|hD5767 i!lJ58 .:^'- :iii^ii^ im'§-^0"-' ..^^r^^rr" ill !'-. 6 !>!ii-i! !l!l!!!l ilill ^mma^^MS!... .dm Ste -V-'*>^ ;.-"-, ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY New York State Colleges OF Agriculture and Home Economics Cornell University Cornell University Library HD 5767.J58 The causes of unemployment: P*- J'' Tjl^d 3 1924 013 882 992 / V h-, THE TEMPOEAEY EEYIEW. PUBLISHED MONTHLY, No. 524. August, 1909. THE LORDS AND THE BUDGET. By HAROLD SPENDER SCENES FROM THE SIEGE OF TABRIZ. By W. A. MOORE INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL CHRISTIAN LITERATURE: An Address. By Prof. Dr. ADOLF HARNAC^ BELGIAN V. BRITISH OARSMANSHIP. By W. MAXWELL=LYTE THEXAUSES of UNEMPLOYMENT: III. Trade Fluc'^uations and Solar Activity. By H. STANLEY JEVONS CHINESE SOLOMON. By Sir. J. QEORQE 5COTT, K.C.I.E. BRUNETIERE. By The Count S. C. de SOISSONS THE RESURECTION OF CHRIST: A LETTER TO COUNT TOLSTOY. By The Late M. SOLOVIEFF MALTA FEVER AND GOATS' MILK. By Dr. WALTER R. HADWEN FOREIGN AFFAIRS : The European Budgets : Fall of Prince Bulow; The French Navy; British Capital AND Russian Politics. By Dr. E. J. DILLON LITERARY SUPPLEMENT:— POEM : ALPHA AND OMEGA. By ERIC CLOUQH TAYLOR ANTI-CLIMAX IN GREAT TRAGEDY. By MUSEUS REVIEWS OF BOOKS: Mr. Macphail's Essays in Politics; Sainte-Beuve ; The Laws of Howel the Good: The Life and Letters of George Bancroft; "Wind A'nd Hill," Etc. NEW YORK: •ONARD SCOTT PUBLICATION COMPANY, 7 & 9. WARREN STREET. rUBLisHi;RS OF 'JTEMPORARV REVIEW. NlflETEEWTH CENTURY. FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. EDINBURGH, QUARTERLY, AND WESTMINSTER REVIEWS. 150 per Annum, Single Copy 40 Cents, Re^lstsrei at New York Post tJillce as Second Class Matter. The Original Edition printed In Eng-Iand and issued in America by Autbority ol the English Publisliers. LONDON: Horack Marshall and Sov. '.^ I'S'^S PENNSYLVANIA: A PRIMER A NEW HISTORY OF f^ENNSYLVANlA By BARR FERREE Secretary of the Pennsylvdrtia Society. A book of facts. The whole history of Pennsylvania admirably condensed and conveniently arranged. It contains more information than many larger book^ and is intended at once as a book of reference and a book that will tell the reader every essential fact in the history of Petinsylvania. "Every reader will learn much that he cannot find as easily elsewhere." — The Athenaeum (Lohdon). — ^'The best and most concise story of the origin, progrdst and development of our Commonwealth that has so far beeh written. Its value as a book of reference can hardly be ovei'-^stimated." — New Era (Lancaster, Pa.). — "We can only wish tMt every State in the Union had its merits described with ko much fullness and detail."— TA^ Sun (New York).— "Remarkably valuable."— Pa A- lic Ledger (Philadelphia). — "It would be difrlcult to find its equal for compactness, clarity, completeness of Information and re- liability as a ready reference yfor\x."—)!Sst (Boston). — "Un- usually comprehensive."— iV»r/A American (Philadelphia). — "Re- markably interesting and valuable — contacts a vast amount of information to be found in no other singre volume." — Tran- script (Boston). — "The essential facts of Peiltisylvania affairs and history." — Pittsburg Gazette. — "Contain^ primary facts in a way that meets the approval of those whd want to get at the meat of the subject." — Philadelphia luquir^r. — "A handy book of reference."— r/i* Nation (New York ).^" It covers a much broader field than many larger histcAf'ies." — fVilkes- Barre Record.— " C^oruAse and authoritative and Well adapted for practical general \ist:'—Book News (Philadelphia).— Governor Pennypacker says :—" ^"" '"""' ''"'*• ««-n«assed under escort, this worthy Mussulman general levied toll from them in the shape of bottles of cognac and wine, while to the French nurse of one of the Russian ladies who caught his fancy he held out the dazzling promise that he would cover her with jewels if she would SCENES FROM THE SIEGE OF TABRIZ. 141 remain and share his fortunes. Since the coming of the Rtissian army he has fled to Karadagh, his native stronghold, with 300 camel loads of loot. The Russians might easily have arrested him, and had plenty of justification for doing so. His name is held in especial loathing by the whole European colony. Prince Ain-ed-Dowlahi took up his position at Basminch in the autumn, but remained absolutely inactive till March, when the advance was made to Barinch. From that time desultory bombardments were frequent, but the damage done was insignificant. A new gun, whose approach had been advertised for weeks, arrived from Teheran in A,pril. With this the besiegers succeeded in dropping shells in the centre of the town, and I remember one occasion when, on a peaceful afternoon out of a clear sky, shells suddenly began to fall right in the middle of the parade-ground where 350 men were drilling. It was the only occasion when I saw any approach to smart range- finding, the distance being more than three miles and the position of the parade-ground probably judged by a neighbouring turret which caught the sun. But this piece of work had the kind of sequel which is common in Persia, for most of the shells did not burst. The new gim did, however, on other occasions destroy some houses, and wounded, amongst others, Bakir Khan. Twice only, on February 25th and March 5th, was Tabriz attacked on two sides. These were two of the heaviest engagements; in both the main attack came from Samad Khan, whose losses were severe. The fight on March 5th, when the Kurds got into the Hookmabad quarter and looted it, was the last of a series' of what must be called, if we consider the nature of Persian warfare, very determined attacks. The rest of the fighting originated with the defence. Its chief incidents were Satar Khan's attack on Alvar on February 21st; a night sortie on March 21st, the Persian New Year ; an attack in force upon Barinch on March 24th ; upon Karamelik on March 28th and 2gth ; and the final attack upon Karamelik on April 20th. Sniping at the barricades was, of