory of the bullet
is quite beyond his comprehension.

846 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

The barracks in which he is housed may be superior in capacity
and ventilation to the hovel which he once called his home, but his
life in them is made unbearable by the non-commissioned officers,
who are imbued with a full measure of Russian officialism, and who,
therefore, think it necessary to make the lot of their subordinates as
unpleasant as possible.

It has been pointed out to me by an enlightened critic that I must
be mistaken in describing the lot of the Russian soldier as an unhappy
one. ' Russian regiments always sing on the march,' he explains,
and therefore, of course, the men must be happy. He is perfectly
right about the singing. Russian soldiers are always singing ; they
sing on the march, they sing in the train, they sing whilst they are
eating their black bread and kapusta (sour cabbage), they sing in the
Jcharchevna (public-house). I have also seen a gang of over four
hundred prisoners in chains on their way to Siberia, and they too
sang as they marched to the station, and afterwards in the train.
I suppose, therefore, that they must have been quite happy and
contented !

An American humourist has told us that a certain amount of fleas
is good for a dog ; he passes the day in scratching himself, and so
forgets to brood over the misery of being a dog. Ask the Russian
soldier why he is always singing, and he will give you much the same
reason. He passes the day in singing, and so forgets to brood over
the misery of being a soldier.

The songs which the soldiers sing are remarkable compositions,
and the origin of them is worth recording. Every company in a
regiment has a clown. He is selected by the captain of the company
on account of his accomplishments. Before he became a soldier he
probably lived by his wits in a city, and possessing a humour of his
own and a ready tongue he soon makes for himself the reputation of
a wag in the regiment. He is, therefore, appointed clown to his
company, and in that capacity he marches in front singing and dancing
for the entertainment of his comrades. He is exempted from carrying
arms, so that he may be able to perform the uncouth Russian dances
which have become familiar to the British public on the music-hall
stage. Then he will strike up a verse of a song, and the whole com-
pany will join in the refrain, and for the time they forget their swollen
feet and the weight of the knapsack which galls their shoulders. If
he is a clown of genius he composes songs for his company when he is
in barracks, and sings them on the march. Sometimes he will make
a great ' hit ' with one of his compositions. It spreads from company
to company, and from regiment to regiment, until it becomes a national
song.

When the slopes of Plevna were thickly strewn with fallen
Russians a mere handful of men, the remnant of a regiment, swept
back from the assault, staggered out of action with the clown

1904 THE RUSSIAN SOLDIER 847

at their head. Back to Skobelefi he led them, shouting the
refrain :

Hai, Turkie duraki,
Krasnoi shapki kak burakee,
Krasnoi shapki kak burakee,
Nasha Eusski mallatchi !

Eh, foolish Turks,
With your red caps like beets,
With your red caps like beets,
Our Eussian bravery I

That was a song inspired by the reek of battle on a stricken field. I
have given the Russian words (Anglicised), because both the metre
and the alliterative guttural are suggestive. Here is another which
I lately heard sung in Russia by troops on the march. It was evidently
inspired by the piping times of peace, and I give only the translation :

A rooster sat on a steeple

For over twenty years ;

But a holy saint blessed the lofty rooster,

And he laid an egg, did that blessed rooster,

Which fell to the churchyard below,

And killed the devil — dead.

Chorus.

O holy, holy rooster, ha ! ha ! ha !
For the saint who blessed thee, he ! he 1 he !
Mayst thou ever lay thy eggs, ha ! ha I ha I
O holy, holy rooster.

Once a year the soldier gets a holiday and quits the barracks for
a few days. The occasion is the week before Easter, and the purpose
of the holiday is to collect eggs for the Easter festival. Every man
who is sent out carries two empty baskets on his arm, and he is told
to go into the country and beg eggs from the farmers. Needless to
say the soldier is delighted to escape from the iron discipline of barrack
life and be, for a few days, a free man. As usual he sings on the road
as he tramps with a few comrades round the district, taking toll of
the farmers' eggs and begging a meal or shelter for the night in their
barns. He ingratiates himself with his host and makes love to his
daughter ; and in return for their hospitality he will do all kinds of
odd jobs about the farm. Finally he takes his departure, with his
baskets full of eggs, and tramps back to barracks.

I once met a party of soldiers, with empty baskets, making for a
farmhouse where I had been staying for some time. Now the soldier
has not an open field for his egg- collecting at Easter, for that is also
the season when the travelling popes are going their rounds of the
country, with the ostensible purpose of begging for the poor. I
happened to know that there were several popes at the farm to which

848 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Nov.

the soldiers were going, and I stopped and told them so. Their faces
fell immediately. They knew that when it came to begging they
were no match for the priests, and they turned back reluctantly.

' The devil take the cursed popes ! ' one of them muttered ; and
as I too had been driven out of the house by their arrival, to seek a
breath of pure air, I was in thorough sympathy with his sentiments.

The spring of the year brings another form of employment for the
soldier in Russia, which enables him to earn a small wage. As soon
as the ice has broken up in the rivers the pontoon bridges which were
taken ofi at the beginning of the winter have to be constructed again.
For this purpose soldiers are frequently employed, and they are paid
a small sum for their labour.

Such are the brighter aspects of the Russian soldier's life ; he is
encouraged to sing on the march ; he is given a few days' freedom at
Easter to beg ; he is allowed to earn a few kopeks at bridge-building
in the spring. Against these advantages there is a very considerable
balance on the other side. The systematic brutality with which he
is treated by his officers I have already mentioned in * Russia as It
Really Is,' and I gave one or two examples. Here is another for the
benefit of those who are sceptical.

I happened one day to be in a tea house in Kaluga, where there
were several soldiers sitting round their samovar, chatting in an
orderly manner. Two of them attracted my attention, as I could
overhear snatches of their conversation. One mentioned that his
wife had come to live in Kaluga whilst he was serving, so that she
might be near him. The other congratulated his friend en his good
fortune in possessing a wife so devoted to him. And so for a few
minutes they chatted on ; and then, having finished their tea, one of
them left the shop whilst the other paid the account. I also had
finished my tea, and walked out into the street. I had not gone more
than a few steps when the soldier who had stayed behind to pay the
reckoning overtook me. At the same moment an officer, coming
from the opposite direction, passed, and the soldier saluted him. The
officer apparently did not see the soldier's pot kazerok, for he turned
back, and overtaking him demanded why he had not saluted. I was
only a few paces from them, and I could see the soldier trembling like
a leaf as he protested that he had saluted. His explanation had no
effect upon the officer, who seized the unfortunate man by the collar
of his great-coat with his left hand, whilst he pummelled his face with
his clenched right fist. The soldier was like a rabbit in his hands, and
the blood was streaming from his nose and mouth. Several people
passed without taking the slightest notice of the incident, and at the
door of the shop on the opposite side of the street were assembled the
customers and employes of the establishment, watching the brutal
scene, but making no attempt to interfere.

There was nothing for it but active intervention on my part ;

THE RUSSIAN SOLDIER 849

and going up to the officer I grabbed his right wrist just as he was on
the point of dealing another blow on the soldier's face. Still holding
the man by the collar, the officer struggled to free the arm which I
held, hurling opprobrious abuse at my head, and calling me by a
name which is frequently used by all Russians to their inferiors, but
which constitutes the direst insult. I hit him full in the face with my
left fist, and he let go his hold of the soldier's collar and turned his
whole attention to me. In the melee which followed the officer drew
his sword, but dropped it before he could make any use of it, and the
outcome was that I broke it over his head. By that time a couple of
gorodovois had come upon the scene ; but, to my surprise, I was not
arrested. I gave my card to one of them, whilst the other called a
droshka, in which the officer drove off, slightly disfigured, and with the
pieces of his broken sword in his hand. When he had gone I looked
in vain for the soldier ; he had disappeared. I had not escaped from
the fray without damage, and I limped off down the street with a very
sore shin, where my adversary had kicked me, determined, if there
were any possible means of effecting it, to bring the scoundrel to
justice.

I presume that the reason why I was not arrested by the goro-
dovois was due to the fact that I was known to them to be the guest
of the politzmaister. To him I went with the whole story ; but he
strongly advised me to drop the matter. So I thought it over, and
came to the conclusion that if the officer were satisfied there was no
reason why I should pursue the subject further. I never saw or
heard of the officer again whilst I was in Kaluga, but whenever I
chanced to meet either of the gorodovois he always regarded me with
a friendly smile.

There is one class of soldiers which has no particular cause to sing,
because marching forms a very small part of its duties. These are
the soldiers who work day and night in the tailors', carpenters', and
smiths' shops in barracks. They are frequently Jews, and that is
another reason why their officers maltreat them.

' You have made the sleeves of my uniform too long,' a younker
shouted to a wretched little Jewish tailor in my presence.

' I am sorry, high-born. They shall be altered.'

* They should have been right to begin with, Judas Iscariot,' the
officer rejoined, and with a blow in the face of the poor tailor he
walked out of the shop.

I did not hear that Jewish soldier sing after the officer had gone ;
I only heard the sewing machine going like a mill.

I abstain from mentioning the term by which the officer usually
addresses his men. Enough to say that it is a word which casts reflec-
tions upon the parents of the soldier, and is, therefore, of a particularly
offensive nature ; but it is so universally used in Russia by all classes
that it is the commonest word in the whole language.

850 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

In the reign of Alexander the Second a certain reformer, scanda-
lised by the tone and frequency of this filthy expression, set about to
petition the Tsar to make the use of it a misdemeanour, punishable
by law. He secured thousands of signatures to his petition, and
being granted an audinece by the good-natured Alexander laid the
document before him. The Tsar read it to the end sympathetically,
declared that the reformer had done a noble work in devoting his
energies to the suppression of bad language, and announced his
intention of countersigning the petition, and making it a law that the
use of that particular expression in Russia should henceforward be an
indictable offence. The reformer was overjoyed at the successs of
his petition, and the Tsar took up his pen to sign the immortal docu-
ment. But, alas ! the pen was a bad one, and Alexander the Second,
losing his temper, dashed it to the floor, using the very expression
which he had intended to make illegal. So the petition remained
unsigned by the Tsar, and to this day there is no law in Russia against
the use of the offending phrase. And the reformer, when he thinks
of the pen of Alexander the Second, still uses the expression himself.
I have failed to find any records of this story in history, nor has it
been published, I believe, in the columns of any British newspaper.
But I can vouch for the truth of it.

Apart from the brutal treatment to which the soldier is subjected
by his officers in the ordinary relations of life the military code pro-
vides all sorts of pains and penalties for lapses from discipline, which
are stringently enforced. The knout plays an important part in
maintaining order in the Tsar's forces — a form of punishment which
is as degrading as it is cruel — but it is very popular with the official
Russian mind. But, with a protest against flogging and the dis-
creditable condition of the prisons in which military offenders are
confined, I shall pass by the operation of military law in Russia, as I
recognise the fact that in the maintenance of discipline in an army
a special code is necessary and a strict enforcement of its provisions.

Every country has its corps d'elite — Guards, chasseurs, bersaglieri,
Jdger — but no country gives a more prominent position to its
* crack ' corps than Russia concedes to the Cossacks. This is the more
remarkable inasmuch as the Cossacks are not really Russians, but
the frontier tribes which Russia has absorbed. The explanation is to
be found in the fact that the Russians proper are not a warlike nation.
They serve in the army under compulsion and without enthusiasm,
and they would very much prefer that the Cossacks should do all
their fighting for them. On the other hand the Cossacks revel in
fighting and in the congenial task of keeping order amongst the
students, Jews, and other disturbing elements of the Tsar's peace.
So the Cossack is given pride of place in the Russian army because
he is a genuine fighting man, and because no peaceable Russian
would dream of disputing his claims.

1904 THE EUSSIAN SOLDIEE 851

The Cossack is a privileged person ; he has a special education
and laws of his own. He also has his own customs, which are not
very pleasing. From his early days he is taught that blood is the
one thing needful. As a youngster he will attend at the slaughtering
of animals, and run to catch the blood in his little wooden cup — and
he drinks it. When he grows up his thirst for blood is insatiable ;
it is a practical, working thirst, and not a mere figure of speech. It
is the craving of a carnivorous beast. The smell of blood affects him
as it does the tiger, and his instinct guides him to the ' kill.' He is
not particular as to the fountain from which he drinks. An ox or a
pig will serve him ; but sometimes he flies at higher game. In Omsk
a Cossack was arrested by the police for murdering a Persian pedlar.
The Persian was what is known as a ' box wallah ' in Anglo-India.
He used to go round the town with a bundle of printed cottons for
sale. The Cossack coveted the Persian's goods and his money, so he
waylaid and murdered him. He confessed, when arrested, that he
had cut the Persian's throat and drunk of his blood. I was present
when he made the confession, and I came across a very similar
case in Malo-Cherkass. It is a common report that in the war
with Turkey the Cossacks practically lived on the blood of the
Turks whom they had captured, until Alexander the Second got
word of it and ordered the Cossack general to put a stop to the
practice.

The British traveller in Russia who takes photographs, shakes
hands with the Tsar, hobnobs with the official classes, and then
returns to England and writes a book on Russia has never told his
readers how the Russian officer passes his leisure hours. The enter-
prising ' Special Correspondent ' of the Press who writes home interest-
ing articles on the social and political condition of the country is
also silent on this subject. With the intention of providing a journalist,
whom I met in Moscow, with some excellent ' copy ' for an article in
his paper I asked him to accompany me one evening to an establish-
ment where I knew that we should meet a large number of army
officers.

I took him to a big, four-storied mansion in the heart of the
city, which might well have been the residence of a prince. The
windows were of coloured glass, and the lights shining through them
from behind reminded me of the stained glass windows of a church.
A gorodovoi stood near the entrance and hastened to open the door
as we approached, with his hand held out expectantly for a tip. An
old man in a gorgeous livery met us in the hall and relieved us of
our coats and hats. He then ushered us into the reception room,
a spacious apartment with a waxed floor, and Turkish divans and
little inlaid tables ranged round the walls. On the divans were
reclining women in costumes diaphanous and dtcolletes, who smoked
cigarettes and drank champagne whilst they chatted with the men

852

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Nov.

beside them. Several girls rose and came towards us as we entered,
and my journalist friend hung back.

' You need not mind the ladies,' I said. ' They will be very
pleased to see you. Here is the lady of the house,' as a large, middle-
a<*ed woman came up. ' You can call her " Matushka " without

O •*•

further ceremony.'

A man at the grand piano struck up a waltz. The bevy of fair
women closed round my friend and bore him off, and I was left alone
with ' Matushka.' I asked if she would show me round her magnifi-
cent house, and, taking me by the arm, she led me through the recep-
tion room, where officers of all ranks in uniform were dancing with
the women or sitting with them on their knees on the low divans.
Before we had reached the door I felt a tap on my shoulder, and,
looking round, found my journalist with a troubled expression on his
face. A misfortune had befallen him, he explained. Being unable
to speak Russian he had contented himself with answering ' Yes, yes '
to everything that his fair companions said, and as a result he had
been called upon to pay for six bottles of champagne at ten roubles
a bottle, and he had not enough money with him to meet the demand.
Fortunately I was able to help him out of his difficulty ; and the
lady of the house seeing me disburse sixty roubles for champagne
became very attentive. She introduced me to many of the officers
present, explaining to them that I was a fabulously rich foreigner,
who had honoured her house with his presence ; but she took care
not to leave me alone with them.

' You must be very rich yourself, Matushka,' I ventured, looking
at the heavy velvet curtains and the gilded cornices.

' No, bareen, no ! ' she answered. ' There was a time when I
used to make a lot of money. That was when a Courlandish regiment
was quartered in Moscow. The officers could get plenty of money
out of their men, but now they are only beggarly regiments who
come here. Their officers can make nothing out of the soldiers, and
they owe me thousands of roubles.'

A polkovnik (colonel), half -drunk and truculent, began abusing a
civilian against whom he had lurched in his passing through the room.

' Oi, Loubva ! ' Matushka called to a pale, thin girl, with hectic
red spots on her cheek bones and large, luminous eyes, ' stop that
coughing and come and look after your polkovnik. He is quarrelling,
as usual.'

The girl crammed her handkerchief into her mouth, and going up
to the polkovnik laid a hand on his sleeve and led him away.

' Ah, the poor polkovnik ! ' Matushka exclaimed sympathetically.
* He has the devil of a wife at home. Loubva is the only one who
can manage him. He is like a child with her.'

At the far end of the room there was a crash. Two younkers
were confronting each other across an overturned table with blazing

1904 THE RUSSIAN SOLDIER 853

eyes and furious words. Matushka left my side and hurried to restore
order. A girl sitting close to the two angry men was crying hysteri-
cally, and a pack of cards was scattered on the floor at her feet.

' He wasn't cheating — I swear he wasn't cheating ! ' she sobbed.
And then Matushka's voice rang out harshly above the din.

' You don't come to my house to gamble. Before you lose your
money to other people I wish you would pay me what you owe me.'

My friend came up to me. ' I have had enough of this,' he said
disgustedly. * Let us go.'

As we were leaving the room we passed Loubva sitting on the
knees of the polkovnik ; she was still coughing, and there was blood
on her handkerchief.

As we walked home together I ventured to suggest to the journalist
that he might write a couple of columns for his paper on the events
of the evening, giving full particulars of the rank and number of
Russian officers whom he had seen, the manner in which they pass
their time, and the sources from which they obtain their money ;
but he was not enthusiastic about it.

' Do you suppose that if I were to write such an article as you
suggest my paper would publish it ? ' he asked.

' Why not ? Surely you are sent here to report on things as they
are. Why should not your readers be told the whole truth ? '

' I am afraid you do not understand newspaper work,' he answered
coldly. * The British public don't like to be told these things ; and,
besides, the proprietor of my paper has lately entertained the Tsar
in England. It would never do to write down the Russian officers.
The manuscript would go straight into his waste-paper basket.'

The result of this mawkishness on the part of the British public,
and of the disinclination of the Press to disturb the public peace of
mind, is that very erroneous ideas of foreign manners and customs
are formed by that intelligent being ' the Man in the Street.'

Only the other day the same journal which announced that Russian
regiments sing on the march, as a proof of the happy disposition of
the men, also stated that the Russian officer is a kind and obliging
gentleman, polite, and anxious to please. I do not say that in Russia
there are no officers possessed of the virtues which the journal attri-
butes to them, but I will again fall back on an American for my
answer. A famous American statesman was speaking in the Carnegie
Hall, New York, in support of a Republican President. This is how
he finished his speech :

' Well, ladies and gentlemen, I do not mean to say that the Re-
publican party has no bad men — yes, a very few — nor do I mean
that the Democratic party has no good men — yes, a very few.'

I do not say that Russia has no kind and obliging and gentlemanly
officers — yes, a very few !

There are in Great Britain to-day people who speak of the de-

854

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Nov.

sirability of this country drawing into closer relations with Russia.
Ignoring our alliance with Japan and the solemn obligations which
that alliance imposes upon us in certain eventualities, these people
clamour for a treaty with Russia, on the lines of the agreements
lately concluded with France and other civilised nations of Europe.
Apart from the rank disloyalty to our allies of such a suggestion,
are these people aware of the present state of the Russian Empire ?
Do they realise that she is governed by an autocrat whose word is
not his bond ? Do they know anything of the ministers who act as
the Tsar's advisers ? Can they record one creditable action on the
part of the Russian Government within the past thirty years ? Until
Japan shattered the feet of clay of the image Russia was the bogey
of the British Empire. Now that our allies have pulled the scare-
crow down and shown us that, if its feet are of clay, its head is nothing
more than a hollow turnip, where is the advantage to us of making an
alliance with a discredited bogey ? The mere fact that the official
Russian press (and the whole Russian press is virtually official) is
clamouring for a better understanding with Great Britain should
make even the most ardent apostle of peace sceptical. We heard
nothing of this desire on the part of Russia for the friendship of Great
Britain until she was humiliated by the Japanese ; but now, in her
hour of trial, she throws pride to the winds and craves the good offices
of a country whom she has thwarted at every turn.

The meaning of this perverted desire for friendship with Russia
amongst certain people in this country must be due to one of two
causes. Either they have a stake in the country — shares in oil fields
or gold mines — or else they have been misled as to the true state of
Russian affairs, social, political, and moral, by the books and writings
of sycophantic travellers who have shaken hands with the Tsar
and taken their facts from Russian official sources.

We may reasonably talk of an alliance with Russia when Russia
has shown herself to be a civilised nation ; but until we have indis-
putable proofs that she is civilised Great Britain would do well to
avoid all alliances and treaties with Russia.

CARL JOUBERT.

1904

LAST MONTH

OCTOBER seems to have been a month of mystification, in two
countries at least. Germany has had its own special source of
bewilderment in the remarkable telegram addressed by the Emperor
William to Count Leopold, the acting Kegent of Lippe-Detmold.
On the face of it, this telegram contained a blunt refusal on the
part of the Emperor to acknowledge the validity of the Count's
assumption of the office of Regent on the death of his father. It is
difficult to see how any other interpretation of this telegram was
possible, so long as words retain their accepted meaning. Yet when
it was found that public opinion in Germany was almost wholly
adverse to the Emperor, on the ground that the position he had
taken up was a distinct aggression on the rights of the independent
Sovereign States of Germany, Count von Biilow, as German Chan-
cellor, came forward with an explanation of the Emperor's words
which seemed to reduce them to something like nonsense, and which
only mystified the German public still further as to the Emperor's
position and intentions. The affair of Lippe-Detmold is, of course,
to Englishmen, as to most people outside Germany, a very trivial
one, and it is the comic rather than the serious side of the attempt
of the Chancellor to explain away his Imperial master's autocratic
message that attracts the attention of the outside public. But in Ger-
many, where so much jealousy exists with regard to the maintenance of
the rights of even the smallest independent sovereignties, it is other-
wise, and during the month the Empire has witnessed a controversy
almost as fierce as that which preceded the Civil War in the United
States on the question of the rights of the different States. Germany,
however, has had no monopoly during the month of misunderstand-
ings caused by official statements which appear to mean one thing,
and are subsequently explained as really meaning something alto-
gether different. If, to Englishmen, the misunderstanding about the
Emperor William's intentions as to the Eegency of Lippe-Detmold
seems to be a matter of no particular importance, the case is very
different with regard to Mr. Balfour's statement at Edinburgh of his

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856 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

present position on the Tariff question. To the plain man, who is
not accustomed to the niceties of a game of finesse, and who does
not appreciate it, however skilfully it may be played, Mr. Balfour's
speech to the Edinburgh Conservative Club seemed upon the surface
to have only one meaning. Parenthetically, I may remark that the
speech itself was a surprise to everybody. There had been no
previous announcement of the Prime Minister's intention to deliver
an important political address. It came suddenly, like a bolt from
the blue, but its significance was enhanced by the fact that two
days later Mr. Chamberlain was to fulfil an engagement at Luton
which had been announced some weeks beforehand. To some of
Mr. Balfour's friends, and to the majority of his critics of both
parties, it appeared, not unnaturally, that his unexpected appearance
in the field was due to his wish to have his say before Mr. Chamber-
lain spoke at Luton. It was known that the member for West
Birmingham intended to leave England immediately after fulfilling
his engagement at Luton, and that he meant to remain away until
after that meeting of the Unionist caucus at which it was understood
a fresh attempt was to be made to capture the party in the interests
of his scheme of Fiscal Eeform. A year ago, when a similar attempt
failed, it did so because the Prime Minister gave it to be understood
that its success would involve his retirement from the leadership of
the party. Naturally enough, the world put two things together,
and came to the conclusion that Mr. Balfour's sudden intervention
was due to his wish to warn, not only his followers, but Mr. Chamber-
lain himself, that the success of any fresh attempt, like that which
was made at Sheffield twelve months ago, would be followed by the
consequences which he threatened at that time. I have said that
the Edinburgh speech seemed, on the surface at least, to be plain
and simple enough. It contained an explicit declaration that the
Prime Minister was no Protectionist, and that if Protection were to
be adopted as the policy of the Unionist party he did not feel that
he could with any advantage remain its leader. To the man of
ordinary intelligence such a statement seemed to be as clear as
noonday, and it was accepted accordingly as a direct repudiation of
the policy of which Mr. Chamberlain is the mouthpiece. But no
sooner had the Edinburgh speech appeared in the newspapers than
a bewildering discussion arose in the Conservative and Protectionist
press as to its true significance. It cannot be said that the discus-
sion was from any point of view edifying. Differences of opinion
between rival parties over political utterances are what everybody
expects ; but when an Oracle in the position of a Prime Minister
speaks at a critical moment in the history of his party, and his own
followers quarrel amongst themselves as to the meaning of his
speech, there is clearly something wrong somewhere. To the plain
man, as I have said, the apparent meaning of the speech is evident,

1904 LAST MONTH 857

but the Ministerial press wrangled over it with something like
ferocity. The Standard, backed up by Lord Hugh Cecil, insisted
that it was a repudiation of Mr. Chamberlain and his proposals ;
the Times saw in it a continuation of ' the game of skill,' an adroit
movement secretly intended to favour the member for West Bir-
mingham. Other organs of Unionist opinion went further, and
maintained that the speech proved there were no differences
between the Prime Minister and his late colleague, but that, on
the contrary, both were marching with equal steps to a common end.
The one indisputable fact in connection with this curious episode
is that we must apparently change the meaning that has hitherto
been attached to certain words. Mr. Balfour declared that he was
no Protectionist ; Mr. Chamberlain, when he came to speak at
Luton, repudiated Protection with almost equal fervour ; whilst it
was left to Mr. Victor Cavendish, who is apparently a supporter of
Mr. Balfour, if not of Mr. Chamberlain as well, to proclaim with
emphasis that he was a Free Trader from the bottom of his heart.
And these are the gentlemen who are supporting in some cases
retaliatory tariffs and in others the taxation of food ! Presumably
they believe that there is some mysterious difference between
' Protection ' printed in inverted commas and spelt with a capital P,
and protection pure and simple. The ordinary intelligence toils
after these refinements of diction in vain. They suggest more
strongly than anything else the old allegory of the distinction
between a chestnut horse and a horse-chestnut.

Mr. Chamberlain, it is true, at Luton did his utmost to induce
his audience to believe that there was no difference between himself
and Mr. Balfour. Protection, according to his view, was the last
thing desired by either of them. But he did not tackle the Prime
Minister's assertion that taxes on food are impossible in this country ;
and, whilst he welcomed Mr. Balfour's proposal in favour of a con-
ference between ourselves and the Colonies and India, he dis-
sented from the idea that the results of such conference, if it
were to take place, could not be acted upon until after a second
general election. Meanwhile the Unionist press continued to be
divided as to the 'true inwardness' of Mr. Balfour's declaration.
So the situation remains, and it is hardly likely to. undergo a change
until the meeting of the Conservative associations at Southampton
on the 28th of October. As that meeting will be a thing of the past
when these lines appear in print, I can do little good by attempting
to forecast its result ; but if one wished for further proof of the dis-
union and disintegration of the once united Unionist party it might
be found in the conflicting rumours and hopelessly divided opinions
as to what would happen at Southampton which prevailed among the
supporters of the Ministry down to the very eve of the meeting.
Whether any party can congratulate itself upon such a condition of

VOL. LVI— No. 333 3 L

858 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nor

things, and upon the sterile ambiguities propounded by those who
ought to be its leaders when they are asked for an explicit declara-
tion of policy, is a matter of opinion on which it might be pre-
sumptuous for me to pronounce. I cannot, however, recall any other
period within my recollection when such confusion prevailed in the
ranks of any party, nor do I think it possible to acquit Mr. Balfour
of the chief responsibility for that confusion. His own friends
declared with confidence on the eve of his speech at Edinburgh that
he meant to ' put his foot down ' and make his position absolutely
clear. He intended, we were assured, to act up to his declaration at
Sheffield that he would either be a real leader or would cease to lead.
If such were his intentions, his courage was hardly equal to themr
and the main result of his speech has been to make confusion worse
confounded.

In the meantime it must be remembered that time is passing,
and that every week brings us nearer to the moment when the
grand inquest of the nation will be held. There are, of course,
wiseacres who contend that the House of Commons has still two-
years to live, and that, no matter what may happen in the country,
it will live its life out to the very last day permitted by the Septennial
Act. Those who hold this opinion apparently believe that in some
curious and unexplained fashion Ministers are quickly to retrieve
themselves, and to regain the lost confidence of the nation. One
would have thought that the experience of the last two years would
have convinced even the least intelligent of the folly of this desperate
expedient by which Ministers are to cling to life so long as they can
command a bare majority in the House of Commons. The position
of the Government and its strength, both in Parliament and in the
country, has by common admission not been improved during these
two years. On the contrary, we have seen the feeling out of doors
against Ministers growing steadily, and in the House of Commons
the party difficulties have day by day become greater. Those who
imagine that now, by some curious transformation on their own
part, they can regain their lost ascendency in the country, and
restore unity and loyalty to their party in the House, must be at
once the most sanguine and the most simple of mortals. If, by any
impossible chance, the two years of additional life which is promised
by their flatterers to Ministers were to be secured, they would
probably be left at the end of that term weaker than ever an
English Ministry was left before, and they would find that the whips
with which they are now threatened had been changed to scorpions.
The practical men who control the business arrangements of the
Unionists clearly do not believe in this theory of two years' further
life, and, at Birmingham at least, the first steps have been taken in
preparation for a General Election, which, it is assumed, may take place
early in the coming year — if nothing happens at Southampton to

1904 LAST MONTH 859

bring it about at a still earlier date. It is not unreasonable to
assume that the rumours (officially contradicted) as to Lord Milner's
impending resignation and return from South Africa are not wholly
unconnected with this question of an impending dissolution. What-
ever may be the opinion of the more devoted adherents of the
Government, no doubt is entertained by the Opposition, and,
apparently, by a considerable proportion of those who have not
hitherto been opponents of the Ministry, as to the result of an
appeal to the country. Mr. Asquith, for example, has spoken with
absolute confidence of the disappearance of the present Government
from the scene, and those acquainted with the feeling in the inner-
most circles of Conservatism know that hardly less uncertainty
prevails even there as to the result of the General Election.
Viscount Milner has, probably, more by stress of circumstances than
by his own intention, been placed in a position which would hardly
permit him to retain his present post under a Liberal Government,
and it has consequently been understood for some months past that
he would tender his resignation whenever the present Ministry met
with a defeat. It is not yet the time for summing up his work in
South Africa. His lot has undoubtedly been a hard one, and even
those who have been unable to approve of much in his policy must
render homage to his intense devotion to his duty, his courage and
force of character, and the genuine ability he has shown as the
representative of the British Government in one of the great crises
in the history of the Empire. Whether he intends to resign, as
rumour affirms, (before Christmas, or to wait until a General Election
takes place, the task of choosing his successor, upon whomsoever it
may fall, will be no light one.

The war in the Far East has entered upon a new phase since I
last wrote. A month ago I ventured to hint that many of our news-
paper strategists had gone wrong in their anticipation of events in
Manchuria, and that they were, above all, gravely mistaken in treat-
ing, as not a few of them did, the capture of Liao-yangl as being
a defeat instead of a victory for (Field-Marshal Oyama. There was a
strong disposition at that time, both in this country and on the
Continent, to believe that the tide had turned, and that General
Kuropatkin, whose masterly retreat upon Mukden had made so
strong an impression upon the mind of the public, was about to
turn and pay off the score he owed to the Japanese. Popular as this
view was, it did not happen to fit in with the facts. The loss of
Liao-yang was no accident, any more than was its choice by General
Kuropatkin as his field of battle. There he had the advantage of
position, and of the great fortifications which he had raised for the
protection of his army. He stood on the defensive there, on the spot
chosen by himself, and it was a splendid achievement on the part of
Oyama to turn him out of his position and to drive him to Mukden

3 L 2

860 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

with great loss in men and stores ; nor did the fact that there was no
Sedan really detract from the brilliancy of the victory. What that
victory meant has now been proved by one of the greatest and most
sanguinary engagements which history records. The Czar and his
advisers, distracted by the prolonged series of misfortunes which the
Russian army has encountered since the beginning of the conflict,
seem to have been in sore doubt after the loss of Liao-yang as to
their proper policy. There were serious disagreements at St. Peters-
burg as to the chief command of the forces in the Far East. Both
Alexeieff and Kuropatkin were threatened with disgrace, and it was
even hinted that a Grand Duke was to be appointed as General-
issimo in Asia. In the end, however, saner counsels prevailed, and
Kuropatkin was retained in his post, but apparently on one condition.
That was, that, instead of retreating to Harbin, he should reorganise
his army, which had been heavily reinforced, at Mukden, and, taking
the offensive, attack the Japanese in their positions around Liao-yang.
It was candidly admitted by friends of the Russian Government that
political reasons made this change of tactics necessary. The open
pretext was the desperate state of Port Arthur. The real reason
seems to have been the unpopularity of the war in Russia itself,
where even the peasants have revolted against a diet of continuous
defeats. But, whatever may have been the real reason for the aban-
donment by General Kuropatkin of his defensive policy, and his
attempt to turn the tide of victory which had so long rolled in
favour of the Japanese by an attack upon the latter in their en-
trenchments, the movement has failed most completely. The
Japanese have not been driven back ; on the contrary, they have
forced the huge army of Russia once more to retire. It is perfectly
true that, both in attacking the Japanese positions and in guarding
their own retreat, the Russians have shown an admirable valour and
resolution. Not since the great Napoleonic wars has there been any
fighting like that which was witnessed at the battle of Sha-ho — a
battle which lasted for more than a week, and in which the casualties
amounted to scores of thousands. But, bravely as they fought, the
Muscovites were both out-fought and out-general led by the foe
whom they can no longer despise. The terrific engagement ended
in the retirement of the whole Russian army, with losses so pro-
digious that even the spectators in the outside world stand aghast at
the tale. Where the story of bloodshed and defeat may end it is
impossible at the moment at which I write to say. The accounts of
the operations which have reached Europe are meagre and confused.
We can only guess at the demoralisation which must afHict the
beaten army, unless it is unlike any other army the world has ever
known. We may admire the obstinacy with which it contests every
inch of ground with the victorious enemy. There is, indeed, no
reason to^utter a word of disparagement of either of the combatants.

1904 LAST MONTH 861

But facts are even more stubborn than Russian courage; and the
main fact in the history of the month, so far as the war is concerned,
is that General Kuropatkin's onward movement against the foe has
not only been checked, but reversed, and that the chief question
with regard to his army is at what point the retreat forced upon it
will be stayed, and an attempt made to reconstitute its shattered
organisation. The advantages gained here and there on the immense
battlefield by the Russian army, though not unimportant so far as
their moral effect is concerned, cannot outweigh the great victories
achieved by Japan, and Sha-ho cannot be regarded as anything but
a crushing Russian defeat. Its political effects cannot at present be
calculated. The stake of Russia in the conflict is of such vital im-
portance to her that it seems hopeless to expect that she will accept
the verdict of the stricken field, even after her recent disasters ; yet,
to the eye of the expert it seems impossible that she can retrieve the
situation in which she is now placed. But her resources are not
exhausted, and it is bare justice to her to admit that her spirit is
unbroken. We cannot, therefore, anticipate that the horrors of
recent weeks, which, to use Mr. Kruger's phrase, ' stagger humanity,'
will induce the Czar and his Ministers to seek for some way of
escape from a tragical situation. As for the idea of mediation, it
receives no countenance from either of the belligerents, and the end
of the bloodiest struggle of modern times is evidently not yet in
sight.

The death of Sir William Harcourt is an event that deserves
more than merely passing notice in these pages. He had played for
so many years so prominent a part in English politics that his sudden
removal has created an unmistakable blank even in the minds of
those who were not to be counted among his admirers. There is no
more wholesome feature in the public life of England than the
readiness with which men unite to praise a political opponent when
the hand of death removes him from the arena. It is as though
they wished to testify to the fact that political differences are, after
all, only skin deep, and that men can do justice to each other in
spite of them. Certainly this characteristic has been very con-
spicuous in the case of Sir William Harcourt. His most outspoken
and vehement antagonists in Parliament have been the foremost in
deploring his loss and commending his virtues, whilst journals which
a few months ago could only speak of him in terms of almost brutal
— and entirely undeserved — contempt have lauded his memory to
the skies. Apart, however, from these elegiac tributes from his
opponents, Sir William must be counted happy in the moment of his
death. The great fighter passed away in his sleep, leaving behind
him no sad memories of the sick-bed. He died in the house which
had been the home of his race for generations, and of which, at the
close of his life, he found himself the owner, whilst his impending

862 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

retirement from Parliament, which only a few months ago he notified
to his constituents, had stilled the voice of controversy, and given
him a foretaste of the deeper peace into which he has now entered.
His was a curiously complex character, and it was one which had so
important a bearing upon the political history of his time that it
would be unfair both to him and to his contemporaries to be content
with the mere acceptance of the panegyrical commonplaces of an
obituary notice. No one ever questioned his ability. Long before
he entered Parliament he was a conspicuous figure in society and
the legal world. His reputation as a wit stood as high forty years
ago as it did at the time of his death. As a matter of fact, he was
one of the recognised ' brilliant talkers ' of London

When the circle of diners is laughing with Fane,
And Harcourt is capping the jokes of Delane.

Nobody imagined, when this couplet was written, that the Har-
court of the dinner-table was to become one of the idols of the
Eadicals, in days more Radical than any that were then dreamed of.
He made his real mark, however, by his work on the Saturday
Review and the letters of ' Historicus ' in the Times. In writing
to myself, some years ago, he used a happy phrase. ' Youth,' he
said, ' is the age of W egotism ; ' and no young man ever wielded the
thunders of the journalist more effectively than he did. It was
something of a surprise to the world at large when people learned
that * Historicus ' was Mr. Vernon Harcourt. The air of authority
he assumed could not have been greater if he had been a septua-
genarian. But, despite this affectation, his letters were both sound
and brilliant, and did something to redeem the character of the
English upper classes in their treatment of the controversies con-
nected with the American Civil War. It seems strange that a man
so gifted and so conspicuously able should not have been universally
popular ; but, as is proved by a well-worn anecdote of forty years
ago, the contrary was the case. When he got into Parliament, in
1868, high expectations were formed of him by men of all parties.
It was a surprise to some that he should have adopted with so much
thoroughness the Radical creed, but I think it distinctly unfair to
attribute to him anything like insincerity in doing so. The Tory
party of that day had been for the time broken up by the revolution-
ary policy of Mr. Disraeli. The Peelites had found shelter under
the newly-raised Gladstonian umbrella, and the Whigs, towards
whom natural affinities might otherwise have drawn him, were
manifestly effete. Radicalism, on the other hand, was a living
faith, well calculated to enlist the sympathies of a comparatively
young man who wished to find himself abreast of the times. It was
not, it must be borne in mind, the Radicalism of to-day. Its leaders
were such men as Bright, Forster, Stansfeld, and John Stuart Mill ;

1904 LAST MONTH 863

and these were men with whom even Mr. Vernon Harcourt might be
proud to be associated. It was my good fortune to hear his maiden
speech, and I can well recall the interest that was excited by his
first appearance in the arena in which he was to play so conspicuous
a part. But, speaking after the lapse of more than thirty years,
I can also recall the fact that the prevailing opinion in the House
after he had spoken was that his effort, though successful, had been
too elaborate, and that he had put forth more vehemence, both in
rhetoric and argument, than the occasion demanded. It was, as
everybody knows, a proposal to abolish the statute of Queen Anne
making the re-election of Ministers of the Crown necessary on
appointment upon which he directed his formidable artillery on
this occasion ; nor need I remind my readers that he was himself
the first Minister in modern times to lose his seat under the pro-
visions of the constitutional law which he defended with so much
vigour. But in that maiden speech he made his mark as a Par-
liamentary debater, and thenceforward his rise in the opinion of the
House of Commons was certain and swift. Yet even then he did not
secure that absolute confidence from his fellow-members which is so
essential to ultimate and abiding success. He was independent
enough to take his own line, and could hardly, in those days, have
been regarded as one of the elect followers of Mr. Gladstone, although
before the fall of the Government of 1868 he had accepted the office
of Solicitor-General. It was after the Liberal debacle of 1874 that
for the first and only time in his life he came into something like
open collision with his chief. That Mr. Gladstone felt his action
keenly was proved by the severity of the castigation that he inflicted
upon the honourable gentleman ' who was, I believe, my Solicitor-
General,' on the floor of the House of Commons. The scene made
a deep impression upon all who witnessed it, and in no case was that
impression deeper than in that of Sir William himself. He never
ran the risk of another rebuff of the same kind. Yet it is only just
to him to say that the line he took in opposing Mr. Gladstone on
this occasion was founded upon no petty or personal motive, but
upon that staunch adherence to the cause of Protestantism in the
English Church to which he was loyal to the end of his days.
Many, many years ago, I heard Mr. Bright, when discussing the
Church of England, refer to some action taken by Mr. Vernon
Harcourt and remark that even he, 'forgetful of the rock from
which he was hewn,' had been moved to protest against certain
features in the Church in which his grandfather had been an arch-
bishop. Whatever doubts men at times might feel as to Sir
William's sincerity upon other questions, no one has ever ventured
to doubt the genuineness of his devotion to the cause of Pro-
testantism.

In that troubled time in the history of the Liberal party which

864 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

followed Mr. Gladstone's resignation of the leadership in 1875,
Sir William became one of the most active associates in the informal
committee which, under the leadership of Lord Hartington, managed
the affairs of Liberalism. I have seen a letter, written by Lord
Granville about the time of Lord Hartington's election to the
leadership, in which the veteran Earl, enumerating the difficulties of
the thankless office, gave the chief place amongst them to ' Har-
court's restless ambition ; ' so that thus early he was proving himself
to be what the French term ' a bad bedfellow ' to his colleagues in
the high quarters of the party. To ignore this indisputable fact
would be to travesty the whole story of Sir William's career, and to
leave unexplained many subsequent events. He had great gifts, and
year by year, as his experience of Parliament grew, he became more
and more an admired and formidable figure in that assembly. No one
was happier in his power of making friends, and his public utterances,
though they were more unrestrained than the older traditions of
Parliament [seemed to permit, never made him an enemy. He was
a magnificent fighter, and the breath of battle was sweet in his
nostrils. The Liberals justly came to regard him in time as one of
their most valuable assets, and it seemed as though any honour and
any office to which he aspired should be within his reach. But all
the while the misfortune that made him a mauvais coucheur dogged
his career, and it was this misfortune which, in the end, deprived
him of the prize he coveted so eagerly. No wise man is likely to
regard Sir William's inability to work smoothly with his intimate
colleagues as being due to any positive vice in his nature. It was a
characteristic of his temperament for which he himself could hardly
be held responsible. In private life, or in private relationships with
public men, he was genial, generous, and full of the spirit of good-
fellowship, even though his tongue at times ran away from his
discretion, stimulated by his keen love of humour and by his sense
of his own undoubted intellectual powers. But in the give-and-take
of Cabinets, where he had to meet men on equal terms, he was
conspicuously deficient in tact. Whilst still a young politician he
had not been afraid to measure swords with Mr. Gladstone, and if he
never again openly entered the lists against the great man, it was
probably because he had not come off victor in the sharp encounter.
But nothing restrained him when dealing with men who were not
Mr. Gladstone. These found in time that he was one of those very
able, very accomplished, and, in the main, well-intentioned persons
with whom it was almost impossible to work in mutual confidence
and harmony. I have seen a great deal written since his death as
to the reason of his being passed over in 1894, when the Premiership
became vacant through Mr. Gladstone's resignation, and have read
the old stories hashed up again of the imaginary intrigues— intrigues
with the Court, intrigues with the Liberal Imperialists, intrigues

1904 LAST MONTH 865

with Lord Eosebery — which are supposed by the ignorant to have
been responsible for his exclusion from the Premiership. The plain
fact is that there were no intrigues, but that Sir William Harcourt's
colleagues in the Cabinet, not one man or one section, but almost
one and all, came to the conclusion that, admirable as Sir William's
qualities were in many respects, he was not a man under whose
Premiership it would be possible for them to work with comfort to
themselves or advantage to the country. The page of history will, I
think, show conclusively that this, and this only, was the cause of
his being passed over in 1894, and the cruel charge which has been
brought against some of having intrigued against him, either for
their own advantage or for any other reason, will then be finally
refuted.

So much for an incident to which much importance seems to have
been attached by Sir William's biographers. I think they do him
an injustice in attributing this importance to it. Sir William had a
distinguished and brilliant career, and no one will think that it was
less happy in its ending because he died without having worn the
thorny crown of the Premiership. He had many fine qualities as a
man, and, though he had his defects of temperament, they will not
dimmish the affection of his friends or the admiration of those who
knew him only in public life. He was staunch in his devotion to
his party, even when he was most disappointed with some of its
internal developments. In private life he was wholly admirable.
Above all, he was second to none in his regard for the dignity of the
House of Commons, and this, perhaps, was why he won so large a
measure of the affection and esteem not only of his friends, but of
his opponents, in that illustrious body.

WEMYSS KEID.

Postscript. — Since the above was written the country has been
startled by the wanton and unexampled outrage committed by the
so-called Baltic Squadron of the Kussian fleet upon the English fishing-
boats in the North Sea. The outrage in itself was so completely with-
out excuse, and was so cowardly and wicked in its character, that it
is almost impossible to regard it in any other light than as the act
of a madman. Certainly it is difficult to believe that any officer
of any civilised State in the world would wilfully attack a harmless
fishing fleet, belonging to a friendly Power, and subject it to savage
bombardment from a powerful flotilla of ironclads. The Russian
Government, it may be confidently anticipated, will lose no time in
making all the reparation in its power for an incident which has
brought discredit upon its flag, and which might seriously have
jeopardised the peace of Europe. But whilst there can be no doubt
as to our receiving the reparation which is due to us for this

866 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Nov.

extraordinary outrage, there is another aspect of the matter of which
it is impossible to lose sight. Ever since the war with Japan broke
out ships bearing the Russian flag have interfered very seriously with
British shipping in different parts of the world, and have done so
even after their acts have been disavowed by the authorities at
St. Petersburg. In short, we have seen on the high seas, what has
so often been seen in the Far East, acts committed by Russian
agents not only without the sanction of their Government but in
express opposition to its professed intentions. Now that these acts
have assumed the tragical character of the incident in the North
Sea, it is difficult for any civilised State to tolerate the possibility
of their recurrence. If unarmed vessels are to be exposed to the
attacks of a powerful foe whose reason has apparently given way
under stress of panic, the ocean highways of the world will become
impassable. In these circumstances it becomes the duty of other
maritime Powers, and obviously of England first of all, to take the
necessary measures for policing the seas and for preventing the
possibility of any repetition of the scandalous outrage of which
Admiral Rozhdestvensky and the force under his command have
been guilty. English seamen look for protection to their own
Government and their own fleet, and that protection it is impossible
to withhold from them. — W. R.

1904

LAST MONTH

n

ELEVEN years ago, the present writer, when fresh from Australia, set
forth in these pages } views which were held at the time to be rashly
prophetic, but which, in the course of the last month, have become
the commonplaces of the fiscal controversy. These were, firstly, that
the cause of Protection and the cause of the Empire were inseparable*
Without pledging ourselves to tax any particular product or to adopt
any catchword, we must — so it was maintained — in discussions at
home, cease to speak of ' Free Trade ' (so-called) as if it were a man-
date from Heaven like the Ten Commandments. It must be conceded
that a business expedient might suit one time or country and not
another. Moreover, since all our Colonies admitted Protection to a
position of equal dignity with Free Trade in their discussions on the
subject, England could still less claim for her own system a Sinaitic
sanction if she desired to be taken seriously by the Colonies when
she spoke of closer union with them in the interests of the Empire.

It was, secondly, maintained that the cause of the Empire was the
cause of the working man everywhere throughout our borders. He it
is, and not the capitalist, who would be fatally injured by a break-up
of the Empire. With this conclusion before our eyes the weakness of
the Gospel of cheapness becomes apparent. It is not a question of
securing cheap food for the labourer so that the capitalist may secure
a cheap type of working man. On the contrary, it is a question of so
adjusting our financial system that the very expensive Anglo-Saxon
type may survive in comfort ; that is the business of an Anglo-Saxon
Government, and everything else must give way to that consideration.
So-called Free Trade, it was argued, implied unlimited competition ;
and under unlimited competition the Englishman must necessarily
give way before cheaper types ; just as the rabbit would eat up
Australia if the sheep were not ' protected.' Union is strength ; and
without independence (which we are rapidly losing, if we have not
already lost it) cheap goods are a delusion and a snare.

Mr. Balfour's methods of thought and speech are so dispassionately

1 Nineteenth Century, June 1893.

867

868 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

speculative that the singleness of his mind on the fiscal question, as
displayed in all his recent deliverances from Sheffield to Edinburgh,
is not apparent to many of his adherents. Though he is a man of
many words and even many speeches, and in spite of being often
credited with a bewildering gift of saying nothing and saying it grace-
fully and convincingly, he has, on this subject, been so definite and
so restricted that he might almost be called Single-speech Balfour.
All the ingenuity of Opposition members has been exerted to conceal
the fact that, so far as he goes, he has been clear and emphatic. With
infinite skill he has confined his energies to holding his Government
in office while the slowly moving mind of the country has time to
grasp that the one thing he asks for is Retaliation.

Mr. Chamberlain, unhampered by the cares of office, has been able
to urge his cause — ' our ' cause one should rather say — with equal
definiteness and with equal frequency of utterance ; and has ' asked
for more.' While Mr. Balfour, with characteristic caution, would be
content, for the present, to secure the defensive position of Retalia-
tion, Mr. Chamberlain, with equally characteristic impulse, has pro-
nounced for the more belligerent right to ' Preference.'

Neither statesman will as yet venture to call himself a Protectionist ;
and, perhaps, for a man of action, the word is somewhat too risky to
be adopted for fighting purposes. Nevertheless, when Mr. Balfour
makes it clear that the interests of the country call for Retaliation,
and Mr. Chamberlain eagerly advocates Preference, we are not far
from the protection that the present writer called for eleven years
ago.

Retaliation + Preference = Protection ; the equation is complete.
Meanwhile the Tories hold office while the country thinks. The
Tory Cabinet does not give complete satisfaction to its supporters (as
what Cabinet ever did ?), yet if we imagine what use its opponents
would make of power, if the country were to place power in their
hands, we shall easily reconcile ourselves to a long continuance of Tory
Government. None the less must it be recorded that the party will
utterly destroy its power for good if it allows any coquetting with
' Home Rule on the sly,' of which there have been lately some ominous
signs.

Assuming, however, that the party, as a whole, is not in sympathy
with any fresh movement in favour of plundering England for the
benefit of Ireland, and finds itself free to face the problem of fiscal
reform, there is no party that could face it with better chance of
success. It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the difficulties : difficul-
ties are made to be overcome ; and to this end Mr. Balfour's mind
and Mr. Chamberlain's mind are complementary. Supposing that we
had only to deal with the United Kingdom, we should still have to
remember how materially things have changed since ' sixty years
ago,' when a not less stupendous fiscal revolution was effected. As

1904 LAST MONTH 869

Mr. Balfour has himself pointed out, the ' vested interests ' disturbed
by the abolition of the Corn Laws were mostly the interests of highly
placed people. To a man with considerable accumulations of per-
sonalty it was not a matter of life and death to maintain the existing
system. Even to many a landlord dependent on his land for his
income the question presented itself as one of principle rather than of
immediate profit and loss. There are many solvents of opposition
in such circumstances. But when nothing less than next week's
living is at stake the complexity of the situation is intensified.

Still more is it intensified when we have to deal, not only with the
tangled web of commercial interests in these islands, but with similar
tangles in three continents. To revert for a moment to Australia,
we see a continent larger than the United States of America, but
with a ridiculously small population, a mere fringe, numbering some
three millions. The land cries aloud for population. Who keeps it
out ? It is not a ready-made country that we see ; on the con-
trary, it is a country that needs capital more than any other country
on the face of the earth. Who frightens capital away ? Capital is
the mother of labour everywhere, and most of all in Australia. So
far as a sympathetic observer can judge of a situation from the dis-
tance of 12,000 miles, Protection has been misapplied in the Common-
wealth. It often happens that a sound principle is misapplied ; and
there is nothing discreditable in admitting the fact. It seems clear
that the resources of a great continent are being wasted in the attempt
to make a manufacturing country where Nature has placed an agricul-
tural country. Hence we have a tiny fringe of population artificially
restricted to the great cities, whose existence is a terrible burden to
the land. If this conclusion is sound, the fiscal problem in the Common-
wealth will take shape as a struggle on the part of the land to regain
the ascendency which a mistaken policy has conferred upon the
cities. There, as here, the working man will decide. It need hardly
be indicated that a very small measure of Mr. Chamberlain's ' pre-
ference ' would give the country party a stake in the conflict which
it has not so far realised, and would open up a future of boundless
prosperity for Australia. At present it is clear that the continent is
half strangled. South Africa has a peck of troubles of her own ; no
doubt Canada would have a great deal to say. The case for an
Imperial conference on what the Colonies want, and what England
has to offer them, is overwhelming.

The newspaper topics started in the dead season are useful indi-
cations of what in the opinion of their shrewd proprietors is likely to
excite popular attention — to ' catch on,' as the popular phraseology
has it. For this autumn, in place of the sea serpent, we have had
two main subjects tried — the everlasting marriage question, succeeded
by the religious, or quasi-religious, discussion of ' Do we believe ? '
Neither of them, perhaps, has thrown out any illumination, or,

870 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Nov.

to use another slang phrase of the day, is very ' convincing.' But
the marriage controversy has been noticeable for the light thrown
upon one of the prophets of literature — Mr. George Meredith — who
has shown, with his own hand, where and what his pseudo-mystical
prophesyings may lead to in the sphere of practical life.

If it furnishes the public with a key to the pretentious affectation
and cryptic nonsense of his works, no harm perhaps will be done ;
for it is always well to be rid of false gods, especially when they are
abolished by themselves.

We have been accustomed for a generation past to hear Mr. Mere-
dith's work described in very grand language. Those of us who, after
a slight or even an exhaustive acquaintance with the Master's
works have been able to discover in them neither sense nor style,
still less inspiration, have held our tongues. On the other hand, no
disciple has deigned to interpret Mr. Meredith to a waiting and
watching world. So the Meredithian cult has remained esoteric, and
we outsiders have had to rest content with the assurance that if we
could only ' understand ' we should find the burden of ' this weary,
unintelligible world ' sensibly lightened.

In the course of the dead-season agitation, however, Mr. Meredith
has, for once, spoken plainly. By his suggestion of marriage for a
term of years he has relieved those who cannot read his books from
any sense of intellectual inferiority. Those of us who still believe in
the antiquated institution of marriage may perhaps be conscious of
feelings somewhat stronger than mere relief. In effect Mr. Meredith
has definitely taken his place among the sea-serpents of this year,
and by linking his name to a ten years' marriage system he has
attained an eminence among sea-serpents which ought to satisfy
everybody — his admirers because he is incontestably chief, and the
rest of the world because he has now definitely placed himself among
the monstrosities.

The autumn season has been marked by the production of three
noticeable plays. At His Majesty's there is much to please and
attract. All that we lack is William Shakespeare. The Tempest of
Mr. Tree has merit. There is an enchanting ' Ariel ' — not Shake-
speare's Ariel, but still an enchanting figure. There are some pretty
airs, although to put The Tempest on the stage without Purcell's
music to ' Full Fathom Five ' is to seriously damage the production
from the musical point of view. Here we stop. Just as a provincial
bandmaster will entertain his audience with Selections from Handel,
in which ' Ombra mai fu ' is preceded with ' I Know that my Redeemer
Liveth,' and succeeded by ' See the Conquering Hero Comes,' so at His
Majesty's we are regaled with a series of ' Variations on Shakespeare '
— with a not dissimilar effect upon our nerves. There is a very fine
shipwreck ; and no doubt the play does open with a shipwreck. The
sands are yellow, as Shakespeare said they were, and the bogies are

1904 LAST MONTH 871

numerous enough and funny enough for Drury Lane. In short, we
have everything that we have a right to expect for ten-and-sixpence,
and more, perhaps — except Shakespeare.

After Shakespeare, Pinero, and A Wife without a Smile gives us
furiously to think. Two years ago Mr. Redford declined to sanction
the production of a play the central incident of which was the appear-
ance on the stage of a young lady with nothing on but a dressing-
gown. Some champions of the play maintained that a ' voluminous
robe ' was not the same thing as a ' dressing-gown,' and gave quite a
different tone to the piece. However, ' robe,' * frock,' or ' gown,' the
thing was one garment that would come off easily, and the audience
was to be provided with the delicious thrill of wondering, through
the whole of a very warm scene, whether it was coming off or not.
Mr. Redford said (very properly, as some of us thought) that he must
draw the line somewhere ; and he drew it here. Thirteen people with
reputations to lose objected to Mr. Redford in the columns of The
Times, and a judge upon the Bench espoused the cause of the girl in
the dressing-gown in his charge to the jury. After this everybody
expected an Act to amend the Act of Parliament under which Mr.
Redford works ; but, to the general astonishment, the indignant
thirteen collapsed utterly. The appearance of A Wife without a
Smile suggests that they must have privately intimated to Mr. Red-
ford that they would overlook his conduct for once, but that ' he
had better not do it again.' Certainly, to refuse one play and license
the other is to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. It is unneces-
sary to describe the play here. It is sure of a long run, and will
command crowded audiences who have not easy access to an un-
expurgated Decameron, or Burton's Arabian Nights.

It is a relief to visit the Adelphi, where there is a play — The Prayer
of the Sword — of all but the highest order, and, as regards its aim, of
quite the highest. No playgoer ought to lose the opportunity of
seeing this perfectly harmonious production. In saying ' all but the
highest ' one feels instinctively that an author who can do so well
as Mr. Fagan does would resent extravagance of expression, for it is
in reserve that the play is remarkable. We have here not a note of
absurdity or exaggeration. Audiences have of late grown so critical
as to scenery and accessories that it may be as well to say
at once that both are perfect. It is not that, in vulgar words, * no
expense has been spared,' although that is tolerably evident. It is
that at every turn we see the control of an exacting and fastidious
taste which insists that, however magnificent the accessories may be,
they shall remain accessories. A ducal court in Italy at the beginning
of the sixteenth century gives abundant opportunity for display ; but
we remember the story and forget the display, which is the best
possible tribute to the management. As to the story, it is told in
blank verse, which is truly courageous and even rash. Yet has the

872 TEE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Nov. 1904

author not tried too much. It is not didactic. The author's aim
has been primarily and, one would say, exclusively artistic. Perhaps
for that reason he has produced the greater effect. Nevertheless, at
a time when so many of us appear to be hankering after a slavery
that it cost us a great deal to be rid of, it might be worth while to
remember how much discomfort, misery, nay, agony, was implied by
the habitual interference of the clergy in private affairs.

It was precisely at the period when the action of The Prayer of
the Sword was taking place, and when, as we heretics think, that prayer
was so graciously heard and answered, that England was preparing
for her final tussle with Papal Rome. Probably this was the last
idea that was present in the distinguished author's mind. Nothing
could better demonstrate the vitality of the play, as a whole, than to
record (as may most faithfully be done) that these contentious reflec-
tions do not occur to the mind until long after the curtain is down
and we have returned from the sixteenth century to the twentieth.