course, a daily incident throughout the siege. It will be sufficient to cite two instances of fighting, in different directions, to illustrate the different natures of the ground and the small number of serious combatants in each case. North-west, beyond the bridge over the Aji Chai which guards the entrance to the town, the Julfa road runs through flat and open country, a wide valley at the foot of the low red hills which flank Tabriz upon the North. Eight miles out lie the two villages of Alvar, east and west, the former full upon the road, the latter half a mile away from it. With some 500 horsemen Satar KTian rode out on February 21st, his men disposed neither right nor left but all along the narrow road. The Karadaghlis on his approach promptly began tO' leave East Alvar and to head for the, village away from the road. Seeing this', Satar Khan rode straight at the village. Rahim Khan from his 142 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. main position in East Alvar immediately opened fire, and the high embanked road — which was built by the RussiaJis to carry a railway — was swept with bullets. Dropping down to the further side of the embankment he held on under its cover, followed by precisely 17 men, the rest of the 500 staying at a safe distance. Three were killed in the last 400 yards, and there arrived in. Alvar just 14 men, of whom three were wounded. I also reached the village, but at that time I was a non-combatant, as it was not till the end of March that I joined the fighting force. Later, some 80 men, leaving their horses in the rear, approached close up, and' posting themselves along the embankment, which served as a sangar, returned the fire of West Alvar. The little foroe in East Alvar drove out the remaining Royalists, and held the village fourteen hours. The firing ceased, as usual, at nightfall, and in the dark Satar Khan returned safely to Tabriz. When it was suggested to him that his party might easily be annihilated, and that as his followers had already left the road he ought certainly to find himself cut off, he replied with a certainty which proved justified, " They will never "think of that. It isn't the custom here to fight after sundown:" The general lack of courage made the achievements of a few more noteworthy, and it was at Alvar that I saw one of those unsatisfying things which are so much more common in fighting than the fine, successftil things; I m^ean something which came very near being fine and successful, but failed. A horseman undertook to carry the Constitutionalist flag into Alvar, that the little force inside might hoist it, a perhaps unnecessary performance, but one which ap'peals to the theatrical instinct of the East. With the flag shooting upright from the pommel of his saddle and its folds flying out behind him in the breeze, he galloped at a furious pace full in view of the enemy along the hard highway. A perfect blizzard of bullets flew around him. The flag was riddled, and I looked to see him fall or plunge to the cover of the bank. Still he held on faster and faster ; two, three, and 400 yards were passed, and it seemed as though he might reach Alvar. But at a distance of 150 yards from the village, where the most advanced post of those who' had failed to come in was firing on the enemy, the cavalier stopped his course and joined them. He had one flesh wound, and had made a fine ride, but not to a finish. The flag never reached Alvar. The Royalist camp at Barinch lay in a valley before the village, and between it and Tabriz the hills made a horseshoe, the sides of which pointed towards the city. The slopes were open but steep, and often twisted into folds and gullies. Along the range of hills that formed the curve of the shoe the besiegers set their sangars and guns. At one time also they ran down the right arm, but they lost so many men in this positiorl that they quickly abandoned it. Bakir Khan, who had entire command of the defence on that side SCENES FROM THE SIEGE OF TABRIZ. 143 chiefly because of the accident that his house was situated in the Khiavan quarter, whereas Satar Khan Hved in Amrakiz near the Aji Chai bridge and the Julfa road, thereupon proceeded to turn this right arm into a Constitutionalist sangar. Along the top of the steep and narrow ridge a winding trench was dug, which ran for a quarter of a mile and came to an abrupt stop some 200 yards from a precipitous hill which formed the turning point of the curve ajnd a principal outpost of the enemy. On March 24th, Tabriz mustered something like 2,000 men for an attack on Barinch. It was a picturesque and wonderful crowd, Seyds and Mollahs, Mujtehids and venerable members of the Anjuman, with wide flowing robes and turbans, green, blue, or white, according to their holy privilege. Two guns thundered fitfully and ineffectually well in the rear, and were never once advanced during the day. Round these a vast concourse of unarmed citizens and loiterers gathered, and at frequent intervals rent the skies with the piercing cry, "Yah Ali, Yah Ali," chanted by all in unison, in the twofold hope of frightening the enemy by much noise and convincing them that the besiegers were not Babis, as slanderously reported, but good Mussulmans like themselves. Here, as everywhere, the samovars were kept ever going, and tea, with Turkish delight and other sweetmeats, was peddled to a patient crowd, which was famishing for lack of bread. Once the unexpected happened and a shell fell into the supposed security, killing three non-combatants on the spot as well as wounding several and pro- ducing a hurried change of place. The gun is an extraordinary fetish in Persia. To lose men, or horses., or rifles is bad, but to allow a gun to fall into the enemy's hands is disgrace. Therefore the gun must be kept well in the rear, so that however hasty the flight of those in front it shall not be endangered. It must never be advanced on the pretext of any success in front. It must, in fact, be in general a quite useless source of anxiety and pride, comparable only to the " parlour " of the English artisan, a family glory displayed at funerals and feasts. The centre of the horseshoe was left alone. A handful of about 40 men occupied all day a position on the right, that is on the left arm of the shoe, which opened towards the town. Outside the right arm, in the deep valley between it and the red hills of the north, Satar Khan, with 300 horsemen, was posted to prevent the main force being outflanked. This main force occupied the trenches , on the right arm, and from dawn till dark fired rounds iimiunerable at the barricades along the curve. The trenches were full, but the majority of those in. front showed no inclination to move forward, nor was any pressure noticeable from behind. When I reached the end of the trench I found that some 60 had pressed on another 100 yards, and, huddled together in such cover as the hill afforded, were threatening the enemy's strong barricade on the top. Further 144 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. still a party of 21 had reached a pit half-way up and were not. more than 40 yards from the goal. I reached this advance party about noon, and found that it consisted of 14 Persians and seven Caucasians, while in eiddition two Persians had already been killed and one wounded, and one Caucasian had been wounded. For an hour and a half we remained in this position, losing two more men. Not a man from the large force in the trenches joined us. One by one, a few, perhaps a dozens ran the gauntlet as far as the second advance party at the foot of the hill, but none came further, nor did this group advance. From a position in the middle of the trench the Armenians fired bombs over our heads, dropping them behind the sangar above us. At half-past one, in the middle of a more furious bombardment than usual, the little party rushed the hill, the enemy bolted precipitately to a second line of barricades at a distance of 300 yards, and amidst ecstatic and ear-splitting yells of "Yah Ali," and a fusillade from everybody that sounded as if nothing ought to be left alive, we found ourselves in possession of tiie sangar. Five more men had been hit, leaving 14 tmtouched out of the original 24. Vigorous yells and signals to the party behind now proctuced some effect, and we were reinforced by some 50 men. There we stuck till sundown. Furious firing lasted all the time, and the bombs flew over our heads. The main body remained far behind in the trenches. Had it only come on, victory was easy and the siege might have been raised. Six more of the advance party were hit. A Georgian just in ftont of me in the rush to the hill blew his own head to pieces with a hand-grenade as he was about to throw it at the flying enemy, and I narrowly escaped a drenching as all the, blood gushed out from his body toppling backwards. These were brave men ; but it was odd that even the most cowardly took death and wounds with stoic indifference when they came. They were not ready to die and they took pains to live, but when the bullet came neither the victim nor those around him bemoaned the misforttme ; a degenerate kind of fatalism. At simset everybody retired on both sides. No one stayed to guard the hard-won hill, and next day this strong point of vital importance was quietly reoccupied by the Royalists and doubly fortified. Karamelik, on the south side of Tabriz, was surrounded by a maze of rectangular gardens with the familiar brown, dead straight, clay walls which lend monotony to Persian towns as a foil to the varying colours of the bazaars. These walls formed ideal natural barricadra, as the bullets spun harmlessly into the clay, w'hile it was a simple matter at a moment's notice to pierce it for loop-holes or break a passage-way. The ordinary form of fig'htii^ on this side consisted in each party posting itself behind a loopholed wall and blazing indiscriminately at the opposite wall. Safely ensconced behind one nf these walls, one could hear the incessant thud of hundreds of SCENES FROM THE SIEGE OF TABRIZ. 145 bullets on the other side, at a distance of two feet from one's body, with the comfortable feeling of comparative security. Some warriors simply rested the muzzles of their rifles oil the top and fired vaguely in the air. Others shoved them through loopholes and pulled the trigger, keeping their persons as far away from the opening as possible to avoid any risks. Occasionally some one got hit by a bullet passing through a hole, or if with greater daring he showed himself at one of the openings in order to reconnoitre the enemy ; while the ceaseless flight of bullets that simg incessantly just over- head, passing above the seven-foot walls, naturally found some human billets further back as men came and went. I had seen this ineffectual performance often, and since of all the quarters it was the one in whieh the attacking party was most prone to stick fast and most difficult to persuade to advance, it was, therefore, a pleasure to find in the last sortie, on April 20th, which was the most desperate encounter of the siege, that, though few, there were some who had learnt their lesson and were willing to advance in rushes against an enemy whom such tactics were botmd to affright. Till then, their opponents had only advanced to a new position, when the Kurds had first abandoned it as untenable. But on April 20th they were five times driven backwards and fled precipitately across the open. Their casualties were, probably, over 100. Ours were 24 out of possibly 150 men. W. A. Moore. VOL. XCVI. '2 JNTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. AN ADDRESS BY PROF. DR. ADOLF HARNACK* «« T NTERNATIONAL and National Christian Literature"— what J[_ theme oould be more suitable to such an occasion as this? For we are summoned by the circumstances of this gathering to reflect upon our common possession, its extent, and' how it has come into being. It is self-evident that, speaking in this festal hour, and speaking as a theologian, I shall be obliged to restrict my enquiry to our common Christian