WALTER FREWEN LORD.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot wndertake
to return unaccepted, MBS.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTURY
AFTER

No. CCCXXXIY— DECEMBER 1904

GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY:

A CONVERSATION WITH COUNT VON BULOW, THE GERMAN

CHANCELLOR.

FOR many months — nay, for the last few! years — the belief that
Germany's Kaiser and Chancellor have been, and are still, playing a
hostile game against Great Britain, and are cynically laying an
elaborate plot); for the ultimate ruin of our country's power, has been
gaining ground in all spheres of British society, and not amongst
the masses of unthinking people alone, who, perhaps, take their cue
from the unreliable lucubrations of sensational journalism. The
cultured classes of the United Kingdom also have become impreg-
nated with similar views, and many persons from among the intellec-
tual portion of the King's subjects speak of Germany as England's
bitterest and most dangerous foe. In very exalted circles, too, we
find persons who think they are justified in believing that Germany
wants to rule the North Sea ; to wrest the whole shipping trade out
of our hands ; to invade England ; and to annihilate the world-power
of Great Britain. For the attainment of these ends German
VOL. LVI— No. 334 3 M

874 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

diplomacy is said to be everywhere angling in turbid streams, and to
be intriguing against England in all the capitals of the world.

Some writers have recently gone so far as to denounce every
Englishman who ventures to doubt the sufficiency of the grounds
set forth in support of such insidious designs as too optimistic, or a
simpleton — or even as a partisan of Jewish bankers. And yet, as a
distinguished French diplomatist not very long ago remarked to me,
'il faut etre un peu optimiste dans la vie.' But for the encourage-
ment of optimism, how would countries ever be able to bury their
animosities? Austria would never have become reconciled to
Prussia ; Great Britain would still be at loggerheads with the
United States and with France. If one did not cherish a hope for
better relations between Great Britain and Germany, one would have
to throw up the sponge and abandon the task of striving for them.
But no sane person can pretend that it is in the interest of our
country, whose foreign policy is and must be determined by our com-
mercial interests, to continue a campaign of insult and mischievous
suspicion that In the long run would infallibly prove disastrous, which-
ever way it ended. Nor is one a simpleton for supporting such
views ; and even a Jewish banker can assuredly lay claim to political
judgment.

The causes of controversy with Germany that have been
exciting the passions of both Germans and Britons for so long should
be removed, and we should start with a clean slate. In trying to
effect so laudable a consummation, there can be no abandonment
of either our intellectual or political independence. A perpetual
cannonade of the same unproved statements, based on mere sus-
picions, produces an unhealthy condition of things ; and a campaign
of this kind is unworthy of a great and free people.

Whenever an incident unpleasant to England happens in any
part of the globe, a German diplomatist or the Central Government
in Berlin is said to be behind it. Could anything be more fatuous
than to attribute so much power to German diplomacy; or could
anything be less complimentary to the representatives of Powers
that are friendly disposed to us than to insinuate that they are
completely under the thumb of their German colleagues ?

If we look at the matter from an unprejudiced and business-like
point of view, we must surely admit that nothing is more mis-
chievous than to convert a rival into a bitter enemy. If some very
serious international question were to arise whilst the peoples of
two great Powers like Britain and Germany are being wilfully kept
asunder by fomenters of international hatred, the situation might
suddenly become fraught with untold danger ; for the existing
friction between them could easily develop into a complete rupture
of relations. Friendship with other Powers need not involve
bickerings with Germany. King Edward's political programme has

1904 GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY 875

been to try to establish friendly relations with all countries on a
practical basis of mutual interests making for continuous peace.

A «few months ago I was talking to Count von Biilow, at a recep-
tion at his official residence, on the deplorable state of the relations
between our two countries. It had long been my desire to broach
the subject to him. His Excellency rejoined : ' I regret this
condition of things as much as you do; but can you suggest any
way for bringing about a change ? '

My reply was to the effect that if his Excellency would do me the
honour of allowing me to have a conversation with him on this sub-
ject, and would permit me to communicate the gist thereof to the
British public in such a way that it would be a faithful reflection
of his views, I thought a very salutary effect would be produced,
because hitherto no authoritative statement had been made calcu-
lated to dispel the suspicions and apprehensions concerning Germans
policy towards Britain which, whether well or ill founded, undoubtedly
existed at home amongst all spheres of people.

The Chancellor without hesitation signified his willingness to-
accede to my request; but owing to a variety of circumstances —
pressure of Parliamentary business, the visit of the King at Kiel,
commercial treaty negotiations, and his own absence for his summer
holiday — the date of the audience had to be constantly postponed.
He very kindly sent me a message from Homburg to the effect that .
on his return to Berlin in the autumn he would be glad to see me.

Those who know Count von Biilow will have always been
enchanted by his amiable and courteous manners and speech ; but •
he has the character of telling nothing whilst he entertains his
visitor. Diplomatists say he is most urbane, complaisant, and'
communicative of speech, but tantalising as regards his reticence
on subjects about which his views are sought. This also is the
criticism passed on him when he speaks from his seat in the
Reichstag.

On this occasion I found him, on the contrary, most desirous to
dispel the errors as to German policy that are current on your side
of the Channel ; and, as will be seen in the following lines, he spoke
frankly and at length on the chief points upon which it was my
desire to enlighten the public at home. We did not discourse on
the special relations between Germany and Russia, on which subject
Lord Lansdowne is amply informed, but confined our conversation
to specific matters affecting German policy towards Great Britain,
the Chancellor's political views on Anglo-German relations, and
his personal sentiments towards our nation. Nor did we touch,
except in a cursory manner, on incidents that no longer have a bearing
on present practical politics. I know personally that Count von
Biilow always opposed and condemned the extravagant malignity of
the enthusiasm of his fellow-countrymen for the Boers, but deem it

3 M 2

876 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

desirable not to rake up questions of the past the discussion of
which is now futile and could only lead to renewed misunderstandings
or divert attention from the main points at issue. If I am correctly
informed, the King's visit to Kiel completely obliterated the soreness
that had been left by those incidents. The mischievous perpetuation
of an exaggerated sense of suspicion, of withering gall and blighting
bitterness, must be stemmed if Britain and Germany are not to drift
into a condition of dangerous hostility.

THE BRITISH PRESS.

' I have had much pleasure,' said Count von Biilow, as he
greeted me in his library on the evening of the 15th of November,
and motioned me to take a seat close to his writing-table,
'in acceding to your request to have a conversation with me.
A good deal of hostility towards Germany seems to influence the
writing of a number of your compatriots — which I sincerely regret ;
and I am bound to say that it seems to me as if a certain school of
your publicists looks upon a paper-war against Germany as the main
object of its life. Surely our mutual interests would be better served
if these writers were to try to extinguish, instead of to foment, ill-
feeling between Germany and England.

1 1 am gratified, however, to see that a reaction appears to have
set in — at least, against the calumnious excesses of this campaign —
and some of the English papers have of late been dropping that tone
of rabid bitterness that was so very irritating.'

Suppressing the obvious comparison with the other side, espe-
cially as the leading organ of the Pan-German press tried to make
the amende honorable about a couple of months ago by distinctly
admitting the grave error of the malicious Teuton campaign during
the Boer War, I merely intimated that the bitterness of our writers
had not been unprovoked.

' Even the Anglo-Chinese press,' added the Chancellor — ' I refer
to the Noi*th China Herald— considers the constant hammering at
Germany with insinuations against our policy in China to be un-
dignified and dangerous, and calculated to throw Germany into
Eussia's arms.'

THE THIBET QUESTION.

4 Let me cite the charge made in the Times against our Minister
at Pekin concerning the Thibet Question,' continued the Chancellor.
' I think I may assume that people in England are by this time
convinced that we did not interfere in order to prevent the ratifica-
tion of your treaty with Thibet — or, indeed, with any matters
affecting Thibet.

1904 GEE AT BEITAIN AND GEEMANY 877

' I can assure you that we are at least as indifferent about Thibet
as we are about Manchuria. We have always strictly confined our
efforts for the protection of the neutrality and integrity of China to
the Celestial Empire proper, and have left the provinces beyond it
and its dependencies outside the scope of our policy. We have
documentary evidence showing that the representative of the German
Empire at Pekin has refrained from all interference whatever in the
Thibet Question, and that all assertions to the contrary are pure
inventions.

' Let me show you Baron von Mumm's despatch, which is his
answer to my telegram asking for an explanation of the statement
published in the Times of the 18th of October.'

The text of this despatch, which I then had an opportunity of
perusing, clearly showed that the Times report was erroneous.
Baron von Mumm stated that he simply asked once at the Wai-wu-pu
whether the text of the Treaty, as published in the newspapers, was
authentic ; and that he expressly made a point, at the time, of
saying that Germany took no interest in the matter.

The Chancellor continued: 'I do not mean to affirm that Dr.
Morrison deliberately told an untruth. I can easily imagine that
in his efforts to discover some anti-English act in Germany's
diplomatic policy he came across somebody who bore him a grudge.
There are persons in the Wai-wu-pu, and also outside this Chinese
Department, who think they can derive some advantage by present-
ing Germany as interested in the Thibet Question.

' At all events, I authorise you to state publicly that Baron von
Mumm did not meddle with this question, and that I characterise
any other version about this matter as a fabrication.

THE ALLEGED GERMAN WARNINGS TO EUSSIA.

' Another recent effort to excite bad blood against us is the story
that the nervousness of the Baltic Fleet was due to " warnings " from
Germany ; so that we are denounced as the cause of the misfortune
that befell the Hull trawlers. There is not a word of truth in this,
either. As a matter of fact, anxiety concerning the safety of the
Baltic Fleet was felt in Russian official spheres long before the date
of its departure was fixed. I may tell you that as early as last
August the Russian authorities officially drew our attention to what
they thought was the possibility that a Japanese attack would be
also made from some place on German soil. It is our duty, as it
would be the duty of every neutral State in similar circumstances, to
take measures for preventing our territory from being used as the
basis of hostilities against a belligerent. We acted in obedience to
the call of duty by so far taking note of Russia's warnings as to urge

878 THE NINETEENTH CENTURA Dec.

our Admiralty and our coast officials to be specially on the watch
and to investigate the matter. Denmark acted in a similar manner.
We are pleased to think that no untoward event occurred in our
waters, whilst we regret that a misfortune took place elsewhere.'

ENGLAND AND EUSSIA.

In reply to my remark that many people in England believe that
the German Government ' intrigues ' against England all over the
world, and has been particularly busy of late in trying to make
mischief between England and Eussia and between England and
France, his Excellency continued :

' I anticipated a question from you on this subject, and I want to
lay special stress on the fact that Kve do not aim at setting the
English and the Russians by the ears, either in Asia or in Europe.
We are, on the contrary, most desirous that there should be no violent
collision between England and Russia anywhere, if for no other
reason than because our own interests would compel us to try to
prevent it. We could not possibly tell, supposing such a calamity
should befall the world, how far war between these two countries
would spread, or what consequences might accrue therefrom to our-
selves. We would not dream of playing with such a firebrand,
because we have no desire to see our own house ignited/X,

' That is why we have done everything in our pow^r to localise
the war in East Asia ; and we are entitled to say that our endeavours
have met with success. We can claim some credit for China's
remaining neutral, and we hope that there is no longer any fear that
she will break her neutrality.

' The questions as to our relations with Russia and as to England's
relations with Russia are always treated in a very extraordinary
manner by some of your publicists in England. A party in your
country is always advocating a special understanding between
England and Russia. Good ! we have nothing whatever to say
against this, especially if it makes for peace; but when it is a
question of Germany being on specially good terms with Russia,
there is at once an outcry in England that we have some ulterior
aim in view, and that we are concocting an alliance against Eng-
land. We have no special arrangements with Russia, but we have
every desire and jntention to live on friendly and intimate terms
with our Eastern neighbour, and neither I nor any other German
statesman would be doing his duty if he did not foster this friend-
ship. If you look at the map, I think you will have no difficulty
in comprehending this.

' During the present war we have observed strict neutrality, and
shall continue to do so ; and we hope to remain on intimate terms
with Russia.

1904 GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY 879

ENGLAND AND FRANCE.

N. ' As regards the charge made against us of having tried to sow
discord and embarrassment between France and England, with a
view of hindering the ratification of the Agreement, could you
possibly believe that we should select the present moment for doing
so, when we see before our eyes all the most patent signs of an
entente cordiale ? Surely blundering intrigues of this nature would
have no effect on the sincerity of an entente like this? Is it
possible — and how is it possible — that we should be considered in
your country to be capable of such arrant stupidity as this, for it
could only compromise us ?

' On the other hand, it is quite allowable — if you like — to ques-
tion whether this intimacy between France and England is likely
to be considered desirable or not by us.

' At all events, by agreeing to what you desire in Egypt we
showed our good-will to the British Government in that we did not
throw any obstacles in the way of its friendly arrangement with
France.'-,^

GERMAN HISTORIANS AND ENGLAND.

Whilst talking generally about the language used by German
writers, and notably by some celebrated German historians, as to
the probability of a war between Germany and England in the
future, I pointed out to the Chancellor that much importance was
attached in intellectual spheres in England to the menacing
language occasionally met with in the writings of learned German
professors which are accepted as text-books at the Universities. I
cited as. a specimen a sentence Heinrich von Treitschke is said to
have used in 1884 : ' The reckoning with England has still to come ;
it will be the longest and most difficult ' ; and mentioned that it had
been said of him in England that he ' had made it the task of his
life to foster in Germany a passionate hatred for England.' Count
von Biilow replied : —

' I have never seen the passage you quote ; anyhow, I can assure
you — for I know Treitschke well — that hostility to England cannot be
fairly attributed to him. He had many friends in England, Carlyle
amongst them ; he was intimately acquainted with English litera-
ture and life. You will find many passages in his writings which
will prove the contrary of what you tell me is asserted in England.
If passages expressing anti-English sentiments are cited from
Treitschke's works, those showing friendly feelings to England
should also, in common fairness, be given. You must not forget
that Treitschke, besides being an historian, was a poet and a man
of strong passions. He was an ardent Imperialist even before 1 870,

880 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

and hated Particularism. Although a Saxon by birth, he had no
fondness for his narrower Fatherland, precisely because of what he
interpreted as its Particularist tendencies, nor could he abide the
States of southern Germany. If he really made use of the words
you cite, it must have been in a fit of emotion or rage ; for he
was easily moved to anger. But even if he or others did use such
words, they do not contain the doctrine encouraged or advocated by
the statesmen or educators of the land. There is no means of
controlling the whims and language of poets, philosophers, and
historians ; but of Treitschke I can speak from knowledge. He
admired England, Greece, Italy — all three countries where liberty
and letters have been fostered. Carlyle and Byron were amongst
his favourite heroes.

' How often, too, is it said by your countrymen that Bismarck
was a hater of England ! This is not true, however, whatever you
may say about his policy. Bismarck is known to have often said :
" We (the Germans) like the English ; but they will have nothing
to say to us." I can speak myself with some knowledge of
Bismarck's policy ; and I utterly repudiate the idea that he was a
hater of England, or that he entertained designs against England's
position in the world.

THE GERMAN NAVY.

N^ Now let me say a few words about the constantly recurring
assertions that our naval policy is aimed at preparing for a war with
England. I can conscientiously say, in answer to this charge, that
we do not dream of conjuring up such a war. It would be a
monstrous crime to do so.

' A war to the knife between Germany and England could only
be politically justified on the assumption that Germany and England
were the sole competitors on the world's surface, and on the assump-
tion that the defeat of one of the two rivals would mean the absolute
supremacy of the other. In former centuries England was always
in a state of rivalry with only one rival at a time — with Spain,
Holland, and France in turn. Everything was then at stake. But
nowadays there are a number of Powers that make the same claims
as we do, and the Russo-Japanese War shows that an addition may
be made to their numbe^X

* As things are, a war between Germany and England would be
the greatest piece of good fortune that could possibly be conceived
for all their rivals. For whereas such a war — and we must not
deceive ourselves on this point — would completely destroy German
trade, as far as one can judge, and would seriously damage British
trade, our rivals would utilise the opportunity for securing the
markets of the world without firing a shot. So that, were we to
come to blows, there would be a whole bevy of tertii gavdemtes.

1904 GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY 881

' As you have yourself gone very carefully into the question of
our navy, you will certainly have obtained proofs that our fleet is
only meant for defensive purposes. Its object is to secure our
waters against any attack, and to afford the necessary protection for
our interests abroad. We shall, of course, always take care that it is
ready to strike when required, for our motto must be — " Always be
ready."

' Foreign countries must reconcile themselves to the fact that
the German merchant beyond the seas is no longer the poverty-
stricken creature who must content himself with picking up the
crumbs from under the table. He now takes his seat next his
fellows ; and we are fully entitled to stand up for and defend the
rights which are ours in company with the citizens of other nations.'

Before taking leave of the Chancellor I craved permission to put
one more question, intimating that I felt sure that his answer
would add great weight to the remarks he had already been good
enough to communicate to me. I said that a belief prevailed in
Great Britain that Germany is Britain's real and mortal enemy,
adding : ' It is also widely reported on the other side of the Channel
that your Excellency entertains a cordial dislike of England. Will
you kindly authorise me to reply to this remarkable charge ? '

' Certainly,' responded the Chancellor in an earnest and serious
tone. ' I will answer this question as a politician and as a man. As a
politician and German statesman I consider that it would be most
iniquitous and criminal to represent a policy that was directed
towards fomenting hostility between two great nations such as
Germany and England, both of which are indispensable to the
civilised world. A war between these two peoples would be a dire
calamity, and, I repeat, it would be an unpardonable crime for a
statesman wilfully to provoke it or to act in such a way as to render
it possible or probable. As a man, I can assure you that nothing
could be farther from my thoughts than dislike of, not to mention
hatred or hostility towards, England.

' I admire the country, its people, and its literature. Pray state
that I most emphatically repudiate the charge that I entertain
the slightest ill-feeling or dislike of England or the English — a
charge that is quite new to me and wholly incomprehensible.'

The above conversation was carried on partly in English and
partly in German. Count von Biilow has a perfect knowledge of
English, which language he speaks quite fluently — more fluently
than did his great predecessor, Bismarck.

J. L. BASHFORD. ]

Berlin : November 1904.

882 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT S
OP FOR TUN I TIES

ACCORDING to all trustworthy accounts the recent Presidential election
in the United States was the dullest that has been witnessed for some
decades. All the recognised mechanical incentives to popular enthu-
siasm were employed ; but the public declined to ' enthuse,' despite
the parades, the fireworks, the advertisements, the professional
oratory, and the desperate efforts of the journalists to work their
readers into the customary quadrennial paroxysm. Outside the
Southern States the great majority of respectable Americans had
made up their minds that Mr. Roosevelt was going to be elected, and
the minority were not seriously disturbed at the prospect. As a show,
the campaign, on either side, was a failure ; it filled the newspapers,
but the people turned aside from the close-printed columns, and
were more interested in the visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury
and the singular conjunction of the Church and the World, as illus-
trated by the hob-nobbing of his Grace with Mr. Pierpont Morgan.
Yet this ' apathy,' as we call it in our politics, disappeared at the
polling-booths. The electors did not fail to exercise their suffrage,
and they gave a record vote. The majority for President Roosevelt
is the largest in the history of the Union ; no man, so far as we know,
has ever been appointed to any place or office by the choice of so
overwhelming a multitude of his fellow-citizens. Perhaps, then, the
Presidential electors did not regard the event with indifference. But
they knew that the result was a foregone conclusion, and they saw
no reason for making a fuss over it in advance. The Americans are a
sentimental, but at the same time a practical, people.

From the practical point of view, they must know that it is not a
light thing they have done. The re-election of Mr. Roosevelt to power,
with this tremendous national ' mandate ' behind him, may have
important consequences for the United States, and for other countries
as well. For the next four years, and perhaps for the next eight, the
executive of the largest homogeneous civilised population in the world
will be controlled by the foremost representative of American self-
assertion in international politics. Imperialism was the most vital of

1904 PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S OPPORTUNITIES 883

the issues involved in the electoral campaign. Most of the other differ-
ences between the parties were blurred or shadowy. The Tariff was
introduced pro forma, but no one really believes that there is any
substantial divergence of principle on that point. High Protection
has probably reached its eenith, and may begin to slope very slowly
downwards, no matter which party is in power ; neither of them
could, or would, venture on any substantial advance towards genuine
Free Trade. The defeat of the Bryanite Democrats at St. Louis has
taken the currency out of party politics. On the Trusts, both say a
good deal, and say it with equal obscurity.

In all these matters the elector might easily feel that there was
little to choose between Judge Parker and Mr. Roosevelt. But in
temperament, in character, and in their outlook on affairs, there is
a good deal to choose. The personality of the President was the
real electoral asset of the Republicans, just as it was the strongest
* plank ' in the platform of the Democrats. Mr. Roosevelt was
denounced as a kind of prancing Proconsul, an American Boulanger,
who might perhaps use his 60,000 soldiers to subvert the Constitu-
tion, and would in any case be sure to plunge the Union into the
welter of world-politics, and hurry it upon every sort of aggressive
adventure. Mr. Bryan says that the President's ' big stick ' policy,
his ' physical enthusiasm and love for war,' are a direct menace to
constitutional government, and a cause of justifiable alarm. The
majority of American voters were, however, not alarmed. They do
not believe in Mr. Bryan's phantasmal Caesarism ; they know well
enough that the liberties of eighty millions of people are in no danger
from an army smaller than that of Belgium. They prefer the big
stick to the painted reed. ' The subject of Imperialism,' says Mr.
Bryan, ' is, all things considered, the most important of the questions
at issue between the parties.' If that is true, the Imperialists have
won a striking victory. The policy of Mr. Roosevelt in China, in
Central America, in South America, towards Germany, towards
Turkey, towards Russia, has been endorsed by the constituencies.
The President and the Secretary of State are enabled, they are indeed
encouraged, to carry it further.

And carried further it probably will be. On the very morrow of
the elections two important pieces of information were cabled from
America. The one was the announcement that the State Depart-
ment had proposed to confer with the British Government on the
subject of an Anglo-American Treaty of Arbitration ; the other, that
the Navy Construction Board had propounded a ship-building scheme,
which, if accepted by Congress, will make the United States the third,
if not the second, maritime Power in the two hemispheres, within a
very few years. We must take these two items together, and put
them side by side with the intelligence that the President's invitation
to the Powers to enter upon another Peace Conference had taken

884 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

definite shape. They are parts of a scheme which seems to have
been forming in the ambitious and comprehensive intellect of the
American statesman. It is the big stick in a different form from
that in which it presents itself to the indignant Democratic imagi-
nation— the truncheon of the policeman, not the bludgeon of the
swashbuckler.

American opinion is undergoing a gradual evolution on these
subjects, of which a stage is marked by the voting for the Electoral
Colleges. On the one hand, by temperament and tradition, the
people of the United States are eminently conservative in foreign
affairs. They are easily moved by bluster and patriotic jingoism,
especially at elections ; and at a time, not distant, though happily
now past, they rather enjoyed the sport of twisting the lion's tail.
But the great steady-going mass of middle-class people, mostly of
Anglo-Saxon descent, who are the real rulers of the conglomerate
nationality, have been brought up to a rooted belief in American
political isolation. They would fight at any time to keep European
aggression out of the two Americas ; but, apart from this, they have
a deep distrust of mixing themselves up with the tangled politics of
the older nations. They have always endeavoured to persuade them-
selves that America was a separate enclave, and that it could survey
the wars and diplomacies of Europe and Asia with serene indifference,
listening unmoved to the far-off echoes of strife that rolled faintly
across the Atlantic and the Pacific. But times have changed. For
political purposes the Ocean has narrowed to a stream. The United
States is itself a country with foreign dependencies, and in the Philip-
pines it has its finger close to the throbbing pulse of Asia. It has
ceased to be self-contained and self-dependent. With a gigantic export
trade, still growing, which may presently be as large as that of all
Europe, it cannot be indifferent to the political conditions of those vast
reservoirs of humanity in which it must find its markets. Its citizens
begin to discern the close relation between international politics and
international trade ; and they are learning the lesson, mastered so
reluctantly by ourselves through the troubled centuries, that no
community, however great and however powerful, can release itself
from the play of the forces that hold the peoples of this planet together
or apart.

This truth is being brought slowly home to the American intelli-
gence ; but it is received doubtfully, and with more anxiety than
enthusiasm. The Anglo-Saxon, utriusque juris, is essentially an isola-
tion-loving, individualistic, person, whose aim is to ' keep himself
to himself,' and to meddle with nobody who does not meddle with
him. He likes to get behind a ring-fence, when he can. In that
umbrageous heart of Sussex, where so much of immemorial antiquity
still lingers, you may sometimes find an ancient farm, spaced off from
the whispering woodlands by a broad belt of untilled pasture. It is

1904 PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S OPPORTUNITIES 885

the mark of the primitive hamlefc community, founded some thirteen
centuries ago by a family of Teutonic or Scandinavian Colonists.
Here they settled, these pioneers from beyond the Northern Sea ;
they built their dwelling-houses, their granaries, their cattle-byres ;
and round the whole they drew their tun or zareeba-like hedge of
thorn and box, girt by the wide zone of rough grass and weed, that
islanded them from an intrusive world.

The characteristic has survived through the ages. In national,
as well as domestic, affairs, non-intervention, laissez-faire, the policy
of letting alone, and individual effort, are the aims of the race. They
are aims which have been frustrated from generation to generation,
constantly abandoned in practice, yet perpetually asserted in theory.
There is some truth in the reproach of foreign critics that we have
gone about the earth, interfering with everybody, and protesting
all the while that we only wanted to be allowed to get on with our
own business and had no concern with other people's quarrels. But
the fact is that almost every great English statesman and ruler, while
genuinely anxious to limit the sphere of British activity abroad, has
found himself compelled to enlarge it. A great nation is irresistibly
drawn into the cosmic states-system, and must play its part there, if
it would maintain its dignity and safety. China lies at the mercy
of foreign aggression, as the penalty for living too long in a world
of its own.

Mr. Roosevelt was among the first of distinguished American
public men to understand the application of these facts to the United
States. Several years ago he put the case boldly :

We cannot be huddled within our own borders and avow ourselves merely
an assemblage of well-to-do hucksters, who care nothing for what happens
beyond. Such a policy would defeat even its own end ; for as the nations grow
to have ever wider and wider interests, and are brought into closer and closer
contact, if we are to hold our own in the struggle for naval and commercial
supremacy, we must build up our power without our own borders. We must
build the Isthmian canal, and we must grasp the points of vantage, which will
enable us to have our say in deciding the destiny of the oceans of the East and
West.

He has gone even further. He has thrust aside the plea of non-
interference, of cosmopolitan quietism, and preached openly the
doctrine which Rudyard Kipling has thrown into verse. Mr. Roose-
velt is quite willing to ' take up the White Man's burden.' He has
disclaimed all sympathy with that ' mock humanitarianism which
would prevent the great free, liberty- and order-loving races of the
earth from doing their duty in the world's waste places, because there
must needs be some rough surgery at first.' His general view is that
' it is for the interests of mankind to have the higher, supplant the
lower, life.'

In the first instance, the founders of the new American Imperialism

886 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Dec.

were content with the Spanish islands. The Americans are in the
Philippines on much the same moral title as ourselves in Egypt. They
blundered in, under a sudden pressure of events, not very clearly
seeing what they were doing, not at all anxious to make a conquest ;
and, having pushed themselves into the country, and rendered them-
selves responsible for its future, just as we have done in Egypt, they
have to remain ; and not only that, but they must remain under
conditions, which will ensure that the Filipinos do not relapse into
anarchy or barbarism or mediaeval, priest-ridden, stagnation. The
group must become an integral part of the modern civilised world.
It was one of the weaknesses of the Democrats at the recent election
that they would not frankly accept the situation. They fenced with
it, in their Convention programme, in a fashion at once maladroit and
disingenuous :

"We oppose, as fervently as did George Washington himself, an indefinite,
irresponsible, discretionary and vague absolutism and a policy of colonial
exploitation, no matter where or by whom invoked or exercised. . . . Wherever
there may exist a people incapable of being governed under American laws, in
consonance with the American Constitution, that people ought not to be a part
of the American domain. We insist that we ought to do for the Filipinos what
we have already done for the Cubans, and it is our duty to make that promise
now ; and, upon suitable guarantees of protection to citizens of our own and
other countries, resident there at the time of our withdrawal, set the Filipino
people upon their feet, free and independent, to work out their own destiny.

This passage bears a rather curious resemblance to the woolly
declarations of some prominent English Liberals during the first three
or four years of our occupation of Egypt. The Policy of Scuttle, as it
was sometimes called, was greatly disliked in England, and it is no
more popular in the United States. Sensible Americans know that
the assertion of it is both undignified and meaningless. It would
be cowardly to run away from the Philippines, and it would also be
impossible. If the Democrats came in, they would not be able to
' set the Filipino people upon their feet, free and independent,' and
they could not attempt to do it. The electors wisely preferred a
statesman, who does not make these ridiculous pretences, and who
regards the possession of the over-sea territories, not as a disagreeable
burden, to be dropped as soon as circumstances allow, but as an
honourable obligation, to be discharged with zeal and fidelity.

But the Imperialist appetite vient en mangeant ; the scope of
Imperialist activity widens with each fresh accession. There is no
help for it, and so the Americans are beginning to understand, with
mingled elation and apprehension. They are now a Colonial Power,
with special interests in the freedom of the seas, in addition to that
of having more cargoes afloat upon it than any other people except
ourselves. Therefore anything that interferes with the even flow of
maritime commerce touches them closely. The United States is the

1904 PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S OPPORTUNITIES 887

natural chief and champion of neutral nations in time of war ; for its
gigantic export and import trade is still to a great extent carried in
neutral bottoms. It is not possible for the Americans to survey a
conflict on the seas, between two or more of the Naval Powers, with
indifference. The Russians entered upon their war against Japan
with the tranquil confidence that they would be permitted to practise
the kind of nautical highway robbery, more or less recognised in the
chaotic muddle of precedents and principles, which is dignified by the
name of International Law. They have had to be reminded that
this was an error, and to discover that the ' rights ' of a belligerent
do not include the right to steal and the right to commit assault with
violence.

We have done something ourselves, as in the case of the Peterburg
and the Smolensk, to enforce the lesson ; but we have moved tenta-
tively and timidly, and with an evident desire not to raise funda-
mental questions. For, to speak plainly, the bullying code which
the Russians are trying to apply is largely of our creation ; the
' Right of Search,' with its confiscatory provisions, is very dear to our
statesmen. They are still convinced that, if ever we come to a mari-
time war, we shah1 continue to be, in the strategic sense, the aggressors ;
that we shall be able to take the offensive, with the old swaggering
superiority ; that with our commanding force we shall seal up and
blockade all the coasts of our enemy ; and that one of our main
duties will be to chastise the neutrals who seek to bring him aid
and comfort. We suppose ourselves to represent the overwhelming
navy that can sweep the seas clear for our own commerce, with little
interest in neutrals beyond that of seeing that they do not annoy us
or interfere with our operations. Our traditional policy is to vindicate
the claims of the maritime belligerent to do very much as he pleases,
or as he can. So we have felt a little awkwardness in explaining to
Russia that these examinations, and overhaulings, and visitations,
and condemnations, though we practised them ourselves industriously
in the days of sailing frigates and corvettes, are no longer tolerable.

The opportunity of performing this service to civilised humanity
lies with the United States ; and it seems that President Roosevelt
and his able Secretary of State do not propose to miss it. Mr. Hay's
Note, protesting against the Russian seizures of neutral vessels, is in
some sense the beginning of an epoch. It is the most vigorous and
direct assertion of the rights of neutrals which has been formulated
for many years. The State Secretary emphatically refuses to admit
the extravagant pretension that Russia, or any other Power, can
add fresh articles to the Law of Nations by issuing a proclamation or
obtaining a ' decision ' in one of its own prize courts ; he repudiates
the extensions which it has been sought to give to the doctrine of
conditional contraband, and the claim which Russia has set up to
establish a kind of paper blockade of the trade routes of the world.

888 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Dec.

The protest has had its effect. Russia, after some demur, was
forced to abandon her extreme claims, and to place the question of
conditional contraband on a footing which will at least relieve neutral
shipping from a repetition of the series of threatening incidents that
occurred during the opening months of the war.

But Mr. Roosevelt does not intend to stop at this point. He
aspires to protect trading nations from similar dangers in future.
Hence his invitation to the Powers to combine in another Hague
Conference. When we consider the traditions of American diplomacy,
the standing dislike of the people of the Republic to go out of their
way to court foreign complications, and their anxiety to avoid being
involved in the mesh of European politics, this bold initiative must
be deemed extremely remarkable. It might well be regarded as a
new stage in the history of the United States, perhaps even the history
of the world ; provided, of course, that it is followed up. Some
shrewd observers tell us that it was mere playing to the American
peace gallery, that it was * good politics ' for the President to counter
the accusation of being a fire-eater and a militarist by coming for-
ward as the promoter of international concord. One cannot think so.
In the first place, it is not Mr. Roosevelt's way ; in the second, it would
seem that, having committed himself to this Conference, he would
not care to incur the discredit of a fiasco. To the final ' Act ' of the
Hague Convention, various pious opinions were added as a postscript.
One of these was that a Conference * in the near future ' should con-
sider the rights and duties of neutrals, and another, that it should
discuss the inviolability of private property at sea. On this last point,
official American opinion may be said to be committed. The Presi-
dent, in his Message to Congress a year ago, registered his adhesion to
' this humane and beneficent principle,' and he has been supported
by Resolutions in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
It will not be the fault of the American State Department if the
Conference separates without coming to an agreement on such a
revision and definition of the rules of International Law as will safe-
guard neutral sea-borne commerce in time of war.

Whether this result is reached depends, to a large extent, upon
the government and people of this country. In the last number of
this Review, Sir John Macdonell l shows that it is high time for us
to reconsider our established policy in this respect. The statements
of Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Balfour at the close of last Session,
and the whole course of our recent diplomacy, demonstrate that
tenderness towards belligerents and harshness towards neutrals still
determine our attitude. But, as Sir John explains, this sentiment is
a little out of date. It takes no account of the changed conditions
of the past few years. It assumes, not only that we are the first of

1 ' The Eights and Duties of Neutrals,' in The Nineteenth Century and After
for November 1901.

1904 PRESIDENT EOOSEVELT'S OPPORTUNITIES 889

Naval Powers, but that our former predominance can be maintained.
When we were searching cargoes in the Baltic in defiance of the Armed
Neutrality, or when we seized the whole Danish Fleet and brought it
captive into the Channel, we had enemies but no real rival. And from
the peace of 1815 until the later seventies there was only one foreign
fleet, or at the most two, worth talking about in relation to our own.

All this is now changed. There are seven great Naval Powers in
Europe, Asia, and America. One of these, the United States, will,
in a few years, possess a maritime torce not very far behind ours ;
it has a much larger taxable population, a greater iron and steel pro-
duction, a longer coast-line on two oceans, more available wealth,
and less occasion to expend its resources on military establishments.
Some of the same considerations apply to Germany ; with a great
mercantile shipping, a numerous coastal population, a vast metal
industry, and unbounded enterprise and ambition, it may provide
itself with a navy nearer to ours than any that has been known since
Trafalgar. And not far below these will follow France, Japan, Russia,
all first-class Naval Powers ; not to mention Italy, and quite possibly,
at no very distant date, China. We may, and must, keep the first
place. But we shall not sweep the seas as if no other flag existed.
And if we endeavoured to enforce the system which Lord Stowell
crystallised in his prize-courts, and which Russia has been endeavouring
to apply, we might find ourselves faced by a much more formidable
combination than any we could possibly have encountered a hundred
years, or even thirty years, ago. Meanwhile we do the chief carrying
trade of the world ; and any belligerent, as this Eastern war has
shown, who begins to exercise the Right of Search, is likely to harass
and injure a dozen British merchants for every one belonging to a
foreign nation. In other words, our interests are now on the side of
the neutrals, not against them. Are we to repeat our non possumus
of Brussels in 1874 and The Hague of 1899, and declare that we can-
not discuss the subject, for fear that the liberty of our captains and
admirals might be unduly hampered in war time ? Or shall we join
with the United States in securing the rights of private traders and
putting an end to the oppressive practices that have come down
from a period when there was no law of the sea but that of the bigger
crew and the heavier gun ? If we accept the latter alternative, most
of the Continental Powers would probably do the same ; it would not
greatly matter if they did not. The Anglo-Saxon navies could enforce
the law of the sea against all the world, if they chose.

The mere suggestion that the armed force of the two English-
speaking nations could be employed for such purposes would be
indignantly repelled by many Americans. It is none of our business,
they would say, to police the universe or to act as guardians of the
rights of humanity. The task may be a noble one, but it is not cast
upon us. We prefer to look after our own affairs, and to defend our

Voi. LVI— No. 334 3 N

890 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

own interests when they are directly attacked. It remains to be seen
whether President Roosevelt will be able, or willing, to convince his
countrymen that mere immobility and passivity may sometimes be as
bad a defence in peace as in war. A strong initiative is often necessary.
Mr. Roosevelt and his Cabinet have themselves taken it very boldly,
and perhaps rather unscrupulously, in Panama, energetically enough
against Turkey and Morocco, somewhat more cautiously, but with
firmness, in regard to Manchuria. So far they have received the
undoubted support of their fellow-citizens. The Democrats made
nothing out of their impeachment of the President on these points.
A few years ago they would have been more successful. The caution,
the provincialism, of the great mass of the sober stay-at-home electors,
would have been alarmed at these adventures. The Democratic
candidate, on this occasion, preached to deaf ears, when he denounced
the abandonment of the non-intervention policy, the dangerous
exploring of ' untried paths,' the following of new ideals, which appealed
to ambition and the imagination. ' It is essential more than ever to
adhere strictly to the traditional policy of the country as formulated
by its first President, to invite friendly relations with all nations,
•while avoiding entangling alliances with any.'

Entangling alliances ! It is a good phrase, a phrase not unknown
to our own political controversy. It has a congenial sound, as I
have said, to the Anglo-Saxon householder, who does not want to
'entangle' himself with any strange persons, if he can help it. But
sometimes he cannot help it, unless he is to suffer various incon-
veniences. Is it a certain consciousness of this truth, which renders
Americans much more tolerant of President Roosevelt's spirited
foreign policy, and much more impervious to the Democratic invoca-
tions of the ancient idols, than they otherwise might be ? The feeling,
to which Mr. Roosevelt appeals, is a little vague, and not clearly
articulate at present ; but it is gathering force, as these movements
do in America, and it may come to be held, by large numbers of
people, with something like the passionate intensity with which the
people of New England repudiated the Slave Power. There is a
growing conviction that war is simply a survival of obsolete bar-
barism, a nuisance and a danger to civilisation at large, and that it
may become part of the ' White Man's burden ' to sit down on the
thing altogether, or at least to see that it is kept within bounds.

As practical men, American statesmen are aware that neither
peace conferences nor treaties of arbitration will carry us very far
towards the goal. Every law implies what the jurists used to call a
sanction — the knowledge that it is laid down by a superior power,
which in the last resort is prepared to enforce it. International Law
has no sanction ; and that is why it is not law at all, but only custom
and vaguely established practice, which nations will follow no longer
than it suits them to do so. We want not merely a tribunal, but a

policeman — a policeman with a big stick. And we should get our
international guardian of the peace, if the pacific industrial com-
munities, having first thoroughly armed themselves, were to make it
known that any disturbance of the public order, any wanton aggres-
sion or violence, would be repressed by the strong hand : that any two
peoples who had a quarrel, which could not be settled by mutual
agreement, would be required to submit the dispute to the decision,
not of force but of a properly constituted court of arbitration.

That is the ideal. It may never be reached ; but the only way
to approach it is by binding alliances between great Powers, or an
efficient majority of them, willing and able to ' levy execution,' if
necessary, upon offenders. The two European alliances, that of
the central States on the one hand, and that of France and Russia
on the other, have undoubtedly served the purpose of keeping the
Continent at peace by rendering war too dangerous. Is it fantastic
to hope that the precedent might be applied on a wider stage, and
with less doubtful motives ? Supposing that Great Britain and the
United States entered into an agreement to employ their splendid
navies, their immense moral and material force, for certain common
beneficial objects ? They would not, in the first instance, look for any-
thing so Utopian as the repression of all international hostilities. But
they might aim at securing two things : first, that a war, if it did break
out, should be ' localised ' and confined to the parties directly con-
cerned ; secondly, that in any case the freedom of the seas should
be maintained, and neutral commerce protected. Such a League
of Peace would almost certainly be joined by Japan, probably by
Italy, possibly by France. In the end it might include Russia and
Germany as well, and so bring about that ' Areopagus ' of the nations,
which may eventually substitute the Rule of Law for the Rule of
Might in international politics.

The establishment of any pact of this nature would be a delicate,
a difficult, and, in some ways, a perilous, enterprise ; for, if hastily or
clumsily attempted, it might make matters worse and precipitate
the conflicts it is designed to avert. But if a beginning is to be made,
it would seem that it can come more easily from the United States
than from any other Power ; since the Washington Government can
take the initiative without incurring the immediate dangers, or pro-
voking the animosities, which must beset any other Foreign Office.
Mr. Roosevelt will be a bold man if he sets himself seriously to over-
come the prepossession of his countrymen for isolation and conserva-
tism in external affairs. But the President has never lacked courage
and ambition ; and much more surprising things might happen than
that the foundations should be laid of a League of Peace, based on
a genuine and effective Anglo-Saxon Alliance, before it is time for
him to quit the Executive Mansion.

SIDNEY Low.

3x2

892 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

WHAT THE FRENCH DOCTORS SAW

IT is scarcely seven weeks ago since the medical world of London was
stirred to its depths by the arrival on our shores of a detachment of
medical brothers, 150 strong, from the hospitals and medical schools
of Paris. This invasion of the Gauls was not unexpected, but coming
at the moment when the holiday bloom was still fresh on the cheek,
and a nut-brown tinge told joyous tales of weeks spent on Alpine
heights, moor, sea, river, or lawn, the faculty had to bestir itself to
get ready in time to do honour to the occasion. Scarcely were port-
manteaus unpacked and houses divested of their wrappings before
the M.D.'s of the Republique Francaise were upon them. Still, the
Royal Colleges were equal to the occasion, for if the time allowed was
short, they made up in energy and resource with such effect that nothing
was wanting when the supreme moment arrived to emphasise the
entente cordiale.

All doors were open : the language of la belle France was ready
to greet them, and even the rustiest French was polished up to sound
like new. Banqueting-halls were filled to overflowing, Christmas was
forestalled, and hospitable boards groaned under the roast beefs,
naming plum-puddings, and seductive mince-pies, which Frenchmen
with native politeness felt bound to honour because it was the national
food ! Thus were the brothers of France received by the outstretched
hands of England's friendship.

The second day after their arrival they were delighted to see ' the
famous London fog,' and among other things that rejoiced them was
the beauty of the English children. Their philosophy, however, could
not quite accept the evidence that all our children were beautiful;
hence the question arose, What did we do with the ugly ones ?

But in order to see at least a little of what the French doctors
saw in extenso it will be necessary now to follow them into some of
the haunts of science and be prepared to enter a new and recently
discovered world ; one still full of mystery, but presenting many
fairy tales to the uninitiated. With ears receptive, and eyes capable
of looking into the depths, and watching under the microscope the

1904 WHAT THE FEENCH DOCTORS SAW 893

minute organisms which influence our lives so largely for good and
evil, we must also be prepared for emotions fluctuating between hope
for the future and haunting fears, before more definite knowledge
can be attained.

On the Thames Embankment, in Savoy Place, there stands a
noble building, opened a few years ago by Queen Victoria, known as
the Examination Hall and Imperial Laboratory for Cancer Research
of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons. It is flanked on
the one side by the Savoy Restaurant, and on the other by Somerset
House and King's College. Passing through the large hall, we ascend
to the top floor, where we find ourselves in a corridor giving access to
a row of laboratories all devoted to the one purpose — cancer research.
The Director and General Superintendent receives us in the white
linen coat of office, and bids us welcome to his den. It is by no means
a pretty place, nor exactly comfortable. No easy-chair is there to
tempt the silent worker to pursue his researches through the mazes of
' tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep.' All is stern, the few chairs
uncompromising ; the stool placed in exact relation to the microscope
is well worn, and does not move. Over the mantelpiece is a black-
board with strange markings, red and blue, significant to trained eyes,
but incomprehensible to the untrained. A row of queerly bound
books adorns the shelves, which also contain a variety of things of
which these books speak. Before going further let us see what these
books contain.

They contain a heterogeneous mass of papers, not bound and
trimmed, but loose and filed, ready for reference, and all bearing on
the one special subject — cancer research. These papers have come
in from all parts of the British Empire at the instance of our late
Colonial Secretary, Mr. Chamberlain, who last year issued the following
circular :

Mr. Chamberlain to the Governors of all Colonies.

(Circular.) Downing Street, May 27, 1903.

Sir, — I have the honour to inform you that a fund has been started in this
country for the purpose of promoting investigations into all matters connected
with or bearing on the causes, prevention, and treatment of Cancer and
Malignant Disease, and that the Scheme of which copies are enclosed has been
approved by the Royal College of Physicians of London and the Eoyal College
of Surgeons of England, who have undertaken control of the inquiry.

(2) I also enclose copies of a Memorandum prepared by the Honorary
Treasurer of the fund, giving further information as to the origin of the Scheme
and the progress which has been made with it.

(3) I need scarcely emphasise the importance of this inquiry, and I request
that you will further its objects as far as possible by giving publicity to the
information contained in this despatch, and by any other means which may

appear to you to be suitable.

I have &c.

J. CHAMBERLAIN.

894 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

SCHEME.
I. Objects of the Fund.

In order to promote investigations into all matters connected with or bearing
on the causes, prevention, and treatment of Cancer and Malignant Disease,
steps shall be taken :

(1) To provide, extend, equip, and maintain laboratories to be devoted to
Cancer Eesearch.

(2) To encourage Researches on the subject of Cancer within the United
Kingdom or in the British Dominions beyond the seas.

(3) To assist in the development of Cancer Eesearch in various Hospitals
and Institutions approved by the Executive Committee.

(4) And generally to provide means for sj'stematic investigation into the
causes, prevention, and treatment of Cancer.

Should the objects of the fund be attained by the discovery of the cause
and nature of Cancer and of an effective method of treatment, the Eoyal
Colleges, with the consent of the Trustees, shall be empowered to utilise the
fund either (a.) for equipping with the necessities for such treatment such
Hospitals as they may select, or (b) forwarding research into other diseases.

There shall be a President, Vice-Presidents, Trustees, Honorary Treasurer,
General Committee and Executive Committee of the Fund.

The Office of the Fund shall (with the consent of the Eoyal Colleges) be at
the Examination Hall, Victoria Embankment.

Without enlarging further, it is sufficient to say that our French
visitors were deeply impressed with the organisation thus adopted for
gathering together the records of our hospitals and medical experi-
ence from all parts of our Colonies, and bringing them to the one
home centre. Since Mr. Chamberlain's retirement Mr. Lyttelton has
followed the same course most assiduously, and the India Office and
Foreign Office, fully recognising the importance of the work, have
also issued despatches of a similar kind to governors and medical
officers. Thus the investigation of cancer is placed on a uniform
basis throughout widely divergent races, regions, and isolated com-
munities for the common benefit of all nations.

Turning from the files of official reports, we shall now direct our
attention to the row of microscopes before us to find therein the justi-
fication of these efforts on the part of our far-seeing statesmen. At
first we can only discern under the lens a mere conglomeration of
cells, specks, and streaks. With the aid, however, of the monitor by
our side, the general chaos soon falls into order ; the eye is able
to follow the oral explanation, and the mind is at length able to
form some faint conception of the life-history of this dreadful
disease.

To understand properly this life-history it is necessary to remember
that all living things throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms
are composed of cells, springing in the first instance from one single
cell. All these cells are nucleated, and from the moment of fertilisa-
tion begin to divide and subdivide and form into clusters of cells, till,
in the final grouping of specialised cells, we have the highest order of

1904 WHAT THE FRENCH DOCTOES SAW 895

being at one end of the biological chain, and the humblest at the other.
After birth there is no sudden break ; the cells continue the process of
multiplication till maturity is attained and growth ceases. All now
remains normal during the years that intervene between youth and
age, when a gradual degeneration sets in, but what causes the normal
cells to spring once again into activity and appear in abnormal shape
is the point yet to be determined. One school adheres to the purely
parasitic theory, the more modern to that of renewed cellular growth
taking a malignant form.

This disease, we are told, pervades the whole vertebrate kingdom,
human beings civilised and savage, animals wild and domesticated,
the fish of the river and sea. External agencies have no causative
influence. Further, it cannot be transplanted from one species to
another species, but can be transplanted subcutaneously from one
mouse to another of the same species. It is not found to be
infectious, or transmissible' in any other way, and theories as to
cancer houses and heredity have to be given up. The specimens of
malignant growths taken from the human being, an animal, and a
fish, which we are examining at present under the microscopes, show
no difference ; the features are alike in all.

Without going too far into the genesis of this disease and intri-
cacies of this research, it is curious to learn that the manner of life con-
cerning this organism can be fully traced under the microscope. In
an active rapid growth the cells can be seen preparing for fertilisation,
and the actual conjugation of the nuclei from one cell to that adjoining
can be observed. Again, in the slow growths, the same phenomena
can be seen accompanied by a disposition on the part of the nuclear
process to abort. Whether this conjugation of cells is the initial
phenomenon in the cancer cycle must be settled, we are told, by
further investigations ; but

it is certain that such conjugation would explain without further assumption
the characteristics of malignant tumours ; their local but occasionally poly-
centric origin ; their independence and behaviour as a new organism ; their
power of invasion, their differentiation in the direction of the ' mother ' tissue ;
the phenomenon or artificial transmission with all its limitations, and the
superaddition of malignant properties to the tissues of those complicated
tumours which are undoubtedly of congenital origin.1

Before leaving we anxiously inquire about the fund for this vast
work. ' Ah ! that is always too low for the work to be done, but,
thanks to Mr. W. Waldorf Astor, the sum of 20,OOOZ. was added to
the fund last year to enable us to fight on.'

Let us try to imagine this worker at his work when all is quiet.
Here he does not bind himself to the recognised eight hours, but
occasionally keeps his solitary vigil amidst the shaded lamps till
midnight, trying to wrest from Nature her secrets, and absorbed in

1 Report of the Cancer Research Fund.

894 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Dec.

SCHEME.
I. Objects of the Fund.

In order to promote investigations into all matters connected with or bearing
on the causes, prevention, and treatment of Cancer and Malignant Disease,
steps shall be taken :

(1) To provide, extend, equip, and maintain laboratories to be devoted to
Cancer Research.

(2) To encourage Researches on the subject of Cancer within the United
Kingdom or in the British Dominions beyond the seas.

(3) To assist in the development of Cancer Research in various Hospitals
and Institutions approved by the Executive Committee.

(4) And generally to provide means for systematic investigation into the
causes, prevention, and treatment of Cancer.

Should the objects of the fund be attained by the discovery of the cause
and nature of Cancer and of an effective method of treatment, the Royal
Colleges, with the consent of the Trustees, shall be empowered to utilise the
fund either (a) for equipping with the necessities for such treatment such
Hospitals as they may select, or (6) forwarding research into other diseases.

There shall be a President, Vice-Presidents, Trustees, Honorary Treasurer,
General Committee and Executive Committee of the Fund.

The Office of the Fund shall (with the consent of the Royal Colleges) be at
the Examination Hall, Victoria Embankment.

Without enlarging further, it is sufficient to say that our French
visitors were deeply impressed with the organisation thus adopted for
gathering together the records of our hospitals and medical experi-
ence from all parts of our Colonies, and bringing them to the one
home centre. Since Mr. Chamberlain's retirement Mr. Lyttelton has
followed the same course most assiduously, and the India Office and
Foreign Office, fully recognising the importance of the work, have
also issued despatches of a similar kind to governors and medical
officers. Thus the investigation of cancer is placed on a uniform
basis throughout widely divergent races, regions, and isolated com-
munities for the common benefit of all nations.

Turning from the files of official reports, we shall now direct our
attention to the row of microscopes before us to find therein the justi-
fication of these efforts on the part of our far-seeing statesmen. At
first we can only discern under the lens a mere conglomeration of
cells, specks, and streaks. With the aid, however, of the monitor by
our side, the general chaos soon falls into order ; the eye is able
to follow the oral explanation, and the mind is at length able to
form some faint conception of the life-history of this dreadful
disease.

: To understand properly this life-history it is necessary to remember
that all living things throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms
are composed of cells, springing in the first instance from one single
cell. All these cells are nucleated, and from the moment of fertilisa-
tion begin to divide and subdivide and form into clusters of cells, till,
in the final grouping of specialised cells, we have the highest order of

1904 WHAT THE FRENCH DOCTORS SAW 895

being at one end of the biological chain, and the humblest at the other.
After birth there is no sudden break ; the cells continue the process of
multiplication till maturity is attained and growth ceases. All now
remains normal during the years that intervene between youth and
age, when a gradual degeneration sets in, but what causes the normal
cells to spring once again into activity and appear in abnormal shape
is the point yet to be determined. One school adheres to the purely
parasitic theory, the more modern to that of renewed cellular growth
taking a malignant form.

This disease, we are told, pervades the whole vertebrate kingdom,
human beings civilised and savage, animals wild and domesticated,
the fish of the river and sea. External agencies have no causative
influence. Further, it cannot be transplanted from one species to
another species, but can be transplanted subcutaneously from one
mouse to another of the same species. It is not found to be
infectious, or transmissible' in any other way, and theories as to
cancer houses and heredity have to be given up. The specimens of
malignant growths taken from the human being, an animal, and a
fish, which we are examining at present under the microscopes, show
no difference ; the features are alike in all.

Without going too far into the genesis of this disease and intri-
cacies of this research, it is curious to learn that the manner of life con-
cerning this organism can be fully traced under the microscope. In
an active rapid growth the cells can be seen preparing for fertilisation,
and the actual conjugation of the nuclei from one cell to that adjoining
can be observed. Again, in the slow growths, the same phenomena
can be seen accompanied by a disposition on the part of the nuclear
process to abort. Whether this conjugation of cells is the initial
phenomenon in the cancer cycle must be settled, we are told, by
further investigations ; but

it is certain that such conjugation would explain without further assumption
the characteristics of malignant tumours ; their local but occasionally poly-
centric origin ; their independence and behaviour as a new organism ; their
power of invasion, their diiferentiation in the direction of the ' mother ' tissue ;
the phenomenon or artificial transmission with all its limitations, and the
superaddition of malignant properties to the tissues of those complicated
tumours which are undoubtedly of congenital origin.1

Before leaving we anxiously inquire about the fund for this vast
work. ' Ah ! that is always too low for the work to be done, but,
thanks to Mr. W. Waldorf Astor, the sum of 20,OOOZ. was added to
the fund last year to enable us to fight on.'

Let us try to imagine this worker at his work when all is quiet.

Here he does not bind himself to the recognised eight hours, but

occasionally keeps his solitary vigil amidst the shaded lamps till

midnight, trying to wrest from Nature her secrets, and absorbed in

1 Report of the Cancer Research Fund.

898 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

Dr. Bonney, are carrying on researches in connection with puerperal
fever, a disease from which hundreds of women die annually after
childbirth owing to insanitary dwellings, and also to infection con-
veyed by untrained midwives, and other causes.

The special microbes which cause this fever belong to the family
of streptococci, not one alone, but many members of the family,
having the power to produce this terrible disease. This fact adds
not a little to the difficulty of finding the right protective serum for
the particular case.

After examining a long series of cases of more or less severe puer-
peral fever, a number of strains of streptococcus have been obtained,
many of which possess distinctive characters, and presumably produce
different toxins (poisons) requiring different antitoxins for their
successful treatment. These organisms were cultivated and their
toxins obtained. For the last two years these toxins have been
injected from time to time into the veins of a horse, so that at the
present time the serum of that horse contains antitoxins capable of
neutralising the poisons produced by seven different strains of strepto-
coccus which have been isolated from different cases of puerperal
fever direct. By this method the chances of success by the injection
of this serum into the blood of stricken mothers is enormously increased.
In practice it has only been known for a short time, but good results
in severe cases have been obtained by its use. The fever is found to
abate soon after each inoculation until recovery takes place.

To continue on the track of the French doctors we must follow
them now to the Lister Institute, which, thanks to Lord Iveagh, has
been rescued from want and enabled to extend its work in chemistry
and bacteriology.

Down in the basement we find Professor McFadyean busy crushing
the microbes of typhoid fever in order to extract what he calls the
cell-juice : in other words, the toxin (poison) which is used to produce
the serum henceforth to be used for those who desire it, or in the
army when troops are sent out to dangerous localities and war. He
and his assistant together have devised ingenious mechanical means for
accomplishing the crushing of the cells in three hours, a process which
hitherto in Koch's laboratory has taken a week. This contrivance
greatly interested our confreres, who saw the machine worked by
electricity. First of all the typhoid bacilli have to be cultivated from
the parent cells of the original disease in culture tubes. In the
microbes' kitchen, close by, the food they thrive best upon is carefully
prepared and poured over the flat inside of large glass bottles. This
is a gelatine of Iceland moss, which does not go soft during the culti-
vation and is called agar. From the culture tube a little of the growth
is taken, then mixed with a little sterilised water and washed over the
surface of the agar. The fluid is now poured off, the neck of the bottle
is closed with cotton wool, and the seeds, if I may so call them, are

1904 WHAT THE FEENCH DOCTORS SAW 899

left to grow. Next day a fine crop of typhoid can be seen flourishing
in this scientific garden, where the soil in relation to crops is so well
considered. When the correct pathological moment arrives the
growth on the surface of the agar is scraped off and subjected to a
marvellous process of washing and drying, the machinery at work all
the time and the electric sparks adding weirdness to the scene. At
one stage they are placed in a small copper cylinder which is made to
revolve very rapidly, leaving the microbes in a sticky mass adhering
to the side. The copper containing this precious mass is now placed
in a bath of liquid air 180 degrees below freezing-point, and so closed
up that during the freezing and crushing no particle can escape alive
in the form of dust. To ensure this, the rod or piston which is working
rapidly up and down is made to pass through carbolic acid, which
would immediately arrest and devitalise any that might perchance
get out.

We have now the crushed substance still vital, notwithstanding
the severe treatment. Again it is washed and wrapped round the
outside of a porcelain bougie, from which the water is drawn by a
suction tube inside the bougie, till finally in a small phial we have
the pure essence of typhoid in a clear liquid of cell juice, the object
of their desire. These phials are next sent down to Elstree, the
country part of the establishment, where the fluid is passed through
the living laboratory of the horse, to yield at the right therapeutical
moment a serum which can safely be passed into the blood of man to
protect him against the danger of the disease.

Having seen something of this process and heard the rest, we pass
into the next room, where the air we breathe is being liquefied by
immense and intricate machinery to provide the small cold bath we
have seen at work in crushing living objects so minute that they can-
not be efficiently dealt with in any other way.

The next room we are taken to is the microbes' soup kitchen,
where several highly trained and most learned chefs in white linen
overalls are composing dainty repasts for the microbes. Their tastes
require the most careful study, and fine adjustment and proportion of
ingredients, before they consent to live or thrive in the laboratory.
Over the fire potatoes are steaming in a caldron, and in the course
of a few days these same potatoes may be found under glass covers
with flourishing growths of various diseases on the top. In various
pots and pans the most savoury soups are in progress — chicken
broth, meat broth, beef jelly, all specially prepared to suit the various
wants of the many little families about to be artificially reared.