possession. We recognise that this does not consist in our institutions, organisations, laws and customs, and you have just heard t that the constitution of our Churches presents so many peculiar features that a foreigner can only after a long time familiarise himself with it. On the other hand, it may with equal emphasis be asserted that a long time is needed on our part so to understand the English Established Church and the various denominations as directly to appreciate the common spirit. We have in common not only institutions, but also an acquired spiritual t wealth. The first element of this wealth is, of course, represented by the Bible and our common work upon the Bible. I need not discuss this at length, and therefore will only say that those men who, under the guidance of the Spirit of God, created the Old Testament, and afterwards the New, have not only opened for all ages the deep springs of edification, but they have also laid a fundamerHum aere ferennius for our spiritual fellowship; and that * This speech, delivered (without notes) at the reception ot representatives of British Churches in the Aula of the Berlin University on Tuesday morning, June 15th, 1909, has been translated by the Rev. J. H. Rushbrooke, M.A., from a steno- graphed German report, which however Dr. Harnack has not been able to revise. That the report is substantially accurate, the Editor of the " Contemporary Review " and the Translator, both of whom were in the audience, are able to assure the reader. t In a preceding address by Prof. Dr. Kahl, Rector of the University.. X Geistig is throughout rendered "spiritual," but the English word must be under- stood in flie broad sense of the German. The compound "spiritual-intellectual" would approximately express the meaning. CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. 147 so long ,as there ,are readers and students of the Bible they will be so strongly and intimately bound to one another that no eaithly power may rend them asunder. That is the significance of the international literature as it is represented in the Bible. Nevertljpless, accepting all that has to be said concerning the Bible — its great, glorious and, indee 40 3 2,467,481 740-2 Cotton 712 j Bale (470 lbs.) 4,000 (SJd. per lb.) 1 400 10,011 400-4 Rice - 712 Pound 2 * 586,001 II-7 Cane Sugar - 712 Ton 6,000 600 231 13-8 Wool - 711 Pound 20 2 291,783 5«-3 Oats 95 Bushel 30 3 ''94,595 268-4 Rye - - 96 J) 5° S 27,241 136 Barley - 97 )J 40 4 139.749 55-9 Buck- wheat 98 )' 5° 5 15,008 7-5 P Dpulation 1904 81.750,000. Total 1956-5 Conver itional val ue i9S6'S per head in 1904 8175 23"94 The vvrhole series of figures for the total agricultural production of the United States will be found in Table IV., and it is also dis- played graphically in the second curve from the top in Plate I. Its salient feature is a periodic variation, not of eleven years, but only some three or four years in length. From 1866 to 1879 the curve rises gradtially, with slight set-backs, or slower rates of increase, every three or four years. This is the period of the rapid extension of settlement westward of the Mississippi, and also of the adoption of machinery. The latter is the chief cause of the increase of produce per capita, one machine alone, the "twine-binder," being responsible for a very great increase in the production of grain, which was pa-in- cipally limited by the labour supply available at harvest time.* From. * Professor T. N. Carver, " Historical Sketch of American Agriculture." Plate 1 THE CAUSES OF UNEMPLOPMENT. 175 1879 onwcurds the character of the curve completely changes. It is' nearly horizontal on the average, but fluctuates violently. I have not yet' certainly discovered the cause of this sudden change in the character of the curve ; but probably it is due mainly to the westward extension of cultivation, and possibly also to the introduction of spring wheat as an extensive crop dirring the later ■ seventies. When I calculated the mean length of this short-period oscillation : of the agricultural production of the United States, I foimd it to be about 3-7 ; and I was much impressed with the fact that this coincides with one-third of the sun-spot cycle, for ii-i25-=-3=3-7i. I had noticed in Dr. Gregory's " Climate of Australasia" a brief reference to the supposed existence of a 32-year cycle in the weather as urged by Sir Norman Lockyer and Dr. W. J. S. Lockyer. I then consulted their papers in the Proceedings of the Royal Society,* and found that they had made annual and semi-annual averages of the baro- metric observations taken for many years past in a great number of places widely distributed over the earth's surface. The variations were found to be practically simultaneous, but of opposite character, in different places, Bombay being the best representative of one type and Cordoba (in Argentina) of the other. Diagrammatically repre- sented, it could be seen that the mean annual pressure had varied with very striking regularity in a period of from three to four years, and the similarity of these oscillations to those on my curve of the totfl agricultural produce of the United States was so evident that a caudal connection immediately suggested itself. The barometric data are given in detail, and continued to 1907, in a recent publication prepared at the Solar Physics Observatory,t South Kensington, of which Sir Norman Lockyer is Director ; and I am thus enabled to make some accurate comparisons of my United States produce figures with the barometric values. As typical of the pressure variations I selected the curve of mean values of barometric readings at Cordoba for the summer months April to September in each year, and I have reproduced it here as the top line in Plate I. From a number of com- putations both between maxima and minima, both on this curve and on the corresponding one for Bombay, I find that 3.60 years is the average length of the short-period pressure variations during the interval 1877 to 1907. A careful computation of the average length of the period of variation of the crops of the United States during the same period gives 3-66. The difference is only -06 of a year, or less than 35 weeks in 3^ years — ^that is to say, well under 2 per cent. The periods are very variable in length,} and the number of them * " On Solar Changes of Temperature and Variation in the Rainfall in the Indian Ocean," Vol. LXVII, p. 400; "On the Similarity of short period Pressure Variations over Large Areas," Vol. LXXI, p. 134; and "The Behaviour of short period Pressure Variations over the Earth's Surface," Vol. LXXIII, p. 457. t " Monthly Mean Values of Barometric Pressure for 73 selected Stations over the Earth's Surface." Solar Physics Committee, under Education Department (Wyman & Sons), 1908. 