At St. Mary's Hospital the first thing that pleased the French
visitors was the admirable out-patient department, which forms the
basement of the new Clarence wing. In the large central hall the
patients await their turn, and the consulting rooms all round are
adapted specially to the needs of the various departments. This is

900 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Dec.

of great advantage alike to patients and medical students. In the eye
department, for instance, they had all the latest developments for
operations — dark room for ophthalmoscopic cases, and new electric-
light apparatus for examining the eyes, &c.

After looking round the wards, Professor A. E. "Wright gave them
a lecture on that intricate subject — the therapeutic inoculation of
bacterial vaccines. To put it simply, it amounts to this — that dis-
ease due to bacteria may arise either in consequence of their mere
presence, or in consequence of the action of their poisonous products.
Now the body of a healthy person does not suffer patiently this
foreign invasion, for Nature has provided the blood with the all-
important white cells called phagocytes, which are there to oppose
and destroy, if possible, the invaders. In some diseases the attack
is made mainly on the bacteria, these little specks we see under the
microscope, which are taken up, devoured, and digested by the trans-
parent white cells called phagocytes. In certain other diseases the
fluids of the body generate substances (antitoxins) which have the
power to render innocuous the poisons produced by the action of the
bacteria. There is, however, a third group of diseases which has proved
refractory to each of these remedial measures provided by Nature,
and it is here that Professor Wright has stepped in by endeavouring
to combine both procedures, and to apply his conception practically.
It is not difficult to understand that when a patient is sinking under
disease it may be due either to the invasion of bacteria in too great a
force for the white blood-cells (phagocytes) to deal with, or to failure
to produce enough of the antidote to neutralise the poison created by
their action. Professor Wright, by uniting the observations of the
French and German schools in these directions, claims that by special
treatment it is possible to cause the body fluids of unresponsive
patients to acquire or reacquire the power so to prepare or affect
the bacteria that they become, as it were, served up in a less inimical
form, and are then greedily devoured by the white cells of the patient,
who, without this treatment, would or might long continue a victim
tojtheir ravages.

We must now leave the metropolis for the moment and follow
the French doctors to the School of Tropical Medicine at the Albert
Docks. Here, once again, they were struck by the propelling influ-
ence of our late Colonial Secretary, Mr. Chamberlain, whose keen
recognition of the benefits likely to arise did so much to establish
this new branch of research in our midst. The hospital, being so
close to the docks, receives patients from all parts of the East, who
step in, or are carried in, straight from the ships. The reception hall
presents an aspect truly oriental, with the turbaned sick sitting round
in every attitude of suffering, awaiting their turn for medical atten-
tion.

Here they were shown the large new laboratory, with thirty-six

1904 WHAT THE FRENCH DOCTORS SAW 901

students at work, the residential quarters, mess-rooms, museum, &c.,
and more recent additions to tropical pathology, as the Tympanosoma
Gambiense, the reputed cause of sleeping sickness, and the recog-
nised cause of a grave form of recurring fever in tropical Africa to
which more than one European has already succumbed.

They were also shown the newly discovered Leishman body — a
disease germ which promises to occupy a very important place in the
growing list of tropical pathogenic agents. It is now recognised as
the cause of what used to be called ' malarial cachexia ' (or at least
one form of malarial cachexia), and is probably the germ cause of
Oriental sore, known locally as Delhi boil, Scinde sore, Bagdad boil,
&c. Besides these curiosities they were shown microscopic prepara-
tions illustrative of the various tropical disease germs and their life-
history, in insect and other intermediaries. In the tropical wards of
this hospital they were shown cases of leprosy, beri-beri, dysentery,
liver abscess, malaria, and a variety of other diseases of tropical
origin.

The school, recognising the importance of the study of protozoa
and other kinds of animal parasites, is about to establish (funds per-
mitting) two new chairs, one for medical protozoology, and one for
medical helminthology, subjects which have not hitherto received the
recognition they deserve either in our laboratories or in our teaching
institutions. It is felt that the scientific study of the grim causes
of tropical diseases is the best foundation for scientific treatment and
prevention.

The Frenchmen were much impressed by the spaciousness, cleanli-
ness, discipline, and comfort of the wards, and by the variety of races
represented by the patients.

At the Westminster Hospital great interest was taken in a patient
— a young man — suffering from a disease which is fortunately very
rare. It is rapid paralysis, beginning at the feet and spreading
upwards till all muscular power throughout the body is lost in fifteen
days. The origin of this malady was diagnosed as being in the spinal
cord, and accordingly a syringe was plunged into his back and some
of the fluid drawn ofi and placed under the microscope. Away up on
the wonderful roof of this hospital is a clinical laboratory, and here
the fluid was examined and the cause of the disease discovered in a
microbe distinguished as the ' tetracoccus ' — simply four little black
specks clustered together forming a square, and many such appearing
in groups.

Under proper treatment recovery began at the head and continued
steadily downward till the lost power was recovered, and now, like
many hospital patients, he was very much pleased with himself.

The operation room in this hospital is quite up to date, with an
adjoining vestibule for the administration of chloroform before the
patient is wheeled into the pale green-tiled chamber, where every-

902 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

thing — surgeon, assistants, nurses, instruments — is ready and await-
ing him.

On the roof new rooms have been built for the use of the Rontgen
rays, electrical bath, &c., and communicate by covered ways through
the open air like cloisters.

At the National Hospital for the Epileptic and Paralytic the French
doctors saw Sir Victor Horsley remove a tumour from a man's brain,
the man being completely paralysed. A few days later I could
testify personally that the man could move his legs and arms quite
freely, and, although not allowed to raise his head from the pillow,
was enjoying a generous slice of Swiss roll and a very good tea. The
man was still filled with astonishment at the sudden change in him-
self. The ward in which he lay was close to the operating room, and
is kept specially for these cases. While operating the surgeon wears
an electric lamp fixed over his forehead, by which he is enabled to
see right through the brain. Here, again, may be seen a perfect
operation room, all white tiles and tessellated pavement, with an
electric fan to cool the air, and radiators to warm it. In an ante-
room the patient is put under the anaesthetic, and in a vestibule a
row of indiarubber boots of all sizes stands ready for nurses and assist-
ants to save them getting wet feet by standing in pools of water
during the operation. On a rail hangs a row of thin indiarubber
gloves, ready for the use of surgeon and assistants.

In another ward a woman had to go through a remarkable process
of stretching the neck every day to cure trembling — a form of paralysis
agitans of the head. When asked if she liked it she shook her head,
but smiled when the nurse brought forward the ' gallows ' to show
how it was done. It was one of the cases where this particular treat-
ment was found to do good.

At St. Bartholomew's Hospital the French doctors had an oppor-
tunity of seeing how our oldest and best endowed hospital could
carry on excellent work under all the disabilities of old age. Could
these ancient walls speak, they eould tell many a tale of hopeless
suffering in times gone by, suffering which no benevolence could relieve
while the true cause of disease was unknown, and surgeons, in giving
relief with one hand, dealt death all unconsciously with the other.
A large picture on the wall shows the surgeon pouring oil and wine
into the wound of a patient, a custom resorted to from ancient times
as a healing measure ; but there was no scientific knowledge to direct
and improve upon this early effort at antiseptic treatment, and with-
out safeguards little good was done. Again, Ambroise Fare's method
of searing the wounds with red-hot irons was a further attempt at
antiseptics, but often failed to save where shock from suffering killed.
The walls that once were death-traps are now kept scrupulously
clean, and the homely comfort of the wards, the excellent food and
good nursing, excited the admiration of the doctors. On the top

1904 WHAT THE FRENCH DOCTORS SAW 903

floor were wards for ehildren suffering from infectious diseases, one
ward being rigorously shut off from another. The ward set aside for
diphtheria excited much interest, as the cases were all treated with
the anti-diphtheric serum worked out by Dr. Roux, of the Institut
Pasteur, the serum of all others found to be the most certain in its
immediate effects if given early enough. In the medical wards were
several cases of typhoid fever. One was that of a young man, the
victim of oysters, who had had two relapses and was in the eighty-
first day of his illness. Another case was that of one of the Queen's
Jubilee nurses, who lay, with flushed cheeks, looking very ill, but
hoping and longing to get back to her work among the poor of the
London slums.

Here, as in the London Hospital and other great hospitals of
London, the neat appearance of the nurses, their perfect training,
and numbers, excited not only the admiration of the doctors but
their envy. In Paris, since the sisterhoods had been scattered, the
gaps had never been filled up, and the difficulty of getting nurses
was a real one. It was feared that French mothers would never
consent to allow the freedom necessary for daughters who might
desire to follow this vocation and make themselves useful in a
sphere where their services are required, not only at home, but in the
colonies and all the world over.

Of the many hospitals visited by the French surgeons and physi-
cians there was just one which was far from disposed to open its
doors, owing to an unhappy consciousness of being out of date. This
was King's College Hospital, which never ceases to proclaim its
readiness to move to a less expensive neighbourhood when the public
provide the necessary means. The site for this new hospital has
already been given by the Hon. W. F. D. Smith, M.P., and the site
of the old will yield an income of 6,OOOZ. a year ; but, pending the
hoped-for change, the hospital as it stands is not proud of itself in
these advanced times. It has become what the Scotch call ' cassy-
faced,' anglice causeway-faced — that is, a disposition to keep in the
back streets rather than be seen in the front. Still, drawbacks not-
withstanding, this was the hospital the French doctors elected to see,
and accordingly drove up, a considerable party, one morning at eleven
o'clock, and asked permission to visit Lister's theatre. The most
advanced hospital in the world had little interest for them compared
with the hospital where Lister led the reform of all surgical practice by
the introduction of true antiseptics thirty-five years ago. The theatre,
with the semicircle of raised benches, is still what it was in his day,
and is still doing duty as operating theatre and class-room com-
bined— a combination now universally condemned. With all the sur-
roundings just as they were in Lister's day, the operating theatre had
an archaic interest for the French that nothing else had. It was the
centre whence modern teaching spread to all other London hospitals.

904 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

It was here the reduction in mortality told its own tale. With the
fundamental principle everywhere adopted and universally the same,
this ' cassy-faced ' hospital forms the keystone of all the proud edifices
that have since been reared in all parts of the civilised world for the
care of the sick and the scientific education of medical men. Re-
flecting on all these things, it must have struck our intelligent neigh-
bours as a curious irony of fate that left this hospital behind in the
general advance, a parent repudiated by her children, when of all
hospitals this should stand out a model to the world, and a monu-
ment to the reformer to whom the world owes so much.

While the French doctors were always ready to accentuate their
profound respect for Lister, the English were not behind in acknow-
ledging all that we owe to Pasteur, and to that early entente cordiale
that existed between these two men when they formed, in the teeth
of fierce opposition, a * brotherhood of science labouring to diminish
the sorrows of humanity.'

As we are all now aware, Lord Lister was the first medical apostle
who believed in the word of Pasteur. The word was conveyed to
his brain while sitting in his armchair (at Glasgow) reading Pasteur's
researches sur les corpuscules organises qui existent dans Vatmo-
sphere. We can imagine him, with attention riveted on all he was
learning, as it gradually dawned on his mind that herein lay the
whole explanation of things going wrong with wounds. It was the
drawing up of a curtain that revealed to him the immense possi-
bilities which have since been realised.

In the Institut Pasteur we have a living, working monument
raised by the contributions of all nations to honour for ever the name
of Pasteur. In a beautiful tomb he lies in the crypt down below at
rest ; but the words he wrote to his father on receiving the prize for
experimental physiology from the Academy forty-five years ago seem
to rise from that tomb like a prayer that has been heard — ' God
grant that by my persevering labours I may bring a little stone to
the frail and ill-assured edifice of our knowledge of those deep mysteries
of life and death, where all our intellects have so lamentably failed.'

Let us, then, welcome the entente cordiale so happily begun, and
do our share in encouraging scientific research and spreading the
knowledge gained over every part of the earth. By this means alone
can we hope to save suffering and needless death, with all the miseries
that haunt the track of ignorance, and do so much to overshadow
the brightness of our homes.

ELIZA PRIESTLEY.

1904

FREE THOUGHT
IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

A REJOINDER

THE MAIN POINT URGED IN MY ORIGINAL ARTICLE EVADED BY MY
TWO CRITICS, NOTABLY BY MR. MAYNARD SMITH

Two Anglican clergymen — Prebendary Whitworth and Mr. Maynard
Smith, the latter speaking expressly on behalf of the Bishop of Wor-
cester— have replied to my recent article on Free Thought in the
Church of England. I must thank them both for their freedom
from that personal acrimony which so often, besides disfiguring, con-
fuses theological controversy. Mr. Smith, however, has completely,
and Mr. Whitworth has to some extent, misapprehended the object
with which the original article was written by me.1

1 Mr. Maynard Smith, on behalf of the Bishop of Worcester, complains strongly of
the manner in which I quote from the Bishop's writings. Both he and the Bishop
believe, he says, ' and it is only charitable to suppose,' that I have never read them
myself, but have dealt with isolated sentences supplied to me by some malicious third
person, to which, torn from their context, I have imputed meanings not those of the
writer. Mr. Smith complains also that besides mis-stating the opinions held by the
Bishop himself, I have wronged him— it would seem in a manner yet more unpardon-
able— by associating these with the opinions of Dr. Sanday. Now if I have in any
way mis-stated the opinions of the Bishop himself I regret my error, and propose
presently to correct it ; but as for the charge that I set myself to attack the Bishop,
equipped with garbled quotations from him, got together for me by somebody else,
I must assure Mr. Smith that, though the charge may have the support of his charity ,
it has not the support of fact. Farther, for deliberately associating the Bishop's
opinions with Dr. Sanday's, I have a far better warrant than Mr. Smith probably
suspects. Several years ago I published a small volume dealing with the position of
dogma in the English Church. The Bishop of Worcester reviewed it at considerable
length ; and in the course of his review he administered to me the following specific
information — namely, that if I wanted to understand what are the real foundations
on which an Anglican's faith in miraculous Christianity rests, Dr. Sanday, with whose
view of the matter he was himself in profound agreement, was the Anglican divine
best fitted to tell me.

Voi, LVI— No. 334 905 3 0

906 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

It seems [says Mr. Smith] to have been Mr. Mallock's object to shock the
orthodox bj proving the Bishop a heretic, and to amuse the heterodox by
exhibiting him as a fool. ... I am reminded that Mr. Mallock has ere now
written much disagreeable fiction. In future it is to be hoped that he will
not associate it with the well-known name of a living man.

Of the severe, though Christian, amenity of these sentences I make
no complaint except that it is not apposite. Let me explain to Mr.
Smith what my object was in reality — an object which the article
itself makes plain enough in every page.

I began by referring to the question which the clergy now ask so
often — Why are the people of this country ceasing to go to church ?
And I tried to point out that the principal reason is one to which
the clergy pay too little attention — this being the fact that an
increasing proportion of the public is ceasing to believe in that whole
system of doctrines of which the Church services are throughout
a solemn and challenging assertion. Such being my own reading of
the actual facts of the situation, I sought to illustrate, and also in
part to account for, them by reference to certain changes of belief
which have taken place among the clergy themselves. In order to
show what these changes are it was necessary that I should take
examples ; and in order that the examples should be useful it was
necessary that they should be representative. The Church of Eng-
land contains, however, various schools of thought. It was necessary,
therefore, to look for examples in more quarters than one. Amongst
the Broad Church party naturally they were easy enough to find.
Canon Henson's views as to the Resurrection were sufficient for the
then occasion. The filtration of similar views into the Evangelical
party is a more novel feature. I illustrated this by the views of Mr.
Beeby as to the Virgin Birth of Christ ; but, lest Mr. Beeby's should
seem merely an isolated case, I cited also a sign of the times to which
Mr. Beeby himself has called attention — namely, that the Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge — a body traditionally representative
of popular Low Church orthodoxy — has in one of its latest publica-
tions definitely discarded the story of the Fall as a fable, valuable
only as symbolising the dual nature of man. But the party in the
Church whose opinions I felt to be most significant myself wss the
High Church or sacerdotal party, as represented by its ablest, its
most scholarly, and its most influential leaders ; for if the traditional
orthodoxy of even ultra-conservatives such as these shows signs of
disintegrating, no one can wonder if, amongst the outside public,
the tendency is fast spreading to reject Christian dogma altogether.
I sought to show, therefore, what the condition of that party was
by taking the expressed opinions, not of any one member of it
who might possibly be peculiar, but of a group of members
who, considered as a group, are representative ; and of this group I
took^the Bishop of Worcester as one, associating with him Dr. Sanday

1904 FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 907

and Dr. Driver, whom he has spoken of publicly as his own closest
allies.

It must then be plain to Mr. Smith, if he will but reflect for a
moment, that with the Bishop of Worcester as an individual I have
no concern whatever. The one important question which I have
sought to raise in this discussion is not any question as to what private
conclusions a particular bishop draws from critical premisses which
he avowedly shares with other divines and scholars, but what are the
conclusions drawn from them, or likely to be drawn from them, by
others — firstly, by his brother churchmen ; and, secondly, by the
general public.

Let me illustrate my meaning by a very homely analogy. The
chairman of a company, which has hitherto thought itself solvent,
makes a number of admissions with regard to certain of its assets
which cause a number of the shareholders to suspect that they have
become worthless. The chairman himself declares, however, that in
spite of all these admissions he believes the business of the company
to be more prosperous than ever. The honesty of the chairman's
belief may be absolutely beyond suspicion ; but what will concern the
shareholders is not its honesty but its value. Accepting the truth of
the various details he gives them, they will insist on putting them
together by their own rules of common sense ; and their own view
of the situation may very well differ from his. In the same way
the Bishop of Worcester, or any of his brother divines, may, in
consequence of modern critical discoveries, make any number of
admissions as to the evidences for miraculous Christianity, which
would have horrified and dismayed the orthodox a very short time
ago, and yet be convinced that the old dogmas themselves are
just as indubitable and as well attested as ever ; but the question
still remains — and this was the question raised by me — of whether
the general public will draw the same conclusion. Will the share-
holders endorse the judgment of the chairman that, in spite of all
his admissions, the business of the company is sound ? Or, seeing
that even the other directors do not altogether agree with him, are
they not rather likely to go over the books for themselves, and come
to the conclusion that the whole business is bankrupt, and must
either be wound up, or, at all events, entirely reconstructed ? Even
Mr. Smith and the Bishop must see that, from the very beginning,
this was the sole issue raised by me.

I will now consider the arguments of my two critics in detail, and
restate in the light of them those originally urged by myself.

3 02

908 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

II

THE REVOLUTION IN ANGLICAN THOUGHT AS TO THE NATURE OF
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES

Let me begin with a brief sketch of the broader facts of the
situation.

4 The whole historical position and justification of that specific
form of Christianity which is called Anglicanism is bound up,' says
the Bishop of Worcester, ' with its strenuous appeal to Scripture.' ?
Whatever may be the case now, this was certainly true once. Up to
a time so recent that it still seems like yesterday, the vast majority
of our clergy and laity also were unanimous in believing that the
miraculous dogmas of Christianity rested on the evidence of a sub-
stantially infallible Bible. Thus Dean Burgon declared that every
word of Scripture is ' the very utterance of the Eternal Himself ' ;
whilst, according to Dr. Pusey, to doubt the traditional date of Daniel
was equivalent to doubting the entire scheme of Redemption. Some-,
indeed, maintained that inspiration was plenary, not verbal ; but this
merely meant that the meaning of every Biblical sentence was directly
supplied by God, though the grammar and the phraseology were
human. But this state of opinion, which survived, till his death, in
Mr. Gladstone, and survives still among churchmen of the school of
Canon Webb-Peploe, is no longer dominant. It is rejected not by
the Broad Church party only, but by a considerable section of the
Evangelical party also ; whilst those who are foremost in repudiating
it are the inheritors of the Pusey tradition — men such as the Bishop
of Worcester, and the other contributors to Lux Mundi. That the
Biblical books are inspired in some sort of sense or other they main-
tain as vehemently as Dr. Pusey himself did ; but, whatever inspira-
tion in its new sense may be, they, as Mr. Smith and Mr. Whitworth
admit, dismiss with a pitying contempt the idea that it even tended
to protect the sacred writers from errors of the most astounding kind
in science, history, and prediction. Thus neither of my critics makes
any attempt to deny that their party not only regards the beginning
of Genesis as mythical, but discerns in those parts of the Old Testa-
ment which can really be treated as history errors and legends like
those that abound in Livy, and admits that the Gospels themselves,
however true as a whole, are vitiated by mistakes due to the imper-
fect information, and, here and there, to the over-zealous faith, of
the Evangelists.

Such, then, being the case, let me ask Bishop Gore, Mr. Whit-
worth, and Mr. Smith whether they can wonder that a growing number
of people, if they find Dr. Pusey's successors enunciating such con-

1 Distertations, p. 205.

1904 FBEE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 909

elusions as the above, should draw for themselves the inference from
them which Dr. Pusey declared to be inevitable, that the whole Chris-
tian creed in its orthodox form is a delusion ? It must at all events
be admitted that there are prima facie grounds for such an inference,
and that those who seek to maintain the old conclusions, whilst com-
pletely discarding the premisses hitherto held to be essential to them,
must expect to be severely interrogated as to the precise character
of their procedure, and that the doubts originally entertained will not
be at once dissipated when they realise what the character of this
procedure is.

For this procedure is one by which the old evidences for the
miraculous are not merely modified, but are actually turned topsy-
turvy, and placed in an inverted order. The central doctrine of
Christianity — namely, that of Christ's divinity, of His consequent
power to redeem us, and of His claim on our adoration and service —
was till yesterday presented to the world as attested by a series of
miraculous events beginning with the creation of mankind, leading up
to and accompanying His birth, and making His life peculiar in the
eyes even of those who rejected Him. That is to say, the central
miracle of the Incarnation, in virtue of which Christ was God as well
ids an exceptional man, was supposed to be proved by a number of
other miracles, the reality of which was vouched for by the testimony
of an infallible Bible, and a general assent to which was the postulate
of Christian argument — these other miracles, amongst them the in-
fallibility of the Bible itself, being supposed to render the miracle of
the Incarnation indubitable. But now, according to the Bishop of
Worcester and his friends, it is an a priori conviction that the miracle
of the Incarnation is indubitable, which alone makes such other
miracles as they elect to retain believable. This is like saying that
whereas in former days we believed that the English were invincible
because of the history of the battle of Waterloo, we now believe that
they won the battle of Waterloo because of an a priori conviction that
tfche English arms are invincible. Surely Mr. Smith and the Bishop
•of Worcester must see that an attempt to inquire into the effects on the
public mind of a change so profound as this cannot be adequately
met by pretending that it is a personal attack on the mental and
moral character of the Bishop of Worcester himself.

So much, then, for the general aspects of the matter. Let us now
go on to particulars. I will first verify and complete my account 01
the neo- Anglican theory. I will next deal with the more important
of the results which those who propound this theory themselves
reach by the application of it. I will then go on to inquire how far
ithe ordinary public, living in the critical and scientific atmosphere
of to-day, are likely to draw from the premisses which the clergy give
them, conclusions coincident with those drawn from them by the
clergy themselves.

910 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

Ill

DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE NEO-ANGLICAN THEORY OF EVIDENCES

I will then quote again, as I did in my previous article, certain
passages in which the Bishop of Worcester describes the neo-Anglican
theory in plain and succinct language 3 :

The inspiration of Scripture is an important part of the superstructure, but
it is not among the bases of Christian belief. . . . Belief in the Spirit's work
in Scripture follows, does not precede, belief in Christ. . . . All that is necessary
for faith in Christ is to be found in the moral dispositions which predispose to
belief, and make intelligible and credible the thing to be believed, coupled with
such acceptance of the generally historical character of the Gospels, and the
trustworthiness of the other apostolic documents as justifies the belief

in the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection', and the Ascension of Christ, and
— Mr. Smith insists I should add — His founding and guiding of the
Church by aid of the Holy Spirit. Mr. Smith, however (with what
object I am totally at a loss to conjecture), goes out of his way to
maintain that what the Bishop is here describing is not his own posi-
tion at all, but ' what St. Paul summed up in the word faith.' Now ini
any case it would be paying a poor compliment to a bishop to assume1
that if he is describing Paul's idea of Faith he cannot possibly be-
describing his own also ; but when we reflect that when Paul wrote;
there were no Gospels existing, and that he can hardly have meant
that Faith comprised a faith in his own Epistles, it is difficult to see*
how Paul could have included in Faith an acceptance of both as-
substantially trustworthy documents. However, whether the Bishop
is alluding to Paul's view or no, he is obviously describing what is
his own view as well. It is also the view which he recommended me
to learn from the writings of Dr. Sanday. It is, indeed, the view of
the neo-Anglicans generally. But if Mr. Smith has any doubts about
the matter, let us turn to Mr. Whitworth's article, and we shall find
the same thing stated in an even simpler way.

The starting-point, says Mr. Whitworth, of faith in miraculous
Christianity is a conviction of the truth of the great central miracle
that ' Christ is God incarnate,' which necessarily, according to him,
leads to a belief in the Resurrection. These two miracles — ' tha
miracles of the divine Personality ' — are, he says, ' vital to Christianity
in a sense which can be predicated of no others.' All the others might
be discarded, he says ; but if we still believed in these ' Christianity
would still remain what it is.' It does not, however, follow, he con-
tinues, that we do discard the others, a belief in which has been
demanded by Christian orthodoxy. On the contrary, we assert them
no less stoutly than ever ; but we are enabled to do so only because;

3 See Lux Mundi, p. 340,

1904 FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 911

they are rendered credible by the fact of our accepting the two primary
miracles first.

The case, however, can really be simplified yet farther. Mr.
Smith complains of me because I said that for the Bishop of Wor-
cester the primary miracles were four, whereas they are really six.
This is merely a question of words. Mr. Whitworth says, ' I prefer
to speak of them as two . . . which practically cover the ground/
In reality, he and the Bishop reduce the whole group to one — that is
to say, to the belief that Christ is God.

The initial question, then, narrows itself down to this : how is a
belief in the Godhead of Christ reached ? And the answer of the
whole neo-Anglican school is identical. We reach this belief primarily
by a subjective experience of its truth. We are first affected by what
we may call the human magnetism of Christ ; and we gradually learn
by an ' experience ' that the human Personality is divine. We do not,
however, as Mr. Whitworth is careful to urge, reduce the foundations
of our faith to the experiences of isolated individuals. The evidence
afforded by these derives a cumulative force from the fact that the
personal experiences of innumerable individuals have coincided.

Now let me admit, in anticipation of what I shall say hereafter,
that I recognise in this argument from experience great force of a
kind ; but will it justify the conclusions which the neo- Anglicans
draw from it ? That is the question to which we shall come ulti-
mately ; but first let us consider what these conclusions are, and the
precise stages by which the neo-Anglicans reach them.

The first stage is as follows. If we start with assuming that Christ
was a supernatural person, we at once see that, in one way or another,
three specific miracles must have taken place in connection with Him.
His birth must have differed in some way from the birth of ordinary
men. He could not be ' holden of death,' therefore in some way He
must have come to life again ; and since after His revivification He
admittedly disappeared from the earth, the mode of His disappearance
must certainly have been as supernatural as the mode of His advent.
Farther, says Mr. Whitworth, we should expect from His unique
character ' that His sojourn on earth would be attended by other
unique phenomena,' though we might not a priori be able to make a
guess at their nature. But whatever they were, they would certainly
not surprise us. Christ's walking on the water, if this should happen
to be amongst them, would be no more unlikely than His teaching
the people from a boat.

Our minds having been thus brought into a properly critical con-
dition, we enter on the next stage of the pathway to complete ortho-
doxy. Convinced a priori that wonders must have happened some-
how, we consult the Biblical records, and we there find it stated that
the class of events we look for actually did take place in certain
definite ways. It was certain that Christ must have been born in

912 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

some unusual manner. He was. He was born without a human father.
It was certain that in some way He must have got the better of death.
He did. Angels rolled away the door of His sepulchre, and men in
white apparel announced that His body had come to life again. The
disappearance of His revivified body must have been just as miraculous
as His resurrection. It was. Whilst He was speaking to His dis-
ciples His body rose into the air ; it was lost to sight in a cloud ; and
more men in white apparel commented on and signalised the event.
Further, since Christ was one with the Lord of Nature, His omni-
potence must have betrayed itself in many other ways as well. It
did. We find records of a whole cycle of miracles, of which, though
some may be false, others are certainly true.

The neo- Anglican argument now reaches its third stage — the part
of it which is essentially modern, and which is supposed to harmonise
orthodoxy with science and impartial thought. In accepting the
evidence of the Bible as to the occurrence of certain miracles, we have
no need to regard it as a book that is in any way supernaturally
inerrant. On the contrary, we recognise that, in its earlier parts
especially, it contains, just as Livy does, a large number of errors.
But it is still admitted on all hands that a large part of it is historical.
Now, the occurrence of miracles of some sort being a priori inevitable,
they stand on no different footing from any other events, the occur-
rence of which is mentioned in the Biblical narratives. The Bible,
then, being what it is, it is only natural to expect that its writers,
who made mistakes about the ordinary events of history, should also
make some mistakes in the case of miracles also, and that the evidence
for some miracles should be worthless, whilst the evidence for others
is convincing. Here is the meeting-point of orthodoxy and scientific
criticism. The latter separates the miracles into two classes — those
for which the evidence is worthless or defective, and which we con-
sequently cast aside, and those for which the evidence is convincing,
and which we assert with renewed confidence.

And now the argument advances to its fourth, and final, stage.
The neo-Anglicans assert that in a truly wonderful way the miracles
which are found to stand the critical test are precisely those, and
practically comprise all those, which traditional orthodoxy has looked
upon as essential, or even important, and that orthodoxy emerges from
its trial triumphant in its old integrity.

This is a fair statement of the neo- Anglican case generally ; and
now comes the question of what these miracles are, which are thus
reaffirmed and offered to us on this new critical basis. We have seen
that Mr. Whitworth and the Bishop of Worcester comprise amongst
them, at all events, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, and the Ascen-
sion ; and I said that these, in addition to the miracle of the Incar-
nation, were the only miracles that the Bishop was not prepared to
discard. This, however, is the one which, of all my original statements,

1904 FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 913

Mr. Smith and the Bishop seem to resent most. The Bishop, Mr. Smith
says, believes in many more miracles than these. Now for having
under-estimated the number of the Bishop's beliefs — though I only
spoke of those which he held to be essential — I am very sorry, and
in honourable amend for my error, I will add that I suspected that
I must have done so shortly after my original article was written. I
came accidentally across a passage in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible,
describing the Bishop's beliefs with regard to the Lord's Supper. The
Bishop believes — so the writer asserts — that whenever the sacrament
of the Lord's Supper is celebrated, a sacrifice simultaneously takes
place on some actual table in Heaven. If the Bishop, who is presum-
ably a believer in modern astronomy, can really harbour a geocentric
fancy like this, I see no reason why he should not believe anything.
Now, as I have said already, the personal beliefs of the Bishop
are not, except incidentally, any part of what I am seeking to discuss.
Still, in order to have something definite to go upon, we will here take
his personal beliefs as a starting-point, and I will deal with them
again in the light thrown on them by Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith does
not attempt to give an exhaustive list of them ; but he specially
emphasises several in addition to the primary miracles, my omission
of which is, according to him, the most ' disagreeable ' of all my
* fictions ' ; and for our present purpose these will be quite sufficient.
They are beliefs in an actual aboriginal fall of man ; in the multi-
plication of the loaves and fishes, which the Bishop seems to refer to
in his latest charge as specifically illustrative of the ' creative ' power
of Christ ; and in an actual casting out of actual li ving devils — which
last belief, presumably, carries with it a belief in the Temptation in
the wilderness by the supreme Devil in person. We will, then, take
these various beliefs in order, dealing with those which are admittedly
the most fundamental last, namely, those which Mr. Whitworth calls
the miracles of the divine Personality ; and with regard to all of
them let me remind the reader that the crucial question before us is
this, and only this : not does the Bishop believe in these miracles ; but
are other people who accept his critical premisses, who are cognisant
of the fact that there are other traditional beliefs which in accordance
with these premisses he himself rejects, and who also compare with his
own the conclusions of his brother clerics, likely to follow him in his
acceptance of the beliefs now immediately before us ?

IV

CONCLUSIONS WHICH NEO-ANGLICANS DRAW FROM THEIR OWN
PREMISSES. THEY CANNOT AGREE AMONG THEMSELVES. WILL ANY-
ONE ELSE FOLLOW THEM ?

Let us remember, then, that all these particular miracles are avowedly
accepted by the Bishop, whilst a number of others are rejected by him,

914 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Dec.

on the ground that there is for these sound historical evidence, which
in the case of the rest is wanting. Let us see, bearing this in mind,
what the Bishop has to tell us about the Fall.

The only historical evidence that such an event took place is con-
tained in certain Hebrew writings which were accepted when the
Bishop was a boy as ' the very utterance of the Eternal Himself.'
This evidence the Bishop frankly dismisses as a late patchwork of
discrepant Oriental myths, in which it would be idle to look for any-
thing like literal history ; and yet in spite of all this, as Mr. Smith is
careful to urge on me, the Bishop elaborates a doctrine of his own,
that an event which did not happen at the only date ever assigned to
it, happened a million, or perhaps a hundred million, years before,
when a pair, or perhaps several pairs, of missing links, whom he calls
' anthropoid animals,' received an ' inbreathing ' of some new
' spiritual capacity,' which they at once proceeded to misuse ; ' and
from this pair or group,' says the Bishop, ' humanity has its origin.
. . . There was, therefore,' he proceeds, ' a fall at the very root of
our humanity ... a lapse into an approximately animal condition.'
Now the Bishop, of course, may believe this if he pleases ; but is the
world in general likely to believe it also ? The first widely felt diffi-
culty in the way of orthodox faith arose out of discoveries, admitted
by the Bishop himself, which run directly counter to the idea that
any such event as the Fall has ever taken place during the existence
of the human species ; and what has the Bishop done to make this
difficulty less, beyond calling Adam and Eve a ' pair of anthropoid
animals ' ? He only makes the story seem more incredible than ever
by thus inviting us to compare it with the revelations of evolutionary
science.

Let us now turn to the secondary miracles of the Gospels — the
Temptation, the loaves and fishes, and the casting out of actual
devils. As a preparation for considering the grounds on which he
asserts these, let us see how his own application of his own critical
method leads him to reject others once thought equally indubitable.
The very first miracles recorded in St. Luke's Gospel — and none in
any of the Gospels are recorded with greater emphasis — are two
appearances of the angel Gabriel, one to Zacharias, the other to the
Blessed Virgin. According to the Bishop of Worcester,4 it is probable
that no Gabriel ever appeared at all, but that those concerned received
subjective intimations, which shaped themselves to the ' imagination '
in * the outward form of an angel.' Again, in St. Matthew's Gospel
three events are mentioned, associated with the most solemn moments
of Christ's career, and narrated by the Evangelist with an emphasis
no less solemn — namely, the colt beside the ass ; the thirty pieces of
silver, and the mingling of the gall and vinegar. All these the Bishop
invites us to regard as what he calls ' modifications ' of fact, intro-

4 Dissertations, p. 21.

1904 FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 915

duced by the writer ' under the influence of Zechariah and the Psalmist
respectively.' What the Bishop means to say with regard to these
is that the ' modifying ' writer unconsciously invented them in his
zeal to show that Christ was really the foretold Messiah ; and, as we
shall see presently in a yet more important connection, he tells us that
the same Evangelist got his facts at second-hand from the memoranda
of other writers, and then ' worked them over in his interest in the
fulfilment of prophecy.' 5

If, then, the Bishop rejects such events as the above, and rejects
them on the ground that the very strength of an Evangelist's faith
may have given him a tendency to imagine and assert what was not,
can this criticism stop at the points where the Bishop would have it
stop ? Mr. Smith's only answer to this question is that the Bishop
himself applies it to very few points indeed, and that I traduce him
by quoting such exceptions in his teaching as ' samples ' of it. I did
not quote them as samples of the Bishop's teaching. I quoted them as
samples of results to which the Bishop's critical method has led even a
man as conservative as the Bishop himself ; and I asked whether, when
applied by other people, its destructive results will not be more exten-
sive, and be fatal to the beliefs which the Bishop still continues to assert.
This is the question which I am asking at the present moment with
regard to the three miracles now immediately before us. If alleged
fulfilments of Messianic prophecies are modifications of fact piously
invented by St. Matthew, and if St. Luke converts subjective impres-
sions into actual appearances of the angel Gabriel, can the Bishop
maintain to the satisfaction of the ordinary mind that the Tempta-
tion, the multiplication of the loaves, and the casting out of devils
were not subjective impressions, or modifications of fact, likewise ?
This question is almost sufficiently answered by saying that the
Bishop cannot even convince Dr. Sanday — the man whom he has
singled out as the very type of the reasonable believer. The incidents
of the Temptation, Dr. Sanday says, ' are on the face of them not
historical.' A true account of the incident of the loaves and fishes
would be certainly very different, he says, ' from that which has
come down to us ' ; whilst, though Christ Himself believed that He
was casting out actual devils, He believed this only as an * accom-
modation ' to the erroneous * ideas of the time,' which ideas ' He
assumed as part of His incarnate manhood.' As to the first two
miracles nothing more need be said ; but as to the third, it must be
noted that the Bishop may, and does actually answer, that he believes
this on the authority, not of the Evangelists, but of Christ. This
answer, however, he has himself deprived of all its weight ; for he,
too, like Dr. Sanday, has committed himself to the admission that in
matters of science Christ was no better informed than His contem-
poraries, He ' having refrained from the divine mode of consciousness

5 Dissertations, p. 31.

916 THE NINETEENTH CENTUR? Dec.

within the sphere of His human life, that He might really enter into
human experience.' 6 On what ground, then, is it that the Bishop of
Worcester here takes his stand when he differs from Dr. Sanday ?
His sole ground is a certain arbitrary assumption of his own that
Christ, though He so thoroughly refrained from the divine mode of
consciousness that His ideas as to science and history were merely
those of His contemporaries, and though He was no better able than
any Palestinian Rabbi to distinguish the errors in the Old Testament
from the truth, yet allowed Himself an interval of omniscience, and
' taught positively ' in His character of God, when He spoke about
' good, and still more about bad spirits.' 7 Thus He allowed Himself
to be in human error when He believed that Jonah was swallowed
up by the whale ; but when He believed that a legion of devils had
got into one man, and were begging Him for permission to transfer
themselves to a herd of pigs, He was then believing and speaking as
the Eternal Word and Wisdom.

Now will such reasoning as this compel any ordinary man to
agree with the Bishop rather than with Dr. Sanday. and to place
the alleged casting out of devils in any other category than that
which the Bishop himself assigns to the appearances of the angel
Gabriel, and the standing of the colt beside the ass ? That the
Bishop is personally convinced by it I do not for a moment question ;
but even he, as to the secondary miracles, expresses himself with a
certain hesitation. In especial it may be noted that in his revised
version of the Fall, as quoted by Mr. Smith, he completely eviscerates
the old orthodox doctrine, which was that the sin of Adam was trans-
mitted to mankind as an inheritance, by substituting the statement
that after it had been once committed, each succeeding generation
' repeated, reiterated, and renewed it.' The Bishop, in short, though
he has convinced himself, has convinced himself with difficulty.
Leading divines even of his own immediate party he has been unable
to convince at all ; and outside his party, but still within the Anglican
fold, we have grave Evangelicals rejecting the Fall altogether.
When, then, we find that the secondary miracles of orthodoxy are
so widely questioned, and so unconvincingly defended by those
even whose office proclaims them devout Christians, the ordinary
man will, firstly, be led to assume that the secondary miracles are
being given up altogether, the primary ones being alone vouched
for ; and, secondly, to ask whether, when tried by the same tests,
the primary miracles will fare any better than the secondary ones.

Let us now turn to the primary miracles, and see. We will take
the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, and the Ascension first, and we
will lastly go on to the root-miracle — that of the Incarnation itself.

All the believable miracles pertaining to miraculous Christianity
are, let me repeat, defended by neo-Anglican orthodoxy on two

8 Dissertations, p. 97. 7 Ibid. p. 24.

1904 FEEE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 917

grounds. In the first place, they are antecedently likely, and in the
second place the documentary evidence for their actual occurrence
is convincing ; and to the primary miracles both these asser-
tions are held to be applicable in a pre-eminent and exceptional
degree. As to the secondary miracles, the antecedent likelihood is
general ; as to the primary miracles it is specific. However strong
may be the evidence for any of the secondary miracles, that for the
primary is immeasurably stronger.

Now, assuming for the moment the alleged antecedent likelihood,
let us take the question of the documentary evidence first. Even
those who make most of its strength admit that it contains diffi-
culties and discrepancies ; but these, they say, are small and un-
important. Is this so ? Let us begin with the Virgin Birth. I said
that the Bishop of Worcester, in a very important connection, ad-
mitted that one of the Evangelists had ' worked over ' his material
in order to introduce imaginary fulfilments of prophecies. He was
alluding to St. Matthew's account of the miraculous birth of Christ.
If the reader will refer to my previous article, he will see that, according
to the Bishop of Worcester, St. Luke's account has been ' worked
over ' in a very similar way, and that in order to invest the evidence
with even the aspect of history he has to invent a whole chapter of
apocryphal gospel for himself. As to the value of this excursion into
a kind of apologetical fairyland, it will be enough to refer, as I have
done previously, to the effect of the Bishop's arguments on his own
friends. On Dr. Sanday they have had so little effect that the ' im-
measurably strong ' evidence leaves him with this reflection — that,
whether the Virgin Birth was really a fact or no, God, at all events,
willed that we should take it for a fact once. Let us now turn to
Mr. Whitworth. He wisely avoids the Bishop's line of argument
altogether. If Christ was God, he says, His birth must have been
miraculous somehow. ' What particular form the necessary miracle
took is of quite secondary consideration.' It is true that St. John,
who was, par excellence, the Evangelist of the incarnate Godhead,
does not say that the Incarnation was accomplished by means of a
virgin birth, but ' at least he does not suggest any other way ' ; and,
finally, says Mr. Whitworth, by way of making everything easy, the
Virgin Birth ' was not a physiological fact ' at all.8 Is the ordinary

8 It would be difficult to imagine a more striking illustration than this of the
instinctive shrinking of the modern professor of orthodoxy from anything like a
definite issue. If the orthodox doctrine were that Christ was born without any
human parents at all, Mr. Whitworth's language might pass ; but the precise point
contended for is that His birth took place by means of the Virgin's womb, which God
' did not abhor.' The miracle, therefore, which all the Churches assert, was either a
physiological fact, or it was nothing. It no more failed to be a physiological fact
because an element of miracle was contained in it, than the Resurrection, for the
same reason, failed to be a physical fact. But the physical reality of the Resurrection
is just what Mr. Whitworth's school maintain with such vehemence in opposition to
the doctrines of Canon Henson. What, then, does Mr. Whitworth mean when he

918 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

man likely, in a medley of opinions such as these, to find any signs
that the evidence for the Virgin Birth, as given in the Gospels and
tested by neo-Anglican methods, is ' immeasurably strong,' or that it
has any strength whatever ?

And what of the evidences for the Resurrection — the bodily
resurrection from a sepulchre whose stone had been rolled away —
for the Bishop of Worcester will hear of nothing less ? In so far
as we are concerned with the purely documentary evidences, which
cannot be dissociated from the accounts of the Crucifixion and the
burial, I must content myself with saying that they contain a number
of notorious discrepancies, which anyone can verify for himself who
studies his New Testament. They are not of a kind that could be
easily summarised here. But the case of the Ascension, which is, in
the opinion of the orthodox, closely bound up with the Resurrection,
and stands on the same footing, is very much simpler. Of this
stupendous event, of which St. John says absolutely nothing, there
are two definite accounts, which are capable of being compared
sharply. According to one of them, it took place on the same day as
the Resurrection, at a spot close to Jerusalem. According to the
other, it took place a number of weeks afterwards, in a locality
which, measured by the time then taken in reaching it, was farther
off from Jerusalem than Vienna now is from Brighton.

Let the Bishop and others believe in this event if they please. I
am not here arguing myself that it did not actually take place. I
wish at the present moment to insist only on this — that when ordinary
men have learnt from the Bishop and his friends that the Evangelists,
instead of being writers supernaturally informed and guided, got
their information from fragments of pre-existing material, which they
* worked over ' in the interest of preconceived ideas, ordinary men
will regard the documentary evidence for the Ascension, just as they
will that for the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection, as being in itself
not only not strong, but worthless. We will now turn to a far more
important question, and ask whether the deficiencies of this evidence,
when taken on its own merits, are made up for by the antecedent
likelihood of the events.

At first sight it seems reasonable to suppose that such may be the
case. The moral appeal made by Christ's personality to the human
consciousness — to the consciousness of Paul, for example — is one of
the most interesting facts of history ; and in what thinkers
like Mr. Whitworth say about it there is a great deal with which
everybody must frankly agree. Thus it is perfectly intelligible that
this moral appeal having been made, those who experienced it should

denies any physiological reality to the miracle of the Virgin Birth ? It is impossible
to avoid the conclusion that he means nothing whatever, except that he shrinks from
putting to himself in a plain form a belief which, nevertheless, he is determined not
to deny.

1904 FEEE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 919

be led on to the conviction that He who made it must be more than
human — must be divine. It is equally intelligible that, when this
conviction has been reached, miracles in connection with such a
being become antecedently probable. We may also go farther
and admit that, in the case of Christ, the three miracles of His
Birth, Resurrection, and Ascension naturally suggested themselves
to believers in a specific and inevitable way. Indeed, the position
of the neo-Anglicans is here much stronger than they see it to be ;
but it is precisely its strength that for them renders it valueless.
For in proportion as these miracles are such as to suggest them-
selves naturally to the imagination, the ordinary mind will at once
draw the inference that the natural imagination, and that alone,
was their origin : and when we turn to the case of other religious
teachers, this inference will tend to become a certainty. In the case
of Buddha, just as in the case of Christ, the moral appeal came first ;
then the belief that the teacher was the incarnation of the Supreme
Principle ; then the belief that, like Christ, he, too, was born of a
virgin. The antecedent probability of the virgin birth of Buddha is,
for the neo-Anglicans, a proof not that it was a fact, but that it was
a fable. Can they wonder if others, whom they have taught to
criticise the Gospels, apply the same argument to the Virgin Birth of
Christ ? The neo-Anglican argument, in short, instead of affording
a foundation for any particular faith, is, on the contrary, an instru-
ment of general scepticism. Its destructive power, moreover, increases
every day — and for the following reason. While the antecedent
probability of the three great Christian miracles was so great in the
past as to account for the rise of a belief in them, even their antece-
dent probability is now rapidly disappearing. It was easy enough
for men to believe in the Resurrection of Christ when Herod, who
certainly was not a type of faith, anticipated the belief of the disciples
in assuming Him to be the risen Baptist. Antecedent probabilities
are very different now ; and if we turn to the Virgin Birth and the
Ascension, we find not so much an evanescence of the old proba-
bilities as an inversion of them. As Archdeacon Wilberforce has
pointed out, in a passage already quoted by me, the probability of
the Ascension and even its meaning depended on, and have passed
away with, the old geocentric astronomy ; and another clergyman,
Mr. Inge,0 gives utterance to the same truth :

The difficulties now felt as to miracles are [so he says] these : (1) They are
unlikely ; (2) They are unmeaning. We should not expect a priori that the
Incarnate Logos would be born without a human father, that he would suspend
his own laws during his sojourn on earth, or that he would resuscitate his
human body and remove it into the sky.

In other words, these great Christian miracles, which, as the
9 Contentio Veritatis, p. 89.

920 THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Dec.

Bishop of Worcester and Mr. Whitworth urge, once possessed so
strong an antecedent probability that this fact alone will account for
the rise of a belief in them, are now, to a growing number of minds,
even within the Church itself, rapidly coming to be recognised as
unlikely and meaningless, and the primary miracles are going the
way of the secondary. This is partly the result of a general accept-
ance of the principles of which the Bishop of Worcester is one of the
most prominent exponents, and partly the result of a general growth
of knowledge which the Bishop's own use of his principles is utterly
powerless to resist.

It still remains for us to consider the root-miracle of the Incarnation.
I will not pause to ask why that subjective experience, which was of
no value in attesting the superhuman nature of Buddha, should be
accepted as indubitable evidence of the superhuman nature of Christ.
I will merely call attention to the fact that our neo-Anglican teachers,
starting from this premiss, are themselves ceasing to be able to draw
from it the old conclusions. Nor does what I am going to say apply
to neo-Anglicans only. It applies equally to men like Professors
Harnack and Sabatier, and to liberal Catholics, such as the Abbe
Loloisy and Baron F. von Hugel. All these thinkers have come to
the same conclusion, that, if principles like the Bishop of Worcester's
are to be applied to the interpretation of the Gospels, our conception
of the divine character of Christ must, in one respect at all events,
undergo a profound change. We can no longer regard His incarnation
of the Godhead as complete. We must regard Him, says the Bishop
of Worcester, as ' having refrained from the divine mode of con-
sciousness ' to such an extent that His knowledge, in many respects,
was no better than an ignorant man's. I do not know how far the
Bishop may realise the scope of this admission ; but, as other thinkers
have shown, who are no less devout than he, it compels us to recognise
that Christ was not only ignorant of many things, but was actually
subject to very serious delusions — chief amongst these being the
delusion that His own second coming would be immediate. Such
being the case, as Baron F. von Hugel observes, the question has to
be faced of how, under these conditions, Christ could have had any
intention of founding an earthly Church. With his own answer as a
Catholic we are not here concerned, nor with what might be the
answer of the Bishop of Worcester either. It is enough to point out
that, to a growing number of minds, these admissions will be a proof
that even within the Church itself the very belief in the Godhead of
Christ is at last beginning to disintegrate.

It remains for me now to touch on one farther point which will
exhibit what I have said before in a yet more vivid light. This is
the general character which the neo-Anglican school ascribe to the
Bible as a book which they continue to call ' inspired.'

1904 FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 921

V

NEO-ANGLICANS AND AN INSPIRED BIBLE

I have reserved the discussion of this point till now, because the
manner in which the neo- Anglican party, whilst rejecting with scorn
the doctrine that the Bible is infallible, still insist on calling it in-
spired, is a type of the hopeless and utterly artificial character of their
attempts to reconcile their beliefs generally with their principles. I
will take three explicit statements as to this subject by the Bishop of
Worcester, Mr. Whitworth, and Mr. Illingworth (in Lux Mundi) respec-
tively. * The inspiration of the Old Testament,' says the Bishop,8 ' lies
in the (racial) point of view. It is that everything is presented
to us as illustrating God's dealings with man, God's judgment on
sin, His gradual delimitation of a chosen race.' In the same way Mr.
Whitworth says of the New Testament, * It is a Christian literature
... a literature which reveals the convictions of the first followers
of Christ, as infallibly as the Elizabethan literature exhibits the
beliefs of the Elizabethan age.' The Bible, according to Mr. Illing-
worth,9 is a vehicle of revelation, just as ' all other great teachers, of
whatever kind, are vehicles of revelation, each in his proper sphere,
and we accept their verified conclusions as divinely true ; while we
reject them the moment they transgress their proper limits, as thereby
convicted of unsound thinking, and thereby deprived of the divine
assistance which was the secret of their previous success.' Of his
meaning here he gives Lord Bacon as an example.

Let us begin with Mr. Illingworth. Mr. Illingworth is a writer
who claims to be taken seriously. I know of one passage, at all events,
in which he shows himself as one of the clearest and most courageous
thinkers that the Church of England has produced. We will take
him seriously here. If the above passage then has any definite mean-
ing, its statements must form part of some definite system of philo-
sophy. According to this philosophy, true things are of two kinds —
things which are merely true, and things which are divinely true.
Unless all true news is revelation, true news is of two kinds — that which
gives us ascertained facts, and that which gives us revealed facts ; and
unless nobody without inspiration can discover anything at all, a man
like Bacon, when dealing with science or history, discovers facts by
two different processes. He discovers some by the use of his normal
faculties ; he discovers others, and presumably all that are important,
by some added ' divine assistance ' which is the sole ' secret of his
success.' Now, is it possible to attach to these statements any intelli-
gible meaning ? If it is, let Mr. Illingworth show us by examples how
facts that are merely true differ from facts that are divinely true.

8 Lux Mundi, p. 344. • Ibid. p. 198.

VOL. LVI— No. 334 3 P

922 THE NINETEENTH GENTUEY Dec.

Let him show us how facts that are * revelations ' in his own Pick-
wickian sense differ from facts that are revelations in the newspaper
or law-court sense. Let him publish a polychrome edition of Lord
Bacon's writings, printing those parts in black which were due to
Bacon's natural faculties ; those parts in red which represented the
divine assistance ; and those parts in yellow which represented not
merely his natural blunders, but the fact that the divine assistance
had become a minus quantity. Since, according to Mr. Illingworth,
the assisted and the unassisted passages can be discriminated by the
unassisted process of ordinary subsequent verification, this task, if
his philosophy is sound, ought to present no difficulties. It is obvious,
however, the moment we take it closely, that his whole argument
resolves itself into a piece of confused jargon — the result of a hopeless
effort on the part of a gifted man to retain for the old doctrine that
the Bible is veritably inspired something of the old prestige of which
his principles have entirely emptied it.

Let us see if the Bishop of Worcester and Mr. Whitworth can do
better. Their way of putting the matter is at any rate plainer than Mr.
Illingworth's. Biblical inspiration, they say, is inspiration at second-
hand. What was really inspired was the life of the Jewish nation, and
the life of the first generation or first two generations of Christians.
The Old Testament is inspired because it is a literary mirror of the
former ; the New Testament is inspired because it is a literary mirror
of the latter. The blessed word ' inspired ' is thus smuggled back
somehow, and Mr. Whitworth, in a touchingly ingenious way, brings
back the blessed word * infallibility ' also. The Bible is infallible
because, like the Elizabethan literature, it infallibly represents the
circumstances under which its various books were composed. Now,
granting all this, what do we get as the upshot of it ? We get a Bible
that is infallible, but a Bible that is infallible in an antiquarian sense
only. It shows us what the Jews believed and felt, and what the
early Christians believed and felt ; and this the Bishop and his friends
invite us to regard as inspired. But do we, in this way, get a body
of Scriptures to which the Church of England, as the Bishop says,
can continue to 'make a strenuous appeal' ? He might as well, 'if
we substitute Elizabethan literature for the Biblical, say that we
test our knowledge of Eoman and English history by strenuous
appeals to the historical plays of Shakespeare. The Church to teach,
the Bible to prove — that is the Bishop's motto. Mommsen, Green,
and Freeman to teach, Coriolanus and Henry VIII. to prove — that is
its equivalent. Shakespeare, no doubt, may have believed certain
things ; the question is, do we believe them ? The Jews and early
Christians may have believed certain things ; the question is, do we,
for that reason, believe them too ? A strenuous appeal to the Old
Testament shows us that the Jews believed in the six days of creation.
A strenuous appeal to the New Testament shows us that the early

1904 FREE THOUGHT IN THE CHURCH 923

Christians, and Christ Himself, believed that the second advent was
going to take place immediately. The Bishop rejects the first of these
beliefs for himself ; events have disposed of the second belief for
him. What good do we get, then, from the infallibility and inspira-
tion of the Bible, when it is infallible only because it infallibly reflects
the opinions of a nation and a community whose ' inspiration ' did
nothing to protect it from mixing up truth with error ? Mr.
Whitworth himself seems to feel that his case, when put thus, is not
quite satisfactory ; for after he has formulated the above doctrine
of inspiration, he supplements it on another page with a doctrine
altogether different. He there indicates that Biblical inspiration
consists in the fact ' that the Holy Ghost moved the authors to under-
take their work ' ; but since he goes on to insist that when once the
Holy Ghost had done this, he gave the authors no farther help, it will
be felt that Mr. Whitworth has hardly improved his case by tacking
on an end to his argument which has no connection with the beginning
of it.

It may well be asked how high-principled and educated men can
have allowed themselves to flounder into this quagmire of feeble
sophistries. The most obvious answer is that they have bound them-
selves to support a conclusion not logically compatible with their
premisses, and that they must do so at all costs ; but there is another
answer also of a much more important kind, which is this. Though
their theories and statements, as they stand, are altogether untenable,
there is at the bottom of them an element of profound truth. The
Old Testament is a literature representing a peculiar people. The
New Testament is a literature representing a nascent community ;
and the respective characters of this people and this community are
amongst the most important factors in the history of human progress.
But just as the Bible can no longer be looked on as inerrant except as
a reflection of the beliefs of those amongst whom its books were
written, so have the beliefs themselves no other inerrancy than that
of symbols or hieroglyphics representing the development of man's
inner nature. In other words, the whole miraculous system of Chris-
tianity is no more true in the old sense than the Bible is ' inspired '
in the old sense. Such is the conclusion to which neo-Anglicanism
logically leads ; but this is the conclusion which neo-Anglicans will
not draw. Some religion, no doubt, may be deducible from these
principles, to which the name of Christianity might, without impro-
priety, be transferred ; but such a religion, whatever it might turn
out to be, would not be the Christianity of the Creeds and the Church
of England liturgy. It would not be the Christianity which the neo-
Anglicans are endeavouring to defend.

Whether this latter form of Christianity be really true or false
it has been no proper part of my present business to discuss. What
I sought to point out in my first article, and what I have sought to

3 P 2

924 TEE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Dec.

emphasise and illustrate in greater detail here, is that, if the critical
principles of nee-Anglicanism are accepted, it is inevitable that, to
an increasing degree, the ordinary educated public will reject the
miraculous doctrines of Anglican orthodoxy altogether ; and, since
the Church services are solemn affirmations of these doctrines, this
public, in growing numbers, will decline to take any part in them,
and will be content to let our modern Flamens have ' their service
quaint ' to themselves.

W. H. MALLOCK.

1904

HYMNS— 'ANCIENT' AND 'MODERN'

These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good,

Almighty ! Thine this universal frame,

Thus wondrous fair : Thyself how wondrous then !

SUCH are the opening words of the splendid morning hymn which
Milton puts into the mouths of our first parents in their sinless Para-
dise, * when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
shouted for joy.' A poet's dream, perchance ; yet we can hardly
refuse to believe that a song not unlike this burst from the hearts of
the first beings who on this globe of ours found themselves with eyes.
to see the glories of Nature, with intellects to soar through realms of
space, and with souls to adore the All-Father who had made them
lords of that fair earth.

Nor do any records of old belie such imaginings. In all we find
the same recognition of an all-creating First Cause, the same appeal
for protection against evil, the same aspiration of the spirit towards
reunion with the central flame from which its divine spark was kindled.
Then from adoration of the Spirit of the Cosmos the bard of old
passes to the glorification of the divine in man, and as he chants the
deeds of demigods and heroes the hymn proper merges into the
epic :

First hymn they the Father

Of all things ; and then

The Kest of Immortals,

The Action of men.

It is, however, the hymn, and not the epic, which we have here to
consider.

It would be hard to decide between the relative antiquity of the
sacred verses which have descended to us. The worshippers of
ancient Egypt have left their ritual chants on the papyri guarded by
their dead, while in the libraries of Babylonia are found clay tablets
showing the kinship of their devotion to that of their Hebrew brothers.