4to. vi. 97 pp., 32 plates. } Individual periods vary from two to five years ig length ; and the averages over six or more periods vary from 3,42 to 3.75 in length. 176 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. Table IV.— American and World's Production. \ 2 3 4 5' 6 7 8 Mean Total Pig Iron World's Baro- Agricul- Produc- Year's World's World's Grain metrii: tural tion. Railway Wool Cotton Pro- Pressure. Produce, TrafSc Pro- Pro- duction. Year April- U.S.A. Tons per Receipts. duction. duction. Sept. Conven- J0O,OOO Millions Cordoba. tional of %per mile Millions Millions of value $ popula- open. of lbs. of lbs. Bushels. Inches. per capita. tion. 1866 16-7 3.400 1867 i6-8 3.603 1868 ifc-i 3.870 1869 i8-5 4.531 1870 19-S 4.318 1871 19-7 4.315 1872 i8-7 6,278 1873 24-65 18-6 6,t45 1874 2601 20-4 5.610 1875 26-51 212 4.605 1876 2556 20-9 4,141 1877 25-08 22-4 4,557 1878 25-96 23-3 4.834 5998 1879 25-73 24-0 5,611 6,076 1880 25'24 262 7,646 6,578 1881 25'36 21-6 8.075 6,806 1882 25-83 24-8 8,8c6 6,662 1883 2579 245 8,557 6,732 7,450* 1884 25-12 25-S 7,462 6,150 7,970* 1885 25-47 24-2 7,202 5.966 7,800* 1886 26-56 24-1 9,900 6,032 7,760* 1887 2526 2a-4 10.935 6,296 1 310 7,780* 1888 24-79 249 10,821 6,089 1,371 4.710 8,37« 1889 26-08 26-0 12,406 6,149 1,439 S,o6i 8,060 1890 26-44 206 14,696 6,5'4 1,327 5,510 7.592 1891 25-40 27-4 12,969 6,592 1,557 5,431 8,264 189* 27-20 23-6 14,069 6,676 1,670 4,604 8,220 I'^QS 26-69 20-3 10,737 6,801 1,603 5,084 8,629 1894 26-39 19-4 9,840 5,847 1,705 6,142 8,489 1895 25-69 25-.'; 13,702 6,031 1,797 5,009 9.155 1896 25-48 22-8 12,274 5. 157 1,694 5,671 9.134 1897 26-68 22-7 13.483 6,136 i,6qi 7,041 8,128 1898 25-51 25-2 16,140 6,689 i,7£i 7,238 9,325 1899 24 04 24-4 18,327 7 002 1,729 5.554 9,383 190'p 2521 22-7 18.071 7.728 1,513 6,570 9.210 1907 24-79 22-9 20,448 8,114 < 1,787 6,286 8,8u 19O2 24-47 27-2 22,557 8.517 1,621 7.023 10, 860 1903 25-78 a4-3 22,407 9.158 1.587 6,63s 10,670 1904 24-70 23-9 20,179 9,311 1,656 8,588 10,630 1905 24-97 27-5 27,653 9,720 1,677 7,018 10,030 1906 25'9o 27-6 30.050 10,542 1,663 9,027 11,900* 1907 26 42 251 30,041 7,248 io,8,oo* 1908 24-6 18,282 1909 27-5* • Pr ovisioiial fi{ jures. THE CAUSES OF UNEMPLOYMENT. 177 (eight) for which we have data is 'so smaJl that if one of them was lengthened by a year the average -wbuld be affected to the extent of about -12. Bearing these facts in mind, the concordance of 3-60 and , 3.66 may be regarded, I think, as remarkably close, and as being good evidence of a causal connection between average annual baro- metric pressure and American harvests. In order to maJse a still more satisfactory test of the causal connec- tion, I calculated what is called the correlation co-efficient between the American harvest figures and the April to October pressure averages of CordobcU The result I obtained is —-437. By the same method the co-efficient correlating the April-October average baro- metric readings in Bombay with those of Cordoba gave — -653. The probable errors of these co-efficients are -loi and -072 respectively. Whenever the correlation co-efficient is greater thcin its probable error this fact may be taken as indicating some probability of causal con- nection between the two sets of figures, the probability becoming stronger the greater the ratio of the co-efficient to its probable error. The co-efficient becomes i-ooo when the correlation is perfect — that is to say, when the variations from the average are exactly propor- tional to one another in the two series of figures. It may then be assumed that a common cause influences them both in an unvarying degree. The negative sign attached to the co-efficient simply means that the quantities correlated vary in opposite directions at the same time. A correlation co-efficient of — 653 for the variations of baro- metric pressure in different parts of the world is very much what might be expected from the known interdependence of meteorological conditions in all paxts of the world, but I think that a co-efficient as high as — 437 correlating the harvests in the United States with the barometric pressure in South America is sufficiently high to lend great probability to the reality of causal connection. The Connection between Harvests and Trade. The rdependence of business activity in America upon the harvests is not hard to prove. The production of pig-iron is the best index of the state of the iron and steel trades ; and these themselves vary with the general state of industry in the country, though perhaps in a somewhat exaggerated manner — I mean that fluctuations of the iron and steel business synchronise closely with those of other trades, but tend on the whole to be more violent. On CcJculating the pro- duction of pig-iron per head of population in the; United States year by year and plotting it as a curve beneath that of the total agricultural production, as is done in Plate I, the cormection between the two sets of figures is obvious. The abundant crops of 1870 and 1871 were followed by a great production of iron in 1872 and 1873; the big harvests of 1879 and 1880 were followed by an increased production of iron, which, again, culminated two years later, in 1882; and the VOL. xcvi. 14 i;8 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. bountiful harvest of 