The Vedic hymns emerge from the primal mists of Indian history ;
while the devotees of Zoroaster hardly hesitate to claim that the
Gathas, or first hymns of his followers, date from ten or fifteen hundred

925

926 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

years before Christ, and that the copies still existing are amongst the
earliest inscribed on parchment.
Says the Gatha :

The Almighty numbers our words,
Deeds done aforetime remembering ;
He knoweth what shall be hereafter,
To us shall it be as He willeth.

The Vedic hymns, praising the Almighty in His countless revela-
tions of Himself in Nature, still have the underlying instinct of unity.
' Who is the God,' say they, ' to whom we shall offer sacrifice ? ' And
the answer comes :

He who gives breath, He who gives strength, whose command all the bright
gods revere, whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death . . .

He who by His sun first looked even over the waters which held power, and
generated the sacrifice — He who alone is God above all gods.

And why should we hesitate to hold these hymns as addressed to
the God of Abraham when St. Paul claims for the Eternal the song
of his own fellow-countryman ? Aratus was born in Cilicia about
260 years before Christ, and he began his ' Phenomena ' with the
famous invocation from which the Apostle quoted when addressing
tke philosophers at Athens. It has been thus rendered : l

Let us begin from God. Let every mortal raise
His grateful voice to tune God's endless praise.
God fills the heaven — the earth — the sea — the air :
We feel His spirit moving here, and everywhere.
And we His offspring are. He ever good
Daily provides for man his daily food. . . .
To Him — the First — the Last — all homage yield,
Our Father — Wonderful — our Help — our Shield.

We must not linger over the countless songs, choral, dramatic,
and didactic, addressed to the Power recognised as Alpha and Omega
•by so-called Pagans, but rather hasten on to the Christian era.

Though the early Christians doubtless took the first sacred songs
used in their services from the Hebrews, the name ' hymn ' is the Greek
' hymnos,' and no special distinction seems to have been drawn
between the ' psalms and hymns ' which St. Paul recommended to the
Church.

Many references to hymns used in religious services are found in
the early Fathers, and tradition says that Ignatius, who suffered
martyrdom about 107 A.D., introduced antiphonal singing into the
Church of Antioch after a vision of angels who were thus glorifying
the Almighty.

Tertullian describes the ' Agapse,' or love-feasts, of his day, and says
that after hand-washing and bringing in lights, each man was invited
1 By Dr. Lamb. He, however, translates ' Dios ' ' Jove.'

1904 HYMNS— 'ANCIENT' AND 'MODERN1 927

to come forward and sing verses of praise either from Holy Scripture
or of his own composition. It is not recorded whether a limit was
put to the length or frequency of any individual poet's performance !

Translations of some of these very early hymns are sung in our
day, notably the ' Gloria in excelsis ' in our Communion service. This
was originally a Greek morning hymn, dating at least from the fourth
and possibly from the second century. It was subsequently trans-
lated into Latin and imported into the Roman liturgy. Unfortu-
nately hymnody could not remain untainted by theological con-
troversy, but fell a prey to the disputes of Arius and Athanasius.
Early in the fourth century the latter had rebuked his rival for certain
hymns by which he had endeavoured to popularise his doctrines.
Towards the close of the same century the defeated Arians, though
still numerous in Constantinople, were allowed no place of worship
within the city walls. They avenged themselves by assembling at
sunset on Saturdays, Sundays, and great festivals, and, gathering in
porticos and other places of public resort, they sang all night songs
expressing their own views, and often adding taunts and insults to
the orthodox. Chrysostom, who was then bishop, was not to be
outdone. At the expense of the Empress Eudoxia, who was then his
friend, he organised counter-processions, with hymns, silver crosses,
wax tapers, and other spectacular attractions. As a natural con-
sequence riots ensued, there was bloodshed on both sides, and, the
Empress's chief eunuch being injured, public singing by Arians was
suppressed by edict. Nevertheless, the custom of nocturnal hymn-
singing on special occasions, though introduced in this stormy manner,
was continued in the Church.

Hymns were extremely popular in the Eastern Church before they
made their way to the Western communities. The Arian disputes
played their part here also. St. Augustine tells us that when Justina,
mother of the Emperor Valentinian, who favoured these heretics,
wished to remove Bishop Ambrose from his see, devout people
assembled to protect him, and kept guard in the church. ' Then it
was first appointed that, after the manner of the Eastern churches,
hymns and psalms should be sung, lest the people should grow
weary and faint through sorrow, which custom has ever since been
retained, and has been followed by almost all congregations in other
parts of the world.' Ambrose was himself a distinguished writer of Latin
hymns ; and tradition attributes to him the authorship of the Te Deum.

From this time onwards hymns appropriate to the canonical
hours, to the ecclesiastical fasts and festivals, to commemorations of
saints, and to other offices of the Church rapidly multiplied, and were
collected in the various breviaries used in different dioceses and
religious houses by the authority of bishops or ecclesiastical superiors.

At the time of the Reformation, when the old Latin service-books
were revised, translated, and adapted to the requirements of the

928 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dee.

English Church, little provision was made for the musical tastes of
congregations. The ' Veni Creator ' in the Ordination services, and
the creeds and canticles in the daily prayers and at Holy Communion,,
might be ' said or sung ' ; but nothing was definitely ordered to re-
place the hymns in the old breviaries.

Luther, fond of music, and well acquainted with popular taste,
had taken care to make full provision of hymns in the vulgar tongue
for German Protestants ; and Cranmer appears to have made some
attempt to follow his example, and to introduce English hymns into
the services of the Reformed Anglican Church ; but before the Prayer-
book took its present form a new fashion in hymnody had arisen.

Clement Marot, a servant of the French King, Francis the First,
with the aid of a youth called Theodore Beza, translated the Psalms
of David into French verse ; and these verses, dedicated to the French
King and to the ladies of France, and set to cheerful tunes, became
exceedingly popular. Calvin promptly perceived that metrical trans-
lations from the words of the Bible were more conducive to the spread
of Reformation doctrines than versions of Latin hymns, and seizing
upon Marot's Psalter appended it to his catechism, while it was with
equal promptitude interdicted by the Roman Catholic priesthood.
The example set in France was followed in England. Thomas Stern-
hold began a translation of the Psalms, which was continued by John
Hopkins, a Suffolk clergyman, who added, amongst others, the ever-
famous * Old Hundredth.' The work was carried on by English
refugees at Geneva during the Marian persecution, and brought into
use in England after the accession of Queen Elizabeth. As many as-
six thousand persons are described as singing together from its pages
after sermons at St. Paul's Cross, with thrilling effect.

Queen Elizabeth, by an injunction issued in the first year of
her reign, after allowing the use of ' a modest and distinct song in
all parts of the common prayer of the Church, so that the same
may be as plainly understanded as if it were read without singing,'
proceeds to permit, ' for the comforting of such that delight in music,5"
the singing of ' a hymn or suchlike song to the praise of Almighty/
God ' at the beginning or end either of Morning or Evening Prayer,.
* in the best sort of melody and music that may be conveniently
devised,' always providing that the sense of the hymn may be ' under-
standed and perceived.' This injunction, and the insertion, a hundred
years later, of the words in the rubric after the third collect at Morning
and Evening Prayer, ' in quires and places where they sing, here
followeth the anthem,' are generally considered to be the only authori-
ties for singing metrical hymns whose words are not taken from Holy
Scripture.

How far the metrical version of the Psalms by Sternhold ancl
Hopkins was regularly authorised has often been debated. It cer-
tainly claimed such authority. I possess a copy printed in 1629 c for

1904 HYMNS— 'ANCIENT' AND 'HODEBN' 929

the Companie of Stationers,' bearing on its title-page the words
' Cum privilegio Regis Regali,' and stating that it is

Set forth and allowed to be sung in all churches, of all the people together,
before and after Morning and Evening Prayer, and also before and after
sermons : and moreover in private houses for their godly solace and comfort,
laying apart all ungodly songs and ballades : which tend onely to the nourishing
of vice and corrupting of youth.

This copy of the Psalms and metrical versions of the Canticles is
also enriched ' with apt notes to sing them withall,' and has some
quaint little hymns which are omitted in later copies of the collection.
The ' New Version,' made by William the Third's chaplain, Dr. Brady,
and the poet laureate, Nahum Tate, was published with an Order in
Council dated the 3rd of December, 1696, permitting it ' to be used
in all churches, chapels, and congregations as shall think fit to receive
the same ' ; and in May 1698 the Bishop of London — Dr. Compton —
recommends it as * a work done with so much judgment and ingenuity '
as he is persuaded ' may take off that unhappy objection which has
hitherto lain against the singing psalms.'

What * that unhappy objection ' may have been is not stated, but
it is clear that the new version never entirely displaced the old
in popular estimation. So late as 1852 copies of the Prayer-book
were published with both versions appended, though others of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries exist, some with the old and
some with the new version only.

A German, Charles Moritz, who travelled in England in 1782,
gives an interesting account of a Sunday spent in the village of
Nettlebed. Having borrowed a Prayer-book from the landlord of his
inn, he studied it during breakfast, and comments as follows :

It being called a prayer-book, rather than, like ours, a hymn-book, arises
from the nature of the English service, which is composed very little of singing,
and almost entirely of praying. The Psalms of David, however, are here trans-
lated into English verse, and are generally printed at the end of English prayer-
books.

The service began at half-past nine, and the village boys were
drawn up ' as if they had been recruits to be drilled,' to salute the
parson, who arrived on horseback. They are described as ' well-
looking, healthy boys, neat and decently dressed, with their hair cut
short and combed on the forehead, according to the English fashion.
Their bosoms were open, and the white frills of their shirts turned
back on each side.'

The English service, Moritz thinks, must be very fatiguing to the
minister, so large a part falling to his share. Before the sermon there
was a little stir, several musical instruments appeared, and the clerk
said, in a loud voice : ' Let us sing, to the praise and glory of God,

930 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

the forty-seventh psalm.' This, in the old version, which was probably
heard by our traveller, begins :

Ye people all, with one accord, clap hands and eke rejoice,
Be glad and sing unto the Lord with sweet and pleasant voice.

The tunes, he says, * were particularly lively and cheerful, though
at the same time sufficiently grave and uncommonly interesting.'
English church music, he declares, often affected him even to tears.

In the afternoon there was no service ; the young people, however, went to
church and there sang some few psalms. Others of the congregation were also
present. This was conducted with so much decorum that I could hardly help
considering it as actually a kind of church service.

— a guarded statement in which one may safely concur ! Moritz was
so delighted with this peaceful village that when the time came to
depart he could hardly tear himself away.

Eeference has been made to the hymns printed at the end of the
old version, some of which were omitted in later editions, while others
took their place. In like manner Tate and Brady published hymns
and translations of the canticles in a supplement to their version
sanctioned by Queen Anne ; and the favourite ' While shepherds
watched their flocks ' is said to have been written by Tate himself.
* Hark ! the herald-angels,' however, which appears in all the nine-
teenth-century editions of this supplement, must have been added
later, probably after the publication of Wesley's hymns in 1779.
The publishers of these supplementary hymns seem to have arranged
the order in which they should be printed, and to have made addi-
tions from time to time, without troubling themselves about official
sanction of any kind. Nevertheless, custom, or a hazy recollection of
Orders in Council, evidently in popular opinion extended to the
supplements the aegis cast over the metrical versions, and some
persons of an older generation still recollect a kind of uneasy
feeling which prevailed when hymns from other collections made
their way into churches. These unauthorised hymnals appear to
have come into partial use seventy or eighty years ago. Bishop
Heber's widow published in 1827 a collection of hymns for Church
seasons, written by her husband, with the addition of several by
Milman and others, and in so doing she expressed the hope that they
might be generally adopted for congregational use. Others followed,
and many, like myself, may remember when it was customary to sing
one metrical psalm and one hymn in the course of a service.

In 1861 the first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern appeared,
and three years later the compilers were able to state that 350,000
copies had already been sold, while it was lately announced that the
sales of the various editions had reached forty millions. The Hymnal
Companion, first published in 1870, has also obtained wide popularity,
especially in churches where the doctrinal tone of Hymns Ancient and

1904 HYMNS— 'ANCIENT' AND 'MODERN' 951

Modern is considered too high. The Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge was even earlier in the field, having issued a collection of
hymns in 1852, which, in its later form of Psalms and Hymns, is still
obtainable. For over thirty years, however, the Society has also
published its well-known collection called Church Hymns, of which an
entirely new edition was issued in 1903.

Before considering the hymnology of the present day we may quote
the opinion of the late Lord Selborne recorded in his excellent article
on * Hymns ' in the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Speaking of the numerous collections then issued by various religious
denominations for their own congregations, and of those which, though
devoid of official authority, had become popular in the English Church,
he wrote :

In these more recent collections an improved standard of taste has become
generally apparent. There is a larger and more liberal admission of good
hymns from all sources than might have been expected from the jealousy, so
often felt by churches, parties and denominations, of everything which does not
bear their own mint-mark ; a considerable (perhaps too large) use of transla-
tions, especially from the Latin ; and an increased (though not as yet sufficient
scrupulousness about tampering with the text of other men's work.

This liberal admission of hymns not bearing exclusive mint-
marks is still striking in the hymnals of divers religious bodies,
as is shown by a somewhat close examination of the following eight
representative books : The new edition of Hymns Ancient and
Modern ; the latest edition of the Hymnal Companion to the Book of
Common Prayer ; the Church Hymns of the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge ; the Methodist Hymn-book, issued last June by
a committee of the English Wesleyan Conference in conjunction with
other Methodist bodies in England and Australasia ; the Congrega-
tional Church Hymnal ; the Church Hymnary, authorised for use by
the Church of Scotland and allied Presbyterian bodies in Scotland,
Ireland, and the Colonies ; the Church Hymnal, authorised by the
General Synod of the Church of Ireland ; and the authorised Hymnal
of the Episcopal Church of America.

No fewer than sixty-seven hymns have been found mall eight books,
three more in seven books, but not in the Scotch Hymnary. ' There is
a fountain ' is omitted from Church Hymns. No translation of ' Dies
Irso ' appears in the Congregational collection, but the hymn is included,
either in Walter Scott's or in Irons' version, in all the others ; while
two favourite hymns, Heber's ' Brightest and best ' and Dr. Sears'
' It came upon the midnight clear,' are excluded only from Hymns
Ancient and Modern. Had time permitted, further search would have
doubtless proved that many more hymns are common to the majority
of these hymnals, if not to all ; but it is not unreasonable to take
these seventy-four (all of which are included in the Irish, American,
and Wesleyan collections) as fairly representing the preference of the

932 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

English-speaking peoples, and they are certainly varied in origin and
sentiment.

Six are by Charles Wesley, five by Bishop Heber, four by Dr.
Watts ; Cowper, Bonar, and H. Lyte are each responsible for three, and
two apiece come from Bishop Ken, Charlotte Elliot, Mrs. Alexander, the
Eev. S. J. Stone, and C. Dix. One hymn, ' Through the night of doubt
and sorrow,' is translated from the Danish ; another, ' Guide me, 0
Thou great Kedeemer,' was written in Welsh by the Rev. W. Williams,
and turned into English by the author with the help of P. Williams ;
while eight are translations from old Greek and Latin hymns. ' Dies
Irae ' has already been noted : the other seven (included in all eight
collections) are ' Art thou weary ? ' and ' The day is past and over,'
from the Greek ; * All glory, laud, and honour,' ' Jerusalem the golden,'
and ' Jesu, the very thought ' from the Latin (these five being chiefly
translated by the Rev. J. M. Neale), and the well-known Latin hymns
* Adeste fideles ' and ' Veni Creator,' the latter said by tradition to
have been written by Charlemagne.

The remaining thirty favourites are original English hymns by
various authors of the last three centuries, from R. Baxter, born in
1615, who wrote * Lord, it belongs not to my care,' to the Rev. S.
Baring-Gould, the present Rector of Lew Trenchard, who has stirred
so many hearts with his ' Onward, Christian soldiers.' Though it
must be noted that the compilers of these different hymnals have not
always hesitated to ' tamper with the text,' or else to select from
several current versions the one best suited to their particular
shades of theology, we may still rejoice that so many great thoughts
expressed in melodious words have found favour in shrines thus
diverse, and that the lines of Lowell have been once more justified :

Moravian hymn and Eoman chant

In one devotion blend,
To speak the soul's eternal want

Of Him, the inmost friend ;
One prayer soars cleansed with martyr fire,

One choked with sinner's tears,
In heaven both meet in one desire,

And God one music hears.

The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge was peculiarly
fortunate in the composition of the committee which served for six
years in preparing the new edition of Church Hymns. Among those
who from time to time assisted in this arduous task the names of
Dr. Bright, Dr. Walsham How, Dr. Julian, and Mr. Palgrave are in
themselves a guarantee of the high standard, devotional and poetical,
maintained in the volume. Exceptionally good is the selection of
children's hymns ; and the committee throughout their work seem to
have borne in mind the memorandum of Dr. Bright quoted in the
preface : * I do not think that the original texts ought to be deemed

1904 HYMNS— 'ANCIENT' AND 'MODERN' 933

sacrosanct, but the alteration ought to be done with a very careful
hand, and only under conditions which make it practically necessary.'

The Wesleyan or Methodist Hymn-book has a very interesting
ancestry. We are told in the preface to the present volume that
John Wesley's first compilation was printed in Georgia in 1737, and
was followed by several others in which various changes were effected.
In 1779 Wesley wrote his famous preface for the hymn-book published
in London, which was intended for general use amongst his congrega-
tions, and of this book the present revised version claims to be the
' lineal descendant.' It is an exhaustive collection, containing no fewer
than 981 hymns, for the most part well adapted to the ends which
Wesley desired to attain by Poetry ' as the handmaid of Piety ' ; these
are raising or quickening the spirit of devotion, confirming faith,
enlivening hope, kindling and increasing love to God and man. Here
and there are lines which sound rather strange to modern ears ; but
these are no doubt preserved as a tribute to old associations.

The Congregational Hymn-book contains most of the well-known
hymns of the Church Universal, but it strikes occasionally an original
note, as in a hymn intended to be sung ' Before a Parliamentary
Election,' which petitions :

The heat of party strife abate,

And teach us how to choose
Good men and wise to guide the State,

The evil to refuse.

One cannot help fearing that the * intention ' with which such a
hymn would be sung in most congregations would not be unanimous !

Two beautiful hymns may be noted as almost peculiar to this
collection : ' Christ to the young man said,' written by Longfellow for
his brother's ordination, and ' In the field with their flocks abiding,'
by Dean Farrar.

The Scotch, American, and Irish collections have each peculiar
merits, and attention may well be drawn to hymns especially
written by Mrs. Alexander for the last-named book. One of these,
* The breast-plate of St. Patrick,' is adapted from an old Irish hymn,
and is a gem of which the Church of Ireland may well be proud.
As it is little known to English readers, the quotation of one verse may

be permitted :

I bind this day to me for ever,

By pow'r of faith, Christ's Incarnation ;
His baptism in Jordan river ;

His death on Cross for my salvation ;
His bursting from the spiced tomb ;

His riding up the heav'nly way ;
His coming at the day of doom ;

I bind unto myself to-day.

We havejnow to consider what steps the compilers of Hymns
Ancient and Modern have taken to keep that widely known volume

934 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

in the forefront of hymnals competing for the favour of English
Churchmen.

No better tribute to its hold upon popular affection could be found
than the chorus of protest which arose upon the mere rumour that
its contents had been tampered with ; few were willing to concede
the simple fact that it is the property of a body of private individuals,
and not of the Church as a whole. Granting, however, to the fullest
extent that the compilers are within their legal and moral rights in
adding, removing, and altering hymns at their own discretion, the
public have an equal right to criticise freely the treatment of a volume
endeared to thousands by long association ; and should they find that
its character is materially deteriorated by such treatment, they can
either demand that the old book should be still supplied to them
(which it is rumoured will be done), or, failing this, congregations will
certainly desire the substitution of some more congenial hymnal in
their public services.

We may consider the work in two portions : the translations from
old breviaries and monkish authors, and the selection of original
compositions. It has already been noted that Cranmer's intention
to introduce English hymns, including translations from the ancient
and mediaeval service-books, was largely superseded by the introduc-
tion of metrical psalms. The ' Veni Creator,' nevertheless, kept its
place in the Ordination service, and many English hymns, without
being translations, were evidently influenced by the ancient verses.
Concurrently with the Tractarian attempt to revive the discipline and
usages of the mediaeval Church, came increased interest in its hymnody,
and many translations from Greek and Latin originals were made
by the Rev. J. M. Neale, the Rev. E. Caswall, and others.

A number of these, varying in merit, were included in the first
edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern, and those which, like 'Jeru-
salem the golden ' and 'Hark ! a thrilling voice is sounding,' added poetic
beauty to devotional sentiment, and soon justly made their way into the
affections of the people. Others, whatever may have been their merit
in their classical garb, were almost disregarded, and might have been
omitted in the new edition without exciting a single protest. Tt is
hardly too much to say that these very compositions appear to have
been those which have received the most devoted attention from the
present compilers, who tell us, no doubt with perfect truth, that
' immense labour has been spent on improving the translations.' One
can almost see these earnest students toiling with pen and paper, dis-
cussing minute points of scholarship, comparing their versions word by
word and line by line, till they produce, not a song of praise nor a cry
of penitence, but a sixth-form exercise corrected by a conscientious
master. They have been digging in a mine instead of tending a garden.

Take, for instance, ' Veni Redemptor gentium.' How often was it
sung in the former translation, and how far is the present version
suited for use in an ordinary congregation ?

1904 E7MNS— 'ANCIENT' AND 'MODERN' 935

It would be difficult to conceive a choir practising the new version
of 'A solis ortus cardine ' — 'From east to west, from shore to shore';
but the most extraordinary fate has befallen a rather pretty hymn
from the Paris Breviary, ' Divine crescebas Puer.' This was efficiently
rendered in the former book by the Rev. J. Chandler, the translation
of the fourth verse being not devoid of beauty :

He whom the choirs of angels praise,

Bearing each dread decree,
His earthly parents now obeys

In deep humility.

The compilers, however, espied a fault either in the theology or
the accuracy of these words, and with ' immense labour ' evolved the
following in their place :

He at whose word swift angels fly,

His dread commands to bear,
Obeys in deep humility

A simple carpenter.

Comment is surely superfluous.

It were a thankless task to collect further instances of the lack of
lyric inspiration, of clumsy diction, and of failures in rhyme and rhythm
in what may be called the ' classical side ' of the new book. We can
only note with sorrow that in her excursions through these pages
Piety seems to have discarded her ' handmaid ' Poetry, and to have
enlisted in her stead that clerkly retainer Scholarship, and we may
be thankful that a certain number of translations have been left
untouched by the hand of the reviser.

It is harder to discuss the original compositions included in
the new book, as the power of hymns over the mind of man is largely
influenced by association. There are hymns which we repeated as
children, and whose words became dear to us almost before we
grasped their meaning; hymns which, sung by the village choir,
brought to our childish faith visions of a happy land not far removed
from the pleasant meadows which we crossed on our way to church ;
hymns which in the perplexities of youth whispered their messages
of hope, of warning, of encouragement ; hymns which ever remain to
us as echoes of the gladness of the wedding-day or the mournful
shadows of the tomb. There are the triumphant strains with which
we greeted Christmas and Easter, and the solemn requiem with which
we watched by Calvary.

As we glance through the new book and compare it with the
volume so familiar to thousands during the past forty years, the
thought cannot but arise that the changes have been made by men
who have lost touch to a great extent with human sentiment, or who,
in their anxiety to enforce Church doctrines, have forgotten the old
couplet ;

A verse may find him who a sermon flies,
And turn delight into a sacrifice.

936 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Dec.

How else can we explain the omission of ' 0 Paradise ! 0 Paradise ! '
whose loss is lamented by numbers of men and women who seem to
have clung to it as ' the Lord's song in a strange land ? ' What
induced the excision of * Now, beloved Lord, Thy soul resigning ' ?
and of Heber's hymn, instinct with poetry, ' When through the torn
sail the wild tempest is streaming ' ? Almost stranger than the
omissions are the curious changes made in hymns added and re-
tained. The compilers have wisely included for the first time Heber's
beautiful 'There was joy in heaven ' ; but why alter the closing lines?
' The sheep that went astray' is more dramatic and more true to Scrip-
ture than ' The soul that went astray,' and the whole quatrain, as the
author wrote it, is more consonant with the preceding verses. There
is seldom an excuse for changing original words — certainly not those
of a true poet like Bishop Heber.

' Outside a city wall,' for Mrs. Alexander's ' Without a city wall,'
in ' There is a green hill,' is another unpardonable alteration.

The crowning sin in the new edition is, however, the reversion to
the original ' Hark how all the welkin rings,' which has been the occa-
sion of so remarkable a burst of indignation. Consecrated by the usage
of over a hundred years, ' Hark ! the herald-angels ' had surely become
a heritage in the Christian Church with which no man should have
lightly interfered. It may be noted that this is the opening line of
the hymn in the Methodist Hymn-book, and we need hardly be more
Wesleyan than the Wesleyans. The defences put forward for the
change are remarkable. One of the compilers is reported to have
said that ' herald-angels ' was incorrect, as one angel was the herald
and the others only joined in afterwards. If this purist had ever
heard a proclamation by several heralds he might have discovered
that one generally makes the announcement and his companions
blow trumpets or otherwise express concurrence. But such an
argument is akin to that of the Middle Ages concerning the number
of angels who could dance on the point of a needle.

One or two hymns, such as ' Crossing the bar ' and * Alone Thou
trodd'st the winepress,' are welcome additions, but it is impossible to
contend that the average of the newcomers is high, and this is the
more to be regretted when there are so many fine hymns which have
never found a place in the collection. To mention only two or three,
there are Dean Milman's 'Bound upon the accursed tree ' and 'Brother,
thou art gone before us,' Addison's 'The spacious firmament on high,'
and a spirited hymn by Charles Wesley :

Christ the Lord is risen to-day,
Sons of men and angels say.

The revised volume is supposed to be especially strong in mission
hymns ; presumably it was too much to expect that room should be
found for ' There were ninety and nine ' and ' Jesus of Nazareth

1904 HYMNS— 'ANCIENT' AND 'MODERN' 937

passeth by.' Both these are in Sankey's collection; the former is
included in Church Hymns and other hymnals.

Since two or three hymns for time of war find place in the new
Ancient and Modern, what a grand addition would be Rudyard
Kipling's ' Hymn before Action ' ! The verse ' Ah, Mary pierced with
sorrow ' must needs be omitted, but how true to the spirit of the
Christian Warrior are the lines —

From panic, pride, and terror,

Bevenge that knows no rein,
Light haste and lawless error,

Protect us yet again.
Cloak Thou our undeserving,

Make firm the shuddering breath,
In silence and unswerving

To taste Thy lesser death !

It is stated in the preface to Hymns Ancient and Modern that in
1892 negotiations took place between the compilers and Convoca-
tion, probably with a view to giving some kind of imprimatur to a
volume founded on this collection. It is remarkable that, alone
among the principal Reformed Churches of the Empire, the Church
of England has no sort of authorised hymnal. In this it somewhat
resembles the Roman Church in this country, whose collections of
English hymns are used (chiefly at Benediction) at the discretion of
individual clergy.

Twelve years spent in revision seem hardly to have rendered
Hymns Ancient and Modern more fitted in popular estimation for
official recognition, and the dignitaries of our Church may shrink
from the almost impossible task of deciding what hymnal is best
suited to the varying requirements of their flocks in both hemispheres.
They will certainly be disinclined to comply with such demands as
that of the Editor of the Historical Companion to Hymns Ancient
and Modern, who wishes for a book containing, first, all the ancient
and mediaeval hymns of the Universal Church ; and secondly, selected
modern hymns, but only those which have ' issued from a Churchman's
heart and head.' It is not quite clear whether Wesley's would be
excluded under this rule, but it is certain that * Nearer, my God, to
Thee,' written by a Baptist, and ' There's a friend for little children,'
by a Plymouth Brother, would be ostracised.

These questions, however, may be safely left to the discretion of
our spiritual Fathers. In conclusion we would ask, — What is a true
hymn ? Is it not the voice of man's heart speaking to the Eternal
Spirit in adoration, in supplication, in humble faith, expressed in
words the most simple, yet the most dignified, the me st musical, and
the most truthful which the mind of man can conceive and the spirit
which is in man inspire ?

M. E. JERSEY. ]

VOL. LVI— No. 334 3 Q

938 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

THE CENSUS OF INDIA

THE counting of the 294,361,056 human beings who live under con-
ditions of every possible variety, climatic, ethnic, and economic,
upon 1,766,597 square miles of the surface of the globe, extending
from the Persian frontier to the Chinese march, from the passes of
eternal snow, which look down upon our troops on their march towards
Lhasa to the burning jungles of Burma and Malabar, is indeed an
operation which can only be described as stupendous. The thing
was done, however, for the third time, on the 1st of March 1901 by
Mr. H. H. Risley, C.I.E., and his assistants, and in a fashion more
complete and comprehensive than upon the two former occasions,
for in the present census new ground, such as the Beluchistan Agency
and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, is included. The convict
isles were entrusted to the very competent hands of Sir Richard
Temple — the second — whose aid is specially acknowledged by Mr.
Risley, and Mr. Gait, to the latter of whom, after the official promo-
tion of the former, it fell to write most of the report but lately received
in England. In this volume is condensed and abstracted information
collected at a cost of only 173,OOOZ. by 9800 charge superintendents,
122,000 supervisors, and no fewer than 1,325,000 enumerators.

Mr. Risley points out, as any fair-minded man might of many of
our successes in India, but as few do, that the Indian census is pre-
eminently the work of the Indian people, and that if they withheld
their unpaid services the undertaking would be financially impracti-
cable. As a fact, they entered, with painstaking zeal and complete
trust in their administrators, into an operation they might, and in
so ne cases still do, regard with suspicion. Mr. Burn, of the formerly
North- West, but now United, Provinces, relates how the zeal of one
volunteer enumerator impelled him to turn his official instructions
into verses, the acquisition of which by heart on the part of his col-
leagues should, he urged, have been made obligatory. Not otherwise
after all did a learned Fellow of the Linnaean Society try to induce a
class of boys, of whom I was one, to learn the beggarly elements of
botany by putting into rhyme the characteristics of the chief natural
orders and the polygamous pursuits of the plants ! Another con-
scientious and accurate enumerator propounded the case of a deaf

1904 THE CENSUS OF INDIA

and dumb lunatic wandering alone in the moonlight of the fateful
night, yet bound by the order of the Sirkar (Government) to fill up
sixteen columns of a schedule ! A proof of the universal trust now
prevailing that no one will, so far as lies within the power of the
British Government to prevent it, be allowed to suffer from actual want
of food, is found in the fact that the wildest tribe in India, the Bheels,
submitted for the first time to enumeration. They were impressed
with the argument that no food might be available in the next famine
for those who were not counted — in short, that the Sirkar would not
know for how many guests to prepare.

A separate slip, like that used in the Bavarian census of 1891, with
the necessary modifications and additions, was for the first time intro-
duced with very happy results by Mr. Risley, the colour, shape, and
size differing in order to indicate the religion, sex, civil condition, and
so on, of the individual to whom it related. The Brahmin gentleman,
who very capably conducted the census of the State of Mysore,
further had printed on the slips he issued pictorial busts indicative of
the information required in each case. A widower, for instance, to
the credit of the class, was represented with his head bare, and without
his caste mark, both signs of extreme grief and deep mourning. Of
the twenty-three Superintendents of Census in Provinces and States,
five were Indian gentlemen, and the reports submitted by those in
charge in Cochin, Mysore, and Travancore, three of the most beautiful
and well- administered States, are deservedly singled out for com-
mendation by Mr. Risley.

No part of India is more interesting from an administrative or
historical point of view than the 678,393 square miles, or 38 per cent,
of the whole, still under native government, more or less independent
according to the more or less scrupulous adherence by the local
Government, or Resident concerned, to the treaty obligations existing
in each particular case. Native India, though over a third of the
area, supports less than a quarter of the population. Of the pro-
vinces, the largest, Bengal, is bigger than Sweden, and has a popula-
tion of 78,500,000. Of the native States, the most extensive, Hydera-
bad, is greater in size than Great Britain, and has a population ex-
ceeding 11,000,000. Yet the average population of the whole Empire
is but 167 per square mile, ranging from eleven in Beluchistan to
1828 in the crowded coast country of Cochin. Density of popula-
tion is all a matter of irrigation and rainfall ; but whether it be dense
or sparse, no less than nine-tenths of the whole dwell in villages,
though the town population has risen by 7' 3 per cent, since last
census ; while the total population is but 2*4 greater, this net advance
being made up of an increase of 4' 8 in British, and a decrease of 5' 4 in
native, India. It is satisfactory to learn that the rise in the urban
population is due, not to the drift of famine and plague subjects to
the towns, but to the growth of cotton and jute mills, railway works,

940 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

and other large industries. Nor is the small proportion of the urban
population so remarkable, in a country in which two-thirds of the
people are engaged in agricultural pursuits, when it is remembered
that the growth of cities is of comparatively recent date in England,
wherein a third, and in Germany and France, wherein a sixth and a
seventh respectively, of the inhabitants, are massed in large towns.
The development of trade in India in the twentieth, may yet have
the effect it had in Europe in the nineteenth, century.

Indeed at the present day Calcutta, with its 1,106,738, is one of
the dozen largest cities in the world. Bombay, with 776,000, shows
a decrease of 0 per cent, since last census, though there is ground for
thinking that, but for the temporary absence of many of the inhabitants
owing to fear of plague, there would at least have been no decline from
the figures of 1891 to register. Yet the Census Commissioner calcu-
lates the total mortality from plague to have been a third of a million,
and the result of the famine to have been the loss of a million and a half,
the drop in Bombay British territory being 2 per cent., and in the
Bombay native States 14 per cent. The Commissioner also con-
firms the view expressed in the Times review of the Indian Famine
Report, that immense numbers of refugees from native States came
across the border in extreme destitution to seek relief in British
territory, upon the death-rate of which such immigration had a very
great effect. The same phenomenon occurred in the Central Provinces,
and the Census Commissioner, like the Famine Commission, finds
that relief operations were in the native States far less successful than
in British India. Indeed, no impartial observer, however his natural
bias inclined, as mine does, towards the administrative methods of
the native States, could arrive at any other conclusion.

Mr. Gait shows very clearly that though an increase of 2*4 per
cent, is below what is considered to be a fair increment, yet that the
high rates of 13 and 23 per cent, of the previous counts were due to
extraordinary circumstances, and cannot be looked upon in any way
as normal ; nor does he omit to contrast, as I have, and as any one
acquainted with Indian history would, the effects of famines in ante-
British days, when a half, a third, or a fourth of the population affected
was wiped out of existence, with the results of recent widespread
failures of crops, which have only availed to reduce the normal increase
of the population. This in itself is sufficiently regrettable, not only
on humanitarian grounds, but because India, in spite of oft-repeated
allegations to the contrary, is not an overcrowded continent. Indeed,
two-thirds of the population occupy a quarter, while the remaining
third is scattered over three-quarters of the area, which in fact is
quite sparsely inhabited, and nowhere contains as many as two hundred
persons to the square mile.

There was always place aux dames in the nineteenth century, and
will be after, but while in Europe they always outnumbered the

1904 THE CENSUS OF INDIA 941

males, in India they continue to be thirty-seven short in every thousand ;
and though in the lower classes women work hard, they are found to
be less liable than men to succumb to the effects of insufficient food
and disease. The breadwinner is the one who goes down in bad
times. The Commissioner errs, I think, in describing the Nayars of
the Malabar Coast as polyandrous, if indeed polyandry implies, as
I understand, the possession of more than one husband at one and
the same time. Nor, if Mr. Gait had enjoyed the privilege ot
living among the Nayars, would he have accused them of an
* excess of females.' The most beautiful women in India, if nume-
rous, could never be ' excessive.' It is interesting, if unexpected, to
learn that enforced widowhood, where it prevails, however wearisome
and monotonous, induces greater longevity ; not surprising to be
told that no conclusions of any value can be drawn from the con-
sideration of so many figures, as to the causes which influence
sex at birth ; and altogether natural to find that in districts wherein
women are scarce, relaxation of the restrictions upon marriage inevi-
tably follows. At a moment when the Licensing Bill provokes strong
feeling even in the placid atmosphere of the House of Lords, it is
worthy of note that the Census Superintendents, who devoted par-
ticular attention to the subject, were unable to trace any connection
between the consumption of drugs and spirits and the prevalence of
insanity, and that the facts seem ' wholly opposed ' to the theory
sometimes absurdly propounded, to the effect that enforced widow-
hood and life in the zenana are prejudicial to the mental equilibrium.
Ophthalmia, on the other hand, can be attributed with some certainty
to the want of forest and greenery, to heat and drought, and to the
pungent smoke of the fires over which the people cook their food.
' As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes,' wrote the Psalmist,
of an Eastern country, the conditions of which are in many respects
exactly reproduced to this day in India.

Then as to leprosy, the Times has recently published letters
by Dr. Jonathan Hutchinson, who is convinced that this dread
disease is caused by the consumption of rotten or insufficiently cured
fish, but is driven to argue that it is more common among Roman
Catholics because their Church makes obligatory the consumption of
fish — which of course it does not — among people who either eat fish
alone as their animal food, in which case the Church slightly reduces
the amount of such food consumed, or eat neither fish nor flesh, in
which case no such rule can have the effect of occasionally substituting
the one for the other.

The Census Commissioner quotes the finding of the Leprosy
Commission that no article of diet can be held to cause the disease,
remarks that no one has found the bacillus of leprosy in fish or else-
where, and notes that three inland provinces, wherein the consump-
tion of fish is very small, actually head the leprosy list. The Bengal

942 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

census lends, moreover, no support to the theory that the quality
rather than the quantity of fish eaten disposes towards this disease.
All that the census goes to prove is that leprosy is most common, as
sanitation and education are least prevalent, among the lower castes
of the people.

On education volumes might be, and indeed are being, written,
but for census purposes a literate is one who can both read and write,
and of such there are fifty-three per thousand in India. One male in
ten, and one woman in 144, possess these qualifications ; and of the
great provinces Burma, owing to the system of indigenous free
education given by Buddhist priests, comes first, while Madras
heads the list for India proper, standing above Bombay, on behalf
of which Sir William Lee-Warner at the Society of Arts put forward
her usual plea for first place, a claim I ventured on the spot to contest.
Had he claimed that Bombay, as usual, spent most in proportion to
the results, the census would have confirmed him. The most Hindu
part is the most educated part, of India ; and the native States of
Cochin and Travancore, the individuality and exclusively Hindu
character of which have never by foreign conquest been, and only of
late have otherwise been, impaired, occupy a higher place than any
British province ; Cochin, wherein women are sufficiently free, in
respect of females dividing with Burma, wherein women are as free
as air, the honours of the first place. These facts should be remem-
bered when we are told again and again with weary reiteration that
all that is best in India came in with the Aryans, whoever and what-
ever they were, and whensoever they arrived in that family procession
described with such precision by the late Professor Max Miiller and
by other theorists, to whom the concrete facts of a census must come
as a cold douche to a heated imagination.

It is where the Mongoloid and Dravidian elements prevail that the
people are most Indian and least ignorant. The Indian order of
merit for literacy runs thus : Parsees, Jains, Buddhists, Christians,
Sikhs, Hindus, Mohammedans, and Animists. It is an amusing and
instructive commentary on this class list, headed by a people famous
throughout Asia and Europe for humanity and enlightenment, that a
recent work published in England, called Love and Life Behind the
Purdah, was more or less accepted as a picture of present Indian
conditions. In one of these tales a Parsee high priest was repre-
sented as beating to death — with some reluctance it is true, but as by
law and duty bound — his devoted wife, by way of punishment for the
pollution she had incurred by suffering their child to expire in her
arms in a first-class carriage on the return from a hill station to Bombay.
Which is, as the Times reviewer remarked, much as if an English
bishop were represented as taking the Twopenny Tube to the City in
order to burn his wife at Smithfield for a breach of the ceremonial law
of Moses. It would be hypercritical to add that among Parsees and

1904 THE CENSUS OF INDIA 943

Brahmins, to which classes the tales chiefly relate, a purdah would
possess no more significance than a common curtain to anyone any-
where, or a sunshade in July to a lady in London.

Such stories indeed mislead, and from them little or nothing can
be gleaned of the true conditions and occupations of our distant fellow-
subjects, most of whom, as above stated, stick tight to the land.
That nearly three millions, however, are now employed in exotic
occupations, such as railways, telegraphs, cotton and jute mills, coal
and gold mines, tea and coffee gardens, is no small matter.

A diversity of occupations and relief from the overstocked calling

of an agriculturist —

Pater ipse colendi
Haud facilem esse viam voluit,

however fascinating Virgil and Lord Burghclere make it — in short,
new industries being the crying want of India, how well does the tea
industry deserve of the country — that occupation to the existence of
which we owe it — not only that we drink wholesome and delicious tea
in these islands, but that the otherwise backward province of Assam
is a glorious exception to the rule that nine poor Indians out of ten
follow one or another of a dozen or more simple and overstocked
callings !

In recollection of the recent controversy regarding the conditions
of the coolies on the tea estates in Assam it is necessary to notice
Mr. Gait's statement to the effect that these previously poverty-
stricken immigrants prosper greatly in their new home, where many
of them settle for good, and whither many of those, who have gone
back to their own country, eventually return. The ex-tea garden
coolies hold ninety thousand acres of land under Government, and
thus help materially to colonise this fertile but backward province.
The new Labour Act of 1901 does not work well, and it is devoutly
to be hoped that in the near future the planters, who are hard hit by
labour difficulties and the excessive and repeated increase of the
taxation on tea, may in the not far-distant future be able to get labour
immigrants, not under contracts, but free, as the Ceylon planters get
them from Madras. A propos, Ceylon, which is proud of its position
as the premier Crown Colony, will hardly accept Mr. Gait's description
of it, as ' to all intents and purposes an integral part of India, though
separately administered by the Colonial Office.' Without South
Indian labour, however, there would be little in the colony for the
Colonial Office to administer.

In the opinion of the Census Superintendent there are many
indications that India is entering on a period of great industrial
activity, and in no respect is the advance since 1891 more marked
than in the development of the supply of coal, the sufficient local
production of which will remove the greatest obstacle to local progress,
unless indeed that be the unwillingness of the small capitalist^ to

944 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

invest his savings in joint-stock undertakings. The extension of
railways and of irrigation, conspicuously in the Pun jab, of mill industries
in that province and in Bombay, Bengal, and Madras, and the pro-
sperous gold-mining industry of Mysore — ' which has not only provided
the labouring classes within the State with remunerative employment
and greatly augmented the general prosperity of the people, but has
stimulated immigration in a remarkable degree ' — the rise of the foreign
trade by sea from 130,000,000?. to 169,000,0002., of the coasting trade
from 52,000,OOOZ. to 63,000,0002., of the foreign trade by land from five
and a half to over nine millions, the increase in the number of joint-
stock companies from 950 to 1366, and of their paid-up capital from
266 to 370 millions, all these are signs and portents of a more prosperous
future following a chequered but not unfavourable past.

It will surprise many with fixed ideas on India to learn that nearly
four millions of her people are occupied in the provision of animal
food, chiefly fish, and that the functional castes have to such an
extent abandoned their traditional occupations that only 11 per cent.,
for_ instance, of the Brahmins of Madras, and 22 per cent, of the
Brahmins of Bombay, follow the calling of priest, even if the term
be given a sufficiently wide interpretation to include beggar, student,
and astrologer.

The languages of India offer little interest to the English reader.
Indeed, from the point of view of official promotion and recognition,
no subject to which a servant of the Indian Government can turn
his attention is likely to prove less remunerative to himself than a
study of any one or more of the 145 distinct languages spoken in
British India, though without a good colloquial knowledge of the
vernacular, no officer can be other than a stranger to the people whose
affairs he pretends to administer, and a tool of the staff of subordinates
he affects to control. The highest officers in the Indian official
hierarchy are almost always men who have spent their lives in the
secretariat, and they are not likely to be reminded by their quin-
quennial master fresh from England of the supreme importance of
qualifications, the lack of which has never impeded their own steady
ascent to positions in which they practically dispose of the official
fortunes of those who have been aptly described of late as the ' men
of the plains.' Perhaps one day it will occur to some head of the
administration that these men below — if they can speak the languages
understanded of the people — know more of, and do more for, the
country than the men on the mountains. Then will the district
officers get nearer to the people, and there will, in fact, be more of
that loyalty to England which some affect to believe surges up in
the breasts of multitudinous peoples, who have no reason to believe
that any Englishman can address a word to them in a language they
comprehend. Dr. Grierson, C.I.E., contributes a very interesting and
learned chapter on languages. He groups 220 millions as Indo-

1904 THE CENSUS OF INDIA 945

European, eleven millions as Indo-Chinese, and fifty-six millions as
Dravidians, gives a much-needed but seldom-heeded warning against
basing ethnological theories upon linguistic facts, and against classing
languages according to their vocabularies, which is, indeed, like
classing men according to their clothes. He agrees with that accom-
plished Oriental scholar, Sir Charles Lyall, in rejecting the vulgarly
received account of the origin of Urdu, which is merely that form of
Hindustani which is written in the Persian character, and freely
borrows Persian, and in a less degree Arabic, words in its vocabulary.

Among the 145 languages are some possessing only a few hundred
words, others rivalling English as Dr. Grierson says, or Russian as I
would say, in their copiousness ; some in which every word is a mono-
syllable, others in which some are elongated by agglutination till
they run to ten syllables, like da-pa-l-ocho-akan-tahen-tae-tin-a-e — a
Sontali word meaning ' He who belongs to him who belongs to me
will continue letting himself be made to fight.' Some of these divers
tongues lack verb and noun, others are as complex and systematic
as Greek and Latin. There are no truer words in the whole Census
Report than those with which Dr. Grierson concludes his chapter,
when he says that ' the true India will never be known till the light
of the West has been thrown on the hopes, fears, and beliefs of those
counted at the present census, for which an accurate knowledge of
the vernaculars is necessary.' Thus does the distinguished scientific
scholar, with characteristic modesty, admit the usefulness of the
ordinary language men; and with any small authority which may
attach to one who has served for many years as Government trans-
lator and examiner in Persian, Hindustani, Tamil, and Telugu, and
has qualified by the high standard in Arabic and passed the Russian
interpreter test, I would, as a witness from the administrative rather
than from the scholarly standpoint, express my complete concurrence
in his view.

Upon the religion of the Hindus much has been written, but
more than as much remains to write. Mr. Risley defines as Animists
those who seek to conciliate the shifting and shadowy company of
unknown powers or influences making for evil rather than good
which reside in primaeval forest, crumbling hills, rushing river, and
spreading tree, which give its spring to the tiger, its venom to the
snake, and walk abroad in the guise of cholera, cattle disease, and
smallpox. Nothing could make clearer a term which defies exact
definition, and the sportsman will recall illustrations at will from his
association with the tribes of the Indian jungles. I have seen them
offer sacrifice that I might meet and slay a big tusker, and propitiate
the powers which caused me to miss an ibex looking down from its
lofty platform on the forest world below. If, then, Animism is the
crudest form of religion, in which magic plays a predominant part,
what is Hinduism ? Sir Alfred Lyall, indisputably the first living

946 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

authority, calls it ' the collection of rites, worships, beliefs, traditions,
and mythologies sanctioned by the sacred books and ordinances of
the Brahmins and propagated by Brahmanic teaching.' Mr. Risley,
seizing upon the all-receptive character of this most catholic of
Eastern faiths, which Sir Alfred illustrates more fully in his writings
than in his definition, goes on to describe Hinduism as ' Animism
transformed by philosophy ' or ' magic tempered by metaphysics,'
and he instances as examples of the survival of magic pure and simple,
the festival upon the recurrence of which every man must worship
the implements of his trade or insignia of his vocation. Not only
does the soldier then worship his sword — just as before the revolution
he did, and practically still does, in Japan — and the cultivator his
plough, but the messengers of the public offices of the administration
adore the oifice boxes in which they carry about papers. Of these
they construct an altar whereon is placed an inkpot, the emblem of
Government, around which are arranged different kinds of stationery
tied together with red tape. There are infidels, however, among
office messengers, and one of these, a drastic reformer a little in
advance of his day, was tried and sentenced a year or more ago for
lighting his fire throughout the winter with his office records. Trans-
migration and Karma are subjects almost too vast to touch upon,
but Mr. Risley finds, as I have after long investigation of this subject
in many directions in India, that it is no part of the Hindu creed
that consciousness continues through the successive lives, at the close
of each of which a curtain of forgetfulness is, on the contrary, believed
to descend. Thus the doctrine is deprived, in a measure, of the
moral aspect which to it would otherwise attach. Of the two practical
tests of Hinduism one is found to be the acceptance of the caste
system, a doctrine I preached myself at the Society of Arts, to the
obvious chagrin of several travelled Hindus, who had necessarily
renounced the system and its trammels. In fact, caste and Hinduism
are almost convertible terms. As to the particular deity worshipped
there is infinite toleration, but the actual religious ideas which underlie
the outward ceremonial are fairly uniform. There is one supreme
god ; a man's future life depends upon his actions in his present state;
and the code of morality differs little from the real or ideal standards
of other countries. There are major and minor deities. Two small
grandchildren of an English lady, who had taught them the import-
ance of prayer, were found one day kneeling beside a sofa and saying
' Please, God, let grandmamma find her spectacles.' The Hindu
would invoke a minor deity upon such an occasion. Belief in metem-
psychosis is general, though not universal. Serpent worship survives,
and a good snake shrine is as much an attraction in the case of a
house on the Malabar Coast as a garden is in the case of a villa at
Hampstead or Harrow. Serpents are, however, most unobtrusive,
and unless you walk noiseless and barefooted in the dark, as Hindus

1904 THE CENSUS OF INDIA 947

do, snake-bite is a most improbable contingency. Of such Hindus
are 70 per cent, of the population, the Mohammedans make 21,
the Buddhists and Animists proper 3 each, the Christians 1, and
the Sikhs, Jains, Parsees, and Jews 1 per cent, between them. Of
course, it is hard to say where Animism ends, and Hinduism and
Buddhism begin, but some classification is essential. The Burmese,
for instance, are at heart more Animist than Buddhist. The followers
of the Prophet have increased since 1891 by 8'9 per cent., compared
with an increase of 2' 4 per cent, for all India. This is partly due
to the chief Mohammedan centres having escaped famine, partly to
the fact that marriage among them is attended with fewer difficulties,
and partly to their more nourishing and varied diet.

Of the Christians, two-thirds are found in Madras and the neigh-
bouring native States. Of the two-thirds, four-fifths of the Christians
in Madras proper are found in the southern districts of that presidency,
and in Travancore and Cochin they amount to 25 per cent, of the
population. As I have served many years in these British districts,
and was British Resident in Travancore and Cochin, I may be allowed
to express concurrence with the Madras Census Commissioner, Mr.
Francis, when he says that converts are recruited almost entirely
from the lowest classes of Hindus, who have little to lose in forsaking
the creed of their forefathers, and that, so far from anticipating the
general conversion of the population expected in certain quarters,
there is, on the contrary, reason to believe that the rate of increase
will slowly decline as the limit is approached of those to whom the
advantages of espousing Christianity appeal. At the same time the
increased supply of missionaries familiar with the vernaculars and
with the religion and literature their predecessors have too often
affected to despise, and the energy, education, intelligence, and im-
proved status of the native Christians, are factors which it would be
equally unjust and erroneous to leave out of account. Nor must it
be forgotten that more than half of the Christians in all India belong
to the Roman Catholic communion, a church belonging to which is
very frequently the only Christian place of worship available for the
European in India. In one such on the Malabar Coast I have seen a
woman in a white sheet kneeling in the aisle during Divine service to
do penance for her frailty, and in all such, of the Syrian rite, probably
the nearest approach will be found to the ritual and liturgy of the
early Christian Church.

Of all religious ceremonies, that which most affects the growth of
a people and the character of a nation is marriage, and nowhere is
the holy estate at once so universal as in India, or so fenced about
with restrictions. Space allows of brief notice of only one or two
aspects of this problem. It is useless to inquire whether or not the
sacred texts prohibited the marriage of widows. Considerations of
property, of spiritual benefit, of sacramental doctrine, the influence of

948 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

hypergamy (or the law which compels a woman to marry in a group
of equal or superior rank to her own), and the dread of dangerous
and experienced competitors — all these factors lead to the extension
of this custom, while the sympathy of the advanced classes with the
marriage reform party stops short of practising widow remarriage in
their own families. The average Hindu sees no reason for a revolu-
tionary change in a system, the admitted evils of which are the sub-
ject of habitual and monumental exaggeration. ' To the masses of
the uneducated working classes, widow marriage,' says Mr. Kisley, ' is
a badge of social degradation.'

Let no one be deceived by any palliation or concealment of this
position, such as I think can be detected, even in so excellent a picture
of Hindu life as is contained in Mr. R. C. Dutt's novel, The Lake of
Palms.

In like manner the practice of infant marriage, which would, I
predicted in this Review in October 1890, be in no wise affected by
British legislation in restraint, has, the Commissioner remarks, ' spread
much further and taken root more deeply among the lower classes
than its social complement, the prohibition of widow remarriage.
Both customs, borrowed from higher castes, are now regarded as
paths leading to social distinction.' I do not agree with Mr. Risley
in thinking that infant marriage is * almost universal,' though such a
statement may be true of Bengal, or that the lowest classes are those
which most resort to it. The authority for these statements is not
clear. It is, however, as he says, an innate characteristic of a ' caste
system proper,' and it is wholly improbable that legislation will avail
to prevent it, if, indeed, such is justifiable in the face of the promise
made in the royal proclamation to the people of India when the
Government was transferred to the Crown. Mr. Risley expresses no
very decided view as to the origin of this custom, which, while it
leads to abuses in certain quarters, in others evidently does not pro-
duce physical degeneration. The fact, moreover, that, calculating the
birth-rate on the number of married women aged fifteen to forty-five,
it is found to be higher in England than in India, disposes of the
theory that the high birth-rate in the latter country is due to the
early age oi marriage. If the birth-rate of India is high, so likewise
is the death-rate, and the difference between the two is not much more
than half what it is in England and Wales. The population, there-
fore, grows at a far less rapid rate than in Europe — a fact which
explodes many an oft-repeated fallacy.

Polygamy is, of course, quite exceptional, though the contrary is
believed in Britain. Even Mohammedans rarely take a second wife
unless the first is childless, and a Hindu in the like case has to obtain
the consent of his caste council. This condition may, however, in
many parts of India, be regarded as a counsel of perfection.
!_ The chapter on caste, written by Mr. Risley throughout, is the

1904 THE CENSUS OF INDIA 949

last and not the least important of the Census Report. Many an
article might be based upon its conclusions and suggestions. The
author puts his faith in the measurements and shape of the head and
nose, and finds that the finer the latter organ the higher — the broader
and coarser that organ, the lower — the accepted order of social pre-
cedence. It would be a difficult system to work in Europe, and can
only be applied to mankind in the mass, and to races, like those of
India, more or less unmixed, and so lending themselves to anthropo-
metrical treatment. Mr. Risley — and his readers on this account,
too, may rise up and bless him — declines all discussion of the Aryan
controversy, and suggests that the immigrants of the so-called Indo-
Aryan type came from Beluchistan before climatic changes had re-
duced that country to its present sterile state. What most of Seistan
once was, what part still is, that formerly may a great or the greater
part of Beluchistan have been. The earliest peaceful immigrants
who colonised the Punjab took with them their women ; the later
invaders did not, but intermarried with the indigenous females.
Hence the evolution of the Aryo-Dravidian type. In like manner,
the Mongoloid and Scythian races, mixing with the Dravidian element,
formed Mongolo- and Scytho-Dravidian types. It is not possible here
to follow the further elaboration of this thesis. Mr. Risley has been
equally enterprising and successful in classifying castes according to
social precedence as recognised by Indian public opinion at the present
day, with the result that the influence of the traditional system of
four original castes was found to be predominant throughout the
continent. Everywhere came first the Brahmin; next the castes
accepted as representatives of the Kshatriyas or warriors; next the
mercantile groups akin to the Vaisyas; lastly, in a more indefinite
and less satisfactory sequence, followed the lower castes more or less
corresponding with the ideal Sudras. Thus, among Hindus, and
Mohammedans alike, foreign descent forms the highest claim to social
distinction.

Mr. Risley sees in the Brahminical theory of caste a modified
version of the ancient division of society into priests, warriors, culti-
vators, and artisans of the sacerdotal literature of ancient Persia, but
allows that the origin of the system is an insoluble problem. How-
ever that may be, it is the bed-rock of Hinduism ; and the difficulties
of understanding India, her people, religions, habits, and customs
experienced in Britain are vastly enhanced by the fact that the
Indians who visit England are necessarily the worst possible witnesses
in this behalf, and, were they angels from heaven, could not be im-
partial judges of the merits of systems they have abandoned, of
habits and customs they have renounced, and of people by whom
they and all their works, however admirable and enterprising, are
utterly repudiated. . . • . .

L f : J. D. REES.

950 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

THE DECLINE OF THE SALON

IN 1765,' at a period famous for the wit and brilliancy of its society
in the most brilliant capital of Europe, we find Horace Walpole writing
from Paris : ' Laughing is as much out of fashion as pantins or bilbo-
quets. Good folks, they have not time to laugh. There is God and
the King to be pulled down first, and men and women, one and all,
are devoutly employed in the demolition.'

And again : ' Gaiety,' he says, ' whatever it was formerly, is no
longer the growth of this country.' Horace Walpole had, as we know,
the entree to the most famous salons of that famous day — to the
innermost sanctuary of the most exclusive aristocracy of birth and
brains alike which has perhaps ever existed. He was the constant
guest of those talented ladies who, to quote Sydney Smith, * violated
all the common duties of life and gave very pleasant little suppers.'
And that he soon began to enjoy himself exceedingly, in spite of the
lack of gaiety, of which he continues somewhat curiously to complain,
there is no room to doubt. In spite of those ' pleasant little suppers '
his attacks of gout became less frequent, and the British lion, that
faithful occupant of every true Englishman's breast, began to roar
less loudly at the difference in the manners and customs of the French
capital from those of his own. Indeed, the lion — in this case a by no
means intractable one — soon lay down to be cajoled and caressed by
these charming and witty women, the indelicacy and boldness of
whose conversation at first jarred very considerably on the nerves
of their English guest. Walpole came from a country where the
conversation in the eighteenth century was certainly no whit less
coarse, but where the most of it was to be heard in the clubs, from
which the feminine element was naturally excluded. In Paris he
found no clubs of any social importance ; but he found the intellectual
life of the country centred in those quiet salons, dimly lighted, innocent
of all ostentatious hospitality, where friends met friends evening
after evening in closest intercourse and completest comprehension,
and where the Saloniere, from whom emanated a prevailing atmosphere
of urbanity, had made a fine art ofjpleasing. She led the conversation
without dominating it/' listened^ with sympathy and intelligence,

1904 THE DECLINE OF THE SALON 951

concealed her wittiest epigram in subtle flattery, and her keenest
criticism in warm encouragement.

Madame Sophie Gay, writing at a later period, maintains, what we
can well believe, that to hold a salon successfully was no easy matter.
The hostess must have a mind of a high order combined with con-
siderable tact and a power of self-effacement, and she must have a
decided taste for superiority in every form. Added to this she must
have complete repose of manner, a gift obviously less rare in those
days than in our own. Birth and fortune are not absolutely essential,
but they are desirable. The Saloniere should have good looks, but
she must not be of an age when her intercourse with the other sex
would naturally evoke compliments. Her personality, in fact, must
dominate her physical charms. To hold a salon involved some self-
sacrifice, for the Saloniere had to lead as secluded an existence as the
goddess in her temple, sitting at home evening after evening to await
her devotees ; for never must the altar be found deserted upon which
their tribute of devotion was to be laid. She must never stir abroad
at night unless it were to attend a Court function or a family gathering
of rare importance. Madame Gay, herself a prominent figure in the
society of the Restoration and later, observes that the self-imposed
slavery of the grandes dames of the old regime, which consisted in
receiving daily and listening to the most brilliant conversationalists
in the world, was perhaps less of a supplice than some of the social
pleasures of her own day !

In any case Horace Walpole was the constant guest of these same
great ladies. He admits that he went his own way in truly English
fashion, but he began to find Paris extremely agreeable — so agreeable,
indeed, that it was with difficulty that he brought himself to leave it
for the fogs of his native land. Later, when he had become the
absorbing passion of old Madame du Deffand's declining years, we
know with what close and sometimes irksome bonds Parisian society
was apt to hold him. Already the influence of this vivacious and
tyrannical lady made itself felt in his criticisms of her rival Salonieres.
He pays but a grudging tribute to the amazing ' common-sense ' of
that wise and clever woman Madame Geoffrin ; for had she not
incurred the lasting enmity of Madame du Deffand by holding out
the hand of friendship to the latter' s sometime companion and protegee,
Mile, de Lespinasse ? Of Mile, de Lespinasse herself he natu-
rally has little that is favourable to report, though he probably went
occasionally to her little salon in the Rue de Belle Chasse, where he
would have exchanged views with the most brilliant intellects of the
day. Ten years later, indeed, he refers to her in a letter written to
his friend H. S. Conway, then in Paris, as a ' pretended bel esprit ! ' a
judgment which reads curiously in the light of those other letters
which have revealed to us the history of a truly remarkable intelli-
gence, combined with perhaps the most passionate and undisciplined

952 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

heart that ever beat. Madame du Deffand was very old and stone-
blind when Walpole first became a guest at her little suppers, and he
was no doubt attracted by her extraordinary wit and memory, her
unerring judgment, and her spirited interest in the thought and
literature of the day. And to his hostess this young Englishman of
no mean parts represented something new — a fresh escape from that
ennui which was her consuming terror, and which was probably
responsible for the many less creditable episodes in her long and varied
career.

Meanwhile Walpole admits that he finds a douceur in the society
of the women of fashion that captivates him. His admiration of the
Duchesse d'Aiguillon, the Duchesse de Choiseul, and other great
ladies is freely expressed ; but, pleasant and hospitable as they all are,
he does not apparently find them gay. First impressions, if not
always the best, are often instructive, and Walpole's impressions of
the tone of Parisian society on his first introduction to it are certainly
significant, and are probably not due entirely to the gout or to insular
prejudice. * Several of the women are agreeable,' he writes, * and
some of the men ; but the latter are in general vain and ignorant.'
In fact he detested the savants, the philosophers, the Encyclopaedists.
* Every woman,' he complains, ' has one or two planted in her house,
and God only knows how they water them ! ' No doubt the adulation
lavished by his old friend upon President Henault and by all that
select cdterie upon such men as Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and many
others, was infinitely tedious to the Englishman, who found their
conversation unmitigatedly dull and arid, and was disgusted with
their open profession of Atheism. Horace Walpole had to learn that
a Frenchman talks his best when the feminine element is not excluded,
and perhaps he also had to learn that in congenial company a French-
man can talk for an almost indefinite number of hours.

* They may be growing wise,' he says, referring to members of a
society which, in spite of his criticisms, held him by its charm, ' but the
intermediate stage is dulness ! ' In the light of after events we cannot
help wondering how far Walpole realised the cruel wisdom to which all
France was growing, due in great measure to that pedantic artificial
talk of the Encyclopaedists which bored him so consumably. How
far did he foresee the terrible harvest which would have to be reaped
from the seed so lightly sown amongst the loves and the epigrams of
the salons ? Was he half unconsciously oppressed by the decadence
of a country in which the feminine influence was so paramount ? At
any rate, we know he was dazzled by the brilliant light of that same
feminine influence, the glamour of which we still feel across the horrors
of the Revolution and the busy restlessness of the nineteenth century.
The moral standard of those wonderful ladies, if they possessed one
at all, was not high, but their loves, though undisciplined, were not
often light. The objects of their adoration were in some sort officially

1904 THE DECLINE OF THE SALON 953

recognised. They loved and they hated with equal sincerity and
conviction. The intellectual atmosphere of the day, which breathed
a spirit of tolerance and liberty, tempted them to throw themselves
recklessly along strange paths of which they could not see the end.
The philosophy which was talked in so impressive a manner by their
encyclopedist lovers taught them to transfer their worship, since
worship is the need of every female heart, to these men at whose
bidding they had cast off their God and their religion. Alas ! at
what a price and with what high courage were some of these frail and
charming people to pay for their loves and their theories ! Mean-
time for all their wit and elegance they did not laugh — not at least as
Horace Walpole understood laughter.

It was just at this date that another salon came into being in'
which, had he ever frequented it, Walpole would have heard even less
of laughter. Madame Necker's salon is one of the most famous in
French history, yet it was here that the first death-knell of the salon
was sounded. It was not unnatural that the former girl president
of the Academic des Eaux at Lausanne should, when opportunity was
given her, seek out the lights and leaders of literary thought in Paris.
Very soon after her marriage to the great financier a distinguished
little circle began to gather round her in the Rue Clery. M. Necker
himself counted for something in the formation of his wife's salon.
A rich man's patronage and protection had already been found to be
useful to gens de lettres and philosophers. Moreover M. Necker in
those early days was just what the husband of a Saloniere should be.
He was present, but he was unobtrusive ; a kind and generous host,
but not too actively interested in the talk which went on about him.
It was the part of the hostess to lead the conversation, to draw out her
guests. This, we understand, Madame Necker did with rather too
much zeal. Her reception of her friends was, if anything, a little too
cordial. It was hardly to be expected that the strenuous daughter
of the Swiss pastor who a few months previously had been struggling
to earn her bread, should have the repose of manner and the well-
bred assurance of the grandes dames of Paris, who, even while they
criticised, approved and helped to make her salon famous. Madame
Necker throughout her life was nervous, excitable, morbidly anxious
to do the right thing, and too often said the wrong one. Diderot com-
plained that she persecuted him into attending her salon, and was
fatuous enough to mistake the homage which she offered so lavishly
to every living writer for tribute to his personal charms. He was not
long, however, in finding out his mistake, and was one of the first to
bear witness to the extraordinary purity of soul, the chill morality which
so offended Grimm, of their mutual hostess. In an age of moral corrup-
tion Madame Necker was a faithful and devoted wife and mother.
The strength of her religious sentiments was at complete variance
with the tone of the society in which she moved, and it speaks much

VOL. LVI— No. 334 3 E

954 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

for the catholicity and width of her intelligence that she felt in no
way compelled to exclude the greatest freethinkers of the day from
her entourage. Buffon and Thomas remained her most intimate
friends, and Diderot, in spite of his early protests, continued to repre-
sent the encyclopaedists in the Rue Clery in winter, and at the Chateau
of St. Ouen in summer, where even Madame du DefEand came out
to sup once a week.

Tactless Madame Necker undoubtedly was, but a kinder and
warmer-hearted woman has probably never held a place in the long
roll of the Salonieres of France. Had matters continued in peaceable
and orderly fashion, the fame of her salon might have been left to rank
with that of Madame Geofirin, to whom she has been sometimes com-
pared. But this was not to be. The fields were already whitening
to the harvest, and those abstract themes, the annihilation of a God
and the downfall of a king, which had provided such enjoyable topics
of conversation for the encyclopaedists, were turning into hard ungrace-
ful facts ; and the wife of M. Necker, the popular Controller-General,
was the last woman in Paris who could avoid facing them.

Madame Necker's tastes were purely literary : she had no more
liking for politics than had old Madame du Deffand herself, who was
clever enough to know that politics and society, as society was under-
stood in the salons, could not exist together. When politics step in
at the door, mutual confidence, mutual interests, good fellowship,
and urbanity are apt to fly out of the window, more especially when
the days are evil. Madame Necker's devotion to her husband and her
daughter was of a morbidly sensitive and conscientious kind, which
gave little enough happiness to herself, and it may be a somewhat
tempered satisfaction to its recipients. Her heart undeniably domi-
nated her head, but it was through her intellect that she derived, if
unconsciously, her purest pleasures. Of these she was to be in future
denied. She shared her husband's power as she shared his banish-
ment, and she was by his side when at the fall of the Bastille he was
brought back and conducted in triumph by the mob through the
streets of Paris. On his return to power her salon reopened in the
Rue Berg£re, but the true spirit of the salon, as she and her contem-
poraries, now mostly dead, had understood it, had gone beyond recall.
Madame Necker sighed for the peace and quiet of Coppet, but, it
must be added, she was thoroughly dissatisfied when circumstances
obliged her to retire thither. Meantime in the Rue Bergere she
presided at a political gathering, where M. Necker entirely ceased to
hold those admirable qualifications of the husband of a Saloniere.
He became a person of importance in his own house : his plans for
the good of his country were discussed and criticised, and distinguished
foreigners sought him out. He justly felt that this was no time for
the cant of the philosophers, who had already done enough mischief
with their talk of freedom and their denial of a God. Literary and

1904 THE DECLINE OF THE SALON 955

academic questions were henceforth to be in abeyance. Added to
this Madame Necker's own position was rapidly usurped by her more
famous daughter, to whom politics were as necessary as the air she
breathed.

The story of Madame de StaeTs three famous salons has passed
into history, for there it may truly be said that history was made.
Nevertheless, in the true or original conception of the word, Madame
de Stael never held a salon at all. To begin with, the time had already
gone by for select and intimate gatherings of intimate friends ; and,
further, this most remarkable and powerful-minded of women had
few of the characteristics necessary to a Saloniere. What, indeed,
had she who from the safety and seclusion of her father's house at
Coppet raced back to Paris with the cry, ' A Revolution, and I not
in it ! ' in common with the well-bred repose and the equally well-
bred courage of those goddesses in their temples ? True those same
goddesses would travel across Europe to meet their lovers under cir-
cumstances which might well make the hardiest modern traveller
hesitate ; but that was a very different thing from throwing themselves
into the common herd and the common matters of the day ! Madame
de Stael was the embodiment of boundless vitality and restless energy.
She was herself a product of the thought which had given birth to
the Revolution. As a young girl her cry had been for liberty, and
her idol that arch-humbug Rousseau. Life and maturity wrought
some change in her views, without however modifying their ardour.
She was, in fact, no grande dame, and, unlike her mother, she had
little natural refinement. She was far too busy, too occupied with
the big events of the day, with her literary interests, her emotions —
for it is undeniable that her heart sometimes ruled her head — to think
of refinement. It is noted that she once kept her salon waiting —
ye shades of the goddesses ! — and that Madame Recamier character-
istically stepped into the breach and entertained the company until
her arrival. By her own amazing personality she gathered her world-
famous circle about her, but she dominated and dictated to it as she
would have dominated and dictated to France and to the whole
world, had not that other master mind that helped to link the cen-
turies pursued her with relentless persecution. Ce n'est point un salon,
c'est un club, said Napoleon when, after Benjamin Constant's famous
speech on the dawn of tyranny, the conqueror of Italy, suspecting
whence it emanated, forcibly closed Madame de Stael's salon of ^the
Consulat and sent its hostess into exile . Probably Napoleon never spoke
truer word. That motley gathering could hardly be called a salon
where, during the Revolution, Barras complained that every visit cost
him a good action, and where Prince Talleyrand, the toujours ministre,
laid the foundations of his career. It was no salon, again, where
plots were hatched and the flag of liberty unfurled and shaken in the
very face of the First Consul ; nor, as salons were understood_in

3 K2

956 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

Madame de StaeTs childhood, could the brilliant throng which gathered
round her on her triumphant return at the Restoration lay claim to
that title. Here Royalists and Republicans, aristocrats and jour-
nalists, met and rubbed shoulders with mutual distrust and mutual
suspicion. How could confidence flourish when a man felt that his
neighbour a few years back would cheerfully have deprived him of
his head, or where he walked so weighted with mighty political secrets
that he must needs tremble before his fellow guests, and especially
before the far-seeing eyes of his hostess ? Madame Sophie Gay
speaks of the far more important matters that were discussed in the
salons of Madame de Stael than in those of previous generations.
More important they undoubtedly were, but conversation of world-
wide importance does not constitute a salon, and Madame Gay lived
too near the times to discriminate between a salon and a political
club. The contention remains that one of the most amazing and
versatile women the world has ever seen was no Saloniere.

The harvest had been reaped. Happy indeed were those who
had quitted the field before the reapers entered it ! France was left
shaken to her foundations, but with a new and stronger spirit springing
to its birth of virile purpose, if still of stormy and uncertain move-
ment.

One by one those who were left of the old society ventured to
return to Paris. Friends met friends, but with what a shadow of
death still hanging over them, and with what a haunting sense of
personal insecurity ! Among the first to creep back when the tide
of blood had receded was Pauline de Beaumont. Winged, broken,
the ' Swallow,' as she was called by her intimates, had been left to
die literally by the roadside when the cart bearing almost every
member of her family had rolled on with them to their martyrdom
in Paris. Pauline, with her sensitive temperament, seems to have
partaken of something of the nature of the swallow in her capacity
to skim just above the ground of cruel fact and tragic circumstance.
In any case she returned and opened a quiet and unobtrusive salon,
very unlike that of her friend Madame de Stael, with Chateaubriand
as its hero and Joubert as her protector. Her salon was purely
literary, and as such was the most interesting of its day. Here
something of the old spirit of trust and confidence lingered amongst
the handful of friends who met nightly in the Rue Neuve du Luxem-
bourg, and combined to distract their hostess from dwelling upon the
horrors of the past, and helped one another to look calmly and dis-
passionately upon the future, with its young hope and ill-defined
promise. Politics broke Pauline de Beaumont's friendship with
Madame de Stael, since the former became an ardent Bonapartist ;
but they were not permitted to spoil the tranquillity of her modest
salon. A few other equally unobtrusive salons reopened, where an
effort was made to maintain the best literary traditions of a former

1904 THE DECLINE OF THE SALON 957

age. Notable among these was that of Madame d'Houdetot, a
sister-in-law of that gay, light-loving Madame d'Epinay, who in her
own person represented all the corruption of a country which had
required a Revolution for its purification. Madame d'Houdetot will
be best remembered as the original of the Nouvelle Heloise. She
was a friend of Madame Necker's, who probably felt the charm of
eternal youth in the woman who to the end of her life could cry,
Le seul ctre malheureux est celui qui ne pent ni aimer, ni agir, ni
mourir. The Suards, brother and sister, were other literary folk
who in these unsettled days took a pleasure in welcoming distinguished
men of letters, and especially Englishmen, within their walls.

But it soon became apparent that any salon other than literary
or artistic had no longer the vitality to flourish. The Princesse de
Poix, who had herself been in such deadly peril during the Terror,
and had steadfastly resisted Madame de Stael's efforts to save her,
tried to gather about her the remnants of the ancient aristocracy.-
Madame du Tallien made a similar effort with partial success. But
the conrinuity of sociaJ life was broken, and the course of impending
events was hardly calculated to restore it. Amusing tales are told
of the embarrassing position in which a grande dame of society some-
times found herself in the salons of the First Empire. On the one
hand, a good Republican would be anxious to confide in her his dis-
satisfaction with the Emperor. At the same moment some Royalist
emigre, not recognising her companion, would be trying to make
her the recipient of his confidences with regard to the past as well as
the present. Surely no previous training had prepared even the
ladies of the old regime for such an awkward social predicament.

Napoleon fell in his turn, and under the Restoration an effort,
to some extent successful, was made to restore the old spirit of urbanity
to the social gatherings of the day.

Much has been written by contemporary biographers of the salons
of the Restoration, but it is probable that Madame du Deffand would
have found much scope for criticism could she have returned to visit
them. Le glas de la haute societe sonne, said Prince Talleyrand to
one of the greater personages of the First Empire, et le premier coup
qui Va tuee est le mot moderne de ''femme comme il faut? The true
Saloniere had no longer time to exist. The modern spirit of bustle
and enterprise had indeed arrived, and arrived to stay. During the
Republic society had opened its doors to all and sundry, and had
grown much too large and unwieldy a monster to be confined to
select and exclusive coteries. Madame Ancelot, herself a young
woman at the time of the Restoration, speaks of the difficulty of the
rising generation in identifying itself with those who had lived and
loved under the old regime. The admiration felt by the younger
people for these social veterans, who were individually a power, was
intense. Their literary and artistic sympathies were identical ; but

958 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

by what an impassable gulf of experience were they separated !
Unity was a thing of the past. Madame Vigee le Bran, the charming
court painter of an earlier day, whose love for her art kept her heart
and mind eternally young, gathered about her the debris of her former
aristocratic patrons, and the remnant of the philosophers whose
views had gone out of fashion since the publication of Chateaubriand's
Genie du Christianisme. Her gatherings were well attended also by
the society of the new regime ; and so crowded were they, it is said,
that the Marshals of France not infrequently had to sit on the floor.
Nevertheless she could not reanimate what she felt to be the spirit
of the old salon, and after the revolution of 1830 she abandoned the
attempt. Throughout the political changes and chances which swept
over France in the succeeding years, the Government of July, the
reign of Louis Philippe, and the Second Empire, there was a succes-
sion of literary and artistic salons of some note, oases in the busy life
of public affairs with which men's minds were most naturally occu-
pied.

Madame Merlin, herself a musician, forbade all reference to politics
and entertained her guests with the best music and literature of the
day. Madame Girardin, a poet and a daughter of Sophie Gay,
failed to keep her salon together because she had herself a weakness
for the aristocracy, and she could not persuade either the Orleanists
or the Legitimists to meet the journalists and writers who were her
regular habitues.

The Marquise d'Ormonde, though a daughter of the people, be-
haved with so much dignity that the doors of the noble Faubourg —
how much more exclusive since equality had been proclaimed law ! —
were thrown open to her, and she succeeded in entertaining a hetero-
geneous collection of society folk even after the revolution of 1848.
But the feminine element was ceasing to have the same importance.
Clubs were opening in Paris, and if they never quite assumed the same
significance that they hold in London, they certainly provided a
common meeting-ground for men who wished to meet the friends of
their own sex and to discuss business, politics, or sport. The salon
gave a final flicker of life in Madame Recamier's cell in the Abbaye
aux Bois. Here, indeed, was a temple slipped accidentally as it
were into the nineteenth century, where incense was burnt con-
tinually before this goddess of beauty and her hero Chateaubriand.
But it was the worship of pure loveliness or, as age advanced, of
tact and charm, for Madame Recamier never professed to have intel-
lect or indeed much esprit. True all the greater literary lights of
the time came to pay their homage in subdued voices in this dimly
lit salon, but they did not always return. Perhaps they found
Chateaubriand tiresome ; for, like many another spoilt lion of a lady's
drawing-room, he played with the cat when he was bored, and entirely
monopolised the conversation when it pleased him. The fact remains,

1904 THE DECLINE OF THE SALON 959

however, that Madame Recamier's salon retained to the last a polish,
a grace, and a fragrance which most surely owed their birth to the
eighteenth century.

On a tant parle en France pendant cinquante ans, complains a
writer of the fifties, que Von n'y cause presque plus. And, indeed,
had there not been enough to talk about ? Sainte-Beuve, in his
Regrets, laments the spirit of doubt, suspicion, and resentment which
had invaded society. While the Reign of Terror lasted, he affirms,
there were courage, good sense, and philosophy to be found among
the aristocracy, but succeeding revolutions and succeeding govern-
ments had totally demoralised all social centres.

The salons are gone, and the old French society, with all that it
implied of charm, intellect, and suavity, has gone with them. But
they have done their work, and who knows whether out of a fresh
century of movement, life, and practical interest, a phoenix shall not
arise from the dead ashes of an unrivalled past, which will not wholly
have forgotten the best social traditions of its forefathers ?

ROSE M. BRADLEY,

960 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

HARA-KIRI : ITS REAL SIGNIFICANCE

HARA-KIRI ! The word has been before us, of late, at every turn. In
translating it the English equivalent is often given as ' disembowelling *
— a ghastly term, and, moreover, inappropriate. ' Happy despatch *
was formerly the phrase employed ; it is, as it seems to me, a far
better term, though how that expression originated no one seems to
know. The matter itself, to the Western notion, is already not an
agreeable one to talk about, but the recent translation of the term
makes it worse. It may not be wholly without interest for the reader
if I try to explain, though with some diffidence from the very nature
of the subject, the true signification of the act, and at the same time
endeavour in some degree to account for the sensitiveness displayed
by my own country-people at the misapprehensions produced by a
wrong translation.

Literally, of course, hara-kiri is ' belly-cutting,' and this is the ex-
pression in common use, but kappuku, or more usually seppuku, is the
word employed by persons of refinement, the actual meaning, however,
being the same as hara-kiri. Seppuku and kappuku are expressions-
coined from Chinese. There are vigorous Anglo-Saxon terms in use
in Great Britain which people of taste often prefer to replace — at
afternoon tea, for example — by something, perhaps equally forcible,
derived from the Latin. The instance is similar.

Seppuku was, in the feudal period, an honourable mode of com-
mitting suicide. It was unknown to the Japanese of ancient days,
and was a custom which grew with the age of chivalry. With us, in
the Far East, to hang oneself is looked upon as the most cowardly
of all methods of self-destruction, and drowning oneself or taking
poison was deemed to be no better. Even to shoot himself was, in a
samurai, regarded as a base and ignoble way of shuffling off this mortal
coil ; it was vulgarly spoken of as teppo-bara, [h is changed into b
for euphony], an abbreviation of teppo-hara-kiri, in other words
hara-kiri by means of a gun, though in reality the throat, and not
the Tiara, was the usual spot assailed in this case.

There was never an instance, so far as can be traced, of seppuku
by a female, and the honourable equivalent thereof for a samurai lady
was death by a stab in the throat from her own dirk, a weapon she

1904 HARA-KIRI: ITS REAL SIGNIFICANCE 961

generally carried in her girdle to be used in time of need. Where a
Roman dame would in ancient times have plunged her dagger into
her own heart, a Japanese heroine preferred to thrust the weapon
into her neck, and there is no record of either male or female in Japan
ending existence in the fashion that is so often depicted in Western
novels, and less frequently, perhaps, in real life.

Seppuku was not only a mode of self-despatch, but was prescribed
as a form of capital punishment for all of samurai rank. Beheading,
and still more hanging, were forms of execution that might not be
employed in cases of offenders of the military classes, whose position,
even to the last of their existence, merited respect ; and when, in very
extreme cases, the crime of which a samurai had been convicted was
heinous enough to deserve exemplary punishment by condemnation
to an ignominious death, the culprit was first stripped of his rank and
privileges as one of the samurai class. No samurai was ever to be
beheaded ; still less to be hanged.

Naturally under such conditions the act of seppuku came to be
invested with much formality, and cases in which the most elaborate
etiquette had to be strictly observed were those when a daimio,
i.e. a feudal baron, or samurai of particularly high standing, was
called upon by the proper authorities to despatch himself in this
way in expiation of some political offence. A special commis-
sioner was then sent from the proper quarters to witness the due
execution of the sentence, and a kai-shaku-nin was chosen to assist
the principal in ridding himself of the burden of life. This person
was selected by the condemned from the circle of his own immediate
relatives, friends, or retainers, and the kai-shaku-nin' s office was an
honourable one, inasmuch as he was thereby privileged to render a
last service to his comrade or chief.

There was always a special apartment or pavilion prepared in
which the ceremony had to take place ; a particular dress, designed for
use only on these melancholy occasions, had to be worn; and the dagger,
or short sword, was invariably placed before the seat of the condemned
on a clean white tray, raised on legs, termed sambo, which in the
ordinary way is a kind of wooden stand used for keeping sacrifices
offered to the gods, or for some similar solemn purposes. The
actual cutting open of the body was not essential, a trifling incision
in a horizontal line 6 or 7 inches, or rarely in two lines crossing
each other — the more superficial the better, as proof of a light
and skilful touch — being ordinarily made, followed by a deep cut in
the throat. As a rule, however, immediately after making the incision
in the abdomen the condemned made a slight movement of his dis-
engaged left hand, and stretched his neck forward, as signs to the
kai-shaku-nin to do his office ; perceiving which, the latter, who stood
by with his sword ready poised, instantly struck off his principal's head.

In Japan there is no need to speak directly of either hara-kiri or

962 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

seppuku, as the euphemism ' ku-sun-go-bu ' is often employed — lite-
rally nine inches and a half, which was the proper length of the dagger
to be used on these occasions. The weapon was always wrapped in
some sheets of pure white paper, only the extreme point being exposed,
and it was correct to hold it, when making an incision, in the right
hand, not by the handle, but by the middle of the paper-wrapped
blade. How to sit, how to bow to the spectators when about to com-
mence the awful task, how to unfold reverently the part of the clothing
which covers the upper part of the body, how to wrap up the dagger,
and how to make the requisite signal to the kai-shaku-nin, were all
matters on which the utmost nicety was enjoined, and were part of
the instruction which every samurai was obliged to receive from the
master of military ceremonies. Hara-kiri, indeed, was to the samurai
a matter involving an appalling amount of ceremony. The end of
the world-famed ' Forty-eight Ro-nins ' was reached by seppuku in
the same way ; each died by his own hand. They were given in charge
of three daimios, in three separate groups, and on the appointed day
each group killed themselves simultaneously at an appointed hour,
but each individual one after another, in specially erected pavilions
provided in the gardens of the Yedo residences of the three barons.
The tale so often retailed in popular story-books, that they all com-
mitted seppuku around the tomb of their avenged lord, is fictitious,
though it is true that they all were buried there.

Perhaps the most notable instance of seppuku was that which
occurred at Sakai, near Osaka, just after the establishment of the new
regime in Japan, when a number of young samurai, some twenty in
all, if I remember rightly, who had attacked the French, were ordered
by the Government to expiate their crime in this fashion, in the pre-
sence of the French Minister, whose rage it was necessary to appease.
He begged that the carnage might stop when eleven had thus closed
their careers.

I need scarcely add that this form of punishment has totally dis-
appeared from our laws, as the abandonment of the distinctive privi-
leges of samurai, and the assimilation of all classes of the Emperor's
subjects in regard to civil rights and punishments, were decreed. But
the practice did not wholly cease for some years after the Restoration
in 1867, and I well remember that there was a case in 1871, when a
nobleman who was indicted for high treason was sentenced to ji-jin —
literally self-ending — which was the same thing as seppuku.

When seppuku was purely a voluntary act the formalities were
necessarily much curtailed, and very often the person who thus con-
ceived himself condemned by fate's decree retired to some secluded
spot, and there slew himself in orthodox fashion, without making known
his intention beforehand, and merely announcing his reasons by letters
which he left by his side for all to read. The principle, however, was
always the same, and it was the samurai's main endeavour at the last

1904 HARA-KIRI: ITS EEAL SIGNIFICANCE 963

to observe due decorum and to conform to the rules in every way that
was possible.

There were numerous instances in which men of truly noble soul
chose this manner of death. Watanabe Kwazan was one of them.
He was councillor to a small daimio, a genuine patriot, and a pioneer
advocate of the opening of Japan to foreign intercourse. As a painter,
though an amateur only, he stood very high. In 1850, seeing that
through his views on the subject of Western civilisation his feudal
chieftain was bound to be implicated, and that his own self-exter-
mination would be requisite if his lord was to be preserved from
the stigma which then attached to any predilection for Occidental
methods, Watanabe hesitated not to commit seppuku, and thereby
saved his master from any such imputations.

Takano Choyei, a sympathiser and active co-operator with
Watanabe, being a well-known physician and Dutch scholar, and
Koseki Sanyei, who was also a Dutch scholar and assisted Watanabe
by translating Dutch books for him, both died by seppuku for the
same cause.

Kuruhara Riozo, father of the present Marquis Kido who suc-
ceeded to the heritage of the house of Kido after the death of his
renowned uncle on the maternal side, and received the honour of a
marquisate in memory of his relative's splendid services to the nation,
was another instance. Kuruhara was a brave samurai. When
Nagai Uta, an officer of high rank of Chosiu province, about 1862,
advocated the definite opening of the country, Kuruhara sided with
him. Circumstances compelled him to show that he had not adopted
that view from any base motive, and in the furtherance of this attitude
he committed seppuku. When he was stationed with the garrison of
Uraga, the guarding of which place was entrusted to the Prince of
Chosiu at the time of the American advent to the Far East, the present
Marquis Ito, then a boy of fourteen, was his subordinate, and when,
a few years afterwards, he was despatched to Nagasaki at the head
of a group of young samurai of Chosiu for the purpose of studying the
Dutch system of artillery, young Ito was one of them. Ito was in
those days a special favourite of Kuruhara, and knew him well. Ito
was almost the first person to rush into the room when Kuruhara
died. I have often heard the marquis talking with admiration of
Kuruhara, saying what a fine chivalrous character he possessed, and
how nobly and with what studied observance of formality he died.
To preserve a perfect self-possession at any dread hour is the essence
of the samurai doctrine. By the bye, Nagai, just mentioned above,
was himself one of those who committed seppuku. He died thereby
at the command of his prince, as a consequence of a political dissen-
sion. I may perhaps remark here parenthetically that Japan's
evolution of Western civilisation was not attained without it costing
her much in blood and treasure.

964 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

In former days, sometimes, one committed hara-kiri by an over-
zeal for some cause which he advocated, merely to demonstrate his
sincerity. Earnest as they may be, such cases are, of course, more
especially discouraged in our own days and gone out of fashion.

The basis on which seppuku was prescribed as a mode of capital
punishment for samurai was that it was unbecoming the dignity and
status of one of the warrior rank that he should be subjected under
any circumstances to the rough handling of the common executioner,
and therefore, when the deed of seppuku was a voluntary one, the
root idea was the same, for it was undertaken in order to avoid igno-
miny, and to prevent the family escutcheon being stained by any act
towards which the scornful might afterwards point a finger of derision.
All that the samurai might ask of his proud race — like Don Caesar de
Bazan in Maritana — was ' to die . . . and not disgrace its ancient
chivalry,' and as the chivalric spirit is still, I am glad to think, ardently
cherished in Japan, there are occasions, as the readers of ' war news '
of the day must have discovered, when it yet seems to some to be
appropriate to end their days in the fashion of feudal times, though
among private individuals this course is now but very rarely re-
sorted to.

To the Chinese and Koreans seppuku is unknown. At the
capitulation of Wei-hai-Wei, nine years ago, the Chinese Admiral
Ting destroyed himself by smoking an immense quantity of opium.
He did this, in accordance with Chinese ideas, to save his men from
punishment, and in the eyes of his countrymen it was altogether the
act of a hero, and so it was. A Japanese, under like conditions,
however, would have died, not by poison, but by seppuku. The
three Chinese of high rank who had been implicated in the Boxer
troubles of 1900, and committed suicide at the command of the
Emperor in consequence of the joint demand of the Powers, died either
by taking poison or by hanging. If the event had taken place in the
former days of Japan, the death would have been also by seppuku.

Terrible as it unquestionably was to witness, the act of self-sacrifice
was so bound up with the revered traditions of our race that it was
shorn in great part of the horrors with which it must seem to readers
in the twentieth century to have been invested. Exaggerated and
loathsome accounts are even to be met with in popular story-books in
Japan, scenes in which the victim is depicted as hurling, in a last effort,
his intestines at his enemy, who is supposed to have been looking on
— a thing in itself quite impossible under ordinary circumstances —
and certainly, if it occurred, altogether exceptional. The incision
usually made, as I have shown, was quite superficial, a mere flesh
wound ; and death was due to the injury inflicted in the throat by the
suicide's own hand, or to the good offices of the kai-shaku-nin, whose
du.y as assistant — the idea is perhaps better conveyed by the term
' second ' in the case of a duel — it was to remove his principal's head

1904 HARA-KIRI: ITS REAL SIGNIFICANCE 965

with the utmost expedition. Thus to translate hara-kiri as dis-
embowelling, or embowelling, is both ghastly and inaccurate in the
impression that it leaves on the mind.

Suicide in any form is incompatible with Western notions of right
and wrong, and it certainly ought not to be encouraged, though
there may be conditions, it would seem to us in the East, when it may
be wholly or partially excused.

SUYFMATSU. \

966 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

THE CORELESS APPLE

THE coreless apple lias at last been produced. It is regarded as ' the
world's greatest discovery in horticulture,' and in fruit-growing circles
is called ' the wonder of the age.' If the fruit is of high quality, of
good saleable size and colour, and a late keeper, then it will revolu-
tionise the commercial apple-growing industries everywhere. If it
is not a full-sized apple, then, despite the fact that it possesses one-
fourth more solid flesh than the seedy apple of equal proportions, it
cannot be expected to supersede such mammoth though seedy varieties
as the Blenheim Orange, Golden Noble, Bismarck, or Peasgood's
Nonsuch. The flavour of the coreless apple is beyond question. If it
proves as large as its rivals, trees producing the new wonder, which is
a winter variety, will be planted by the million in the commercial
fruit fields at home and abroad. Even if the seedless apple justified
all that has been said by its best friends in its praise, there is little
likelihood of its impeding the profitable sale of ordinary apples of
high grade. Its introduction would, however, ruin the sale of common
out-of-date varieties of fruit, and ensure the destruction of millions of
worn-out, moss-covered, and profitless trees, which for years have
encumbered thousands of acres of some of the richest and most pro-
ductive land in Great Britain. In that sense the coming of the core-
less apple would do untold good to many landowners, cultivators, and
public consumers combined.

Why should we not possess a coreless and seedless apple, since the
seedless orange is unquestionably the largest, most expensive, and
best fruit of its class obtainable ? The new apple, which is both
coreless and seedless, was introduced by an old fruit raiser. For
twelve years he experimented to obtain the fruit. As the result of
seeking to secure the seedless apple, a blossomless tree has been
developed. It bears a stamen and a very small quantity of pollen.
The importance of such developments is apparent. The cold spells
do not affect the fruit, and the apple grower has little to fear from
late spring frosts, which in most years do much harm on the fruit
farm.

The tree is described as blossomless, the only thing resembling a
blossom being a small cluster of tiny green leaves, which grow around

1904 THE CORELESS APPLE 967

the newly formed apple, and shelter it. Being devoid of blossoms,
it is claimed that the fruit offers no effective hiding-place in which
the codlin moth may lay its eggs, which it usually does in the open eye
of the fruit. The devastations of the codlin moth are so extensive
that in the aggregate they cause losses in Great Britain, the Continent,
and the United States exceeding 5,000,OOOZ. a year. In some English
counties I have known the apple crop to be reduced by over 50 per
cent, by the voracious grub of this pest. I am not in strict agreement
with the producer of the new apple when he claims absolute immunity
from the ravage of the codlin moth on account of the lack of blossoms
making it almost impossible for the pest to deposit its eggs in the eye
of the apple. In my tests I proved conclusively that the eggs are
sometimes laid on the skin of the apple also. But with no petals
and the use of insecticides by spraying the grub could readily be
destroyed. In the plantations where the coreless apple trees have
been grown no codlin moth has made its appearance. It is said that
so long as they are isolated from seedy apple trees there is no possi-
bility of the moth attaching itself to them, there being nothing in the
way of perfume or flower to attract it.

The colour of the new apple is red, dotted with yellow on the skin.
As with the seedless orange, so with the seedless apple, a slightly
hardened substance makes its appearance at the navel end. But
this can be obliterated by culture. The originator of the coreless
apple states that the further ' we get away from the original five
trees the larger and better the fruits become in every way.' Whether
the Spencer seedless apple is actually seed-proof time alone can prove.
As the result of tests, it has been found absolutely impossible for the
coreless apple trees to bear fruits that have seeds in them, that is,
of their own accord. Still, when grown in the vicinity of ordinary
apple trees, with their branches interlocked with each other, a small
percentage of the coreless trees have sometimes produced two or
three seeds, though they are just as apt to be found near the skin of
the fruit as in the centre of it. A seed has been found within one-
eighth of an inch of the rind, right away from the core or the core
lines. These fortuitous seeds owe their origin to the transference of
the pollen from the blossoms of the seedy apple trees to the stigma
of the coreless apple tree. Whether carried by wind or bees, when
the pollen is deposited in this way there is the possibility that a few
seeds may here and there result, but it cannot be said that necessarily
the seed or seeds will be about the tube or even near it.

The appearance of one single variety of seedless apple cannot
seriously affect the skilled commercial apple growers of the world.
If the introducer of the new fruit can develop seedless varieties of the
various leading apples in commerce — and he claims that he can do so —
then the coming of the coreless apple may in due course disorganise
the industry. But we have not got to that stage yet. Apple culture

968 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

is more important even than orange culture. In the United States
there are 200,000,000 apple trees in bearing, from which 250,000,000
bushels of fruit are annually harvested. In ten years these trees will
give a yield of 400,000,000 bushels. At the present time the apple
consumption of the United States is 80 Ib. per head of the population
per year. By bushel measure the American apple crop is four times
greater than the entire wheat yield of Great Britain and Ireland.
Billions of apple trees are grown in the orchards of the world, and
millions of them are still being planted each year. The apple imports
of Great Britain alone range between 4,500,000 cwt. and 5,000,000
cwt. In addition, I estimate the census of our apple trees at
20,000,000.

There are now 2,000 of these coreless apple trees available for
propagation, to supply the orchards of the world. It is estimated
that by 1906 2,500,000 of these trees will be put upon the market.
For domestic use a coreless apple will commend itself to every house-
wife in the country. For evaporating purposes it would prove in-
valuable.

The time has come when, in the interests of the prosperous com-
mercial fruit-growing industries, the merits of the coreless apple
should be considered. The brief announcement that has been made
in the press respecting it has already created some stir in fruit-trade
circles. I have received communications from leading producers in
the four kingdoms, on the Continent, and even in several of our
colonies, relative to the claims of this wonderful apple. I am enabled
to write reliably upon the subject, my information coming person-
ally from the originator of the seedless apple trees. Already the new
comer has been assailed by critics interested in the sale of seedy forms
of foreign fruit. But the seedless apple must be judged upon its
merits. It is not sufficient to condemn it on the ground that we
possess seedy dessert varieties, such as Cox's Orange Pippin or Ribston,
which are far superior to it in flavour. Even then there might be a
huge field available for distributing the seedless apple, for we use as
many culinary as dessert varieties. The word of the cook will have
much to do in moulding the final opinion pronounced upon the claims
of this pomological curiosity. The Spencer apple is not the first
seedless apple that has been grown. During the past sixty years
about half a dozen such claimants have made their appearance. But
in no instance was it found possible to reproduce trees from them
which would bear seedless apples. The stock of 2,000 trees now in
the hands of the raiser were obtained from five trees that bore fruit
practically without seeds. Trees that have produced crops for eight
years successively have all yielded coreless fruits each season.

Though no blossom is at any time visible on the Spencer seedless
apple trees, when budded or grafted they ensure trees that will produce
coreless apples. They are great bearers, and crop freely in any

1904 THE COBELESS APPLE 969

country where the ordinary apple tree will fruit. In 1862 Abbe
D. Dupuy, Professor of Natural History at Auch, drew attention to
the Bon Chretien d'Auch pear, which at Auch produced fruits without
seeds, though when removed to another locality the seeds reappeared
in the fruit in the usual way. This fact up to that period had led
the fruit-tree distributors to treat the pear in one locality as Bon
Chretien d'Auch, and in another district as the Winter Bon Chretien.
But the Spencer apple remains seedless in any soil. When the core-
less apple is cut through the centre of the eye to the stalk, core lines
and carpels can be faintly traced. It may be argued from this that
the fruit has started from a rudimentary flower. But the coreless-
ness and seedlessness of the novelty is beyond question. The carpels
being the seed-cells, if there are no seeds there can be no need for
carpels. As the apple develops and matures these core lines become
absorbed into the flesh. The nearest approach to what some might
be tempted to call a flower is the calyx, but at no time are there any
petals attached to it. As a novelty for private gardens, undoubtedly
there is room for the sale of millions of these trees at fancy values.
The coreless apple will produce as great a sensation when brought
before the public as the seedless orange did a few years ago. The
orange is a luxury ; the aromatic apple has become an absolute
necessity.

SAMPSON MORGAN.

Voc,. LVI--NO, 3S4

970 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

THE RHODES BEQUEST AND UNIVERSITY
FEDERATION

' IF the Colonies are not, in the old phrase, possessions of England,
then they must be part of England ; and we must adopt this view in
earnest. We must cease altogether to say that England is an island
off the north-western coast of Europe, that it has an area of 120,000
square miles and a population of thirty odd millions. We must
cease to think that emigrants, when they go to colonies, leave England
or are lost to England. We must cease to think that the history of
England is the history of the Parliament that sits at Westminster,
and that affairs which are not discussed there cannot belong to Eng-
lish history. When we have accustomed ourselves to contemplate
the whole Empire together and call it all England, we shall see that
here, too, is a United States ; here, too, is a great homogeneous
people — one in blood, language, religion, and laws, but dispersed over
a boundless space.' So wrote the late Sir John Seeley in a little book
which well deserves to be in the hands of everyone who has at heart
one of the most important problems of our time.

In the Rhodes bequest to the University of Oxford, and in the
institution of an Imperial Council of Universities, the result of the
Allied Colonial Universities Conference held in London last year, we
have the foundations, broad and solid, of an alliance and relationship
between ourselves and the Colonies unparalleled alike both in their
significance and in their potentialities. The significance of the first lies
in the fact that one of the most practical and sagacious men of our
times discerned clearly that as many as possible of the rising genera-
tion in our Colonies could and should be educated as British citizens,
should be sentimentally and morally impressed by the traditions and
discipline of our university system, and, in his own words, should
have ' instilled into their minds the advantage to the Colonies as well
as to the United Kingdom of the retention of the unity of the Empire.'
The significance of the second lies in the fact that in every one of
our Colonies, hitherto, and very naturally, absorbed in the mercantile
development of their material resources and in the practical work of
politics and legislation, a growing sense of the importance of higher

1904

THE RHODES BEQUEST

971

education and culture, and of a close and intimate relationship, for
the purpose of furthering it, with the great centres of that education
and culture in the Mother Country, is finding emphatic expression.
It is in the sense of the existence of such needs as these, and in the
instinct which turns to the Mother Country to supply them, that we
may discern with confidence an earnest and anticipation of closer
bonds ; for it is the creation of a new tie. The old ties — common
blood, a common language, common laws, and a common religion —
though strong, in Burke's phrase, as links of iron, did not, as we all
know, prove indissoluble. Of the new tie it may be said, without
reserve and without exaggeration, that, potent in itself, it adds to the
potency of every other tie.

So much for the significance of these movements and institutions.
What may reasonably be expected from them, their potentialities, so
to speak, will be best seen by giving a brief sketch of what their chief
initiator provided. By the Rhodes bequest 162 scholarships, each of
the annual value of 300Z.,tenable for three years, are thus distributed:

-

Total
No.
appro-
priated

To be tenable by students of or from

No. of

scholar-
ships to
be filled
up in each
year

/Q

3

3

The South African College School in the

Colony of the Cape of Good Hope

1

3

The Stellenbosch College School in the

South Africa . 24

3

same Colony
The Diocesan College School in the

1

same Colony

1

3

St. Andrew's College School, Grahams-

town, in the same Colony .

1

3

The Colony of Natal ....

1

(3

The Colony of New South Wales .

1

3

The Colony of Victoria ....

1

<3

The Colony of South Australia

1

Australia 21

j

3

The Colony of Queensland .

1

3

The Colony of Western Australia .

1

3

The Colony of Tasmania

1

3

The Colony of New Zealand .

1

(3

The Province of Ontario in the Dominion

of Canada

1

3

The Province of Quebec in the Dominion

of Canada . . ...

1

Canada . .24

<

3

3

Nova Scotia . . ...
New Brunswick . ...

1

1

3

Prince Edward Island

1

3

British Columbia . ...

1

3

Manitoba . ...

1

3

North-West Territories

1

]3

The Colony or Island of Newfoundland

Atlantic Islands 6

and its Dependencies

1

( o

The Colony or Islands of the Bermudas

1

West Indies . 3

3

The Colony or Island of Jamaica .

1

Total . . 78

Total ... 26

3 s 2

972 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

Such are his provisions for the Colonies, but for the purpose of —

encouraging and fostering an appreciation of the advantages which [he implicitly
believed] will result from the union of the English-speaking peoples throughout
the world, and to encourage, in the students of the United States of North
America who will benefit from the American scholarships, an attachment to
the country from which they have sprung, without withdrawing them or their
sympathies from the land of their adoption or birth —

he provided two scholarships, each of the annual value of 300Z.,
tenable for three consecutive years, at any college in the University of
Oxford, to each of the following States :

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware,
Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri,
Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New
York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania,
Ehode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont,
Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.

The conditions imposed on candidates for the scholarships, who
are nominated either by committees of selection or by university
councils, are that they must be British citizens (in the case of the
American scholarships American citizens), must be between the ages
of nineteen and twenty-five, and must be unmarried ; and, that they
may be competent to proceed at once to the more advanced courses
of study at Oxford, they must at least have reached the end of their
sophomore or second year work at some recognised degree-granting
university or college, and must have qualified themselves for selection
by passing an examination corresponding to Responsions. The first
Rhodes scholars have in this autumn term come into residence,
and a link for ever between Oxford and every centre of the
English-speaking race — Colonial and extra-Colonial — has thus been
formed.

Almost contemporary with the announcement of the Rhodes
bequest the Allied Colonial Universities Conference met in London,
* with two aims ' — to quote the words of its Chairman — ' to develop the
intellectual and moral forces of all the branches of our race wherever
they dwell, and therewith also to promote learning, science, and
the arts by and through which science is applied to the purposes of
life ' ; and, secondly, ' to strengthen the unity of the British people
dispersed throughout the world,' under the conviction that ' the
deepest and most permanent source of unity is to be found in those
elements in which the essence of national life dwells, identity of
thought and feeling, a like attachment to those glorious traditions
which link us to the past, a like devotion to those ideals which we
have to pursue in the future.' In the constitution of this conference,
in the speeches of the delegates representing each university or college,
in the attitude assumed by the representatives of our two great

1904 THE ERODES BEQUEST 973

universities and of the other universities, central and provincial, in
Great Britain and Ireland, and in the resolutions passed as the result
of the conference we have in epitome the whole history of this move-
ment, as well as a precise account both of what has been effected
and of what is about to be effected in its present stage of develop-
ment.

The institutions * of university rank ' which have been established
in our Colonial dominions, and which now, without exception, desire
federative union with the universities of Great Britain — in other
words, a Central Imperial Academic Council, equality of privileges,
the interchange of students and teachers, and mutual assistance
in the furtherance of post-graduate studies and original research —
number, not counting affiliated institutions, about twenty.

Now, there can be nothing offensive and surely nothing unreason-
able if we assume that in such a federation there must and should
be a hegemony, and that that hegemony belongs to Oxford and
Cambridge. It belongs to Oxford and Cambridge because they
have a threefold claim to it — an intellectual, a moral, a sentimental.
The paramount — the ubiquitous — the all-absorbing energy of science
and its votaries must not blind us to the fact that universities, regarded
in relation to their essential and peculiar functions, are not primarily
centres of scientific instruction. They are the centres of the humani-
ties in the most comprehensive sense of the term, the centres of all
that is influential in the study of theology and metaphysics, of moral
and political philosophy, of logic, of history, of belles-lettres generally,
and of the fine arts. These are their primary functions. It is absurd,
it is monstrous, to suppose that science can supply, either as a means
of intellectual and moral discipline, or as an end equivalent in import-
ance, what these subjects supply. And this is certain : unless the
two universities recognise and guard loyally and jealously their peculiar
prerogative the consequences cannot fail to be most disastrous. In
studies like the humanities, which appeal so directly to the finer
instincts and affections, into which sentiment enters so largely, and
which owe so much to association and surroundings, it is of immense
advantage, of quite uncommon and capital importance, that in any
imperial system they should find their centres where for so many ages
they have found them — at Oxford and Cambridge. Science creates
its own atmosphere, and its own home, and is quite independent of
* towers whispering the last enchantments of the Middle Ages,' or
whispering anything else, and, indeed, quite indifferent to them. It
certainly gains nothing by selecting the banks of the Isis and of the
Cam for centres, and would as certainly lose nothing if it established
its chief seminaries on the slag plains of Wolverhampton and the
Black Country. In any case, if Oxford and Cambridge are to
exercise hegemony in any system of imperial university federation,
they will not hold it by virtue of what they have in common with

974 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

the universities of McGill, Toronto, and Sydney abroad, and with the
universities of London, Leeds, and Manchester at home. Nor is
this all. Oxford and Cambridge would themselves be the first to
repudiate any claim to pre-eminency — we may perhaps go further
and say any claim to particular authority in science — either as legis-
lators or as exponents. Their sole claim, I repeat, to that position
which Englishmen, at all events, would wish to see them fill, and
which they are fairly entitled to fill in such a system, is based on
their relation to the humanities. And here they have a great work
to do. Briefly indicated, it is to further and secure such solidarity
in all that pertains to the moral, aesthetic, and political education of
the citizens of Greater Britain as has been attained in the organisation
of scientific instruction. Science may, both as a subject of common
interest and as a means of mutual advantage, do much, and very
much, to strengthen the ties between ourselves and the Colonies, but
the humanities will, as Cecil Rhodes foresaw, do very much more.

And now, before considering the relations which it is proposed to
establish, let us see what connection already exists between our chief
universities and the universities of the Colonies. With Oxford are
affiliated the universities of McGill (Montreal), Toronto, Tasmania,
New Brunswick, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, New Zealand, Cape
of Good Hope ; and, in India, Calcutta, the Punjab, Bombay, Madras,
and Allahabad. And affiliation confers these privileges. For admit-
tance to a B.A. degree at Oxford a student is obliged to pass three
examinations — Responsions, what is called the first public examina-
tion (Moderations), and the second public examination, after keeping
residence for three academical years, each consisting of three full
terms of eight weeks — that is, twelve academical terms. Now if a
student belonging to any of these affiliated universities has pursued
at his own university a course of study extending over two years,
passing all the examinations incident to it, he is exempt from Respon-
sions, and, if he takes honours at Oxford, he is allowed to obtain his
degree after keeping eight instead of twelve terms, but, if only a pass,
he must complete the full period of residence. But greater privileges
are conceded to students of these affiliated universities who have
pursued at their own university a course extending over three years,
and who have at the end of that course obtained final honours, for
they are exempt not only from Responsions but from the first public
examination, and, provided they take honours in the final examina-
tion at Oxford, they may obtain the B.A. degree after keeping only
eight terms — in other words, after two years' residence. By a very
wise regulation, which, however, does not, for some reason, apply to
Indian students, every Colonial student is obliged to qualify in Greek.
In the provisions made for the promotion of post-graduate study and
research, for the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Letters and of
Science, we have another and important point of contact with the

1904 THE RHODES BEQUEST 975

Colonial universities ; for these degrees are open not only to graduates
of Oxford but to ' any persons being over the age of twenty-one
years who can satisfy the university that they have received a good
general education, and that they are fitted to pursue a special line of
study or research.' On what constitutes * a good general education '
a very elastic construction is placed, and certainly a diploma obtained
in any Colonial university would meet what is required. Subject to
these two conditions being satisfied, these degrees may be obtained
by advanced work of high merit in almost any branch of knowledge,
together with residence for eight terms, which may be kept partly in
vacation. Opportunities for instruction and for the prosecution of
advanced work are afforded in classics, in philology, in Oriental
languages, in philosophy, in ancient and modern history, in the
English language and literature, in the theory of education, in theology,
philosophy, law, mathematics, natural science, medicine, and in
geography and economics. In these studies, pursued under the
supervision of the university and under the guidance of specialists,
many young men from all parts of Europe, and especially from America
and the Colonies, are now engaged.

The same judicious hospitality has been extended by Cambridge,
which has, with two exceptions, affiliated all the universities affiliated
by Oxford ; and the privileges conferred, speaking generally, cor-
respond to those conferred at Oxford. Thus, Colonial students who
have satisfied conditions of residence and study at any of these
affiliated universities are, by grace of the Senate, admitted as
candidates to a Tripos examination without having passed any part
of the Previous examination, and are also allowed to reckon the first
term kept by residence as the fourth term of residence. With regard
to advanced and research students Cambridge has gone much further
than Oxford ; for, in addition to admitting them to the university
without any examination and simply on * satisfactory ' testimony
that they are qualified to enter on the proposed course, they are not
only allowed to proceed at once to the subject in which they desire
to specialise, but if, within a specified period, they submit a disserta-
tion which is accepted by the Degree Committee, they are entitled to
a certificate of research, and, on keeping six terms of residence, may
proceed to a degree. This is, no doubt, highly satisfactory to scientific
students, and has led to some edifying remarks, in which the Idols of
the Den are a little too conspicuous, by Professor Ewing on the func-
tion of research as a method of education. The University of London
has, through its examination system, always been in closer touch with
the Colonies than any other English university. Some of its examina-
tions— namely, the Intermediate and Bachelors' Degree Pass exami-
nations in theology, arts, laws, science, and economics — may be
passed and degrees obtained without residence in England, though
residence is required for honour degrees in these faculties. Graduates in

976 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

* approved ' universities — and under this term are included most of the
principal Colonial universities — are exempted from the matriculation
examination, and may proceed at once to the Doctorate of the Univer-
sity of London as internal students in any faculty except that of
medicine.

To proceed to the smaller universities. Durham has affiliated
two Colonial colleges — Codrington College, Barbados, and Fourah
Bay College, Sierra Leone — and members of these colleges are members
of the university, eligible, on the same conditions of residence, &c.,
to the same examinations and degrees as members resident in Durham,
The Victoria University, though it has no specified regulations as to
the admission of Colonial students, is always willing to consider any
applications from such students and to make such concessions as
seem fitting in each case, while the research studentships of the
Owens and University Colleges are open to them. Privileges similar
to those conferred by Cambridge are conferred by the recently estab-
lished University of Birmingham, which will probably in a few years
be the chief centre for the study of applied science, particularly the
various branches of engineering, metallurgy, and mining, as well as
of economics. Of the Scotch universities, Glasgow and, particularly,
Edinburgh have always been more closely in touch with the Colonies
than any others in Great Britain, both because of the great number
of Colonial students attending them, and because of the fact that
so large a percentage of the teaching staffs of the Colonial universities
has been supplied by them. At present, in accordance apparently with
the general policy of those universities, the concessions made to such
students are not so liberal as those made by Cambridge. But almost
all the bursaries, prizes, scholarships, and fellowships are open to them,
and if the conditions under which the studies requisite for the higher
degrees and the regulations for post-graduate study and research are
a little more hampering than they need be, there can be little doubt,
so strong is the feeling in favour of this movement, that if such a step
be authoritatively recommended they will at once be conveniently
modified. In the Irish universities, beyond the foundation of some
scholarships for South African students, with reference chiefly to
medical studies, no direct steps have, I believe, as yet been taken.
But Professor Mahaffy, representing Trinity College, Dublin, an-
nounced that that university was ' quite ready to fall into line with
other older universities, and do all it could to knit together the
education of the Colonies with our own,' adding that, though the
average number of Colonial students at Trinity was at present small,
a rapid increase in their numbers was expected.

Such, then, are the present relations between the Colonial universi-
ties and our own. In what way is it proposed to extend them and
make them more intimate ? The answer will be found in the two
resolutions adopted at the conference last year, namely —

1904 THE ERODES BEQUEST 977

that it is desirable that such relations should be established between the
principal teaching universities of the Empire as will secure that special or local
advantages for study, and in particular for post-graduate study and research, be
made as accessible as possible to students from all parts of the King's dominions ;

and

that a Council, consisting in 'part of representatives of British and Colonial
universities, be appointed to promote the objects set out in the previous
resolution.

Now, it is in this Council, regarded not in relation to the comparatively
contracted sphere expressly specified in the first resolution, but in
relation to its extended functions — functions not formally specified,
but plainly contemplated, namely, the co-ordination of the higher
education throughout the Empire, and the organisation, for the pro-
motion of that object, of an Imperial Council of Universities — that
the full significance of what has been initiated reveals itself. What is
contemplated cannot, indeed, be put better than in Mr. Bryce's words
in his inaugural address :

That which a great university does as the organ of the intellectual life of
the nation in each community may, to some extent, be done by a combination
of universities for the united national life of the whole British world. The
universities may thus be led to feel themselves part of one great whole, and
may all the more effectively bend their united energies to the advancement of
knowledge and to the discovery of truth.

This strikes the note of the whole thing, and strikes it as a clock
strikes the hour.