1 884 produc3ed a spurt in the iron trade two years later. In the years 1888 to 1895 the curve of pig-iron production follows closely that of agricultural production one year later ; and from 1893 onwards the correspondence of the two curves is most remark- able, making due allowance for the rapid growth of the iron and steel industry. A very interesting point is the way in which the iron production has caught up with the harvests, so to speak, owing to the improvement of credit and business organisation. In the seventies it took two years for abundant harvests to work their full effect upon the iron industry. By the early nineties the activity of industry lagged but one year behind the harvests, while in recent years its movement has become simultaneous. At the present day the growing crops are discounted — ^literally turned into money as they stand- either, by the farmers themselves or by the merchants to whom the farmers have sold their crops in advance. Relying upon Government crop estimates, too, manufacturers and wholesale merchants anticipate the demand which will arise from an abundant Ijarvest, and railways the call for rolling stock ; and they place orders beforehand accord- ingly. As I write there is news that most crops in America are expected to be fairly good this year, punptually obeying the 3^-year period ; and there is also news of a distinct revival of the steel trade. On the other hand, when estimates indicate the probability of poor harvests, merchants naturally refrain from giving many orders which they otherwise would have done. Thus the 35-year period is well marked in the production of pig-iron. It may also be traced, for similar reasons, in the output of coal and many other figures. When we proceed, however, to study the general industry and commerce of the country we do not find that it varies in a 3^-year period, but in one of greater length, usually of seven or ten years. To measure the activity of trade in general several series of figures are available, amongst which I think the following most suitable : — (i) Gross receipts of all railroads per mile of railroad open ; (2) the total value of foreign trade ; (3) bank clearances ; (4) total of bank deposits ; (5) the average level of wholesale prices. The foreign trade and banking figures should be calculated on a per capita basis. Periods of activity in trade in the United States {i.e., the expansion and boom) generally last three or four years, and they are most precisely defined by the dates when they come to an end — i.e., when the collapse sets in. The last period of activity came to an end in 1907, the previous one in igoo, and the one before that in 1893. There is some little doubt about the precision of the last date, because prices began to fall after 1890 in sympathy with prices in Europe, where the eoUapse began in 1 890. The Europ^n situation and also a bad harvest in the United States in 1890 caused some set-back to the expansion, but the excellent harvest of 189 1 and the average harvest of 1892 continued the expansion in the United States, until THE CAUSES OF UNEMPLOYMENT. 179 the very bad harvest of 1893 brotight it to a close. Statistics of railway receipts, banking, iron production, and foreign trade all show that the period of expansion beginning in the later eighties is to be regarded as ending in the United States in 1893, not 1890. The next preceding expansion ended with the collapse in 1883, as shown by statistics, although the financial crisis was deferred until 1884. America partook in the severe and world-wide collapse of 1873; and the next previous collapse should be put at 1 866, although there was no crisis then, and the next before that at 1857. There was a crisis of a purely financial character in 1869, but statistics show that it but slightly affected the general trend of industry and commerce, which was then just beginning to expand. Occurring midway between 1866 .and 1873, it was evidently a manifestation of the 3i-year period, resulting probably from the relatively poor harvests in 1867, which caused a particularly unfavourable balance of trade, and the exporta- tion of much gold in 1868. By inspecting these dates it is evident that industry in the United States' runs in cycles of seven and ten years — that is to say, in periods embracing either two or three of the 3g-year periods. I conceive that the reason why the cycle of industry does not complete itself in 3^ years is chiefly economic, but the question whether it is to be seven or ten years in length is probably determined mainly by physical causes. The minds of individual men are so constituted, and such is modem business organisation, that the cycle of trade could hardly complete itself in less than about five or six years ; and if it cannot be completed in four years it must extend to seven. Very abundant crops, such as those of 1905 and 1906, may produce a boom, which is followed by a collapse, such as that of 1907. There were poor crops in 1907 and 1908, and excellent crops, let us suppose (for I do not pretend to prophesy), in 1909. Can these excellent crops of 1909 of themselves arouse trade into an expansion culminating in a boom ? By themselves they certainly cannot, though they will be sufficient to prevent industry falling into a still more depressed condition than it was at the end of 1908. If the crops of igio were good also, probably they would supply sufficient cheap raw material and capital, and stimulate demand enough, to set industry properly on its expansion. But the expansion would be only beginning. Prices would be beginning to rise, thus restoring con- fidence to business men of all classes ; and capital being plentiful, new enterprises would be planned, and construction soon undertaken. The abundance created by the good crops of 1909 and 1910 would gradually distribute itself throughout the community during 191 o and 191 1. If the law of the 3^-year period be true, then the crops either of 19 10 or of 191 1 must be below the average, and, as we have assumed 1910 to be