The benefits and advantages mutually accruing from the coalition
which has thus been inaugurated are obvious, and may be regarded
from two points of view : in their relation to education generally and
in their relation to Imperial Federation. In the first place, it would
vitalise and broaden education in our own universities by bringing it
still more intimately into contact with civil life and with the needs
of civil life, by catholicising its ideals and submitting its methods to
practical tests. Whoever will compare the theories and curricula of
our universities, on the side of the humanities, before the Extension
system became influential, and when they were first freely criticised
in the columns of this Review, will have no difficulty in understanding
the salutary effect of what this coalition cannot fail to secure on a
very much larger scale. It would secure efficiency in teachers as well
as efficiency in instruction and curricula, for Colonials, unlike our
average undergraduates, know what they want, and, not finding it
in one place, would very soon discover where it was to be found.
It would enable those who are engaged in the various departments
of education — and education, at all events at present, is, in relation
to many subjects, largely an experimental science — to interchange
experiences and ideas. While in no way interfering with autonomy

978 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

and independence, or in any way aiming at the reduction of the several
universities to a common type, it would conduce to that solidarity
in all that pertains to the humanities which has so long and with such
happy results obtained in the organisation of scientific instruction.
It would fix, or tend to fix, the highest standards of aim and attain-
ment as general standards. By establishing a sort of informal tribunal,
the members of which would be the acknowledged chiefs of the various
departments of education wherever education in Great Britain is
represented, it would not only stimulate educational activity in all
its phases and along the whole line, but would direct it aright and
keep it steadily and healthily progressive. It would secure it from
abuses, and adjust, or tend to adjust, its equilibrium, now so unevenly
and capriciously regulated, by a due regard for the claims of science
and the claims of the humanities, as each would or could be adequately
represented. By facilitating an interchange of teachers and students
it would be of inestimable advantage to both. In the case of Colonial
teachers, whether originally educated at our own universities or not,
the benefit which would be gained by an occasional visit to them
needs no comment. And if they gained they would at the same time
impart. Everyone who has had experience of the life and work at
Oxford and Cambridge knows how welcome and stimulating are
the freshness, the energy, the enthusiasm so essentially, so universally
characteristic of Colonial visitors. ' There is,' remarks Professor
Ewing in his speech at the conference, ' no part of my work as pro-
fessor on which I can look with greater satisfaction than that part
of it which has brought me into contact with our Colonists. It has
been in every way a valuable stimulus to university life to have these
men here.' In the case of our own teachers, contact with the Colonial
universities would not merely tend to counteract, but probably prevent
what is now — and the phrase is not too strong — the curse of our
academic system, the tendency to get into grooves and ruts, to become
purely mechanical and prematurely stereotyped. On every important
university is impressed a peculiar character, and the teachers whom
it has educated will be pre-eminently distinguished by particular
qualities and in particular subjects of study — I am here speaking of
the humanities. It is so with Oxford, it is so with Cambridge, it is so
with the great universities of the Continent, and it will probably be
so, though in a less degree, with the universities of the future, whether
in the Colonies or elsewhere. Now, nothing is more important than
that there should be a free interchange of these teachers, to leaven
where leaven is needed. Nor should we lose sight of another aspect
of this question. Nothing can be more important in university
education, and assuredly nothing is less considered, than the constitu-
tion of the teaching staffs ; in other words, the selection, not of men
who have proved by their degrees that they know how to acquire
knowledge, but the selection of men who have given some evidence

1904 THE EHODES BEQUEST 979

that they know how to impart it. What a famous Spanish writer has
called la ciencia de las ciencias, the science of sciences — in other words,
the art of teaching — is about the last thing that our universities
consider. The late Professor Nichol bitterly complained that f men
take to education as they take to drinking ' ; it is the last refuge of the
failures, of clergymen who cannot get livings, of barristers who cannot
get briefs, of scribblers who cannot get their manuscripts accepted,
or of less aspiring impotents who can turn to nothing else. I may
be putting the case a little too strongly, but what is no exaggeration
is that, speaking generally of the teaching staffs of our universities,
nothing can often be more deplorable than the contrast between the
learning of many of those who are engaged in this work and their
utter inability to vitalise it and make it influential. A high degree,
at all times a most fallacious test even of intellectual efficiency, is no
test at all of qualifications for teaching. One of the greatest advan-
tages of the proposed federation will be the explosion of a fallacy
which has probably affected education quite as deleteriously as the
old and now happily all but effete theory of the identification of
antiquities with history, and of philology with literature. The federa-
tion would have this further advantage : it would not only tend to
discover and advance both in the Colonies and in the Mother Country
those young men who possess this all-important gift, the union of
competent attainments with the power of influentiaUy and inspiringly
communicating them, but it would open a career to them. At present
there are many, and very many, young men occupying subordi-
nate places on the teaching staffs of our universities, as well as
in the universities of the Colonies, peculiarly qualified as well as
eager to follow education as a profession, who will be obliged to
abandon it because they have no prospect of rising. Some of those
who would have done most to advance it are thus constantly lost to
education. Were the universities confederated, this misfortune — and
a great misfortune it is — would be averted. In their own interests
they would endeavour to secure the greatest efficiency in all grades
of their teaching staff, and this they would best effect by a free inter-
change, in cases of vacancy, of the most fitting candidates for pro-
motion. Thus, if a young man had completed his noviciate in a
university where there was not, at present at least, a further opening
for him, he would be pretty sure to find what he deserved in another
where there was. And this, it may be remarked in passing, would be
an excellent precedent. All educational appointments directly con-
cerned with teaching should be reserved for those who are by their
services as teachers fairly entitled to them, and education in all its
branches has, in Great Britain at least, suffered from the fact that
this self-evident principle is, apparently on system, ignored.

Such would be some of the obvious advantages of university
coalition in relation to teachers ; in its relation to students its effects

980 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

would be equally beneficial. By encouraging and facilitating an inter-
change of students, not in the undergraduate stages of their work,
for that would be as undesirable certainly in the case of home students
as perhaps in the case of Colonial, but at the post-graduate stage of
their work, it would be of incalculable benefit. Let us see how. And
first let us take the humanities, and next scientific instruction. On
the generally beneficial effects of drawing the educational alliance
between ourselves and the Colonies closer I have already touched.
To come to the more particular. It is doing the Colonial universities
no injustice to say — what their Calendars proclaim aloud — that their
instruction on the side of the humanities is, both in theory and practice,
on a very much lower level than that obtaining at Oxford and Cam-
bridge. This is no doubt partly to be accounted for by the fact that
their undergraduates are on an average some two years junior to those
in our universities. Indeed, the relation of their advanced educa-
tional system to that of ours is exactly indicated by the conditions
imposed by our universities in admitting them to degrees. For this
reason, if a Colonial student is to stand on the same plane in educa-
tional attainments and culture as his brethren in Great Britain, he
must complete his education, so far as these subjects are concerned,
in the Mother Country. And the advantages of a residence at Oxford
or Cambridge and of being brought into contact with their traditions
and chief representatives are too obvious to be specified. Here, no
doubt, the advantage will be on the side of the Colonists, and yet not
altogether, for their freshness, energy, and alert intelligence, as well as
their shrewd and keen sense of what is truly efficient and furthering,
will be no unwelcome and unserviceable leaven in our academic
centres. But it is in the facilities which will be open to them for
literary and historical research, and post-graduate studies in the strict
sense of the term, that we may look for the chief results ; and important
indeed they may be.

It is, however, in relation to post-graduate studies on the scientific
side only that the conference laid most stress ; indeed, it would not
be too much to say that, with some two or three exceptions, the
speakers contemplated the proposed federation almost entirely from
this point of view. And the importance of such an aspect of the
question is of course obvious. As Mr. Bryce well puts it, it is
vital for ourselves and the Colonies that we should lay a scientific
foundation for every department of industry, and that the develop-
ment of science in all its branches, and especially in its application to
the arts of life, is the most urgent need of our time. Nor would any-
one dispute that universities should be the chief centres of scientific
instruction and scientific research, and that they should, to the utmost
possible degree of efficiency, be equipped with the means of providing
such instruction and pursuing such research. By an alliance of such
centres of instruction and research, and by a systematic interchange

1904 THE RHODES BEQUEST 981

of their post-graduate students, there can be no doubt that the interests
of science and of all that science furthers would be substantially
advanced. And here the gain would be reciprocal. To say nothing of
mutual stimulus and mutual assistance, some of the Colonial universi-
ties afford as many facilities for advanced work as our own. For
numerous branches of research, indeed, they have opportunities which
we have not, as particularly, for example, in New Zealand, New South
Wales, and the Cape. There is probably no branch of applied science
which could not be pursued in the Colonies as advantageously as at
home, and which would not profit by such association, while some
branches, notably mining and forestry, could be better studied there
than here. For various reasons, certain universities, both in Great
Britain and in Greater Britain, are better adapted for becoming
centres for particular branches of post-graduate instruction and
research than others. In such subjects these universities might
with propriety specialise, as some of them already do, and become
the recognised centres of particular departments of instruction and
research. Thus would a systematic interchange of post-graduate
students be both encouraged and indeed secured, and thus would the
first condition of progressive success in the organisation of advanced
instruction be fulfilled. By mutual co-operation and by the mutually
inspiring stimulus of a spirit of generous emulation alone can the
highest efficiency in the advanced educational system of Greater
Britain be attained. And at present it is not attained. It is deplor-
able to know that many hundreds of Colonial students, both graduate
and post-graduate, seek in the universities of France and Germany
the teaching which they might be expected to seek here.

But the relation of the proposed coalition to education and to the
interests of education is not the only aspect in which it has to be
considered. It is the wisest and most important step which has ever
been taken in the direction of that great consummation of which
Tennyson and Seeley were such sanguine and eloquent prophets —
the unification of our Empire, imperial federation. Nothing can
contribute more towards establishing the relations on which such a
union must be based and, indeed, rendered possible than what is here
contemplated : relations founded, as Mr. Bryce puts it, upon freedom
and equality, upon mutual assistance in the solution of economic,
of administrative, of social problems — and those of vital import-
ance to the Colonies and to ourselves ; upon drawing closer those
intellectual and sentimental ties which, assuming no collision of self-
interests, more than anything, perhaps, link man with man and peoples
with peoples ; upon a communion the conditions and nature of which
particularly conduce to enabling those who share it to understand
one another. Can anyone doubt that the first great schism in our
Empire, so soon to become irreparable, was simply the result of mutual
misunderstanding — of what would in all probability have been pre-

982 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

vented had such relations existed between ourselves and America as the
present proposed coalition at least initiates between ourselves and the
Colonies still under our flag ? But let us make no mistake. However
important both to the interests of science itself and as a factor in the
coalition from which so much may reasonably be expected, scientific
considerations are not the only ones to be regarded. We may safely
go further and say that they are not the chief ones. If the Colonists
are to be attracted to our universities, they will not be attracted by what
they can find in their own ; they will not, on principle, exchange at
great expense their own class-rooms, laboratories, and apparatus for
precisely the same provisions, simply because they are to be found at
Oxford and Cambridge. If, in an imperial system of university
federation, Oxford is to be what Cecil Rhodes contemplated she
should be and what he has done so much to enable her to become, it
will not be by virtue of her relation to science that she will hold any
title to hegemony. By virtue of their relation to the humanities and
by virtue of that relation alone, not by virtue of what they simply
share in common with other universities here and over the sea, can
Oxford and Cambridge claim that place which every English-speaking
nation most gladly and proudly concedes to them. To subordinate
the interests of the humanities to the interests of science, as is becom-
ing, perhaps inevitably, more and more the tendency in both universi-
ties, is deliberately to dethrone themselves. Science, as I said before,
carries with it its own atmosphere, creates its own habitat, and is
quite independent of local associations. It is not so with the humani-
ties, as the English-speaking world instinctively feels. As in imperial
federation, if it ever be realised, sentiment, both as basis and as ener-
gising principle, must very largely enter, so in the federation which is
here initiated, and is its anticipation, sentiment in still larger measure
enters also. And it is the sentiment which, in the dissolution of
every other tie and of every other claim, kept the ancient world loyal
in its homage to Athens.

It is a proof of the monopoly which science is everywhere acquiring,
as well as of its all-absorbing and ubiquitous energy wherever advanced
education is in question, that the proposal for University Federation
emanated entirely from representatives of science ; that the delegates
from almost every university were from the scientific staff ; that the
question was contemplated almost purely from the point of view of
science, and that such considerations as I have here been urging were
scarcely even hinted at. Only in the inaugural speech of Mr. Bryce,
which was in every way worthy of so memorable an occasion, was
this note struck ; only in the scholarly and admirable speech
of the President of Magdalen was there any plea for the importance
of the humanities. The representative of New Zealand, indeed,
ventured timidly to observe that ' it would be placing a very narrow
construction upon the resolution proposing the establishment of an

1904 THE ERODES BEQUEST 983

alliance between the universities if the incoming Council were to
devote their attention solely to scientific objects.' But there was no
response. And in the constitution of the committee for nominating
the Council it is quite clear from the enormous preponderance of
scientific representatives what body will give the ply to the movement.

And now let us consider what duties the Council at present
in course of formation may fairly be expected to undertake, and by
what provisions they may obviously best further this important
movement :

By providing a central institution, such as may be found in the
London University or the Colonial Institute, for information, where
all that is at work in the various allied universities should be reported,
and all the facilities for mutual reciprocity of advantages co-ordinated.

By arranging, at regular intervals, conferences by which the allied
universities may be kept in touch with each other, and in which all
suggestions and proposals likely to be of mutual benefit should be
communicated and discussed.

By facilitating in every way interchanges of students and, when
desirable, of teachers, and by registering, with their records, all such
graduates as are qualified for progressive staff appointments, in order
that those who have proved their qualifications for lecturing and
teaching may, where vacancies occur, be selected to fill them.

By encouraging such universities as happen to have special facilities
for particular branches of post-graduate studies to specialise in those
subjects.

By endeavouring to secure or further a uniformity of standards,
especially in relation to entrance tests and, if possible, in relation to
pass-degrees, so that each university might enable students to proceed
at once to post-graduate study and research.

By organising research scholarships and fellowships on the model
of the Playfair 1851 Scholarships, not merely for science, but for
history, economics, and the humanities generally, and undertaking
the nomination to those scholarships and fellowships.

By offering prizes, such as the Imperial Institute offered some
years ago, for important original contributions to any branch of study,
preferably to such studies as relate to history, politics, and economics
as they bear on imperial questions and interests.

By bringing pressure on the Government to recognise the energies
now awake both at home and in the Colonies, and to realise the
importance of co-ordinating them, and by making every effort to
obtain, both from Government and from private philanthropy and
patriotism, adequate financial support, the necessity of which would
thus, urged as it would be by an Imperial Council, be authoritatively
and impressively demonstrated.

And I cannot forbear adding that the Council would undoubtedly

984 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

have to extend its attention to the educational needs of a portion of
our Empire which is not strictly included in the question discussed
here, and which was not represented in the conference. Nothing could
be more radically inadequate, nothing more deplorable, than the
present regulations for the education of our Indian subjects.

In conclusion, let me return to what I said when I began. The
real significance of this Federation of Universities is not its relation to
education, though that is of immense importance, but its relation
to a problem of more vital and pressing concern to us than any other
problem which has defined itself in our time — the consolidation and
unification of our Empire. A most wise step has been taken, it would
be premature to say more ; golden opportunities are open to us, but
they may be lost. It depends on ourselves. But this is certain, that
all which is at present contemplated is within our reach, and will be
realised or not realised as our universities shall determine. It is
open to them to assume that hegemony in a system of education and
co-operative educational activity co-extensive with the Empire,
which, after much reluctance and grudging, they at last assumed in a
system co-extensive with this country. They will not assume it, it
will not be conceded to them, I repeat, by virtue of their relation to
science and scientific instruction, but in virtue of their relation to the
humanities. Let them, therefore, complete and perfect their curricula
on this side. Let them provide, for example, as adequately for the
interpretation of our own national classics, those golden links between
every community of the English-speaking races, as they have for
most other branches of the humanities. It is satisfactory and of
happy augury to learn that Oxford has, by the recent establishment
of a Chair of English Literature — in the proper sense of the term —
prepared to do so, and that the Rhodes scholars have not found the
university maimed and disgraced by such a conception of the
constitution and functions of a Chair of Literature as has till lately
obtained, and as still, unhappily, obtains in the sister university.
And assuredly, too, encouragement might with propriety be given to
the study of our Colonial Empire, to its history, to its economics, to
the various relations in which it stands to the Mother Country — a
branch of instruction at present absolutely unrepresented in both of
our universities. That study would at least be initiated by the
foundation of a Chair of Colonial History — a suggestion which may
be recommended with confidence to the consideration of the Rhodes
Trustees.

J. CHURTON COLLINS.

[4s this article was passing through the press, the realisation of
its final suggestion was publicly announced. Mr. Alfred Beit has
offered to found a Professorship of Colonial History at Oxford, and
his munificent gift has been accepted by the university. — ED. Nvne-
teenth Century and After.']

1904

PALMISTRY IN CHINA

WITH the Chinese, palmistry is a branch of an ancient art which
includes physiognomy, phrenology, and general inspection of the
human body. Its origin has been assigned to prehistoric times — the
third millennium before Christ.

The object of this art is twofold : (1) to ascertain the mental and
moral characteristics of persons, and (2) to foretell happiness or mis-
fortune, success or failure, disease, and death. An instance is given
of a young lady of the tenth century A.D., who had no brothers and
was obliged to perform some of the mourning ceremonies before the
image of her dead father. While thus occupied she was observed by
a visitor who had come to condole. ' I did not see her face,' he said,
' but when she grasped the incense-burner I noticed that her hands
gave promise of a high position.' Later on this visitor married the
young lady, and rose to be a Minister of State.

Restricting the inquiry to palmistry only an attempt will be made
to show what the Chinese people have to say on a subject which has
been much to the front of late years, and especially in the past few
weeks.

One writer says :

The presence of lines in the hand may be compared with the grain of wood.
If the grain of wood is beautiful, that wood becomes known as excellent
material ; and if the lines in the hand are beautiful, that hand is obviously well
constituted. Therefore a hand cannot but have lines on it, those which have
lines being of a higher order than those which have none. Fine and deep lines
mean success ; coarse and shallow lines mean failure. Of the three lines on the
palm, the uppermost answers to heaven ; it connotes sovereign or father, and de-
termines station in life. The middle line answers to man ; it connotes wisdom
or folly, and determines poverty or wealth. The lowest line answers to earth ;
it connotes subject or mother, and determines length of days. If these three
lines are well denned and unbroken, they are an augury of happiness and
wealth. Vertical lines in excess mean a rebellious nature and calamity :
horizontal lines in excess mean a foolish nature and ill-success. A vertical
line running up the finger means that all plans will turn out well ; random
lines, which cross the creases of the fingers, mean that they will fail. Lines
which are fine and resemble tangled silk mean wit and beauty ; coarse lines,
like the grain of the scrub oak, mean stupidity and a low estate. Lines like
scattered filings mean a bitter life ; lines like sprinkled rice-husks mean a life
of joy, &c. &c.

VOL. LVI— No. 334 985 3 T

986

Dec.

* The hand,' says the author of The Divine Art,

is used for taking hold, and this causes lines to appear on it. If these lines are
long, the nature will be kindly and generous ; if short, mean and grasping. A
man whose hand reaches below his knees will top his generation ; but one
whose hand reaches only to his waist will ever be poor and lowly. A small
body and a large hand portend happiness and emolument ; a large body and a
small hand, purity and poverty.

And so on.

Several illustrations are given of what might be termed the topo-
graphy of the hand, showing its various elevations and depressions,
and indicating the directions in which different influences make
themselves felt. The fingers, with their several joints, are each sepa-
rately mapped out ; the commanding finger (thumb), the tasting
finger, the middle finger, the nameless finger, and the little finger.

Then follow seventy-two diagrams of hands, each with certain
sets of lines, of which an interpretation is given. With these sets

FIG. 1.

FIG. 2.

will, of course, be found other lines ; they are merely characteristic
combinations which have a recognised purport, and are given sepa-
rately for the sake of convenience. It is impossible to reproduce all
these diagrams here ; a few specimens will no doubt suffice.

The first of these is simply a hand — always the left hand — the
palm of which is divided into four regions, upper, lower, right, and
left, known as summer, winter, autumn, and spring, respectively.
That part of the hand under the influence of spring should be of a
greenish hue ; summer should be red, autumn white, and winter
dark. If autumn is red, winter yellow, spring white, or summer
dark, sorrow and disaster will inevitably ensue.

Possession of the ' lyre ' hand (fig. 1) is a sign of an honest heart,
of skill in composition, and of a large share of Imperial favour in the
days to come.

The hand shown in fig. 2 indicates love of good works, placidity of.
temperament, and strong religious feelings.

Love of flowers (women) and wine is manifested in the middle of

1904

PALMISTRY IN CHINA

987

the palm, as seen in fig. 3. The owner of this hand will be too fond of
drink, and * a slave to the charms of twice eight.'

Fig. 4 shows the covetous hand of the unreliable man who will
cheat as soon as look at you.

There is also quite a little dictionary of combinations of two or
more strokes, such as might occur in any portion of the hand ; for

FIG. 3.

FIG. 4.

instance, X and ^, both of which are really borrowed from char-
acters in the written language, meaning man and a well, respectively ;
x, A> an(i others.

The Chinese, however, do not confine their investigations to the
palm only ; they examine carefully the lines on the back of the hand,
thus making ' cheiromancy ' a better term than palmistry. Nor do
they omit the nails, each variety of which has its own signification.

FIG. 5.

Tapering nails mean brains ; hard and thick nails mean old age ;
coarse, stumpy nails mean dulness of wit ; broken and sloughing
nails mean disease and ill-health ; bright yellow nails mean high rank
to come ; dark thin nails mean obscurity ; bright greenish nails mean
loyalty and goodness of heart ; fresh white nails mean love of ease ;
nails like sheet copper mean pomp and glory ; nails of a half-moon
shape mean health and happiness ; nails like copper tiles mean skill
in arts and crafts ; nails like the end of a plank mean staunch

3 T 2

988 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

sincerity ; nails with sharp-pointed tips mean cleverness and refine-
ment ; and nails which are rough like stone mean profound stupidity.

The Chinese, again, who are nothing if not thorough, push every
investigation of this kind with German minuteness to its logical
conclusion. Consequently, when they have exhausted palmistry,
they proceed to * solistry,' and extract indications from the lines on
the feet.

Those combinations which augur best are the ' tortoise ' and the
' bird ' lines, the latter of which is shown in fig. 5.

In conclusion it may be pointed out, in simple justice to the Chinese,
that the wonderful system of identification by finger-prints, which is
forcing the modern burglar to carry on his trade in gloves, was in
force in China many centuries before it was heard of in Scotland
Yard. Title-deeds, and other legal instruments, are often found to
bear, in addition to signatures, the finger-prints of the parties con-
cerned ; sometimes, indeed, the imprint of the whole hand.

In a small volume, entitled Omissions from History, published in
the twelfth century, we have the following story :

A favourite concubine of the Emperor Ming Huang (A.D. 713-756),
having several times dreamed that she was invited by a man to take
wine with him on the sly, spoke about it to the Emperor. * This is
the work of a magician,' said his Majesty ; ' next time you go, take
care to leave behind you some record.' That very night she had the
same dream ; and accordingly she seized an opportunity of putting
her hand on an ink-slab and then pressing it on a screen. When she
awaked, she described what had happened ; and on a secret investiga-
tion being made, the imprint of her hand was actually found in the
Dawn-in-the-East Pavilion outside the palace. The magician, how-
ever, was nowhere to be found.

HERBERT A. GILES.

1904

QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PICTURES

QUEEN CHRISTINA of Sweden, the daughter of the Protestant hero
Gustavus Adolphus, is best known for having resigned at one and the
same time the throne of her father and the faith for which he died*
Most people also know that she spent the last thirty years of her
life in Rome, and that during a visit to France in 1657 she had her
equerry, the Marquis Monaldesco, brutally put to death in the castle
of Fontainebleau.

It is less generally known that she was one of the greatest patrons
of art of her time, a passionate collector and a fine judge and ' con-
naisseur.' Her interest in matters of art was as varied as it was deep.
Herself a good musician, she kept for years a splendid orchestra and
the best singers in Eome. She was the centre of the theatrical world
in the Eternal City, and it was chiefly owing to her protection that
Roman drama and opera did not succumb under the bigoted perse-
cutions of Innocent the Eleventh. She was a dramatic writer of no
mean talent. She started excavations in the hope of finding antique
statuary, and eagerly bought what statues were offered to her, as far
as her means allowed. Unfortunately she had them restored, too !
And as for pictures her enthusiasm knew no bounds, not even those
of the purse. In the midst of great financial troubles she did not
hesitate to purchase the entire Carlo Imperial! gallery (1667).

That is what she practised. Lofty, duty-bound, half-indifferent
patronage was all she professed. This is what she wrote about it :

La Pinture, la sculture et tous les autres arts qui en dependent sont des
impostures innocentes, qui plaisent et qui doivent plaire aux gens d'esprit.
C'est un defaut a un honeste hommo que de ne les aymer pas, rnais il faut les
aymer raisonnablement.

She was better than she made herself out to be in that pretentious
sentence, and she was universally acknowledged in Rome as a ' con-
naisseur ' of as much taste as erudition. The painter Bazziggi used
to say about her that she was unequalled as a judge and critic of art,
and that he had never been to see her without learning something
from her. This much for the possessor of the collection ; now for
the pictures composing it.

989

990 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

It was not in her own country that the Swedish Queen had
found her treasures. Sweden was then in the midst of her glorious
career as a military Power, but she lived still in a state of heroic
simplicity which had not yet allowed letters or art to flourish.
She was poor, suffering from the exhaustion which her temporary
rank as a great power produced, for she had to keep up a state far
above her means She had fostered warriors, but not artists, and
she had neither money nor wish to acquire works of art from abroad.
It was to the fortune of arms that Christina owed the collections
the royal castle of Stockholm contained. Nearly all her pictures
had come there as spoils of war, part of the last but richest loot ever
taken during the Thirty Years' War — a spoil of which the world was
not destined to see the like until the days of Napoleon.

The first owner of the Queen's artistic wealth had been the Emperor
Rudolph the Second. History has not much good to say about this
degenerated scion of the Hapsburgs. Weak, false, indolent, and
melancholy by nature, he further developed these undesirable qualities
by what was then considered a true princely education, for he was
brought up by Jesuits at the dull Court of his cousin, Philip the Second
of Spain. At twenty he became King of Hungary ; four years later,
in 1576, Emperor ; and he at once showed himself a willing tool of his
former masters. He was largely responsible for the Roman Catholic
reaction which brought about the Thirty Years' War, and his mis-
government ultimately led to his being compelled to abandon his
hereditary territories to his brother Matthias (1611). He died, 1612,
at Prague, which city had been his favourite residence, leaving a
memory respected by few of his subjects, execrated by many, but
cherished by artists, antiquaries, and curiosity dealers. For this
bigoted and unmanly prince, who never was young, never married,
and seldom smiled, was a passionate collector and a magnificent
patron of art.

It was in the spacious halls of the Hradschin Palace at Prague
that Rudolph the Second assembled his treasures. He brought
thither from Vienna the most precious of the numerous works of art
which he had inherited from his father, the Emperor Maximilian the
Second, and he at once set to work to increase his collections. His
agents were constantly busy hunting up bargains for him. Spain,
Italy, and Flanders were ransacked for him in search of pictures,
statues, medals, coins, trinkets, jewels, and curios of every descrip-
tion. Year after year the Rudolphinische Kunst- und Wunderkammer
became richer and more famous, backed as it was by the resources of
an imperial purse and the zeal of imperial diplomacy and bureaucracy.
The Emperor also called to Prague the principal artists of Germany
and the Netherlands, and gave them liberal orders. The sculptor
Adrian de Vriez, the engraver Giles Sadeler, and the painters Spranger,
Hoefnagel, and Heinz are among the best known of the artistic colony

1904 QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PICTURES 991

that settled in the Bohemian capital at his bidding. Diamond-cutters
and workers in rock crystal were also in great demand, and, last but
not least, alchemists and astrologers.

The only happy hours the Emperor knew were those spent in his
museum, and with his artistic and scientific friends. Many of them
were anything but first-rate men ; some of them were downright
rogues and swindlers ; but it must be remembered that among
those he protected and befriended were also the great pioneers of
science, Tycho Brahe and John Kepler. Much might, perhaps, be
said about the Emperor's taste. We have not much sympathy now
for the art which marks the transition from the late Renaissance to
the Barocco period, but it was the fashion in Rudolph the Second's
time, and he was a man well able to understand and follow the direction
of taste, but not competent to lead the way towards a new one.
There were also a good many copies and school pictures among his
' originals.' In some cases he knew it, and did not care much. In
others he was deceived, as will unfortunately happen even to the
best of connaisseurs. Many of the pictures the Emperor had ordered
himself belonged more to the ' wonder ' section of the collection than
to the artistic one. Such were a set of representations of fabulous
animals, dragons, hippogriSs, and the like. These might perhaps
be considered as the connecting link between the domains of art and
natural history, which the Emperor wished to unite as closely as
possible. He had also plenty of stuffed birds and other animals,
as well as a great many curiosities which it would be difficult to
classify. Where would you put, for instance, a set of teeth and a
hand of a mermaid, or a glove made of human skin ? Of diamonds
and emeralds there was a plentiful supply, something like three
thousand dozen, kept in bowls of gold, silver, or crystal, much in the
same way as in the imperial secret treasury of Constantinople.

A great many things were lost, or removed, during the stormy
years that swept over Prague after the death of Rudolph the Second,
but the great bulk of the collections remained at the Hradschin until
the very last days of the Thirty Years' War. A Swedish army was
besieging Prague even while the plenipotentiaries were already busy
drawing up the great treaty of peace at Miinster and Osnabriick, and
on the morning of the 25th of July 1648 the Swedes under Konigs-
marck succeeded in occupying part of the city and the Hradschin
itself. The town was plundered by the soldiery, but the treasures
of the palace were reserved by the victorious general for his young
Queen. Konigsmarck well knew the passionate interest which
Christina took in art and literature, and how welcome these truly
royal spoils would be. He only feared he would not have time to
send them safely away before peace was proclaimed, and his fears
were shared by the Queen, who sent pressing orders not to lose any
time in forwarding the collections to Stockholm. |

992 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

The entrance to the galleries had not been effected without resist-
ance. Konigsmarck's soldiers found the doors bolted and locked,
and the impatient hammering of their pikes elicited no response.
The keeper, Eusebius Miseron, one of the finest stone-cutters of his
day, was at last found and brought before the captain in command,
but he stubbornly refused to give up the keys. He had undertaken
to protect what was entrusted to his care, and he meant to keep
his word. Threats were of no avail. Torture had to be resorted to
before poor faithful Miseron revealed the hiding-place of the keys.
I hope there may be somewhere a record of model gallery-keepers
with Miseron's name in golden letters at the top of the list.

Carpenters and packers now invaded the Hradschin ; pictures
were removed from their frames and rolled together, and in a few
weeks' time long rows of stout boxes filled the imperial halls. Finally,
early in the morning of the 6th of November, before the news of peace
had had time to reach Prague, a flotilla of barges was towed up the
Elbe northwards. But ice soon blocked the river. The cases were
taken overland to Wismar, then a Swedish possession, and stored
there during the winter. At the end of May 1649 they arrived in
Stockholm, and were carried up to the royal castle.

The young Queen was anxiously awaiting their arrival. At the age
of twenty-two, the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus was one of the
most learned women of Europe, and fully merited the name of ' Pallas
of the North,' which her admirers bestowed upon her. And she had
neglected no opportunity to cultivate the feeling for and understanding
of art which was inborn in her, as in every section of the royal house
of Vasa. Until now, however, her opportunities had been few. She
knew the names of the great masters and what her books and engrav-
ings had told her about them, but that could not be much. At any
rate it was not enough for her. We must remember that there were
no photographs in 1649, nor any such publications as those which
in our days make the artistic treasures of the world the common
intellectual property of all lovers of art. Nor were the collections
she had found within the walls of the old palace in Stockholm very
rich or very interesting. A hundred Dutch, Flemish, or German
pictures, a third of which were portraits, that was about all she had
inherited from her father. Of sculpture she had hardly seen any-
thing at all, except a wooden group of St. George and the Dragon.
True, the palace possessed a good many sets of Flemish tapestries,
and a splendid one from Mortlake, but tapestries could hardly satisfy
a soul hungering for the sight of masterpieces, the splendour of which
she could only divine. Of Swedish art there was none, or at least
none to speak of. The Reformation had put an end to the pictorial
decoration of churches, and for a long time to come architecture was
to be the only form of art that appealed to the Swedish mind. Military
enterprise still absorbed too much of the forces of the nation.

1904 QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PICTURES 993

Let us fancy Queen Christina impatiently wandering backwards
and forwards among the crowd of workmen unpacking her new
treasures. In her hands she might carry the catalogue, written in
quaint German simplicity, which Konigsmarck had sent her from
Prague, checking ofi pictures and statues as they emerged out of
boxes and wrappings. What a truly royal pleasure ! And to hang
and put up everything afterwards ! The palace was hardly big
enough to hold it all. There were about four hundred and ninety
pictures, and to a great many of them were appended the names of
Correggio, Titian, Mantegna, Diirer, Leonardo, Michel Angelo,
Gio. Bellini, Raphael, Tintoretto, Brueghel, Matsys, &c. ; no large
statues, but some one hundred and twenty statuettes of bronze,
marble, and alabaster. There were also weapons, scientific instru-
ments, mirrors, majolica, banners, embroideries, pearls, silver, clocks,
manuscripts, such as the famous Codex Argenteus of Ulfilas, and the
no less celebrated ' Gigas Librorum ' or Devil's Bible, and, last but not
least, a living lion. The transport of the latter article from Prague
to Stockholm had not been without its troubles.

To catalogue her pictures the Queen called in from France Mar-
quis Raphael du Fresne, the editor of the great Leonardo's works,
but the choice was not a happy one. Du Fresne wrote down very
conscientiously where the pictures came from and described as well
as he could what they represented, but he neglected every mention
of the painters' names. Nor had the inventory sent home by Konigs-
marck been more explicit. To this regrettable negligence much of
the confusion that has arisen regarding the authorship of some of the
Queen's pictures is to be attributed.

Du Fresne's work was completed in 1653, four years after the
arrival of the Prague collections in Stockholm, and its termination
preceded, alas ! only by a few months the breaking up of the collection
and the removal from Sweden of the best part of the Queen's art-
treasures. It is well known that Christina abdicated in June 1654 in
order to embrace the Roman Catholic faith and to settle in Rome.
She carried with her all the best belongings of the Swedish Crown, for
in those days little difference was made between what was owned by
the State and what by the Sovereign personally. Besides, the love and
regard the Swedes entertained for the daughter of the great Gustavus
Adolphus was too great to allow of any serious opposition. Perhaps
also the immense loss she thus caused to the artistic and scientific
development of her own country was not sufficiently understood at
the time. The Swedish soil was not yet ready for the seeds of art.
Let it be remembered that there was in the palace only one picture
by a Swede, and that probably a poor one.

Happily for Sweden, the Queen did not care much for the Dutch,
German, and Flemish schools, and left the great majority of their
paintings at Stockholm, where not a few of them are still found in the

994 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

National Museum. She especially cherished her Italian pictures, and
of these all the principal ones followed her to Rome. They were,
however, first sent to the Netherlands, where the Queen spent the
first year after her abdication, and some of them were stored at Ant-
werp for several years, until Christina had in 1659 definitely selected
her abode in the Palazzo Riario. During her stay in Brussels and
Antwerp Christina made some new purchases: among others, of
some pictures from the collection of the Duke of Buckingham.1

It was not until 1662 that the Queen's Roman installation was
completed, but from that time until the last years before her death
in 1689 she kept on continuously increasing her collections. The
largest addition was her purchase in bulk of the Carlo Imperial!
collection from Genoa in 1667. There are two catalogues of the
pictures extant from this period, one written about 1677,2 the other
shortly after her death,3 both giving the names of the painters and the
dimensions of the pictures, but unfortunately not mentioning their
origin. The first of these is the most important one, as it came under
the eyes of the Queen herself. We shall follow it here.

Cardinal Azzolino had been Christina's intimate friend and adviser
ever since her first arrival in Rome. It had been a case of love at
first sight with her, and, what is less frequent, it proved to be the
love of a lifetime. She instituted him by her will her universal legatee,
bequeathing to him all she possessed, a few special legacies excepted,
and thus the famous collections passed, at the death of the Queen, to
the Cardinal. Azzolino, however, only survived his friend a few
weeks, and at his death in June 1689 his nephew, Marchese Pompeo
Azzolino, became the owner of Christina's treasures. But as he in-
herited very little ready money at the same time, he could not afford
to keep them, and in 1696 he sold the bulk of the collections to the
Prince Don Livio Odescalchi, Duke of Bracciano, a nephew of Pope
Innocent the Eleventh. The price was 123,000 scudi (24,OOOZ.), and
the number of the pictures was then 240.4 Of these at least sixty-
six, probably more, had originally belonged to Rudolph the Second's
gallery in Prague, and had been brought by Christina from Stockholm.

The day of rest had not come yet for these unfortunate paintings.
In a few years the princely house of Odescalchi found itself in
somewhat straitened circumstances, and began to look out for a
buyer of the Queen's ' cabinet,' as art-collections used to be called in
those days. Already in 1715 negotiations were begun with the Regent
of France, Duke Philip of Orleans, and after a voluminous corre-
spondence he purchased, in January 1721, all the pictures, now stated

1 Lady Burghclere, George Villicrs, Second Duke of Buckingham, p. 57.

2 Now in the Archivio Azzclino at Empoli. A copy is in the Royal Archives at
Stockholm.

3 Now in the Archives of the Vatican.

4 Gualtiero Papers, MS. 20309, British Museum, folio 17.

1904 QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PICTURES 995

to be 259, but not the statues, tapestries, medals, &c. Nineteen
paintings had thus been added to the collection during its stay in the
Palazzo Odescalchi. The pictures were removed from their frames,
cleaned, and ' restored ' under the personal supervision of the Cheva-
lier Poerson, and finally shipped at Civita Vecchia in September 1721.
They travelled by way of Cette, the Languedoc Canal, Bordeaux, and
Nantes, and did not arrive in Paris until the spring of 1722.

The Regent had a special admiration for Correggio, who had not
hitherto been represented in his gallery, and it was his desire to acquire
some pieces of this great master which originally led to his opening
the negotiations. At one time, when these seemed hopeless, he gave
orders to his agents in Rome to limit themselves, if his offer for the
whole of the Queen's cabinet was rejected, to an offer of 20,000 livres
for four Correggios and three Titians. The Correggios were : Leda,
lo (both now in the Royal Museum at Berlin), Danae (now in the
Borghese Gallery), and Cupid shaping his Bow (now in Bridge water
House). This latter was in reality by Parmigianino. The Titians
were : Venus with the Mirror (now at Cobham Hall), Venus rising
from the Sea (now in Bridgewater House), and Venus, Mercury, and
Cupid (now in Stafford House). The last picture is now attributed
to Schiavone. If the Regent's advisers were not quite certain as to
the names of the painters, their taste at least was sure. These pictures
were in fact the gems of the collection, and two of them are to
this day numbered among the treasures of the world. When the
Borghese collection was purchased by the Italian Government a few
years ago, the Danae alone was valued at 40,OOOZ.

However beautiful and valuable these paintings were, they had
still had one defect in the eyes of squeamish seventeenth-century Rome.
Never was the nude, and especially the female nude, more gloriously
represented. Green curtains were evidently the thing for them !
Queen Christina would not hear of any such prudery, but others were
less liberal-minded, and Cardinal Odescalchi had in fact ordered
curtains to be placed over them. The Regent, of course, shared
Christina's ideas, but after his death his son, Duke Louis, returned to
the Roman view of the nudity question. The poor pictures had once
more to submit to curtains. Worse still, some, among others the
Leda, were badly mutilated and objectionable parts cut out '

With the exception of this little interlude the Queen's pictures
enjoyed seventy years' rest in the halls of the Palais Royal. But in
1792 their wanderings began again. The then Duke of Orleans, the
famous Philippe Egalite, needed money. His pictures were sold in
two great lots. The French and Italian ones were disposed of for
750,000 livres to a banker, who resold them shortly afterwards for
900,000 livres to a certain Laborde de Mereville. This gentleman
soon had to leave France and seek a refuge in London, whither he
also brought his newly acquired collection. After the death of Laborde

996 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

the pictures were bought for 43,OOOZ. by an association of three English
noblemen, the Duke of Bridgewater, the Earl of Carlisle, and the Earl
Gower. An exhibition of the paintings was then decided upon. It
commenced in December 1798 in the rooms belonging to Mr. Bryan,
an art dealer, in Pall Mall and at the Lyceum, and lasted for six
months. The three buyers had reserved for themselves a number of
pictures, valued at 39,000 guineas ; of the remainder part were sold
during the exhibition for 31,000 guineas, and the last ones were finally
disposed of in 1800 by public auction at Messrs. Peter Coxe, Burrell &
Foster's for about 10,000£. The Dutch, Flemish, and German pictures
of the Orleans Gallery were also disposed of in 1792 to English buyers
represented by Mr. T. M. Slade, and were exhibited and sold in London
some time afterwards.

Thus the last year of the eighteenth century witnessed the final
dispersion of the Emperor Rudolph the Second's and Queen Christina's
pictures. About eighty of the latter are believed to be still in England
in the. hands of various owners.

The National Gallery has nine paintings which have belonged
to the Queen. The four large Paolo Veroneses, Unfaithfulness, Scorn,
Respect, and Happy Union, which are now hanging in the grand
hall under the cupola, were in the Palazzo Riario placed on the
ceiling of the Queen's great audience-room, which in our days has
become the meeting- room of the Accademia dei Lincei. They had
plain gilt frames, and around them there was stretched painted canvas
showing a rich ornamentation in grisaille enlivened by gilding. I
cannot help thinking that in these surroundings they appeared more
to their advantage than they do now in their showy frames of the late
Victorian period and of nondescript style. And it is certainly a mistake
to exhibit hanging on a wall paintings intended for ceilings. The
foreshortenings then become puzzling. This explains why the other-
wise most excellent catalogue of the National Gallery describes the
two young women in Scorn as ' seated hand in hand,' while in fact
they are walking away. The catalogues of the Emperor Rudolph
and of Queen Christina had no names for these allegorical groups, but
at the time of the sale of the year 1721 the Happy Union was described
as Abundance crowning Peace. The present names were given to the
paintings in the Orleans Gallery. They are certainly not very happy,
but they are short, and people are rather lazy about finding out the
meaning of allegories. Therefore the names are likely to stay.

The audience-room of the Palazzo Riario contained forty-two
more pictures, of which seventeen bore the name of Titian, while
eight were ascribed to Paolo Veronese, and three to Correggio.
Among the forty-two were Titian's Venus rising from the Sea and
The Three Ages, now in Bridgewater House, his Venus, Cupid, and
Mercury (Stafford House), and his L'Esdavonne (Cook Collection,
Richmond). Of the eight Veroneses six are now in England, and one

1904 QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PICTURES 997

hangs, as it did 200 years ago, in the neighbourhood of the great
ceiling pictures. It is the little sketch of the Rape of Europa, now
placed under Respect ; in a rather bad light, I regret to say.

Another of the Queen's pictures is placed under Respect. It is
the Death of Peter the Martyr, now ascribed to Cariani after having
long borne the glorious name of Giorgione. It is by no means a great
picture, and it is a mystery how it can ever have passed as a work of
the fellow-pupil and rival of Titian.

Queen Christina is also indirectly connected with the splendid
Correggio of the National Gallery, Mercury instructing Cupid in the
Presence of Venus, for she owned a copy of it, which came to London
with the Orleans collection, and was again sold in Paris in 1832 at
the Errard sale. I should hardly think it worth while to mention
this were it not that a certain mystery is connected with this copy.
It so happened that in the year 1603 Johan von Aachen, one of
Rudolph the Second's painters, saw some copies executed in Mantua
by Rubens, who was then in the service of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga.
Von Aachen praised them so highly to his sovereign that the Emperor
begged the duke to let him have reproductions by Rubens of all the
Correggios which were then at Mantua. This was done, and the
copies were sent to Prague.5 One of them was the Mercury and
Cupid. We might therefore suppose that the Queen's copy was by
Rubens, but unfortunately it is not quite certain that it came from
Prague. She may have bought it later during her stay in Italy.
In one of the Queen's catalogues the Venus in the picture is simply
described as a ' woman with wings.'

Two other Correggios, Groups of Heads, apparently part of a
choir of angels, are kept in the basement of the National Gallery.
They had belonged to the Queen, but I could not say whether they
came from Prague or were purchased in Italy. Their damaged state
also renders it difficult to form any opinion as to the hand to which
they ought to be attributed. They reproduce parts of Correggio's
frescoes in the cupola of the cathedral at Parma, but are they sketches
made before or copies made after the frescoes ? I do not pretend to
answer the question, but at any rate the groups seem to deserve a
better treatment than is now bestowed upon them.

Rinaldo Mantovano is at the present date said to be the author of
four compositions in the National Gallery (Nos. 643 and 644), repre-
senting The Capture of Carthagena, The Continence of Scipio, The Rape
of the Sabines, and The Reconciliation between the Romans and the
Sabines. In the Queen's collection these paintings, then still on wood,
now on canvas, bore the name of Rinaldo's master, Giulio Romano.
They are evidently sketches meant to be carried out in larger
dimensions for the decoration of a room, and their artistic value is
but small, whether they are by the pupil or by the master.
* Emile Michel, Rubens (London, 1899), i. 103.

998 THE NINETEENTH CENTUE7 Dec.

Bridgewater House has become the home of no leas than thirteen
of Queen Christina's pictures. The best known of these is perhaps
Raphael's Madonna del Passeggio or La Belle Vierge, representing the
Madonna standing with the Infant Saviour and St. John in the midst
of a beautiful landscape, while St. Joseph is walking away in the
background. This famous picture has been much discussed and
written about ; it now hangs in the sitting-room of the stately palace
of the Ellesmeres, together with the Bridgewater Madonna and La
Vierge au Palmier ; but much still remains to be known, not only
about its early history, but also about its authorship. It is generally
admitted that it was originally painted for the Duke of Urbino, and
it is nearly certain that it afterwards came to Spain, and probably
into the possession of Philip the Second. What is less certain is how
it found its way to Queen Christina's gallery. The accepted tradi-
tion is that it was given by Philip the Second to Rudolph the Second,
and taken by the Swedes at the sacking of Prague. Another, more
improbable, version is that it was given by Philip the Third to Gus-
tavus Adolphus. Unfortunately, the catalogues of the Prague and
Stockholm collections do not supply us with any means of identifying
it with any of the pictures known to have belonged either to the
Emperor or to the Swedish King. It is true that a catalogue of the
Prague Gallery of 1621 6 speaks of Ein f'dmemes Stuck, von Rafael te
Urbin (No. 19), which migJit mean our Madonna ; but the indication
is too vague for anything but guesswork. What we do know is that
the picture appears for the first time fully described in the Queen's
inventory of (about) 1677. This catalogue, which she had herself
seen, expressly mentions that the picture was given to her by the
King of Spain. We further know that the Queen received many
valuable gifts from Philip the Fourth during her stay (1654-55) in
Antwerp and Brussels, where she was living under the special protec-
tion of the Spanish king previous to her conversion and departure for
Rome.- During the following twenty years her relations with Spain
were instead rather strained, and her papers mention no exchange of
presents with the Court of Madrid. It is also known that during
these same years 1654-55 several pictures from the Duke of Bucking-
ham's collection were bought by or for Christina. And in the cata-
logue 7 of that collection we find the following mention (146/113) :

No. 2, Raphael. Une autre ditto de N.D., N. Seigneur et S. Jean dans un
paysage. Elle a une hauteur 4 pieds et une longueur 2 pieds 10 pouces.

Brian Fairfax's printed translation of the catalogue describes the
picture as ' the Virgin Mary, Christ, and St. John in a landskip.'
The measures are repeated.

6 Printed by 0. Granberg in Kejsar Rudolf II. 's Konstkammare, and in Berichte
und Mittheilungen des Alterthum-Vereines zu Wien, Bd. vii., 1864.

7 Pictures of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, British Museum MS. 17915,
Plut. cxcviii. H.

1904 QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PICTURES 999

Now these measurements are somewhat larger than those of the
Bridgewater picture, but the indications of seventeenth -century cata-
logues in this respect are, unfortunately, not always to be relied on,
especially as it is seldom mentioned whether the measurements are
taken within or without the frame. In the present case the difference
may be accounted for if the frame was included by the compiler of
the Buckingham catalogue, which, it is well to note, appears to have
been written after the dispersion of the pictures.

From this we may be allowed to offer as a conjecture that the
Bridgewater picture at one time beloved to the Duke of Bucking-
ham's collection at York House, and that it was bought in 1654-55
in the Netherlands for the King of Spain in order to be presented
on his behalf to Queen Christina. It was considered by the Queen
as one of the gems of her gallery, and she would certainly have laughed
to scorn any suggestion that its authenticity might be open to doubt.

But then Queen Christina did not foresee to what heights the
art-criticism of the present day was destined to rise. In her time a
picture did not require so many credentials. If a king made a pre-
sent to a queen of a Raphael, it was a Raphael, and there was an end
of it. We are a little more particular now, and before recognising a
work as belonging to one of the great masters of old, we want to have
satisfactory answers to a great many questions. Modern criticism
has been especially hard on Raphaels, and specialists will remember
how nine years ago an Austrian savant 8 boldly ascribed a good half
of the works of the Urbinate, among others the famous South
Kensington cartoons, to the most insipid of his scholars, Gio. Fran-
cesco Penni, generally known as il Fattore. The Madonna del
Passeggio was among those that thus fell to Penni's lot, but it is
only just to add that older critics had already expressed their doubt.
Waagen,9 for instance, could ' not agree that it is really by the hand
of the master.'

As his objections are largely founded on the colour and execution,
it may be of interest to quote what the Chevalier Poerson, Chief of
the French Academy in Rome, wrote to the Regent's representative,
Cardinal Gualtiero, while he was superintending the cleaning and
* restauration ' of the Queen's pictures previous to their being shipped
to France : 10

J'auray 1'honneur de luy dire quo la belle vierge de Raphael est entierement
retablie avec line adresse et une intelligence qui n'a point de pareille. J'y ai
toujours assist e sans manquer un instant, et nous continuons de travailler au
reste.

8 Hermann Dollmayr, ' Eaffael's Werkstiitte,' Jahrbuch der TcunsthistoriscJien
Sammlungen des Kaiserhauses, vol. xvi. (Vienna, 1895). Keviewed by Eugene Mvintz
in tbe Athenceum, July 11, 1896, No. 3585.

9 Treasures of Art in Great Britain (London, 1854), ii. 28.

10 Gualtiero Papers, MS. 20309, British Museum, folio 207. The letter is not
dated, but it was written during the summer of 1721.

1000 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

To those who know what an ' entire re-establishment ' at the
hands of eighteenth-century workers means, it will be clear that the
present state of the colour and of the execution cannot allow us to
judge of the original state of the picture. It certainly cannot allow
us to ascribe it to Penni rather than to Raphael.

Less discussed, but more important, are the two Titians — Venus
rising from the Sea and The Ages of Human Life — both once placed
in the great audience-room of the Palazzo Riario. The Ages belongs
to the great Venetian's earlier period, the Venus to his period of
glorious maturity, and they both still are, as they have always been,
reckoned among his best productions. The figure of Venus is perhaps
not free from a certain sensuousness in its fulness of form, but the
expression of the face and the grace of the attitude have an irre-
sistible charm ; and in The Ages of Human Life the master gives us a
scene of idyllic poetry which has only been rivalled in his own time
by Giorgione, and in ours by Bocklin.

Both pictures, especially the Venus, have suffered not a little
from well-meant renovation. In the Queen's time they had the
advantage of being seen in plain gilt frames. Let us hope that privi-
lege may some day be restored to them.

Paolo Veronese's Venus bewailing the Death of Adonis came from
Prague, and was in Christina's palace hung in the audience-room,
together with six others of the same master, under the great plafonds
which are now in the National Gallery. The effect of that series must
have been very great, but in its present place in the Bridgewater House
gallery the picture is not seen to full advantage, isolated as it is from
its proper surroundings.

Correggio's Vierge au Panier, of which the original is in the National
Gallery, is represented at Bridgewater House by an excellent copy or
duplicate. It was acquired by Christina in Italy, and was considered
by her, and during its stay in the Orleans Gallery, as an original.

Parmigianino's Cupid shaping his Bow has long been considered
an original. It is, however, now known that the faithful keeper of
the Prague Gallery, Eusebius Miseron, had some of the best pictures,
among them Parmigianino's Cupid, sent away to Vienna before the
city was invested by the Swedes. A copy, said to be executed by
Rudolph the Second's favourite painter, Joseph Heinz, was left
behind, and fell into the hands of Konigsmarck. In Christina's cata-
logues it is attributed to Parmigianino, but at one time, during the
stay of the picture in the Odescalchi collection, it was ascribed to
Correggio, and it was offered as such to the Regent. In its present
state Heinz's copy is certainly superior to the original in Vienna.
The sarcastic glance with which Cupid seems to look on the spectator
recalls to the mind the famous verse of Voltaire :

Qui que tu sois, voici ton maitre,
II Test, le fut, ou le doit etre.

1904 QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PICTURES 1001

It may amuse the reader to know that in one of the Queen's cata-
logues this Cupid is described as ' a naked woman seen from behind.'

Another splendid picture is Annibale Caracci's Danae. It belonged
at one time to the Pamfili family, and was then placed in their magni-
ficent summer-house on the Janiculus, Vigna di Belrespiro, now
Villa Doria Pamfili. It was given to the Queen on the occasion of
her first visit to the villa, in February 1656, by Don Camillo Pamfili,
Prince of Rossano, husband of the beautiful and famous Olimpia
Aldobrandini. During its stay in the Palazzo Riario it was somewhat
eclipsed by the superior charm of Correggio's Danae,n but now that
it has escaped that dangerous proximity its powerful design and rich
colouring might be more appreciated, if only it enjoyed a better
light.

The Portrait of a Doge in the State drawing-room was acquired by
the Queen in Rome as a work of Palma Vecchio. This attribution is,
however, not supported by any evidence, and few modern critics
would recognise in it the hand of Palma.

Another portrait of A Gentleman with a Book, by Tintoretto, came
to the Queen from the Buckingham collection, in the catalogue of
which it is described as ' No. 7. Tintoret : Le portrait d'un homme
assis, haut 4 pieds, large 3.' The colours have now darkened too
much to judge of its original state.

The Christ before Pilate of Andrea Schiavone, the Holy Family
of Paris Bordone, and the Christ at Emmaus by Scarsellino have also
belonged to the Queen. The latter came from Rudolph the Second's
collection, while the two former were acquired in Italy. Bordone's
picture was ascribed to Pordenone in the Queen's catalogue, and to
Giorgione at the time of the Regent's purchase. It was sold in London
in 1798 under the same illustrious name, to which it certainly is not
entitled. Whether the present ascription is the right one I should
not like to say.

Last, but not least, Gerard Dou's magnificent Fiddler for a few
years graced the Queen's collection at Stockholm. It was bought for
her from Dou, together with eight others of his best pieces, by Chris-
tina's minister-resident at the Hague, Pieter Spiering, but the Queen
returned them all to Spiering before her departure for Rome in 1654.

And now let us cross over to Stafford House. The Venus, Mer-
cury, and Cupid of Andrea Schiavone came to the Queen from Prague
under the name of Titian, which modern critics will not allow it to
retain. Cupid is charmingly painted, and the figure of Mercury has
both vigour and grace, but it would be difficult to say the same about
Venus. The head is especially weak, and there is certainly nothing
of Titian about it. It is nevertheless an agreeable picture, which
would be seen to better advantage if it were hung a little lower.

The Mule-driver of Correggio is more remarkable for the stories
11 Now in the Villa Borghese, Rome.

VOL. LVI— No. 334 3 II

1002 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

that have been circulated about it than for its beauty. It has been
said that it was painted by Correggio to pay a debt which he had
run up with the keeper of an inn on the Via Flaminia outside Rome ;
also that it was used as a shutter or blind for a window in the royal
stables at Stockholm. Unfortunately, it is equally uncertain whether
Correggio really painted the picture or whether it ever was in Stock-
holm. It seems more likely that the Queen acquired it in Italy.
Her catalogue mentions it as a Correggio, but if it is one it certainly
is a bad one. A small picture, representing the martyrdom of St.
Bartholomew, is now ascribed to Agostino Caracci. It came originally
from Prague, and when in the Queen's possession went under the name
of Guido Reni, while during its stay in the Odescalchi collection it
was ascribed to Lodovico Caracci. Of the latter there is an Ecce
Homo, which the Queen had acquired in Italy. It then bore Annibale
Caracci's name, and was described in the Odescalchi catalogue as of
' incomparable beauty.' True, that catalogue was compiled in view
of a sale.

Sir Frederick Cook's gallery in Richmond gives its splendid hospi-
tality to one of the gems of Rudolph the Second's and Christina's
collections — Titian's famous UEsdavonne. It is now generally pre-
sumed to be a portrait of Laura de' Dianti, the beloved mistress of
Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. At Prague it was called * a
Turkish woman,' probably on account of the head-dress, while in
Rome it became known as ' la Schiavona ' — a name it is likely to
retain. There are several copies in existence, the best known in the
museum at Modena, and hypercritical judges have not been wanting
who have declared the Richmond picture also to be a copy — after a
lost original. It has, however, a broadness of touch which is scarcely
ever found in a copy, and a transparency in the shadows which
seems to mark it as the handiwork of Titian himself. The picture has
suffered some slight damage during its journeys, but it still remains
a thing of joy and beauty. It has, besides, the advantage of being
most appropriately framed. Queen Christina has also been the
owner of Veronese's Man between Virtue and Vice, of which Sir F.
Cook and Lord Francis Hope, at Deepdene, have each a reproduction.
Which of these two is the Queen's I have not been able to ascertain.

The picture gallery of the Earl of Darnley at Cobham Hall con-
tains two of the Queen's old pictures. A copy of Venus at the Mirror,
by Titian, the original of which is in the Hermitage, came from Prague.
The Tomyris of Rubens was acquired by the Queen later, perhaps
during her stay in the Netherlands. Four other pictures of the
Queen's — Pordenone's Milon of Croton and Hercules and Achelous,
and Ribeira's Heraclitus and Democritus — have been sold from Cobham
Hall, and I have not been able to trace their whereabouts.

There are still about forty pictures from the Queen's gallery which
ware last sold in England and are still believed to be here. The most

1904 QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PICTURES 1003

important of them are Palma Vecchio's Venus and Cupid, Titian's
Venus and a Lute-player, Veronese's Mercury and Herse, now in the
Fitz william Museum at Cambridge, Andrea del Sarto's Leda, Veronese's
Mars and Venus, now at Mr. Wertheimer's, and Rubens's Venus
returning from the Chase, Venus weeping over Adonis, and Ganymedes.
The others are not particularly interesting.

Palma's Venus and Cupid is one of the finest of the Queen's
pictures. It was called in her catalogue an opera assai bella, and it
well deserves that name. There is a quiet majestic grace about the
figure of the goddess and a charming naivete in that of Cupid,
eagerly stretching forth his hand for the arrow his mother is giving
him. The colouring is rich and harmonious, the modelling of the
flesh exquisite, although obtained by the simplest means, and the
background shows a delightful piece of landscape. The foliage and
flowers of the foreground are the weakest part of the picture, and
show traces of repainting. Otherwise the state of preservation is
perfect. This truly magnificent specimen of the Venetian school came
to the Queen from Rudolph the Second's collection.

Titian's Venus has suffered much from repainting and restora-
tion, and in its present state certainly differs very much from what it
looked like when it left the master's atelier ; that is to say, if it ever
was there. There are two similar pictures by Titian in Madrid and
in the Uffizi, and one in Dresden, which is now recognised to be a copy
by some Flemish artist. Whether the Fitzwilliam replica is a school-
picture or simply a copy, I must leave to specialists to decide. I
should not be surprised if they ended by deciding to ascribe it to some
of the Flemish or German artists that worked for Rudolph the Second.
I must add, however, that the Queen's catalogue mentions that the
head of Venus was painted by Paul Veronese.

There ought not to be any doubt as to the authenticity of Veronese's
Mercury and Herse, as it is signed — rather a rare occurrence, by the
way — and has the characteristic fine silvery tone, which copyists have
found so difficult to imitate. The favourite term of the modern
critic, ' school picture,' will probably, nevertheless, be applied to it
by some ; but it does not seem likely that Veronese, who generally
neglected to sign his works, should have gone out of his way to affix
his name to a mere school picture. The frame, unfortunately, covers
a little of the canvas ; otherwise the state of the picture is excellent.

BlLDT.

3 U 2

1004 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

ONE LESSON FROM THE BECK CASE

THOUGH the results of the pending inquiry in the Adolf Beck case
may perhaps be known before these sentences appear in print, I will
not be guilty of the impropriety of commenting upon any of the
questions which have been referred to the Master of the Rolls' Com-
mittee ; but there can be nothing unseemly in appealing to public
and undisputed facts to point a useful moral.

Sympathy with Mr. Beck, and indignation at the wrongs he has
suffered, have been intensified by the fact that he is a stranger in
this country, and therefore, in a sense, our guest. Had the victim of
these wrongs been an Englishman, it is doubtful if such an inquiry
would ever have been held ; but, be that as it may, the case is im-
portant as affording fresh and striking proof of the need of one of the
reforms in criminal procedure which I have for years been advocating
in these pages.

Lawyers may differ as to the Common Serjeant's ruling at the
1896 trial, in rejecting certain evidence upon which the counsel for
the accused relied to establish his client's innocence. That the
admission of that evidence might have led to an acquittal may be
conceded ; but that it would certainly have had that effect no one
would venture to assert. For while it is true that criminals rarely
copy one another in the details of their crimes, it is not true that
they never do so. An argumentative defence based on the evidence
thus ruled out would no doubt have disposed of the charge against
the prisoner if the witnesses had been few in number, or if their credit
had been damaged by cross-examination ; but, in view of the un-
doubted fact that a number of persons had been robbed, and that
their testimony against the prisoner was unhesitating and unshaken,
it is by no means certain that the rejected evidence would have cleared
him. Neither is it certain, I may remark in passing, that any Court
of Criminal Appeal, acting under our present law and practice, would
have reversed the verdict. The only inquiry which would certainly
have saved the victim of this terrible miscarriage of justice, either
at the 1896 trial or at the trial before Mr. Justice Grantham in the
present year, would have been an after- verdict inquiry such as I have

been pleading for — an inquiry of a kind now unknown to the criminal
law of England.

But I should not sit down to write this article if I had nothing
to offer but inferences and arguments based upon the Beck case.
What leads me to take up my pen is that a recent Irish case — a case
which, though it has received no attention in England, is, in a sense,
more interesting and important than the Beck case — affords striking
proof of the need and of the practical value of a reform such as I
advocate.

In the month of August last year a Mr. Francis du Bedat, well
known in business circles in Dublin — he was at one time president of
the Dublin Stock Exchange — was tried before Mr. Justice Wright,
of the Irish Court of King's Bench, on a charge of fraudulently
obtaining money to finance a scheme for the construction of certain
works in South Africa, under a concession from the Portuguese Govern-
ment. The fact of the concession was not in dispute ; but it was
proved at the trial that it had been cancelled before the accused had
applied for and obtained money on account of it. The prisoner was
convicted of the offence charged, and sentenced to penal servitude.

Mr. du Bedat having been made bankrupt, the matter on which
the criminal charge was founded afterwards came before Mr. Justice
Boyd, another judge of the King's Bench, sitting in bankruptcy.
Text-books on the law of evidence have no place in proceedings in
bankruptcy. The court sets itself to get at the truth and facts of a
case without regard to technical rules of evidence or abstract prin-
ciples of any kind ; and as the result of the searching inquiry which
was thus held, payments were authorised from the bankrupt's estate
in furtherance of the very scheme in respect of which he had been con-
victed and sentenced. It was not that there was any conflict of juris-
diction, or friction of any kind between the judges. It is more than
probable that if the conduct of the bankruptcy proceedings had not
rested with an exceptionally strong and fearless judge he would have
shirked an inquiry which reopened a chose jugee ; but the fact was
recognised that the evidence which led him to take a favourable view
of the bankrupt's action could not have been received at the trial.
And yet upon that evidence the Government ordered the discharge of
the prisoner, with the full concurrence of the judge who had sentenced
him.

Several pages might be filled with details, culled from the Irish
newspapers, of this remarkable and interesting case. But space is
valuable ; and, moreover, such a digression would bring in the name
of a well-known public man, whose action, or inaction, was com-
mented on by the judge ; and the main facts and salient points of the
case are sufficient for my purpose. As I have already said, the granting
of the concession, which formed the subject matter of the criminal
trial and of the hearing in bankruptcy, was never in doubt. The

1006 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Dec.

fact that the concession had been cancelled was proved by the pro-
duction of the official gazette of the Portuguese Government ; and
the evidence at the trial seemed to establish that the accused had
knowledge of its cancellation. But there were further facts. The
concession contained a clause empowering the Portuguese Govern-
ment at any time to take over, without compensation, any works
constructed under it. This clause, it was understood, would be acted
on only in case reasons of State policy demanded it ; but its effect
was to create such difficulties in obtaining money that the purpose
for which the concession was granted was in danger of being frus-
trated ; and the concession was cancelled, not to put an end to the
scheme, but with a view to its revival on more favourable terms.
Though it was cancelled technically and in law, it was still alive in
an equitable sense. And as no works had yet been constructed, no
notice of the cancellation was given, save the entry in the gazette ;
and knowledge of this had never reached Mr. du Bedat.

All this was clearly proved in the Court of Bankruptcy ; but the
proofs were of such a kind that they could not have been made evidence
in the criminal court ; and, as a matter of fact, the scheme which,
in the absence of these proofs, was adjudged to be fraudulent, has
since been revived, and the unfortunate bankrupt has been enabled^
by the help of the Court of Bankruptcy, to secure a valuable interest
in it.

I cannot conceive how anyone who studies Mr. Justice Grantham's
statement to the Master of the Rolls' Committee can doubt that, if
after the verdict had been given in the Beck case this year, instead
of conferring privately with the lawyers and police officers and
writing to the Home Office, he could have proceeded to hold a full
and searching inquiry, like that of the Bankruptcy Court, untram-
meled by technicalities and rules of evidence, he would have arrived
at the truth, and Mr. Beck could have cleared himself of the charge.
And I have cited Mr. du Bedat's case as an actual instance of the
effect of such an inquiry in rescuing an innocent man from penal
servitude. In previous articles [ I have shown the need of such
inquiries to prevent that sort of modified miscarriage of justice which
occurs incessantly under our stupid ' punishment of crime ' system,
in allowing deliberate and dangerous criminals to escape with sen-
tences which afford no adequate protection to the community ; and
I have explained that the proposal is merely an enlargement and
adaptation of a scheme formulated by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen
in his History of the Criminal Law of England. But my special pur-
pose here and now is to call attention to the fact that such inquiries
would afford a safeguard against the imprisonment of the innocent.

I have already expressed a doubt whether a Court of Criminal

1 See, ex. gr., The Nineteenth Century of last January, and of March 1903, and mjr
first article of this series, which appeared in February 1901.

1904 ONE LESSON FROM THE BECK CASE 1007

Appeal would have saved Mr. Beck either in 1896 or in 1904. It
would certainly not have done so in 1896 if the excluded evidence
had been heard, and after hearing it the jury had convicted. For if
the decision of a competent court on issues of fact, based on the un-
shaken evidence of a dozen witnesses, is to be set aside on appeal,
we may as well abolish trial by jury at once. But how could such a
court have saved Mr. du Bedat ? There was no question of mis-
direction or of mistake in law ; and a new trial would have been
subject to the same rules of evidence that precluded his clearing him-
self in the trial before Mr. Justice Wright.

The plain fact is that our rules and methods of criminal procedure
are devised in the interests of wrong-doers. An innocent man wel-
comes the fullest and freest inquiry ; and such an inquiry is a benefit
also to anyone whose only lapse is the particular offence charged
against him. Very few of the judges, moreover, now cling to the
1 Vicegerent of the Deity ' theory — that it is their duty ' to fit the
punishment to the sin.' If that be the function of a judge, he ought
to have an ecclesiastic, or theologian of some sort, as assessor. But
my point is that while our best judges are earnestly desirous to obtain
the fullest information about a prisoner's character and antecedents,
to enable them to decide what sentence the public interests demand,
the law makes no provision for any inquiry to this end. Our methods
are a survival of the days when judges had practically no discretion
in sentencing prisoners ; and, as a conviction for felony was followed
by a death sentence, the rules of evidence were framed to give accused
persons every chance, not of proving their innocence, but of escaping
proof of their guilt. For a judge to go behind the evidence was not
only impracticable but useless.

But now that judges have the widest discretion in apportioning
sentences, it is almost essential to get behind the evidence ; and, as
I have shown in preceding articles, the action usually taken for this
purpose is very seldom adequate or satisfactory. It is unfair, more-
over, even to an habitual criminal, that statements to his prejudice
should be sprung upon him at a time and in a manner to preclude his
answering them ; while in the case of the victim of a false charge
it is a monstrous outrage. In his Fifty Years of Public Service, Major
Griffiths notices the difference in the demeanour of the real culprit
and of the innocent person wrongly accused. The one, he says,
' knows the worst, and can count the cost ; while the innocent, con-
fused and confounded at the charge brought against him, cannot
frame words of defence.' And this is intensified after conviction,
when a prisoner has no longer the aid of counsel. Mr. Beck has
declared that the effect of his trial and conviction was to reduce him
almost to the condition of an imbecile ; and what happened to him
may happen to others. It is bad enough that professional criminals
should so constantly escape the fate they deserve, and that the com-

1008 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

munity should be so inadequately protected against their depreda-
tions ; but it is intolerable that methods designed to screen the guilty
should operate to entangle and crush the innocent.

Trial by jury is said by some to be derived from the ancient
doctrine and practice of trial by those to whom an accused person was
known ; but, strange to say, one of the essential elements in such a
trial to-day is that the jury shall be composed of those to whom the
accused is not known ; and this theory is scrupulously respected even
in circumstances that make it the merest fiction. The pedantry of
it becomes grotesque when a prominent and well-known financier, on
being charged with an offence, loses his individuality and becomes * a
man named Hooley.' And in these days of newspapers it is no less a
fiction in the case of every sensational or important crime. For
the practice of trying a case twice over, first before a magistrate
and then in a superior court, has become so settled and habitual that
even the lawyers have come to think it is required by the law of
England. I recall a case of public interest and notoriety in which
I appeared for the Crown, where a prisoner was committed for one
offence and tried for another, in respect of which no evidence what-
ever had been offered in the magistrate's court. There is nothing in
our law to prevent this, and in the case in question it operated entirely
in favour of the prisoner.

That the prevailing practice is generally favourable to an accused
person may be conceded ; but it is sometimes very hard upon an im-
pecunious defendant, and in cases where the ' man named Hooley '
theory is of importance to the prisoner it always operates unfairly.
It is one thing to put ' a man named John Doe ' on his trial for a
sensational burglary ; but it is another matter, and the case bears a
very different aspect, when it is known that ' John Doe * is really a
notorious burglar who has served many terms of penal servitude for
earlier crimes. Though this information is always before the judge,
the jury is supposed to know nothing of it, whereas, in fact, it has
been announced openly at Bow Street, and published broadcast, with
sensational headlines, in all the halfpenny newspapers.

And mark how this may operate in a case like that which is now
before the public. Who can say that some member of the jury that
convicted Mr. Beck in 1896 had not learned from the police-court
proceedings that Adolf Beck was the John Smith of a previous con-
viction ? Who can say that no one of the jurors who convicted him
this year had read the report of the magisterial inquiry which an-
nounced that he had been convicted of a precisely similar crime in
1896 ? Is it likely that out of twelve newspaper readers not one
would have noticed the case ? And the one would, of course, pass
the word to his eleven fellow- jurors.

By all means let us so reform our procedure that even ' Bill Sikes '
shall have a fair trial, unprejudiced by any knowledge of his career.

1904 ONE LESSON FROM THE BECK CASE 1009

But let the reform include the abandonment of the evil and stupid

* punishment of crime ' system under which the wicked and the
weak now fare alike, and the innocent are in danger of sharing their
common fate. Our present methods of dealing with offenders are, as
I have said, the result of mere drifting. Is it too much to expect
that, in this much-vaunted twentieth century, the whole question
should be reopened in the light of primary principles and of plain
facts ?

I have more than once argued the matter by supposing the case
of a new community in which, after a time, the 'general peace and
confidence become disturbed by the lapse of certain of its members.
How are the delinquents to be dealt with ? They may, on convic-
tion, be registered, and photographed, and measured, and then, after
undergoing certain terms of imprisonment, be released to prey again
upon the community, this being repeated every time they return to
their evil ways ; or they may, after fair warning, be shut up for good,
or otherwise got rid of altogether. Would any sane and sensible
person hesitate in deciding between these rival methods ? Under the
one a skilled and costly detective police force must be organised to
watch the criminals, and the inhabitants must change their habits,
and learn to live, as we do in London, in a modified state of siege,
behind bolts and bars. Under the other, the community may con-
tinue to enjoy security and peace. If some petty and troublesome
minority began to agitate for the system which prevails in England
to-day, would not their neighbours raise the question whether a
lunatic asylum should not be added to the public establishments ?

But, it may be objected, an abstract and a priori discussion of a
question of this kind is of little value. Let us deal with it, then, in
a practical way upon the known facts of the prison population. Take
any prison to which prisoners of all classes are committed, and pro-
ceed, by the help of prison and police officials, to classify the inmates.
They are all criminals, of course ; but some of them are criminals
only in the sense that they have committed crimes, while others are
criminals in the sense that the commission of crime is the habit and
business of their lives. As we pursue our inquiries we shall find that
some who belong to the former class are registered as ' habitual
criminals,' and that the latter class includes some of the worst pro-
fessional criminals.

' But is that possible ? ' some one will exclaim. It is not only possible,
but not uncommon under our ' punishment of crime ' system. * The
sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done ; ' and so this
man yielded to the temptation. Having fallen once, it was easy to
fall again ; and on this second conviction he became in law an

* habitual,' albeit he struggled to retrieve his character, and was at
honest work until his second lapse. But here is another man who
never did an honest day's work in his life, and who has been preying

1010 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

on the community for twenty years. Too clever, however, to be
caught, he has never before been convicted, and poses as a first
offender.

But, it will be demanded, did not the judge in both instances
inquire about all this ? Yes ; probably to the extent of asking the
police officers in charge of the respective cases what was known of
the prisoner. But information thus given ex parte, in an informal
inquiry devoid of legal sanction, affords no adequate basis for a
judicial sentence, and judges naturally use it with hesitation and
reserve.

But to resume ; for I must not turn aside to go over ground fully
covered in previous articles. A further examination of the two
main divisions of the inmates of a gaol will suggest a further classifi-
cation. There are some who have the honest wish to break with the
past and retrieve their character, and there are others who have
neither the intention nor the wish to be reformed. Is it not obvious
that men who, of set purpose, intend to use liberty to commit crimes
ought not to be set at liberty at all ? But how can this purpose be
ascertained ? In regard to the worst, and in that sense the most
important cases, there would be no difficulty in the matter. These
really bad criminals are happily but a small minority of the whole,
and yet it is they who give most trouble to the police, and cause
most loss to the community, and it is by them chiefly that others
are drawn into the criminal ranks. I believe that no man is hope-
lessly incorrigible ; but with men of this type, the best, if not the
only, prospect of making them lead a useful life is to put it out of
their power to lead a mischievous life. Let them have due warning,
and every opportunity to profit by it ; and if they give proof that
they either cannot or will not run straight, then let them be treated
as moral lunatics and committed during His Majesty's pleasure. Here
I need but refer to my article of last May, begging attention specially
to the paragraph endorsed by Mr. Justice Wills. My present purpose
is not to repeat what I have previously urged, but to indicate that
reforms which I have hitherto advocated for the protection of society
would operate powerfully for the protection of innocent persons
wrongly charged with crime.

Outside the scope of this article there lie questions of far-reaching
reforms in criminology. For the majority of the inmates of every
* local ' prison are the wretched victims of the short-sentence craze —
prisoners who are committed for terms so brief that in their case
reform is impracticable, and the chief effect of their detention is to
make them increasingly unfit for liberty. Among these the most to
be pitied are the young. Mercy will sometimes unite with justice
in demanding their imprisonment ; but if a youth must be sent to
gaol at all, it should be for a period long enough to give efforts for
his reformation a fair chance of success, and imprisonment should be

1904 ONE LESSON FBOM THE BECK CASE 1011

resorted to only where no more suitable punishment is possible or
adequate. A short term of imprisonment makes a hero of the

* hooligan.' Upon a lad of another kind it may leave a brand that
will injure his prospects for life. But if the ' hooligan ' were flogged
in the police-court yard, and then and there turned out among his

* pals,' he would be no hero either to them or to himself. And with
the other sort of boy similar treatment would often be not only more
effectual, but kinder, than imprisonment. Nine-tenths of the com-
munity would endorse this statement, but here in England we seem
to be governed in all such matters by aggressive and noisy minorities.

We should seek to check committals to prison, and we should
seek also to make imprisonment answer its purpose, whatever that
purpose may be. Some offenders need punishment, others reforma-
tion, and others, again, are committed with the main object of pro-
tecting the community against their misdeeds. But all are now
treated alike ; for prison discipline, like death, levels all distinctions.
In his book already cited, Major Griffiths tells the story of a gunboat
which the Admiralty sent to the East with a medicine chest instead
of a medical officer on board, ordering the commander to take charge
of it, and to use his discretion in doctoring the ship's company. But
the captain knew nothing of medicine, so he had all the bottles emptied
into a pail, and any man that went sick got a dose of the mixture.
for, as he explained, there was bound to be something in it to suit
him !

It is on this system we deal with our criminals ; and in saying
this I am neither unmindful nor unappreciative of the praiseworthy
efforts of my friend Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise and his colleagues to
introduce reforms, especially in the case of the young ; nor is it any
fault of theirs that in these respects they resemble the criminals
whose struggles to mend their ways are hindered by want of help
and inability to break with the past.

ROBERT ANDERSON.

1012 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

THE GERMAN NAVY LEAGUE

THE time is not long past when the German people were often re-
proached, by home as well as by foreign critics, for deficiency of
national pride. Though there was perhaps a certain amount of
reason for this criticism, the judgment formed rested very largely
on externalities, which are apt to deceive. However, of these signs
one in particular used to be mentioned by way of illustration. In
Great Britain, where, as it is well known, the home-manufactured
article is preferred, goods marked, say, * Made in Germany ' have
always been looked upon with suspicion, the expression having been
introduced with the intention of deterring would-be purchasers from
acquiring them. But in Germany, as it is on all hands admitted, the
equivalent of * Made in England ' is an advertisement — a mark of
superiority, as it were, even though it is pretty generally known
that fully 90 per cent, of these wares, if not indeed even more, are the
product of German workshops. Conclusions of an adverse character
have also been drawn, especially by French critics, from the fact
that in almost every large German family two or three of the children
have been given a foreign name — Charles, Harry, and John, of English
names, being common — just as if there were only comparatively a
few good German Christian names to select from. Then it has often
been pointed out that when a German takes up his residence in a
foreign country, no matter what its political relation to the Father-
land may be, he soon assimilates the habits and manners of that
country's nation, and to a very large extent throws ofi his nationality.
Nor does the latter remark apply only to those Germans who have
made a foreign country their permanent domicile. Indeed, this mode
of adopting foreign customs is, so we are told by the critics of the
nation in question, very observable in a German who returns to his
own country after, say, two or three years' residence in London, or
Paris, or New York. For he more often than not endeavours to
introduce into his home some of the customs which he has picked
up abroad. Moreover, his relatives, it would seem, show a disposi-
tion to give way to him, for, as Bismarck said, he is treated * as if
he wore the epaulettes of an officer,' that is, as if he were some quite
superior person.

But, as has already been said, criticism of this kind applies to the

1904 THE GERMAN NAVY LEAGUE 1013

past rather than to the present. German national pride found itself,
as it were, in the great days of 1870-71, and, since the establishment
of the Empire, Germans, taking them as a whole, have not been by
any means wanting in this respect. Bismarck was well familiar with
this new and interesting phase in the national tendency, and, indeed,
his famous saying, ' We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the
world,' refers to this latter quality of the German character. And,
further, he who observes from a distance, but closely, cannot fail to
be struck by the yearly growth of pride of country and enthusiasm
to see the Fatherland excel in all things. As an indication of this
one need only point to the ever-lengthening list of patriotic national
institutions and associations, which have been and are being formed
in all parts of the Empire. Of these, one in particular stands out most
prominently — the German Navy League.

This association of patriots, who take deep and active interest in
all matters connected with the progress and well-being of the Father-
land, was formed, under the immediate patronage of Prince Henry
of Prussia, as recently as the year 1898 — that is to say, some
six years ago — yet already there are branches scattered all over
the Empire, and even abroad wherever Germans are to be found
in any number. They exist not for comradeship only, and for the
sake of looking after the Imperial naval affairs, but also — and no
doubt mainly — for the purpose of furthering and consolidating the
general interests of the Navy as well as those of the Mercantile
Marine. Indeed, the object of its existence has been briefly and
officially denned as follows : * To arouse, to stimulate, and to
strengthen the interest of the German people in the importance
and the duties of a navy : to educate them, and to guide them, as
it were.' In connection with this, it is interesting to record that the
League was established just at the right moment. Had the idea
been acted upon some time previously to 1898, it is, on the whole,
to say the least, improbable that it would have been attended with
any particular success. For, speaking generally — that is, so far as
popular interest is concerned — naval affairs were not then much
discussed, at least outside official circles. To explain this, I need
only refer to the fact that, from the historical point of view, it was
not till 1897 that the Emperor William made manifest the most
active and practical interest both in the subject and in the
proposal to create a powerful German navy, though, on the other
hand, his leaning in this direction had been known to those who
stood near him for a considerable number of years previously.
Even when he was Prince William he devoted much time to the
study of the whole question, in illustration of which the following
from a recent publication may be quoted in full : j

If people had been aware of the zeal with which the unassuming Prince
William, who then appeared to be a long way from the throne, studied and

1014 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

worked in the privacy of the Potsdam Marble Palace, there would not have
been so much surprise at the fact that immediately after he ascended the
throne he showed a striking interest in naval matters. By means of untiring
industry, a highly developed faculty of grasping facts, and a magnificent
adaptability, he has become a first-rate naval expert, and is as familiar with all
the details of naval service and naval science as any professional naval officer
of long standing. Equipped with this knowledge he has been able to re-
organise, modernise, and develop the Navy, and to raise it to that powerful
fighting machine which it is to-day.

And, further, the honour which Queen Victoria bestowed on him in
1889 in appointing him Honorary Admiral of the British Navy helped
considerably, as there is every reason to assume, to determine him
to formulate a strong naval policy. In 1897, owing to political con-
siderations which, however, need not be enlarged upon here, the
Kaiser felt that the time had come for the vigorous prosecution of
his views, the Navy Bill was introduced into the Reichstag, and every
member of the Imperial Parliament had placed into his hand a paper
containing a mass of information, which the Emperor had been chiefly
instrumental in collecting, together with an elaboration of the scheme
which he himself had drawn up. The attention of the whole nation
was, therefore, more or less forcibly called to this subject, and immense
interest was aroused. This was the time for the foundation of a Navy
League, and in April 1898 a number of influential people took the
initiative and formed the now famous League which played a consider-
able part in furthering the Emperor's programme.

But the efforts of the League would have been more quickly effective,
if its leaders had from the first clearly defined their political attitude.
The names of many of the more prominent members were not such
as to give the public any distinct idea of what political colour the
association as a whole would be. The consequence was that it did
not receive as much support as otherwise it would have done, and,
moreover, it was looked upon with a considerable amount of suspicion.
Conservatives regarded it as a Liberal or Radical organisation ;
Liberals feared that it had Conservative proclivities ; the Social
Democrats denounced it as a Liberal or Conservative institution — as
a matter of fact, it did not matter much which ; and the press,
echoing these widely divergent views, showed a disposition to treat
it in what may be mildly described as a grandmotherly way. In
order that this situation may be properly understood, it is necessary
to point out that political parties in Germany are in a con-
siderably different position as regards the question of Imperialism
from what is the case in other countries. Apart from the ordinary
political parties, there are two great parties which have no parti-
cular name and no special organisation, and are not much heard
of out of Germany, but, nevertheless, they exercise enormous in-
fluence throughout the Empire. One party holds the opinion that
the prosperity and strength of the Empire depend upon the Empire

1904 THE GERMAN NAVY LEAGUE 1015

being developed as a united whole ; the other party believes that the
peculiarities of each individual State should be specially considered
first of all. It is, therefore, not a little difficult for a national associa-
tion such as the German Navy League to gain the goodwill of all
parties, and the Navy League in its earlier days failed altogether to
draw up a programme which was generally acceptable. The con-
sequence was that even in 1900, when the Navy Bill was passed in
the Reichstag by a large majority, the membership of the League was,
comparatively speaking, very small, though, as has already been said,
the League did good work in helping to popularise the Emperor's
scheme.

But it was not, after all, very long before the Council of the League
recognised to the full the difficulty in which they were placed, and
the mistaken views which prevailed, and, with the object of amending
matters as quickly and as satisfactorily as possible, invoked the aid
of the Prussian High Court of Justice. The Court was asked to give
judgment — under the law to which the existence and regulation of
associations, political and otherwise, are subject — on the status of the
Navy League, and, after making a rigid investigation and hearing a
large body of evidence, declared ' that the German Navy League is
not a political association, but one which aims at influencing public
opinion in certain patriotic matters.' This pronouncement on the
part of the High Court had an extraordinarily favourable effect upon
the German public. The press of all shades of opinion now began to
devote much attention to the matter, with which the object of the
Navy League was intimately connected ; the importance of the
existence of the League for the Empire as a whole gave rise to far-
reaching discussions in both private and political circles, and the old
suspicion was put aside. Finally, there was a huge rush to join the
League, with the result that in December 1901 — twelve months after
the Court had given its decision — the number of members of the League
amounted to the enormous total of 626,201. In some cases clubs and
institutions joined bodily, and so also did the employes at several
manufactories. It is safe to say that if the Council had taken this
step earlier — that is, during the height of the interest which was
generally manifested in the Navy Bill — millions, not hundreds of thou-
sands, would have joined in 1900. For many Germans, from purely
theoretical reasons, refrained from becoming members, though they
were in full sympathy with the aims and objects of that institution,
because they thought that as the Navy Bill had been passed into law
the existence of the Navy League was no longer necessary — a riew,
as will be seen later on, which is quite erroneous, the Navy League
at the present time being engaged in much excellent work.

There are, on the whole, few national institutions which can show,
so far as the minutest details, management, and general administra-
tion are concerned, such a splendid organisation as the Navy League.

1016 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

Indeed, it may briefly be said that there is nothing haphazard in it.
From the outset, sufficient care has been exercised and the necessary
steps without much delay taken that it shall cover the whole Empire.
The headquarters are, of course, in Berlin, but each State has a chief
branch in the State capital. In direct communication with each of
these chief branches are smaller branches in the large cities and towns,
and each local branch is a centre for the branches in the small towns,
villages, and hamlets in the rural district around. No wonder, there-
fore, that, by means such as these, a thorough Imperial organisation
is maintained, and at the same time the peculiarities of the different
districts are properly observed, so that the necessary educational
methods and measures can be adequately and in due course carried
out. But, in addition to embracing the whole Empire, the Navy
League extends its arms beyond the German frontiers, for branches
are to be found in the colonies and in countries where considerable
numbers of children of the Fatherland reside — in Great Britain and
the United States for instance. Some idea of the enthusiasm for the
cause shown by oversea members may be gathered from the fact
that quite recently they paid, out of their own pockets, for the con-
struction of the gunboat Fatherland, which, after being built by one
of the oldest shipbuilding firms in Germany — Messrs. P. Schichau, in
Elbing — was placed at the disposal of the authorities of the Navy
League in Berlin. This warship, it is interesting to add, left Ham-
burg for Shanghai as recently as on the 4th of February last, her duty
being, among other similar objects, to help to protect and to pro-
mote German commerce in Chinese waters.

Coming now to the principal aims of the institution in question,
it may be pointed out that the chief of the duties which the German
Navy League has set for itself is, as has already been mentioned, to
arouse, to stimulate, and to maintain the interest of the general public
in naval matters. As a matter of fact, no better definition of the main
ideas and purposes of the League can be given than by quoting the
Emperor himself, who, in reply to a telegraphic announcement of the
formation of a provincial committee of the Navy League in Konigs-
berg (which was sent to him by Count Wilhelm von Bismarck, the
then Governor of the Province of East Prussia, at the beginning of
November 1899), said : ' I express the hope that, assisted by the
German Navy League, we shall succeed in convincing the German
nation at large more and more of the necessity of a powerful Navy,
commensurate with our interests and able to protect them.'

Briefly stated, with this object in view, the League has among
other things striven to inculcate into the minds of young men the
importance of the Navy, and to induce them to join it or the Mercan-
tile Marine. In order that the interest of as many young men as
possible may be obtained and kept alive, practical hints are given
to school teachers as to the best means of turning the attention of

1904 THE GEEMAN NAVY LEAGUE 1017

their young pupils to the advantages to be derived from adopting a
seafaring life. For this purpose a very informative and lucid text-
book on the Navy and the Mercantile Marine, written by some
of the leading naval experts in Germany, has been issued by the
corporation in question, and, though it is only a short time since
this book was first published, five large editions have already been
exhausted, the total sales amounting to between 35,000 and 40,000
copies. As regards the education of the public at large, this is done
by the free distribution of naval literature, by the gift of important
works on naval matters to public libraries, by lectures illustrated by
limelight and cinematograph views, and by arranging excursions to
sea at absurdly low rates for members of the League for the purpose
of enabling them to view warships and to be present at certain
manoeuvres — this last-mentioned undertaking having so far proved
to be an unqualified success.

But the League has its philanthropic as well as its educa-
tional side, for it supplements, as far as possible, the work of the State
in providing for those who have been incapacitated in serving the
nation at sea, and for the families of those who have either lost their
lives or been prevented by accident from earning a living wage. As
an instance of the really useful work being done in this respect, the
China Fund of the Navy League may be mentioned. It was formed
during the troubles in China in 1900, and every German and his
family who took any part whatever in the operations against the
Chinese rebels comes within the scope of the fund. If he was injured
or killed or died, and the State does not adequately assist him, or those
dependent upon him, then the League endeavours to do so, as far as
its financial position will permit. And, considering the comparatively
short existence of this institution, it is interesting to note that the
means which are at present at its disposal for such excellent purposes
as those which were just mentioned are on the whole considerable
and satisfactory in every respect.

As regards the income of the League, it may be said that this is
derived for the most part from the annual subscriptions of members.
The subscription, it deserves particularly to be pointed out, is not
a uniform one, for the League very wisely leaves it to the members
themselves — who are rich and poor, and of all shades of political
opinion, Conservative, Liberal, Advanced Radical, and even Social
Democrat — what their contribution to the common fund shall be. It
follows, therefore, that some subscriptions are large and others very
small ; but, speaking generally, this arrangement is attended by
highly satisfactory results, for the contributions to the funds in ques-
tion are, on the whole, quite liberal. Apart from this, other contri-
butions are also made, but in kind. It is significant not merely of
the interest in the League but of the real desire to further its work
in every possible way that a number of its members, shipowners and

VOL. LVI— No. 334 3 X

1018 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

rich merchants, have formed themselves into a sort of inner league,
and have purchased and equipped several training-ships. Perhaps
the best-known of these is the sailing-ship Elizabeth, on board of which
a great many boys are trained, and from which fully 200 are drafted
every year into the merchant service, which service, as is well known,
is a splendid recruiting ground for the Navy itself.

I must now revert to the question, so often discussed in Germany,
as to whether the existence of the Navy League has been necessary
since the passing of the Navy Bill in 1900. When this Bill became
law foreign critics in general, and a number of home critics also, were
of opinion that the programme which had thus been authorised by
the Imperial Parliament was so large that the Naval party could not,
even in their most optimistic moments, have hoped for anything better,
and, further, that any advance on this programme was out of the
question for many years to come. But the more far-sighted of politi-
cians, whose numbers, unfortunately, are very limited indeed, and
to whose untiring efforts the success of the Navy Bill in question
was mainly due, have by no means shared this opinion, and, needless
to say, among these were the leaders of the Navy League. Not long
after the passing of the Bill dissatisfaction began to be expressed,
and there cannot be much doubt that this dissatisfaction was largely
brought about and fostered by the quiet, but persistent, agitation of
the Navy League's representatives. To cut a long story short, it
was, among other objections raised in regard to the Bill, contended
that, in refusing to sanction the augmentation of ships in foreign
waters, the Reichstag had acted, to say the least, wrongly, and, in
addition, severe comments were made on the decision to extend the
active life of cruisers from fifteen to twenty years. Still graver was
the view taken of the action of the Reichstag in adopting the Bill
and at the same time trying to avoid an immediate increase, as it
were, in the annual naval expenditure ; for, it was argued, laudable
though the desire for economy on the part of those who are concerned
in public welfare always is, the avoidance of extra expenditure in the
immediate future was folly — that is, so far as this particular case is
concerned — inasmuch as it implied that the programme could not be
completed till 1917 at the earliest, and probably not till 1920.
The Navy League, therefore, considers that the advocacy of these
views alone, if indeed there were no others, is quite sufficient to
justify its continued existence, and there cannot be any doubt that
its activity in this respect has had a pronounced effect on public
opinion.

It may, possibly, be not out of place here to point out that the
policy with which the German Navy League is identified is almost
universally misunderstood outside Germany. This policy is thought
to be aggressive for the most part, but anyone who will dispassion-
ately study the German official documents, and will make himself

1904 THE GEEMAN NAVY LEAGUE 1019

acquainted with the grounds, as it were, on which the present pro-
gramme is based and advocated, can scarcely fail to be convinced
that it is not only justifiable, but absolutely imperative as well, and
this from the point of view of defence alone. Let it be briefly said
that the scheme which the Navy League and also the Government
favour is necessary, in the first instance, for the protection of the
German coast, say, in time of war ; secondly, for the protection of
German commerce in general ; and, thirdly, for the protection of
Germans who live beyond the seas. And, further, it will have to be
carried out as a condition sine qua non, as it were, if Germany is to
maintain her relative naval position compared with other nations,
and if she is ambitious to become a suitable ally for some strong Naval
Power. On this particular matter of German naval policy no one
has been more greatly misunderstood than the Emperor William.
One is at a loss to comprehend why such utterances as ' Our future
lies on the water,' and others of a similar character — such as, for instance,
' A fleet which we so bitterly want ' — should be regarded as threats
against some foreign nation, particularly Great Britain. The present
economic position of Germany shows clearly enough what these
expressions really mean. It has more than once been said by political
economists, not only German, but French as well, that * if Germany
does not sell goods abroad she will starve.' How perfectly correct
this statement is may be gathered from the fact that the German
foreign commerce at the present time amounts in value to about
550,000,0002. per annum, and of this fully two-thirds is sea-borne.
Another very important point is that not less than 300,000,0002. of
German capital is invested, by way of export of goods considerably
more than by that of actual bullion, as it should be added, in foreign
countries. And, further, there is another highly weighty factor,
often indeed ost sight of, but which must be taken into full con-
sideration, especially when naval matters are discussed — namely,
that Germany possesses at the present time what may justly be
described as an immense carrying fleet. It is, of course, small as com-
pared with the British Mercantile Marine, but then the latter is
known to be the largest in the world; and, consequently, no great
surprise was caused by the estimate contained in one of the recently
published Blue-books, which is to the effect that the value of the
goods imported annually into the United Kingdom as payment for
freight service amounts to 90,000,0002. But the case is totally different
as regards Germany, for her Mercantile Marine is, comparatively
speaking, a quite young one. Hence Herr Lotz's estimate, laid down
in an interesting article which he contributed to a recent number of
the Bankarchiv, that the revenue received by Germany at the present
time for freightage is something between 200,000,000 marks
(10,000,0002.) and 300,000,000 marks (15,000,0002.) is, to say the
least, deserving of special attention.

3 x2

1020 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec,

Again, the population of the Empire is increasing very rapidly — that
is, to the 'extent of about 850,000 annually. The necessity, indeed the
inevitability, of Germany's expansion beyond the seas is therefore
perfectly obvious, and, from the economic point of view alone, a strong
navy is an arm which Germany cannot possibly dispense with. If
Germany now possesses, as can easily be demonstrated on the strength
of some recently published official statistics, the second largest Mer-
cantile Marine in the world, it becomes therefore incumbent upon
her to take the necessary steps for the purpose of raising the status
of her navy to such a position as betokens a powerful nation and the
name of Germany, and as becomes the role which she plays in what
is usually called by German politicians ' Weltpolitik.' Moreover,
the Fatherland has in this matter to bear in mind the old truism —
usually ascribed to Napoleon, but which, as a matter of fact, can be
traced as far back as two centuries ago, namely, to an eminent German
(Dessauer) — that ' Providence is generally on the side of the big
battalions.' In connection with this, one is also reminded of what
the present First Sea-Lord, Sir John Fisher, said, in regard to the
historic Hague Conference. 'After all,' remarked that naval delegate
to the Conference in question, ' a strong British Navy is the strongest
argument for peace.' A further point to be taken into consideration is
that since 1900 the economic progress of the world, in which Germany
has shared, has advanced considerably, and this has caused an increase
of the general desire to afford adequate protection to commerce.
The United States gives us a good example of this. American com-
merce has increased rapidly of late, and the Imperial spirit has grown
stronger in the great Republic ; and, consequently, although there are
few colonies to protect, the United States Navy is being so increased
that in a few years it will be much larger than that of Germany.
Then there is the case of Russia. Previous to the outbreak of the
present war Russia found herself in a position — as she does now, for
that matter — of being able to convey her troops overland to any
point where she was likely to be attacked, and a fleet, therefore, was
unnecessary for the purpose of protecting transports ; yet Russia,
at the beginning of the present century, adopted a naval programme
which was intended to increase very largely the Tsar's power at sea.
Great Britain, also, since 1902, has considerably increased her naval
expenditure, the estimate for this year amounting to the enormous
sum of 34,450,0002., as against an actual outlay of 31,170,0002. in
1903. This increase in the British naval programme is often attri-
buted in Great Britain to the adoption in Germany of a bold naval
policy ; but in German political and naval circles, as it might not be
out of place to record here, a quite different view is held, it being
more or less generally thought that the reason for the increase lies in
the fact that in the course of the naval manoeuvres held, comparatively
speaking, quite recently — some three years ago (1901) — in which, as

1904 THE GERMAN NAVY LEAGUE 1021

it is well known, the French fleet participated — the British Navy was
/shown to be less efficient than was generally believed to be the case.
So much so, indeed, that an examination of the comments published
at that time in the foreign, especially French, Press will clearly show
that the issue of these naval manoeuvres was received in France with
what may be called undisguised and quite general satisfaction. As a
matter of fact, certain well-known French naval authorities went even
so far as to say that the prestige of the British fleet was destroyed, at
least for a considerable time to come ; that there was a chance of the
Mediterranean and Channel coming under the supremacy of the
French Republic ; and, further, that in case of war between the two
countries ' a disembarkation of French troops on the south coast of
England was by no means unattainable or beyond the bounds of
possibility.' l

The enormous reaction which thus ensued in this country in
regard to the state of the national fleet as a consequence of the not
too fortunate issue of the naval manoeuvres in question, German
politicians are inclined to regard as the sole and direct cause of the
more or less immediate and considerable increase in British naval
expenditure. How far this view is correct — that is, as far as actual
history is concerned — would be out of place to discuss here. But, as I
have already pointed out, the fact deserves to be particularly empha-
sised that German politicians, taking them as a whole, decline to
bring the present British naval policy in any relation with the naval
programme recently adopted in the Fatherland.

I have endeavoured in the course of this article to demonstrate
that the German naval policy in general, and that of the Navy League
in particular, is very far from being aggressive, as some publicists in
this country are fond of putting it, but is of a defensive character in
the truest sense of the word. Briefly stated, the Imperial Navy is to
be developed along the following lines : The first is strictly for home
defence ; the next is for service in foreign waters near the colonial
possessions ; the third is for protection and furtherance of the interests
of commerce in general.

When the Reichstag passed the Navy Bill in 1900, it was, of
course, not aware, nor could it be, as to what the increase of the fighting
strength and power of foreign navies would be in the years to come,
and, further, it could not very well foresee what political and economic
changes would take place meanwhile so as to provide for such eventu-
alities. As will be seen from the figures given below, which are
based upon recently published official statistics, both German and
foreign, the Imperial Navy, at present the fourth on the list, will, in
a few years hence — namely, 1907 — occupy the fifth position among
the navies of the Great Powers.

1 See also Die Internationale Ecrue iibtr die gesan.mtcn Armeen und Flatten,
October 1901.

1022

THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY

Dec.

The position at about the end of 1907 will be :

-

Battleships

Total
Tonnage

Cruisers

Total
Tonnage

Great Britain
France .
llussia
United States
Germany .

57 (55 over 10 000 tons)
32(23 „ , ;,

32 (26 „ , „ )
25 24 „ , „ )
21 (20 „ , „ )

790,880
349,727
351,241
322,294
238,805

71 (30 armoured)
28 (23 „ )
15 ( 5 „ )
16 (13 „ )
12 ( 6 „ )

671,870
244,191
115,706
176,155
92,750

Hence there is sufficient reason why the Reichstag should be called
upon to reconsider its decision of four years ago, and revise and
enlarge the programme then approved, so that the German Navy may
ere long be made strong enough for the purposes enumerated above,
and rendered equal to the great tasks which unforeseen circumstances
may place before it.

Let it be put briefly : this is precisely the very object which the
Navy League has in view, and to which end, despite the enormous
obstacles which have to be overcome, it is now devoting all its ener-
gies, making at the same time extensive use of all accessible and
necessary resources. As it was the League which, thanks to the
personal efforts of its very able and indefatigable president, Prince
Otto zu Salm-Korstmar, and of his collaborators in this scheme —
Admiral Kollmann, Freiherr von Wiirtzburg, Dr. Blum, to mention
only a few of many well-known names — so largely helped to create,
as it were, public interest in the Navy, it now strives to maintain
and increase it — a task far more difficult than the primary work
accomplished.

Louis ELKIND, M.D.

1904

THE RE-FLOW FROM TOWN TO COUNTRY

IT is generally accepted as a fact that the purely agricultural districts
of England tend to diminish in population — not from any falling-ofi
in the birth-rate, but from the migration of the inhabitants to other
parts, and largely to the towns of the country. From this tendency
it is sometimes rather hastily inferred that the population of the
island is becoming a population of dwellers in close streets and over-
crowded quarters, and is consequently diminishing in vigour. It is
reassuring to be told by the recent Committee on Physical Deteriora-
tion that, even as regard physique, height, chest-measurement, and
such matters, there is as yet no evidence of falling-off, and that such
evils as can be traced are confined to a very limited class at the extreme
end of the social scale. This is only what one would expect, when due
allowance is made for other characteristics of the progress of the
nation, and in particular for that counter-current from town to country
which, though perfectly familiar in the individual experience of most
of us, is apt to be overlooked in the general views which are founded
on statistics. Who, with the least knowledge of London, for instance,
is not acquainted with the prodigious extension of the capital in
recent years over the surrounding rural districts? Not only does
London spread as London, but the influence of London affects the
whole region within fifty miles or more of Charing Cross. The figures
on the subject are most instructive ; but let us take a concrete instance.
Everyone has heard of Hindhead and the neighbouring district.
Twenty years ago an old inn at the top of the long rise on the Ports-
mouth Road was almost the only habitation on the high ground,
while a few scattered farms and small manors nestled in the folds of
the many hills which culminate in the wild spot sketched by Turner.
Now every ridge and slope is lined with spacious houses ; there are
two hotels, which, in Germany, would certainly advertise an 'air-cure ';
there are a street of shops, a church, and all the other indications
of a communal life ; and this although the station which serves the
district is three miles away, down a long hill. Haslemere, which
provides the station, was a quiet country village less than a quarter
of a century since — little changed from the days when, as a borough
in the pocket of Lord Lonsdale, it returned two members to Parlia-
ment. It is now a busy little centre for the considerable residential

1023

1024 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

district which has grown up around it — a station of sufficient importance
to be made a terminus for many trains. Yet Hindhead and Hasle-
mere are more than forty miles from London, and are served by a
railway company which does not trouble to develop places by means
of fast trains. They are but typical of other places — Oxted and
Limpsfield, for example, which have been suddenly created by a new
railway. The rural parts of Surrey alone — omitting all urban districts
— increased 20 per cent, between 1891 and 1901. Something of the
same kind may probably be said of the north and east of the metro-
polis. Every railway-served district within fifty miles of London is
in a sense a suburb.

Now, what does this mean ? It means that a large area of open
country — field, meadow, copse, and hill — is planted with inhabitants
to a much greater degree than it ever was as an agricultural district.
In place of the single farm with its attendant labourers is a multitude
of houses, each with its family, its household of servants, its coach-
man, and its two or three gardeners. To serve these communities
come the retail traders, each with his shopmen, messenger-boys, and
other assistants, places of worship, schools, and all the establishments
which a growing neighbourhood brings into existence, and which act
and react in the way of hastening the occupation of the country-side.
On the immediate outskirts of a town the process is so rapid that the
occupied fields cease to have any rural attribute, and become them-
selves towns — more unattractive sometimes than the older parts,
but still not, as a rule, so densely inhabited. But when the process is
carried on at greater distances from the centre, very different results
follow. Nothing like the close packing of a town ensues. In the
nearer places there are broad roads and detached houses with much
garden ground. At greater distances, while socially and economically
the character of the district changes, physically its rural attributes
are scarcely affected. Woods, commons, parks, and heaths still
abound ; fields are still tilled, and meadows grazed. Only dotted over
the face of the earth are country houses, and here and there a cluster
of smaller dwell ings. From the point of view of health, nothing has been
lost, and probably much gained. For with the advent of a residential
population comes a critical attitude towards water-supply and house -
drainage which is not natural to the purely agricultural community.

To a large extent, also, the population thus spreading over the
country-side is a population which comes from the towns. The
householders and their families would, with very few exceptions,
live in or near a town if they did not live where they do. They have
come from the town, not from the country. And so with their gardeners
and coachmen ; some of them might be working on farms, if they
were not in private service ; more of them would be servants in or
about towns. The community is mainly made up at the expense,
not of the agricultural districts, but of the towns. The very growth

1904 THE EE-FLOW FEOM TOWN TO COUNTRY 1025

of large towns thus tends to cure itself by the development of a species
of centrifugal force. Inhabitants from the centre migrate to the out-
skirts ; those on the outskirts move further away to purely rural districts.
When a town is made, it is pleasant for a merchant or a professional
man to live near his work ; not much more than a generation ago, great
lawyers met their clients in consultation at their private residences
in the neighbourhood of the Inns of Court, or gave evening appoint-
ments at the chambers where they lived as well as worked. Then
comes the next stage, when a spacious suburban residence, within
easy access to the place of business, becomes the general rule. And
then, in a capital like London, which is a city of pleasure as well as
of work, comes the day when the successful man wants to combine
the pleasures of town and country life, and to have one pied-a-terre in
the residential quarters of the town, and another, by way of contrast,
in some quite rural district. The need of quiet, fresh air, and the
sights and sounds of nature, combines with the ever-increasing value
of land in the centre of a town to spread its inhabitants outwards
further and further from the important business quarters which supply
the motive of the town's growth.

This tendency is abundantly proved by figures. In the twenty years
from 1881 to 1901, no fewer than 244 urban districts were created.
This means two things. It means that, in classifying population as
urban and rural, it must be remembered that 244 urban districts
have only just ceased to be nominally rural, and are in fact con-
siderable tracts of country with one or two centres around which
population is grouped. In other words, the increase in urban popula-
tion represented by the transfer of the inhabitants of these districts
from one side to the other is nominal, not real. It also indicates that
in many cases, whether of recent or of older growth, urban districts are
not really towns. In the words of the Registrar-General, ' a consider-
able number of urban districts, though technically urban, are dis-
tinctly rural in character, being in many cases small towns in the
midst of agricultural areas on which they are dependent for their
maintenance as business centres. At the recent Census (1901) there
were as many as 215 urban districts with populations below 3000 ;
211 with populations between 3000 and 5000 ; and 260 with popu-
lations between 5000 and 10,000 ' — or nearly 700, out of a total of
1122, with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. Obviously, in none of these
districts does town life, in the sense of life in a densely peopled district,
exist. In the 260 districts of 10,000 inhabitants there are on the
average fewer than 1500 persons to a square mile, whereas in really
large towns, those of more than 250,000 people, there are over 18,000,
and in the County of London nearly 39,000. So far as the urban
population has increased by the addition of urban districts, the result
has been merely to spread the population of the country over a wider
area, and thus to people rural districts — not to surfeit towns.

1026 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

Again, the tendency of large towns to expand rather than to thicken
is shown by the rate of increase in towns of different sizes. Thus
towns of 20,000 inhabitants increase faster than towns of 10,000,
but towns of 250,000 increase much less rapidly. Up to the limit of
100,000, the more populous the district the higher the rate of growth,
both during the last and the preceding inter-censal decade. But
above the limit of 100,000 the greater the population the lower the
rate of growth. In the group of towns with populations between
50,000 and 100,000, the rate is 23 '2 per cent. But in towns
between 100,000 and 250,000 it is only 17'7 per cent. ; in still larger
towns it is only 12*1, and in the County of London only 7 '3. In the
words of the Registrar-General, the figures suggest that ' the slower
rate of growth in the larger towns is due to the high degree of density
of their population, which would cause an overflow of the population
to adjoining areas outside their administrative boundaries.'

The statistics of the growth of London illustrate this process in a
very remarkable way. The County of London, formerly the metro-
polis, is, as we all know, a very wide area extending from Woolwich to
Putney, and from Hampstead to Penge. Throughout the last century,
until 1881, the population of this area bore a continually increasing
proportion to the population of the country at large. Between 1881
and 1891 the proportion for the first time began to fall, and between
1891 and 1901 it fell more rapidly. Thus, while in 1881, 14'75 per
cent, of the inhabitants of England and Wales resided in London, in
1901 the proportion was only 13'95. To put the matter in another
way, while the rate of increase in the whole country during the last
inter-censal decade was 12'2 per cent., in London it was only 7'3.
But this diminished rate of increase by no means shows that London
is beginning to decline in importance relatively to the rest of the
country. It merely shows that London is peopling a wider area. For
while in the last decade the County of London only grew by 7 -3 per
cent., the vast district around it which goes to make up the Metro-
politan Police District, or the Greater London of the Registrar-
General — an area of some 400 square miles — grew by 45 '5 per cent.
This district is very roughly described by a radius of fifteen miles
round Charing Cross ; it comprises, in addition to the county, no fewer
than 149 parishes. It numbered in 1901 over two million inhabitants,
and, extending into five counties, might be thought to represent the
whole area influenced by London. This, however, is not so. The
population of London is now overflowing even this outer ring. The
rapidity with which this ring has been peopled is shown by the fact
that its inhabitants have doubled in each ten years between 1861
and 1881. In the last ten years of the century the rate of increase
abated ; it was only just over 45 per cent. But during the same
period the whole County of Surrey, the outlying parts of which are
perhaps most in favour with London for residence, increased by 25 per

1904 THE EE-FLOW FEOM TOWN TO COUNTRY 1027

cent, and the rural districts, which are almost entirely outside Greater
London, increased by 20 per cent. On the other hand, the ten metro-
politan boroughs which, in the view of the Registrar-General, form
the central area of London, have been steadily decreasing in popula-
tion for the last thirty years, while boroughs on the edge of the county,
like Wandsworth and Fulham, have been rapidly filling up. Every-
thing points to a movement from the centre towards the nearer suburbs,
from the nearer suburbs towards the Outer Ring, and even from the
0 uter Rin g towards parts which , until lately, have been completely rural.

It is not suggested that the set of population from purely agri-
cultural districts has ceased. Even here, indeed, the figures are
somewhat reassuring. The population of the purely rural districts of
England and Wales — those which contain no urban population, even
technically so called — diminished steadily from 1861 to 1891, but
increased by nearly 2 per cent, in the subsequent decade. This increase
is said to have taken place mainly in a few districts where mining is
the principal industry, and there are undoubtedly some counties
where there has been an absolute decrease of population both in the
rural districts technically so-called and in the rural parts which com-
prise urban districts of fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. But if rural
England and Wales is taken as made up broadly of the whole of these
districts, the gain of population during the decade has been no less
than 5*28 per cent., a figure which may be contrasted without alarm
with the 7 per cent, which represents the growth of the County of
London. What all the figures tend to show, and what it is the object
of the present paper to suggest, is that England is not becoming a
country of huge overcrowded towns, surrounded by deserted fields,
but of many centres of life round which is grouped a population spread-
ing over wide areas. The loss in the rural districts, where it occurs,
is not counterbalanced by a gain in Whitechapel or the slums of
Liverpool, but in suburbs like Wimbledon, small towns like Guild-
ford, and rural places like Hindhead. These are the spots which are
absorbing the population which ceases to till the fields. And whatever
may be thought of the economic effects of the change, it is erroneous
to assume that such a shifting of population tends to a deterioration
in the health and physique of the race. For good sanitation, good
drainage, good roads, and many other incidents of a growing neigh-
bourhood more than outweigh any deleterious effect from a small
increase in human beings and human habitations.

Further, it may be questioned whether this is not the natural
mode of growth in such a country as England, and whether it is
worth while to fight against it. Everything which artificially de-
populates the country should no doubt be resisted. It may be that
the system of land tenure in England, which has kept estates in few
hands, and sometimes in the hands of those who had not the means
of doing their best by the land, has been one cause of stagnation in

1028 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

purely agricultural quarters. The increased powers which the law
now gives of dealing with settled estates have supplied a remedy for
the worst abuses of this system, and with the advent of the colossal
commercial fortunes of the present day the rage for acquiring territory,
and with it social position and power, has probably been tempered ;
money rather than land is now the great moving power. It may be
— it probably is the case — that a certain hopelessness attending the
lot of the labourers in a purely farming district, the prospect of a
long life of work, with little change or advancement from early youth
to old age, and a not improbable dependence at the close on the
goodness of relations or the bounty of the State, has sent many a
young man from the plough to the railway or the town. The inclo-
sure of commons, which the cottager regarded as more or less his
own, and from which he gained many small advantages contributing
to make life more pleasant, has probably done something to destroy
in the labourer the hereditary affection for his country ; and the
passion for large farms, which in the best days of agriculture influ-
enced land agents and landowners, no doubt destroyed the ladder by
which previously the industrious and clever man sometimes rose from
day wages to a small property, and so enhanced the monotony of the
country-side. By all means let any of these causes of rural de-
population be removed, and the labourer be won back to the soil
by every legitimate means. But when all is said and done, it may
be questioned whether England has the same advantages for agri-
culture as she has for mining, manufactures, and commerce. The
farmer has to contend against a sunless and capricious climate. It
may be a climate which, as someone has said, allows a man to take
outdoor exercise with comfort on a maximum number of days in
the year ; it is temperate beyond a doubt. But it is deficient in
sun, and it is absolutely uncertain ; and these drawbacks seriously
handicap the farmer, and especially the small farmer, who depends
on continually turning over his little capital, and cannot conveni-
ently set off bad years against good. The best intelligence and
most persistent industry may find themselves defeated by an unkind
turn of the seasons, and the energy and ability which may reckon on
success in other pursuits are discouraged by the action of forces
beyond control. England's magnificent seaboard, her position as an
outpost of Europe, her mineral wealth, and the enterprise and activity
of her inhabitants place at her command more certain conquests than
those of the soil of this little island, and it is probably the play of
economic forces which has in the main led to the gradual application
of the energies of her sons to other pursuits than those of agriculture.1

1 The advocates of the Garden City movement recognise that for the establish-
ment of a successful colony something more than agriculture is necessary. It is a
leading feature of their scheme that manufactures should find their home amid fields
and gardens.

1904 THE RE-FLOW FROM TOWN TO COUNTRY 1029

But the land which ceases to be sought after as a productive machine
comes into request again as a place of residence. The free interchange
of commodities which England has been wise enough to encourage
has given a strong impetus to trade, commerce, and mining, and has
produced large aggregations of men and women. For a time the
towns thus produced grew rankly and without order ; but the pro-
gress of education, the awakening of a sense of civic responsibility,
the growth of a love of the beautiful in nature and in art, have led to
a determination on the part of those who spend their working lives
in towns at once to improve their surroundings and to escape for at
least the leisure hours of their existence into gardens and fields.
Hence the movement now on foot, which is re-peopling the country in
a natural way, and covering it with houses in place of farms.

The future of such a movement depends largely upon the way in
which it is conducted. The proper cultivation of suburbs is perhaps
one of the most urgent needs of the present day. Everyone knows
how appallingly mean and even squalid a suburb may be. At this
moment the suburbs of London are in many places faring badly.
The large houses of fifty years ago — often ugly enough in themselves,
no doubt — and their ample gardens are being replaced by rows of
cottages with no gardens at all. More new houses and new roads
were, we believe, built and laid out in the suburbs of London in 1903
than in any preceding year. Trees, green fields, hedgerows are
giving way to bricks and mortar. Monotonous streets, with scarcely
a suggestion of nature, receive the clerk or the artisan after his hour's
journey from his place of work. There is great danger that the
unsightliness and squalor of the heart of the town, which everyone
now condemns, may be reproduced on a larger scale on the outskirts.
The suburbs were formerly the resort, in the main, of well-to-do citizens
who could take care of themselves. They might make a dull neigh-
bourhood, but they would not overcrowd. Now that workers of all
kinds are being taken out of town by suburban railways and electric
trams, it is necessary to see that they are not merely moved over
four or five miles to find a repetition of what they have left behind.
Good sanitation in their new homes they will doubtless get. Local
authorities are now alive to this need ; their officers are intelligent
and zealous. Good drainage, good water, forty-foot roads, electric
light — all these advantages will no doubt be found in most places
within ten miles of Charing Cross. But more than this is necessary.
As fields and gardens disappear, public open spaces should take their
place — not merely a formal playing-field here and there, with its
border of shrubs and flowers, though this is valuable enough, but an
admixture of trees and greensward with streets and houses through-
out the whole colony, trees along the footpaths, sometimes a strip of
garden down the middle of a road, small garden sitting-places at the
junction of roads, larger open spaces where possible. That one large

1080 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Dec.

open space is not enough, may be seen from the case of Wimbledon.
This parish, now an urban district of over three thousand acres, has a
magnificent common. But the common is on the top of a sharp hill,
and below this hill, to the south of the railway, is a network of poor
streets, with a rapidly increasing population. The whole district
increased by nearly 16,000 inhabitants in the last inter-censal decade.
A walk of a mile or so will no doubt take the residents in these streets
to a beautiful open space ; but the streets themselves suggest Ber-
mondsey or St. Pancras. Croydon, again, which added a third to
its population in the last decade, is in many parts hardly distinguish-
able from a poor quarter of old London. But Croydon in the last
century bartered away its open lands, and has ever since been trying
to replace them. Wherever there is a natural feature of any kind — a
hill-top, a bit of old woodland, an especially charming private garden
which comes into the market (such as Golder's Hill at Hampstead,
and Brockwell Park at Dulwich, both happily saved), it should
be jealously preserved. Still better, perhaps, if broad, leafy avenues,
like the Avenue Longchamps, could radiate from the central parts of
a town, and cross now and again belts of garden and open space
encircling the city. All this, perhaps, sounds extravagant and in the
air ; but it must be remembered that the growth of a suburb lets
loose the latent value of the land, and there is no reason why a part
of this value should not be appropriated by the community (the
increase of which confers the whole value) and applied in providing
health and the amenities of life. The present writer some years ago
advocated in the pages of this Review a special levy on land about to
be devoted to building — to take the shape either of a certain portion
of the land to be actually set apart as open space, or of money pay-
ment to be applied in providing open space elsewhere. The principle
of a taxation of land values has now found general acceptance, and it
is laid down by high authorities that such a taxation for the purpose
of providing open spaces and similar amenities is economically justifi-
able. Were the means thus afforded, it would only need some breadth
of view and enlightenment on the part of local bodies to keep the
nearer suburbs of a great city airy and healthy, and refreshing both
to mind and to body.