good, 191 1 must have poor crops, and those of 191 2 would be likely to' be fairly good, but not of remarkable i8o THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. plenty. The expansion started at the end of iQOg,, reinforced by the crops of 1910, would be working itself out during 191 1 ; and it would be about coming to a standstill ia 1912, when it would receive a fresh stimulus from the fairly good crops; of that year. Supposing that the crops of 191 3 were remarlcably' abundant, the demand of agriculturists would be greatly increased, and also railway earnings ; and the profits of merchants handling raw materials would grow, also the profits of manufacturers who can now buy cheaply and sell dearly. The expansion of trade would thus be turned into a boom. Prices would continue rising ; and the margin of profitable utilisation would be extended to old-fashioned and disadvantageous plant. Metalliferous ores of low yield, which do not pay under ord;inary conditions, would be worked. The supply of all commodities would have increased to meet the greatly enhanced demand. How long can the situation last? Its economic unsoundness must bring it to an end in a year or two at most. If the harvests of 1914 be ppor the career of the boom is at once cut short. The high demand, to meet which' such great prepajrations have been made, melts away in a few weeks ; railway earnings fall off enormously ; and prices, which were perhaps already showing signs of weakness, come down with a run. For the time being there is little surplus of production over consumption ; and the large profits, and accumulations of free capital, which are required to sustain an unusual demand are non-existent. Thus arises the collapse ; and if the banks have not been cautious in the boom it may bring with it a financial crisis. If, however, it were possible that remarkably good crops should be reaped again in 1914, the boom would no doubt be precariously sustained for another year — ^that is, for a total length of twenty to twenty-four months, and the collapse would follow bad crops in 191 5- If we could imagine good crops occurring continuously from 191 3 onwards, this would not, I suppose, prevent a modified collapse taking place in 191 5, extending perhaps into 1916, but it would not be of the suddenness and severity to which we are accustomed. Such, however, is not Nature's rule, and a bad harvest seems bound to come after two or three years of abundance. The foregoing theory seems to explain how the seven years' cycle originates. Why, it may be asked, has it often been prolonged to ten' years? The reason, I believe, is partly economic, partly physical. There is no doubt that industry responds in its activity much more quickly to the stimulus of agricultural production at the present time than it did formerly ; indeed, a hundred years ago, a marked activity of trade in general might not arise imtil two years after the abrmdant crops which really caused it were reaped. When once started, too, the expansion took longer to work itself out and reach the boom. The rush and hurry of American business enterprise at the present day leads to new sotu-ces of supply being opened to meet the THE CAUSES OF UMEMPLOYMMNT. i8i increased demand in , about half the time that was required some fifty years ago. Hence I think that the second period of abundant crops following the previous collapse often did not succeed, as it can do now, in raising business to an unhealthy state of inflated prices, over-trading and speculation. Before it had reached this condition came a failure of the harvest ; and industry had to mark time for a while, though still in a healthy progressive condition. Then, when the next cycle of good crops came round in the eighth or ninth year, the expansion was easily stimulated into the boom. It is very doubtful, however, whether this is a complete explanation, and I am inclined to think- that an important factor in determining the length of the industrial cycle is the degree of abund- ance of the crops in the years when they are abundant. Returning to our hypothetical treatment of the present cycle, by way of illustration, let us suppose that the good crops of igi2 and 191 3 were only moderately good. They might not then be sufficient to change the expansion into a boom, but they would keep the expansion continuing as a period of slowly rising prices and gradual progress, and it would be left for the abundant crops of 1915 and 19 1 6, say, to bring about the boom. On the other hand, if the good crops of 1909 were followed by a failure in 191 o, they would not, as we have already seen, be sufficient to arouse industry decisively from its state of depression and set it going on the expan- sion. The same would be true if the crops of 1909 and 1910 were about equal in quantity, but not above the average. In these cases it would be left for the good crops of 191 2 and 191 3 to set industry going upon the expansion, and the boom could only set in with the prolific yield of 191 6. In obedience to the eleven-year law the good harvests might very likely be deferred to 1916 and 1917, the collapse following in igi8, and making an eleven-year cycle. It must be carefully borne in mind that it is only on the average that the baro- metric period is 32 yeajrs in length, and that individual periods may vary considerably in length ; hence in any such hypotheticcil illustra- tion the shifting of the dates of the good harvests by one year, possibly even by two years, in either direction might be needed to fit it in with the actual fact. There is much evidence tending to support the view that physical causes, acting in the way I have just described, are miainly responsible for determining the length of the period, although at the same time one must admit that improved economic organisation will tend to make the period shorter. In order to see how different periods of plenty compare with one another, I took successive fotir-yearly averages of my figures for the total agricultural produce of the United States. I