There is an equally strong case for imposing upon new neighbour-
hoods some general plan of development. At present the powers of
a local authority are confined to the width of roads, the height of
bridges, and the space to be left around them ; they do not embrace
the general design of a town extension. In Germany, it seems, when
a town shows promise of growth, the municipality (or some higher
authority) takes advice of persons who have studied the subject and
lays down a scheme for the anticipated new faubourg. Such a power,
with proper safeguards for the interests of individual landowners,
would seem only reasonable. We do not in England love too much

1904 THE RE-FLOW FROM TOWN TO COUNTRY 1031

control. There has lately been a revolt against building by-laws,
and with considerable reason. No one would wish to introduce a
cast-iron uniformity either into the architecture of our houses or the
arrangement of our towns ; but, after all, a house is not built for a
day, and the arrangement of an aggregation of houses affects not only
the builder and the first occupants of his work, but successive genera-
tions, perhaps for centuries. Not only the interests of the landowners
but those of the whole community may fairly be taken into account
when buildings are spread over a new district ; and, in point of fact,
suburbs are less likely to be wearisomely similar if they are controlled
in their formation by a skilled mind, with due regard to the natural
features of the land to be occupied, than if the desire to make the
last penny out of the land is tempered only by the last fashion in
favour with the builders of the day.

Not only districts which are undoubtedly suburbs, and which are
being rapidly covered with buildings, but those rural places further
afield, which are just beginning to feel the influence of the distant
town, would be better if a little foresight regulated their growth.
It is ridiculous to treat the country like the town — to enforce, for
instance, by-laws which are designed to prevent fire in closely
packed districts, in places where each house or cottage stands apart.
The utmost freedom compatible with good sanitation should be
allowed in such matters as house-building ; but there are measures of
a different kind which ought to be taken, though it is perhaps difficult
to take them otherwise than by voluntary effort. Places at some
distance from a town are usually selected for residence because they
are especially attractive. Certainly it is so within fifty miles of
London. The beauty of the Thames peoples its banks with Londoners.
The chalk downs and the sand hills of Surrey and Kent collect groups
of residents wherever easy means of access are afforded. The intro-
duction of motors will tend still more to spread the population whose
pivot is London over the hills and heaths, and amongst the lanes and
copses, of the Home Counties. The first essential for the future oi
such places is to protect the natural features which constitute their
charm. The conspicuous heights, the notable points of view — of
course the open commons — should be treated as inviolable, and building
should be arranged so as not to destroy that which has brought
persons to the spot. There are various means of achieving this
object. Local authorities have now large powers of acquiring land
for purposes of pleasure, and there are voluntary societies which can
step in where local action is difficult. The important thing is to take
time by the forelock, and, where land has to be bought, to buy it
before it acquires a high value. Land on Hindhead, which is now
worth 300Z. an acre, changed hands within living memory for as
little as 21. To regulate the general development of a district is no
doubt a more difficult matter. The counsel of perfection would be

1032 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

the early acquisition of the best building sites by some enlightened
association of persons,2 which would see that they were utilised, in
due course, not wholly for large houses, but in such a way that houses
of various sizes should, as required, be arranged in such manner as
not to injure each other, or to be an eyesore to the general public.
It is difficult to suggest a complete remedy for the disfigurement of
beautiful country under the spread over its face of that population
which flows from the towns ; but it seems likely that the subject will
become more and more important with the natural growth and dis-
tribution of the inhabitants of the island. Something at least will be
done if all open land is jealously preserved, and places of conspicuous
charm are secured for the public enjoyment before they are appro-
priated to private profit.

ROBERT HUNTER.

2 There seems to be some chance of an experiment in this direction on the outskirts
of London. Eton College has offered to Mrs. Samuel Barnett and half-a-dozen friends
the whole of the College estate in Hendon to be developed for building under condi-
tions designed to prevent overcrowding and unsightliness, while all classes are to be
accommodated.

1904

LAST MONTH

THE unexpected seems also to be the inevitable in politics. When I
closed my chronicle a month ago the startling incident of the Russian
outrage in the North Sea had just occurred, but few persons believed
that it could become an affair of international importance, or that
within a few days it would threaten the peace of Europe. To the
minds of Englishmen of every party the action of the Baltic Fleet
was so absolutely without excuse, or the shadow of excuse, that it
was impossible to believe that the Russian Government would not
take the earliest opportunity of making the fullest amends to this
country for the murder of the Hull fishermen when engaged in their
peaceful though perilous calling on the Dogger Bank. This was,
indeed, the view of the whole civilised world, expressed with rare
unanimity and emphasis, and it seemed incredible that the Govern-
ment at St. Petersburg would not make haste to put themselves
right in face of a world-wide indignation. No one, therefore, was
seriously concerned a month ago by the escapade of the Baltic Fleet.
In this country, at any rate, our thoughts were turned to the approach-
ing meeting of the Unionist Associations at Southampton on the
28th of October, and to the manner in which Mr. Balfour would deal
with the difficult problem raised by his attitude towards the tariff
reformers, and the probable consequences to himself and his party.
That when the 28th of October arrived he would make a long speeck
in which food taxes, tariff reform, and even retaliation would not be
so much as mentioned, was the last thing expected by our politicians
and journalists. Yet this is precisely what happened, and, thanks t®
a crisis of national importance, the Prime Minister was enabled once
more to escape from the dilemma in which his own mistiness of lan-
guage and confusion of issues had landed him. All the preparations
for that decisive action within the Tory camp which Liberal writers
and speakers had anticipated so eagerly, and by which the policy of
the Conservative party for the future was to be decided, went for
nothing, and, so far as the struggle for supremacy between Mr.
Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain was concerned, the great gathering

VOL. LVI — ~So. 334 1033 3 Y

1034 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

at Southampton might just as well never have been held. Such was
one of the consequences of the way in which the North Sea incident
was developed by the strange action of the Czar and his advisers.
That there is such a thing as luck in politics Mr. Balfour at least must
acknowledge when he recalls the story of the events dating from
that Friday night in October when a horde of panic-struck Russian
officers, who could not even keep their vessels on the recognised
course through the North Sea, suddenly imagined that a pacific
fishing fleet, upon whose lawful ground they had trespassed, was
nothing less than a flotilla of Asiatic enemies, and, without warning
of any kind, opened on them with all their guns.

It is, however, with its national, and not its party aspect, that
Englishmen have to treat the grave question of the Baltic Fleet. It
so happens, indeed, that during last month I had an opportunity of
looking at it from the international as well as the merely national
point of view. Two days before Mr. Balfour spoke at Southampton
I left Liverpool, on the magnificent steamer Cedric of the White Star
Line, for New York, and, like most of my fellow-passengers, I carried
with me a certain burden of anxiety as to the course of the crisis England
had been so suddenly called upon to face. This uneasiness was not
allayed by the latest news we received when calling at Queenstown
the following morning. This was distinctly ominous in its character,
and it sent us across the stormy Atlantic with minds somewhat per-
turbed. But if anyone had told us that the peace of the Empire was
hanging in jeopardy on that day when we left the shores of Ireland
in our wake, he would not have found a man on board to believe him.
There is no * Marconi installation ' on board the Cedric — in all other
respects the finest vessel in which I ever crossed the sea — and for once
everybody regretted the fact. We could not hope to pick up news of
what was happening in Europe whilst we were traversing the lonely
North Atlantic. Once only, as we were approaching the American
continent, did any incident of possible significance happen. This
was when, in the mist and darkness of a November night, three large
men-of-war were discerned crossing our path at a considerable dis-
tance ahead. Only their signal lights were visible, and they were
evidently manxuvring. There was no clue to their nationality, and
naturally a good many persons jumped to the conclusion that they
were possible Russian cruisers, engaged in their amiable operations
against neutral vessels. They vanished among the tossing waves and
the murk of the gloomy night, and we saw them no more. The naval
experts on board accounted for their presence in unusual waters on
the ground that they were a portion of the British squadron at Halifax
making its way to Bermuda. If that were the case, the concentration
of the naval forces of the Empire which, when we left, had just com-
menced at home was evidently being carried on throughout the world.
' There is nothing,' said a distinguished American whom I subse-

1904 LAST MONTH 1035

quently met in New York, ' that I admire so much in English institu-
tions as the way in which your ships in every ocean move at the word
of command like pieces on a chess-board.'

It was the confident expectation of all on board the Cedric that
we should reach New York to find that Russia had made due apology
and reparation for the atrocious misconduct of her admiral, and that
the North Sea incident was at an end. To our amazement, we landed
in the busy city to find a war scare at its height. The newspaper
placards blazoned alarm in the largest of red letters ; the headlines in
the newspapers themselves could scarcely have been bigger if fighting
had actually begun, and the telegrams from London and Paris were
full of warlike movements and preparations. Even the ' call boy '
who took me to my rooms at my hotel asked eagerly if I thought
that war could be avoided. I gathered from the newspaper files
that there had been something like a panic the previous week over
Mr. Balfour's Southampton speech ; and I reached New York to find
another panic in full possession of the Press, over an alleged breach
by Russia of her provisional agreement with this country for the
pacific settlement of the dispute. The detachment caused by distance,
equally with that which is due to the lapse of time, enables men to
take a more dispassionate view of events than is possible for those
who are on the spot and in the midst of exciting occurrences. In
New York, 3,000 miles from London, the things which were disturbing
the equanimity of my fellow-countrymen at home, and causing the
deader-writers of London to inveigh against Russia in terms that were
scarcely measured, did not seem quite so serious as to justify the
commotion they had caused. Yet it was impossible to doubt their
gravity. The central fact was that Admiral Rosjdestvensky, so far
from treating the attack on the fishing boats as an accident more or
less to be deplored, had practically justified it as a measure made
necessary by the orders he had received and by the precautions which
the safety of his fleet demanded. This in itself was a startling fact,
scarcely anticipated by anyone at the time when I left England.
But it was still more startling that this extraordinary view of the
position, on which the Press of the civilised world, when it became
known, had made haste to pour contempt, had not been at once
and decisively repudiated by Russia. No one could fail to feel both
surprise and indignation at this attempt to find a justification for an
inexcusable outrage, and this sentiment found expression even in
the pro-Russian newspapers of New York. On the other hand, it
was reassuring to learn that the diplomatists of both countries, with
the full support of their respective sovereigns, had lost no time in
arranging the basis of a pacific settlement, and that it had been agreed
to refer all matters in dispute in connection with the afiair to an inter-
national tribunal. But here again a cause of disquietude had crept
in. The public had been led to believe that until this tribunal had

3 Y 2

1036 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dee-,

met and adjudicated upon the question to be submitted to it the-
luckless Baltic Fleet would not be permitted to proceed on its journey
to the Far East, but would remain at Vigo, those officers who were-
implicated in the affair being recalled to St. Petersburg to give evidence.
But hardly had the announcement regarding the reference to a Com*
mission been made than the world learned that the Russian fleeb
had left Vigo, followed, it was said, by British cruisers; whilst simul-
taneously it was announced in the New York newspapers that th^
ships and fortifications of Gibraltar had been placed upon a war
footing, and that our naval forces in the Mediterranean were to be-
concentrated at that point. It was these announcements that caused
the second war scare that was flaming out when I reached New York.
Nearly three weeks have passed since then, and I am once more
within reach of those sources of information which are focussed ii>
the British capital ; but, apparently, matters have not advanced very
far from where they were when Mr. Balfour at Southampton told the
country of the reference of the question to a Commission. Nay, if
anything, things are not quite so favourable as they then seemed to-
be. There has been a disagreement, we are told, between the two-
Governments as to the precise meaning of the words in which the
reference to the Commission was made. According to the English
accounts, published in the first place without any contradiction from*
Russia, the Commission was to ' deal with ' the question of the perso as-
responsible for the attack on the fishing-boats, and the term ' deal
with ' was understood to imply the punishment of the guilty officers.
The word * punishment ' was, indeed, actually used by responsible
Ministers in this country in referring to the scope of the Commission,
But the Russian Press discovered that this would be an infringement
of the sovereign rights of the Czar, and contended that the inter-
national Commissioners were to inquire and report only. The dispiite
is not in itself a very serious one ; but it was, unfortunately, cha-
racteristic of most attempts to negotiate with Russia. Just as, after
we had been promised by our own Ministers that the Baltic Fleet was
not to leave Vigo until the persons primarily responsible for the
outrage had been discovered and detained — a promise that wa^
certainly not fulfilled by the recall to St. Petersburg of four sub-
ordinate officers of the fleet — so now it was shown that, in spite of
the reassuring statements made in England, the reference to the
International Commission was not to be so complete as we had been
led to expect. This disagreement has now, happily, been settled
by the adoption of an ingenious form of words which apparently
implies that it may have been the lamb rather than the wolf that was
to blame in the outrage in the North Sea. Of Russian diplomacy
there is no need to say anything here, at least to those acquainted
with the history of the last few years in the Far East. The friends
of peace rejoice, and properly, at the fact that our diplomatists have

1-904 LAST MONTH 1037

succeeded so far as to open up a way to the pacific solution of a dan-
gerous complication. But it hardly seems that either Mr. Balfour or
Lord Lansdowne can claim to have achieved anything that can be
described as a triumph in their negotiations with the astute Ministers
of the Czar. What the final issue of the Commission will be we cannot
as yet determine. It is incredible that even Russian diplomacy will
cither desire or prove^able to rob us of the proper satisfaction to which
we are entitled for an outrage which no facts that have been brought
to light have either justified or excused. We have the opinion of the
civilised world on our side, and wise men will be content to abide the
result of the promised inquiry with patience ; but in the meantime
we have had a sharp lesson as to the perils that are involved, even for
peaceful neutrals, in the war in Manchuria, and as to the ease with
which theTress, here as well as abroad, can arouse a dangerous state
of excitement in the public mind. It is not pleasant to reflect that
more than^once last month we came perilously near to the brink of
an unnecessary war.

As for the Russo-Japanese struggle, the curious inaction which has
prevailed at the seat of the great conflict in the Manchurian peninsula
since the ^terrific fighting on the Sha-ho seems to have been main-
tained. I'eay seems, for we are not allowed to be quite certain of
.anything that is happening there. Great events are promised in the
immediate future ; but for the moment nothing of importance takes
.place, and both armies are probably only now beginning to recover
.from the exhaustion brought upon them by such fighting as the modern
world had not witnessed before. One stubborn fact is, indeed, clear
to everybody. That is that — up to the moment at which I write —
Port Arthur still holds out. Its fall, so often promised, has not yet
taken place ; and though the heroic garrison has now nothing more
•than a heap of blood-stained ruins to defend, they continue to fulfil
their duty in a way that justly commands for them the admiration of
mankind.

To revert to home politics, strangely tame compared with the larger
outside affairs, I must allude again to the meeting at Southampton
at the end of October. Mr. Balfour's silence upon the subject on which
lie had been expected to say so much can hardly be said to have saved
iim from the fate with which he was threatened by Mr. Chamberlain.
It would be ridiculous to deny that the Tory caucus, in everything but
form, adopted the standard of tariff reform, and went over, root and
branch, to the great Tariff Reformer, who was discreetly absent from
the scene. It is true that, both at Southampton and subsequently,
.the most fervent declarations of loyalty to the Prime Minister have
been forthcoming whenever a Conservative politician, from Cabinet
.rank downwards, has spoken. But they have been declarations of a
kind familiar to the habitues of the Divorce Court, where they seem
iavariably to precede an elopement with the object of the protester's

1038 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

unlawful passion. The truth is that Mr. Balfour's failure to carry
out his own intentions when he spoke at Edinburgh two months ago
has brought upon him a just retribution. The plain man in his
party no longer pretends to understand him, and manifestly does not
care very much whether he does so or not. But he does understand
Mr. Chamberlain, and he is evidently prepared to follow the bell-
wether, whose note is plain and audible. It thus appears that if the
Member for West Birmingham has failed in everything else, he has at
least succeeded in capturing the Tory party and its organisation.
oSTot that he has been allowed to do so without some vigorous protests
from the Free Fooders of the party, who still cling to Free Trade and
the old economic policy. Some of these during the month have had
to say unpleasant things of tariff reform and its father ; and they have
been heartily supported by the leading members of the Opposition,
who, from Lord Rosebery downwards, have been energetic in speech-
making and uncompromising in their opposition to the Chamberlain
heresies. The most important speech of the month, however, was
that of the Duke of Devonshire, who, speaking at Rawtenstall,
announced that he would support nobody at the next election who
favoured Mr. Chamberlain's proposals, and urged his friends to follow
in his footsteps. It was amusing to observe the disgust to which
this speech gave rise in the breasts of the writers for the Times and
the other acolytes in the temple of tariff reform. Out of doors the
path of the Birmingham agitation continues to be marked by the
wrecks of Conservative enterprises. Two Parliamentary elections
took place, and the results in both showed that the increase in the
voting power of the Opposition has been swollen almost equally in
Monmouthshire and Sussex. The municipal elections, too, showed
a great increase in the strength of the Liberals in our English boroughs ;
whilst the elections to the Canadian Parliament were disastrous to
the party leader who claimed to be Mr. Chamberlain's champion.
I was not wholly surprised, during my short stay in New York, to find
that most of the politicians to whom I spoke regarded tariff reform
as being in almost as hopeless a condition as the silver policy of that
extinct volcano, Mr. Bryan.

A great deal of interest has been excited during the month by the
change of proprietorship in the Standard. Ever since that journal
was raised to a position of altogether exceptional influence and pros-
perity by the genius of its former editor, Mr. Mudford, it has been
justly regarded by all parties as one of the most sane and trustworthy
organs of English opinion. Its firm adherence to Free Trade and to
the economic doctrines under which British prosperity has been
raised to its present height has been one of the most striking features
of the fiscal controversy, and with the Standard in strenuous opposi-
tion to his opinions even Mr. Chamberlain could hardly regard his
conquest of the Conservative party as complete. The purchase of

1904 LAST MONTH 1039

the paper by Mr. Pearson, the chairman of the so-called Tariff Reform
Commission, is, therefore, a political event of distinct importance.
Nobody has any right to quarrel with Mr. Pearson because of his
new investment. He is a man of great energy, and, in his own line,
of very great ability. But Free Traders, at least, cannot be expected
to rejoice at a change which has robbed their cause of its most
powerful advocate in the morning Press; nor can those who are
intimate with the older and better traditions of English journalism
regard this extension of the movement which is concentrating the
control of so many of our newspapers in the hands of one or two
individuals whose motives are avowedly mercenary — using the word
in its strictly legitimate sense — rather than public or political, with
equanimity. The events of the last few years unquestionably prove
that independent journalism in this country is passing under the
shadow of an eclipse, and that our daily Press is ceasing to furnish a
faithful reflection of the opinions of all classes of the community.
Most of us are aware of the condition to which the Press of the United
States has been brought in consequence of a similar state of things.
It is not a good thing for Great Britain that it should have to con-
template the possibility of a like disaster.

The State visit of the King and Queen of Portugal to England
as the guests of the King has been one of the events of the month r
and has been signalised by the conclusion of a treaty of arbitration^
between this country and our ancient Portuguese allies. The Anglo-
French agreement has been ratified by an overwhelming majority in
the Chamber, after a keen and protracted debate. The French
Government has triumphed over the Opposition on the question of
its Church policy, but has lost one of its leading members, General
Andre, who has been compelled to resign owing to the hostility
aroused by some of his measures connected with the army. The most
notable death of the month has been that of the Earl of Northbrook,
once Viceroy of India, and Cabinet Minister under Mr. Gladstone.

It was my good fortune last month, for the second time in my
life, to be in New York at a critical moment in the political history of
the United States. Three years ago I witnessed, and described in
these pages, the great struggle against the corrupt and degrading
forces of Tammany Hall, which resulted in their overthrow and in the
deliverance of the greatest of American cities from a cruel and
humiliating bondage. This year I found myself in New York during
a Presidential election and the days which immediately preceded the
decision of the issue. What struck me first was the apparent apathy
of the people with regard to the election. They were about to elect
the man who was to rule over them for four years, but there were
fewer indications of popular excitement than were visible in 1901,
when it was not a President of the United States, but a mayor of
New York, that was to be elected. Across Broadway and some of

THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY Dec.

the more important streets, it is true, were hung banners on which
were inscribed the names of the Democratic candidates for the various
offices ; but there were few of those signs of the bustle and activity
©f rival parties which one would be certain of seeing in any town
in this country during a General Election. The dulness of the streets
seemed to have descended upon the newspapers, and everywhere
people admitted that they had never known before a Presidential
contest as tame as this was. The fact was that as time had passed
the belief that Mr. Roosevelt would be elected had become almost
universal. It is true that for a brief season, after the nomination of
Judge Parker by the Democrats, the Republicans were alarmed.
The Judge's message, in which he ruthlessly threw over Bryanism,
with its doctrines on the subject of silver, and boldly rallied to the
gold standard, had made a deep impression upon everybody. It
was known that at the previous Presidential election many Democrats
had deserted their party and voted for McKinley because of their
dread of the Bryanism policy on silver ; and not a few Republicans
feared that the conversion of Judge Parker to orthodox views on the
currency question — he voted, I believe, for Mr. Bryan in 1900 — would
bring him a large accession of strength from Wall Street. The trusts,
again, were understood not to be friendly, in the first instance at
least, to President Roosevelt, and a strong effort was made to whip
them into line in favour of Judge Parker. This, however, was a
doubtful measure of expediency, for, whatever may be the financial
and mercantile power of the trusts, they are hated by the over-
whelming majority of American citizens with an intensity unequalled
by any feeling shown in Great Britain on social or economic questions.
As time passed the Republicans were reassured, and a week before
the day fixed for the election the betting was five to one in favour of
Mr. Roosevelt ; but suddenly, at the eleventh hour, the general apathy
was broken up and disappeared like a field of ice in a thaw, and for
four days before the fateful 8th of November the excitement and
political passion evoked were equal to anything witnessed in previous
elections. The cause of the sudden and unexpected change was a
speech by Judge Parker in which he insinuated, if he did not state
directly, that his rival had obtained the vast funds required for an
election in the United States by blackmailing the great trusts. Such
a charge would have been a grave one if brought against the merest
political adventurer. When the person against whom it was alleged
was the man who had held the supreme office of President for more
than three years, it naturally aroused intense feeling among all classes
of the public. The ostensible ground upon which Judge Parker
based his unprecedented charge against Mr. Roosevelt was that the
manager of his election was his former private secretary, Mr. Cortelyou,
and^that this gentleman had acted as an official of the department
appointed by the President to deal with the whole question of trusts.

1904 LAST MONTH 1041

In this capacity Mr. Cortelyou, it was alleged, had learned the secrets
of the various trusts, and armed with this information he had been
able to extract as much money as he wanted for the purpose of the
Republican campaign from their coffers. This accusation, sprung
at the eleventh hour upon the country by a man who had hitherto
conducted the contest on his side in a manner to which no excep-
tion could be taken, convulsed the nation. President Roosevelt,
breaking with long-established precedent, himself stepped into the
arena, and with clearness and a dignified emphasis flatly denied the
base charge to which he had been subjected. The Democrats pro-
fessed to be much shocked that Mr. Roosevelt should have disre-
garded the traditions of his office so far as to take any personal part
in the struggle ; but even Democratic journals joined the Republican
Press in declaring that after the President's plain denial Judge Parker
was bound, if he wished to be believed, to bring forward the evidence
on which he based his charge against his opponent. This he entirely
failed to do. He did, indeed, make a speech on the Saturday night
preceding the Tuesday on which the election took place, in which he
professed to justify his accusation ; but even his warmest supporters
in the Press refused to admit that he had done so, and in a moment
the feeling of the country became absolutely hostile to him.
i This, I take it, was the explanation of the extraordinary * land-
slide,' to use the expressive American phrase, in" favour of Mr. Roose-
velt which occurred when the electors went to the poll. Most people
felt confident of his victory, but nobody dreamt of a triumph so
complete, one almost, if not quite, unprecedented in the history of
Presidential contests. Judge Parker's ill-advised action in suddenly
introducing, at the last moment, a new and personal issue of the
most offensive kind into the struggle, instead of ensuring his success,
brought upon his head an overwhelming defeat. Apart from any
question between Democrat and Republican, the friends of America
must be glad that this was the case. Too often in previous political
struggles in the United States a desperate card has been played at
the last moment by the managers of one of the parties to the cam-
paign, and, unhappily, the card has not always failed to win the trick.
That on this occasion it did fail, and fail ignominiously, even when
played by one of the principals in the great struggle, is a fact upon
which Americans should feel that they have reason to congratulate
themselves. When, on the evening of the 8th of November, the
electoral results began to appear, and it was known that Mr. Roose-
velt's victory was greater and more complete than the most sanguine
had anticipated, the people of New York gave themselves up to a
carnival ^of rejoicing which almost seemed to suggest that for the
moment]no Democrat was to be found within the limits of the Empire
City. It recalled Mafeking night in London, though without the
blackguardism which accompanied that celebration of evil fame.

1042 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

Perhaps the nearest approach to it was the scene I witnessed in Paris
in October 1877, when the electors, under the leadership of Gambetta,
won their great triumph over the insolent forces of reaction, and the
Republic was at last established on the broad foundation of the
national will. Then, as now, the people of the great city gave vent
to a gaiety of heart and spirit that was absolutely intoxicating. To
the windows of my room in Holland House there ascended from
Fifth Avenue all the noisy tumult of a fair — music, laughter, shouts,
the blare of trumpets, and the volleying of cheers. Great proces-
sions swept by, following party banners, whilst away in the distance
the sky was lightened by the glare of countless bonfires and the
brilliancy of the search-lights which flashed the news to every quarter
of the compass. Late that night I had to rejoin the Cedric for the
return voyage to England, and everywhere as I drove through the
streets I encountered rejoicing crowds, some gathered in dense masses
in front of the screens on which the results from different States and
districts were shown by means of the magic lantern, others watching
the bonfires which blazed, despite all police regulations, from the
middle of the busy streets ; and yet others singing and shouting in
accents of unfeigned joy as they surged along the crowded thorough-
fares. Whatever of apathy I may have found on my arrival, there
was no trace of it when I left ; and the strange thing was that no
discordant note was struck. Wherever Judge Parker's supporters
might have been found, they were certainly not visible on that memor-
able night in New York. Everybody seemed to be in accord, all
were bubbling over with triumphant joy.

I have said nothing as yet of the international aspect of this con-
test— in other words, of the bearing which Mr. Roosevelt's election is
likely to have upon the foreign policy of the United States during
his term of office. It is no secret that in this country many persons,
who freely acknowledged the President's high personal qualities, felt
some alarm at what they regarded as his leaning towards Jingoism —
a word, by the way, which seems now to have become acclimatised
in the United States. From all that I could learn, not merely from
the newspapers, but from personal intercourse with men of undoubted
authority, there is no real reason for apprehension as to the Presi-
dent's future policy in foreign affairs. Apart from the fact that he
has constantly beside him, in the person of his chief Minister and
adviser, Mr. John Hay, one of the sanest and best-balanced intellects
not only in America, but in the world, it should be borne in mind that
Mr. Roosevelt was the first man in his exalted position to make public
acknowledgment of the fact that the Monroe doctrine, beloved of
all Americans, not only establishes rights, but imposes duties upon
those who maintain it. More than once he has made it clear to
South American States, eager to commit some act of international
wrong under the shelter of their big brother in the north, that they

1904 LAST MONTH 1043

need not hope to escape punishment for any misdeed by claiming
immunity under the Monroe doctrine. In an admirable statement of
his claims and policy issued during the election by that distinguished
jurist and diplomatist Mr. David Jayne Hill, for some years Assistant-
Secretary of State under Mr. Hay, and now United States Minister
to Switzerland, that gentleman gave, as one of the titles of Mr. Roose-
velt to the confidence of his fellow-countrymen, the fact that * his
conduct of American foreign relations has emphasised, and will con-
tinue to emphasise, those conceptions of peaceful intercourse, equit-
able treatment, and vigilant action which express the will and con-
victions of the American people and the spirit of their national exist-
ence.' More than this none of us have any right to ask, and we
could hardly have the welcome declaration upon authority more
conclusive.

i- WEMYSS REID. <

1044 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

LAST MONTH

II

THE last great Tartar throne rests upon secure foundations. We are
often told of * the change that must come,' of the ' growing unrest,'
and the ' impending revolution ; ' but the change does not come,
and when we ask for a sign of its coming the answer is as naught.
No man can know Russia ; but all the world may know this much —
that the moujik is unhappy, but he is not intelligent ; that there are
many intelligent people in Russia, but they are not unhappy ; as why
should they be ? standing, as they do, possessed of all the good things
of this world. Between these two — the moujik and the noble — is the
student, whose madcap revolts constitute all that apparently moves
in Russia, and who is a source of alarm and horror to both noble and
peasant.

Over these mutually repellent forces — if forces they can be called —
the administration rules supreme, controlling all by means of the
army. There, say the sanguine, is its weak point ; the army is the
moujik. True it is that the rank and file of the army are recruited
from the peasantry ; and if what we hear were true we should expect
to see whole regiments flinging down their arms when face to face
with the foe. During the last nine months there have been many
occasions when even willing troops might well have been excused for
surrendering in thousands. Far from doing so, the Russians have
never fought better, and though the casualties of their armies must
by now have reached a huge total, the number of prisoners taken is
quite insignificant. In fact, as soon as the moujik shoulders his
rifle he is a changed being. The administration, therefore, rules ;
absolute, unchallengeable. The poet's line —

Night hath none but one red star, Tyrannicide —

is but a poet's version of a truth long obscured to many — that Russia
is but a great Tartar State, like the State of Timur the Lame, and
many others which have known, and still know, no law but force.

It must not, however, be forgotten that the administration has a
nominal chief at whose word all is supposed to move — the Emperor.

1904 LAST MONTH 1045

His predecessor, Alexander the First, is reported to have said — sadly
enough — when an admirer congratulated Russia on her monarch :
* I am only a happy accident.' Accident or not, all were prepared
to welcome the accession of Nicholas the Second as an event of
happy augury for many reasons. There was, for example (might,
one mention it ?) the Peace Conference.

Then it was his great happiness to become the father of a
long-wished-for son. Readers of this Review do not need to be
reminded of Baron Suyematsu's masterly and dispassionate account
of ' How Russia brought on War.' From that admirable narrative
it is clear that the most charitable explanation of the Emperor's-
action, or inaction, is that he was deliberately hoodwinked by
designing and interested people, some of them being in very high
place. In the joy of his paternity (a joy which all good people
shared with him), what more natural than that the author of
the Peace Conference should command peace in his son's name ?
Such a,deed would have been an act of magnanimity worthy of "a
great Christian monarch. So most of us thought that the Tsar
might safely have made his son a Prince of Peace ; but he preferred
to make him a Colonel of Cossacks. The act was of the highest
significance.

Then there was the North Sea outrage.

Even more dramatic than his behaviour on the occasion of the-
birth of his son was the Emperor's behaviour on the occasion of the-
North Sea outrage. Tartar though the impudent assault was, that
impudence was transcended by the subsequent attitude of Russia.
Even in the midst of our grief and rage we could hardly help laughing
at the series of so-called ' explanations ' with which Russia favoured
the world.

But by now we are beginning to understand. There is, thank
Heaven, a leaven of righteousness in this Tartar State ; and, thanks-
(so far as the public understand) to Counts LamsdorfE and Bencken-
dorff, it prevailed on this occasion. The scanty satisfaction, which
was all that we could get, must have been unspeakably galling to
those who had clearly hoped to drive us into war.

The Press of this country has made a point of assuming that it
was 'impossible,' 'unthinkable,' &c., that the North Sea outrage
should have been deliberate ; but, on the contrary, that is exactly
what the face-reading of the facts leads us to conclude must have-
been the case. ' Inasmuch as incident A, incident B, &c. (any one of
which made a good casus belli) cannot drive England into war, let us-
now give her a soufflet in the face of all Europe that she cannot help
resenting.' So must have reasoned the war-makers.

Now England has no reason to fear war with Russia. On the-
contrary, it is Russia who has everything to lose. The Indian army
would enjoy nothing so much as the conflict for which it has thirsted

1046 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Dec.

ever since the days of Sir Charles Napier. If Russia — all sane, intelli-
gent Russia — wants war, she can have it ; but we, in England, are of
the opinion that all sane, intelligent Russians are furious at the
wretched figure their country is made to cut, and while that is the
case we do not intend to be driven into war by a crew of brigands in
order to gratify an interested third party.

Slowly from some points of view, but with extraordinary rapidity
from others, the nations of Western Europe are drawing together
in a kind of informal concert that bids fair to become authoritative.
Italy and England, France and Italy, France and England, England
and Portugal ; these are considerable ' understandings.' While the
* peoples ' have chattered and boasted, the Kings have worked, learnt,
and acted. In Western Europe there bids fair to arise a temper that
will not tolerate indiscriminate militarism — such a temper as rules
in private bodies, where a man must i' behave as a gentleman ' or
leave the club. Your Tartar, on the other hand, strikes how and
where and when he will, so that he may strike in safety : as witness
the massacre of Blagovestchensk, an ' incident ' too soon forgotten,
but which it is necessary to remember. ' On that occasion,' to quote
Baron Suyematsu, * thousands of helpless men, women, and children
were drowned or slaughtered by the Russians in compliance with the
Russian commander Gribsky's orders, he acting, as he declared, in
consonance with Imperial decree.' The Imperial authority for these
frightful barbarities was repudiated by Count LamsdorfE. But was the
shameless ruffian who perpetrated them punished ? Not at all : his
conduct received Imperial approval and the blessing of the Church.
' To-day on the Chinese bank of the Amur, on the ashes of Sakalin,
a solemn thanksgiving service in memory of the relief of this place by
the Russian forces, together with the ceremony of renaming the post
Ilinsky, was held, in the presence of the authorities, the army, the
English officer Bigham, and a large crowd of people. The High
Priest KonoplofF said : " Now is the Cross raised on that bank of the
Amur which yesterday was Chinese. MouraviefE foretold that sooner
or later this bank would be ours." In a beautiful speech General
Gribsky ' (not apparently degraded) * congratulated the victorious
troops.' l

All Christians will agree with Baron Suyematsu that this was an
' indecent and blasphemous function.' But, from the Tartar point of
view, nothing could be more correct and proper.

Professor Gradowsky, quoted in the Observer of the 20th of Novem-
ber, says of his own country that ' since 1815 Russia has not only
herself been plunged in ignorance, slavery, and despotism, but has
always obstructed all free and progressive tendencies in Europe.'
He adduces evidence in support of his statement, and what we —
England and France in particular — have to realise is that, in spite
1 Nineteenth Century and After, September 1904, p. 349.

1904 LAST MONTH 1047

of smooth externals, we are, in fact, face to face with a great bar-
barous power drawing its strength from slavery and superstition ;
and that it is nothing less than treason to civilisation to stand
by and allow the painfully acquired results of centuries of struggle
to be overwhelmed in the avalanche of Russian retrogression. This
is what Napoleon meant.

When we consider the part that England has played and is yet,
let us hope, to play in this new movement so full of promise, it is with
some concern that the thoughtful will read some reflections on our
national character by the late Bishop Creighton in his Life just
published. * An Englishman is not only without ideas, but he hates
an idea when he sees it ; ' so says the Bishop. The worst enemy
of England never said anything more damaging. Was it by hating
ideas that Japan acquired the power to administer the tremendous
castigation that Russia is now enduring at her hands ? Or take
this : * the House of Commons is dearer to us now than it has
been at any time, because it is entirely our own and reproduces our
own infirmity.' This passion of self-admiration is a most retarding
frame of mind ; but, in justice to both the nation and the Bishop, it
must be noted that this was said seventeen years ago. In that time
the nation has come to be rather less satisfied with itself and with its
House of Commons. So much for the people ; how about ' our natural
leaders ' ? * I suppose dukes have souls to be helped,' he wrote,
' though it is hard to realise.' These are not the words of some idle
club-cynic, but of a man who cared most tenderly both for the souls
and the minds of his fellow-countrymen. No dreaming sentimental-
ist, either, was Creighton ; but a man of action who understood
thoroughly the responsibilities of public life. * The administrator has
to drive the coach ; ' he wrote, ' his critics are always urging him to
upset it.' He hated gush. Writing of the claptrap phrase ' the
heart of the English people,' he called it ' a very nasty place to go
to, the last resting-place I should wish to be found in — a sloppy sort
of place, I take it.' Of his time he wrote ' In future times this age of
ours, judged by its literature, will be called " the crazy age." '

This is all that fifty years of peace-mongering and ' cheap labour '
have left of once-great England. Inarticulate, but still convinced
by sad experience that England was no place for them, our best
labouring hands have left us, edged out by ' cheap labour,' and have
gone to build up the prosperity of countries who know how to cherish
their manhood. The ruin of agriculture has helped in the same
direction. We have so long been taught that patriotism was un-
businesslike that we have come to believe the wicked falsehood.
So-called * education ' has mangled the mind of the country to an
incalculable extent. Sickly phrases have made us forget that love
is not a moaning sentimentalism. The result is that when a crisis
comes the trumpet gives forth an uncertain sound. The course that

1048 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY Dec. 1804

England adopted on the occasion of the North Sea outrage was
undoubtedly politic, and perhaps the only course possible, all things
considered. But there was an alternative. Lord Lansdowne might
have said : ' Our business is no longer with the Russian Ambassador ;
our responsibility is to all the world. Two innocent men have been
murdered on the high seas, and somebody is going to stand his trial
for the crime. Lord Charles Beresford has his orders.' •,. But bitter
experience of public life has probably taught Lord Lansdowne that if
he had ventured on such a policy the whole pack of peace-mongers
would have been upon his back in twenty-four hours. In Lord1
Palmerston's day Englishmen still believed in a few_ things; but
let us once more refer to the Bishop :

We are in a period of uncertainty such as history has never witnessed^
Science has said its say and has led nowhere ; rationalism has led nowhere ;
materialism has no hopes. In politics machinery has broken down ; Liberalism
is bankrupt. In international affairs no country has a clear idea of its line of
progress. Statesmanship has almost ceased to exist ; everyone is conscious of
forces which he cannot control, of impulses and instincts generated in the past,.
not to be regulated by any reasoning which can be framed at present. How
things are going to settle down no one can say.

These words were written in the year 1896. If Creighton had?
lived he would, assuredly, have ' settled down ' to the conclusion
that, in spite of his interest in and affection for all that was best in
Russia, and especially in the Russian Church, England and Russia
had come to the parting of the ways. He would have recognised
that the real and only ' Yellow Peril ' was that Tartar peril which has
always been with us — like the east wind : and he would have realised
that the national, the European, the Imperial duty of England was
to resist it with all our might.

»•*,. WALTER FEE WEN LoKi>.r

TJie Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot ^undertake
to return unaccepted MSS.

INDEX TO VOL. LVI

The titles of articles are printed in italics

ACT

ACTORS, managers, and authors in
Colley Gibber's days, 451-468
Aeronauts as explorers of unknown

lands, 251 261

Air, Medicated: a Suggest ion, 97-104
America's future policy, President

Roosevelt's opportunities, 882-891
American designs upon our coasting

trade, 418-432
American Woman, The — an Analysis,

433-442
American women and woman suffrage,

833-841
Amsterdam International Congress of

Socialists, 559-570
Anderson (Sir Robert), One Lesson

from the Beck Case, 1004-1011
Apple, The Careless, 966-969
Arabia, To Explore, by Balloon, 251-

261
Army Reform, 158-160, 327-328, 501-

50J
Arb collections of Queen Christina of

Sweden, 989-1003
Athanasian Creed, A Practical View

of tlie, 75-83

Atmospheric hygiene, 97-104
Australia, The Political and In-
dustrial Situation in, 475-491
Australia, The Political Woman in,

105 112
Austrian difficulties and Prussian

ambitions, 707-722
Auxiliary forces, Report of Royal

Commission concerning the, 1-19,

20-27

BACON (Rev. John M.), To Explore
Arabia by Balloon, 251-261
Bagot (Richard), a Reply to, 46-54 ;
The Pope and Church Music— a
Rejoinder, 247-250
Balfour, Mr., and his Ministry, Posi-
tion and prospects of, 152-160, 319-
329, 334, 339, 499-504, 511, 516,
675-679, 856-859, 867-869, 1033-
1038

VOL LVI— No. 334

BY

Balloon, To Explore Arabia, by,
251-261

Baltic Fleet, The, and the North Sea
Outrage, 865-866, 1033-1036, 1045-
1048

Bashford (J. L.), The German Army
System and How it Works, 606-
621 ; Great Britain and Germany,
a Conversation with Count Billow,
the German Chancellor, 873-881

Battleships for the British Navy,
596-599

Beck Case, One Lesson from the,
1004-1011

Becquerel rays and Rontgen rays,
88-96

Bicentenary, Our, on the Rock, 181-188

Bildt (Baron), Queen Christina's
Pictures, 989-1003

Birchenough (Henry), Compulsory
Education and Compulsory Mili-
tary Training, 20-27

Blennerhassett (Sir Rowland^, Eng-
land, Germany, and Austria, 707-
722

Blunt (Wilfrid Sea wen), The By-law
Tyranny and Rural Depopulation
— a Personal Experience, 643-651

Boulger (Demetrius C.), The Capture
of Lhasa in 1710, 113-118

Bradley (Miss Rose M.), The Decline
of the Salon, 950-959

Brassey (Lord), Our Naval Strength
and the Naiial Estimates, 591-605

British Army in Napoleon's time,
Side-lights upon the, from Sir
Robert "VVilson's journals, 796-812

British Shipping and Fiscal Reform,
189- 198

Biilow (Count von), German Chan-
cellor, A Conversation with, 873-881

Bulwer (Sir Henry), afterwards Lord
Palling and Bulwer, some of his
proverbs, 262-268

Butler (Slade), The Virgin-Birth, 84-
87

By-Law Tyranny, The, and Rural
Depopulation — a Personal Experi-
ence, 643-651

Sz

1050

INDEX TO VOL. LVI

BYZ

Byzantine Empire, The, its influence
upon Christendom, 571-590

/CALIFORNIA, Japanese labourers

\J in, 815-819

Cancer research, London hospitals,
and the French doctors' visit to
England, 892-904

Census of India, TJie, 938-949

Chamberlain's (Mr.) fiscal policy, 152-
155, 163-172, 236-241, 324-327,
334-339, 502-504, 516-518, 694-
695, 856-858, 1033-1039

Chapman (Dr. Paul), A Reminiscence
of Coventry Patmore, 668-674

Cheiromancy, Chinese, 985-988

China, Palmistry in, 985-988

Christian doctrines and clerical critics,
386-401

Christina's (Queen) Pictures, 989-
1003

Church hymns and the new edition of
Hymns Ancient and Modern, 925-
937

Church Music, The Pope and — a
Rejoinder, 247-250

Church of England, Free Thought in
the, 386-401

Church of England, The, and Roman
doctrines and practices, 543-558

Gibber's (Colley) ' Apology,' 451-468

Cobdenism and Confucianism, 163-172

Collins (J. Churton), The Rhodes Be-
quest and University Federation,
970-984

Colonies, The, and University Federa-
tion, 970-984

Compulsory Education and Compul-
sory Military Training, 20-27

Compulsory military service, how it
works in Germany, 606-621

Conscript life in Russia, 842-854

Conversation, The art of, 790-795

Careless Apple, The, 966-969

Courtney (Leonard), What is the
Use of Gold Discoveries ? 299-306

Crewdson (Wilson), Japanese Emi-
grants, 813-819

Criminal procedure and wrongful con-
victions, 1004-1011

Cross, J. \V., The Pinnacle of Pro-
sperity— a Note of Interrogation,
469-474

Cruisers, scouts, and submarines for
the British Navy, 599-602

Currie (Lady), Concerning Some of
the ' Enfants Trouves ' of Litera-
ture, 126-141 ; Are Remarkable
People Remarkable - looking ? — an
Extravaganza, 622-642

T\ALLING and Bulwer, Lord (the
'J-' late), Some Maxims of, 262-268

FRE

Damnatory clauses of the Athanasian

Creed, 75-83

Decline of the Salon, The, 950-959
Dicey (Edward), Last Month, 163-172,

330-340, 510-520

Domestic life in Pepys's time, 269-285
Douglas (Langton), The Exhibition of

Early Art in Siena, 756-771
Drama of to-day, The, 870-872
Drummond-Wolff (Sir Henry), Some

Maxims of the late Lord Dalling

and Bulwer, 262-268

T?AST Africa Protectorate, The,
-*-' as a European Colony, 370-385
Education Act, The, and the Roman

Church, 549-555
Educational Conciliation: an Appeal

to the Clergy, 67-74
Egyptian peasants, their past troubles

and present prosperity, 443-450
Electrical currents and invisible radia-
tions, 88-96
Eliot, Sir Charles, The East Africa

Protectorate as a European Colony,

370-385
Elkind (Dr. Louis), The German Navy

League, 1012-1022
Eltzbacher (0.), How Japan Reformed

Herself, 28-41
England, Germany, and Austria,

707-722
England's financial position and alleged

prosperity, 469-474
Ethical Need of the Present Day,

The, 207-226
Ewart (Dr. William), Medicated Air :

a Suggestion, 97-104

T^AMILY decorum in China as pre-
_L scribed in native classics. 820-

832
Federal and State elections in Australia,

105-112, 475-491
Finland, The Literature of, 772-

789

Fellah, My Friend the, 443-450
Fiscal question, The, 152-155, 163-

172, 189-198, 324-327, 334-339,

502-504, 516-518, 694-695, 856-858,

1033-1039
FiscalRefonn, British Shipping and,

189-198
Fisher (W. J.), The Liberal Press and

the Liberal Party, 199-206
Foxcroft (Frank), Tlie Chech to

Woman Suffrage in the United

States, 833-841
Frank (Helena), The Land of Jargon,

652-667

Free Church property and the judg-
ment of the House of Lords, 504-

507, 519

INDEX TO VOL. LVI

1051

FEE

Free Thought in tlie Church of Eng-
land, 386-401, 737-745 ; a Rejoin-
der, 905-924

Free Traders, The Unionist, 236-246

French Doctors, What they saw, 892-
904

French society and salons of Walpole's
days, 950-959

/GERMAN Anglophobes and their

VJ ambitions, 707-722

German Army System, The, and How
it Worts, 606-621

German Navy League, The, 1012-
1022

Germany, Great Britain and : a Con-
versation with Count Billow, the
German Chancellor, 873-881

Gibraltar, Story of its capture by Sir
George Rooke, 181-188

Gifts, 312-318

Gilbey (Sir Walter), Motor Traffic and
the Public Roads, 723-736

Giles (Professor Herbert A.), Woman
in Chinese Literature, 820-832 ;
Palmistry in China, 985-988

Girls in China, Rules and advice con-
cerning, 820-832

Gllinicke (Lieut.-Col. G. J. R.), The
Women of Korea, 42-45

Gold Discoveries, What is the use of?
299-306

Goldstein (Vida), The Political Woman
in Australia, 105-112

Graham (Marquis of), British Ship-
ping and Fiscal Reform, 189-198

Great Britain and Germany : a Con-
versation with Count von Billoiv,
the German Chancellor, 873-881

HALE (Col. Lonsdale), Our Pitiable
Military Situation, 1-19
Hara-kiri : its Seal Significance,

960-965
Harcourt (Sir "William), Death of,

861-865
Hardie (J. Keir), The International

Socialist Congress, 559-570
Harrison (Mrs. Frederic), Table Tall;

790-795
Harrison's (Mr.) Historical Romance,

571-590
Hedgerows, The Harvest of the, 227-

235
Heron's Ghyll and Coventry Patmore,

668-674
Higgs (Mrs.), Tramps and Wanderers,

55-66
Highways, their history, construction,

and xisage, and motor traffic, 723-

726

LIB

Hindus and other Indian races, their

condition as shown by the Census,

938-949
; Hospitals of London, The, and the

French doctors, 892-904
Housing question, The, and Rural

Council by-laws, 643-651
Hunter (Sir Robert), The Re-flow from

Town to Country, 1023-1032
Hymns — ' Ancient ' and ' Modern,'

925-937

JNDIA, The Census of, 938-949
•*• Indian Portraits, Some, 286-298
Industrial Arbitration Acts and labour

questions in Australia, 475-491
International conference on rights and

duties of neutrals, 697-706
International Questions and the

Present War, 142-151
Invisible Radiations, 88-96
Irby (Adeline Paulina), Ischia in

June, 119-125
Irving (H. B.), Colley Gibber's

' Apology,' 451-468
Ischia in June, 119-125

TAPAN and the Commencement of
** the War with Russia., 173-180
Japan, How she reformed herself,

28-41

| Japanese capital punishment and com-
pulsory suicide, 960-965
1 Japanese Emigrants, 813-819
| Jargon, The Land of, 652-667
Jersey (Countess of), Hymns — 'An-
cient ' and ' Modern,' 925-937
Jesus Christ, The miraculous birth of,

84-87

Joubert (Carl), The Coming Revolu-
tion in Russia, 364-369 ; The
Russian Soldier, 842-854

JfOREA, The Women of, 42-45
•^•L Kropotkin (Prince), The Ethical

Need of the Present Day, 207-226
Kruger, ex-President, Death of, 339-
340

T ABOUR troubles and Arbitration

I J Acts in Australia, 475-491

Last Month, 152-172, 319-340, 499-

520, 686-696, 867-872, 1033-1048
Lathbury (D. C.), Educational Con-
ciliation : an Appeal to the Clergy,
67-74
Lhasa, The Capture of, in 1710, 113-

118
Liberal Ministry, The Next, 675-685

1052

INDEX TO VOL. LVI

LIB

Liberal party, The, its policy and '

prospects, 155-159, 163-172, 236-

241, 320, 326-327, 330-334, 338,

511-519, 1038
Liberal Press, The, and the Liberal

Party, 199-206
Literature, Concerning some of the i

1 Enfants Trouves ' of, 126-141
London expansion into rural districts, i

1023-1032
Lord (Walter Frewen), Last Month,

867-872, 1044-1048
Low (Sidney), President Roosevelt's

Opportunities, 882-891
Lucy (Henry W.), The Next Liberal

Ministry, 675-685

Tlf ACDONELL (Sir John), Inter-

i.T-L national Questions and the
Present War, 142-351 ; The Eights
and Duties of Neutrals : President
Roosevelt's Proposed Conference,
697-706

Macnamara (Dr. T. J.), Physical Con-
dition of Working-class Children,
307T311

McNeill (Ronald), Our Bi-Centenary
on the Rock, 181-188

Mallock (Mr.) and the Bishop of
Worcester, 746-755 ; Free Thought
in the Church of England, 386-401 ;
a Rejoinder, 905-924

Manchuria and Port Arthur, How
Russia obtained possession of,
341-363, 521-542

Mann (Tom), The Political and In-
dustrial Situation in Australia,
475-491

Marriage customs and home life in
Korea, 42-45

Marriott-Watson (H. B.), The Ameri-
can Woman — an Analysis, 433-442

Masai grazing lands and European
settlers, 375-379

Maxwell (Sir Herbert), Sir Robert
Wilson : a Forgotten Adventurer,
796-812

Medicated Air : a Suggestion, 97-104

Mercantile marine, Our, and foreign
competition, 189-198

Mercer, Pepys and, 269-285

Meredith (Mr.) and the marriage con-
troversy, 870

Mieville (Sir Walter), My Friend the
Fellah, 443-450

Military Situation, Our Pitiable, 1-19

Military Training, Compulsory/, Com-
pulsory Education and, 20-27

Minor poets, Some, 126-141

Money values as affected by gold dis-
coveries, 299-306

Morgan (Sampson), The Careless
Apple, 966-969

PIN

Morley (John), Mr. Harrison's His-
torical Romance, 571-5PO

Motor Traffic and the Public Roads,
723-736

Music in churches, The Pope's ' In-
struction ' upon, and Mr. Bagot'a
views, 46-54, 247-250

Musical servant-maids in Pepys's time,
269-285

Mutual aid, morality, and modern
ethics, 207-226

NATIVE characteristics in India,
286-298
Naval Strength, Our, and the Navy

Estimates, 591-605
Navigation Laws, Shall we restore

the ? 418-432 .

Navy League, The German, 1012-1 022.
Neutrals, belligerents, and international

law, 148-151
Neutrals, The Rights and Duties of:

President Roosevelt's Proposed

Conference, 697-706
Newspapers, Liberal and Conservative^

compared, 199-206
Nihilists, revolutionary committees,.

and rulers in Russia, 364-369
Nonconformist objections to the Edu-
cation Act, 67-74

r\PALS, A Chapter on, 492-498

Open air and medicated air in

the treatment of disease, 97-104
Oxford University and the Colonies

and the Rhodes and Beit bequests,,

970-984

PAINTINGS and sculpture and
JT other works of art by Sienese,

artists, 756-771
Paivarinta, Minna Canth, and Juhani

Aho, Finnish authors, 782-789
Palmistry in China, 985-988
Parliament and politics, 152-172, 319-

340, 499-520, 686-696, 856-869,

1033-1039
Patmore (Coventry), a Reminiscence

of, 668-674

Patriotism and reform in Japan, 28-41
Pearson (Norman), Pepys and Mercer ^

269-285

Peking expedition and Russian in-
trigues, 341-363, 521-542
Pepys and Mercer, 269-285
Personal peculiarities of distinguished.

men, 622-642
Physical Condition of Working-class

Children, 307-311
Pinnacle of Prosperity, The — a ATo

of Interrogation, 469-474

INDEX TO VOL. LVI

1053

POL

Political a/nd Industrial Situation in

Australia, The, 475-491
Political Woman in Australia, Tlie,

105-112
Poor Law, Need for revision of the,

55-66
Pope, The, and Church Music — a

Rejoinder, 247-250
Pope, The, and the Novelist : a Reply

to Mr. Richard Bagot, 46-54
Precious or noble opals, 492-498
Presents, their etiquette and their

abuse, 312-318
Presidential election in the United

States, 882-891, 1039-1043
Priestley (Lady), What the French

Doctors saw, 892-904
Proverbs of Lord Bailing and Buhver,

262-268
Public Roads, Motor Traffic, and tlic, \

723-736
Pulpit oratory and its difficulties, 402- ;

417

-DADIATIONS, Invisible, 88-96

-*•"' Ramsden (Hermione), The Lite-
rature of Finland, 772-789

Rationalism in the Church of England,
386-401

Eattigan (Sir William), Some Indian
-Portraits, 286-298

Raymond (Walter), The Harvest of
the Hedgerows, 227-235

Rees (J. D.), The Census of India,
938-949

Reformation, Rome or the, 543-558

Reid (Sir Wemyss), Last Month, 152-
162, 319-329, 499-509, 686-696,
855-866, 1033-1043

Remarkable People, Are they Remark-
able-looking ? — an Extravaganza,
622-642

Reserves for the Navy, 592-595

Revolutionary and Evolutionary
Socialism, and the Amsterdam
Congress, 559-570

Rhodes Bequest, The, and University
Federation, 970-984

Road usage and motor traffic, 723-736 j

Roman Catholic church music, 247-
250

Rome or the Reformation, 543-558

Roosevelt's (President) Opportunities,
882-891

Roosevelt's (President) Proposed Con-
ference : The Rights and Ditties of
Neutrals, 697-706

Rural Councils and their Building By-
laws, 643-651

Rural Depopulation, The By-latu
Tyranny and — a Personal Experi-
ence, 64b-651

Russia, how she brought on War — a
Complete History, 341-363, 521-542

TEA

Russia, Japan, and the Commence-
ment of the Present War with, 173-
180

Russia, The Coming Revolution in,
364-369

Russian Soldier, The, 842-854

Russo-Japanese War, The, 148-151,
161-162, 172-180, 328-329, 339, 341-
363, 507-508, 687-693, 859-861, 1037,
1044-1047

SCHOOL Kitchens and dinner cou-
pons, 307-311

Sermons, The Difficulty of Preaching,
402-417

Sexual distinctions as affecting Ameri-
can civilisation, 433-442

Shogun and samurai of Japan, their
patriotic self-effacement, 28-41

Sienna, The Exhibition of Early Art
in, 756-771

Smith (Rev. H. Maynard), Mr. Mallock
and the Bishop of Worcester, 746-
755 ; Mr. Mallock's reuly to, 905-
924

Socialist Congress, The International,
559-570

Somerset lanes and an old dame's trip
to London, 227-235

Strachey (J. St. Loe), The Unionist
Free Traders, 236-246

Suyematsu (Baron), Japan and the
Commencement of the War with
Russia, 173-180; How Russia-
Brought on War — a Complete
History, 341-363, 521-542; Hara-
kiri, its Real Significance, 960-
965

Swedish literature in Finland, 773-
782

mABLE-Talk, 790-795

-*• Taunton (Rev. Ethelred L.), The

Pope and the Novelist : a Reply to

Mr. Richard Bagot, 46-54 ; reply

to, 242-250
Tavastjerna, Ahrenberg, and Helen

Westermarck, Swede-Finnish

authors, 773-782
Taylor (Benjamin) Shall we restore

the Navigation Laws ? 418-432
Taylor (Jeremy) on the Athanasian

Creed, 82-83
Theophano, the Crusade of the Tenth

Century, by Mr. Frederic Harrison,

reviewed, 571-590
Tibet, Mission to, 509, 695
— Eleuth invasion of, in 1710, 113-

118
Town to Country, The Re -flow from,

1023-1032
Tramps and Wanderers, 55-66

1054

INDEX TO VOL. LVI

Tsar, The, and the revolutionary party
in Russia, 364-369

UGANDA Railway, The, and East
African colonisation, 370-385
Underfed school children, 307-311
Unionist Free Traders, The, 236-

246

University Federation, The Rhodes
Bequest and, 970-984

VAGRANTS and the Poor Law,
55-66

Virgin-Birth, The, 84-87
Voluntary enlistment and compulsory

military training, 20-27
Voluntary schools and the Education
Act, 67-74

WALKER (H. Kershaw), A Chapter
on Opals, 492-498

Wanderers, Tramps and, 55-66

War, The Present, International Ques-
tions and, 142-151

Welldon (Bishop), A Practical View
of the Athanasian Creed, 75-83;
The Difficulty of Preaching Ser-
mons, 402-417

"Wheeler (C. B.), Gifts, 312-318

Whitworth (Rev. Prebendary), Free
Thought in the Church of England,
737-745; Mr. Mallock's reply to,
905-924

Wilson (Sir Robert) : a Forgotten
Adventurer, 796-812

Wimborne (Lady), Rome or the Refor-
mation, 543-558

Wireless telegraphy in warfare, 148-
151

— and balloon exploration, 260-261

Woman in Chinese Literature, 820-
832

Woman Suffrage in the United States,
The Check to, 833-841

Women of Korea, The, 42-45

Women voters in Federal Elections in
Australia, 105-112

Worcester (Bishop of), Mr. Mattock
and the, 746-755; Mr. Mallock's
reply to, 905-924

Workhouses and vagrants, 55-66

Working-class Children, Physical
Condition of, 307-311

'IDDISH literature, 652-667

F7IMMERN (Antonia), Invisible
U Radiations, 88-96

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