thus eliminated the 3^-year period ; but the curve, instead of being a straight line, as would happen if the figures obeyed only the law of the 35-year period, now distinctly showed a longer 1 82 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. period of seven years, as can be seen by referring to the middle curve in Plate I. A maximum is to be seen at the following dates : 1870-71, 1878-9, 1883-4, 1889-90, 1896-7, 1903-4, and the intervals are respectively eight, five, six, seven, and seven years.. The maximum of 1883-4 evidently occurred a year late ; and, making an allowance for this, we may interpret the intervals as follows : -zf, \p, 2p, if, 2f, where p is used to denote the short barometric or pressure period. In other words, there seems to be a tendency for crops to be particu- larly abimdant every seven years, with an occasional break. This method of averaging is not altogether satisfactory, because it tends to throw the maximum earlier than the highest figures of the actual annual crops. As a matter of fact, a .series of harvests which, taken as a whole, are above the average, has its maximum effect towards the end of the series, because the surplus produce tends to be carried over from year to year, but still more because its effect upon industry is cumulative. Hence the activity of industry culminates in the last of a series of years which, although it may include one or two bad harvests, are on the whole above the average. Bearing this in mind, the maximum of 1903-4 on the curve of four- year averages corresponds to the boom of 1906-7 ; the maximum of 1 896-7 to the boom of 1 899- 1900 ; and the maximum of 1 889-90 to the boom of 1892-3. The maximum of 1870-71 also clearly corresponds to the boom of 1 872-3 ; but the remaining twt> maxima do not fit in so nicely. The maximum of 1878-9 was doubtless responsible for the boom which culminated in 1882 and 1883, though occurring rather a long time before it. Here probably we must bear in mind the foreign trade of the United States, and events in other parts of the world, particularly Europe. The crops of the year 1879 were bad in Europe. They were about up to the average in the next two years, and very abundant in 1882. The crops of the United States, on the other hand, were good in 1879 and very abundant in 1880. They were largely exported to Europe at a high average price, thus stimulating trade and promoting the boom in America. The boom in England was largely the result of the exceptional crops of 1882, but it was cut short by the comparative failure of the crops in 1883, the collapse setting in in the autumn of that year. Abundant crops were reaped in America in the years 1883, 1884 and 1885, which were responsible for the maximum of 1883-4 i^ the curve of averages. Probably the crops of this period were cumulatively more abundant than those which five years previously had raised a boom. It may well be asked, then— Why did they not produce another expansion and boom, ended by a collapse about 1887? The reason, I believe, is the economic factor of the trade cycle to which I have already referred. The collapse, beginning in the autumn of 1883, and particularly the panic of 1884, destroyed the confidence of business men ; and abundant capital, cheap food and raw 'material THE CAUSES OF UNEMPLOYMENT. 183 are not always in themselves sufficient to' dispel depression and re-awaken industry. It must be remembered also that at that time the United States was not so much a self-sufficing economic unit as she is at the present day ; and her industrial activity was then more dependent on prices offered abroad for her raw products than it is now. The abundant American crops of the middle eighties occurred simultaneously with abundant crops in many other piarts of the world, so that the prices realised in the Emropean market were low, a very different state of things to that prevailing in 1 879-80.* The influence which conditions in the European m.arket appear to have had upon American commercial activity in the early eighties practically disappeared less than ten years later; or, at least, the conditions were such in 1 8go that the collapse beginning in that year in Eiigland did not bring with it a collapse in the United States. There crops were exceptionally good in 1889 and 1891, and fair in 1 892. They caused the boom which continued imtil the collapse and crisis of 1893, due to the poor crops of that year. Very instructive in this connection is the curve of the gross receipts per mile open of all the railways of the United States, which is exhibited in Plate II. The drop in the receipts following each year of collapse is very striking, and so is the extraordinary rise which lias taken place since 1897, due to the rapid growth of population and development of commerce, and a somewhat slower rate of construction of railways. In America the collapse of 1900-01 caused but the slightest check in the onward march of progress — ^less than in this country, and very much less than in Germany, where its effects were severely felt. Evidence that the causes determining the length of the trade cycle are probably partly physical is to be found in barometric records, as well as in the variations of the harvests. Dr. W. J. Si. Lockyer has shownt that if four-yearly averages are taken of the mean annual pressure data already referred to, the 35-year period is eliminated, and a longer period of variation stands revealed. This is rather irregular in most of the curves, individual periods being seven, eight, ten, eleven and nineteen years in length. The last is characteristic of Australian stations, and is 8+ 1 1 or 5 x 3.8. The curve for Madras is the most regular, and it shows maxima at 1866, 1877, 1885, 1890 and 1901. The maximum of 1885 occurred a year earlier at Batavia, and obviously belongs to 1884. The conditions coimecting weather, favourable or unfavourable to harvests, with average barometric pres- sure are so complicated that it is useless to attempt a correlation of these maxima Avith booms of trade ; but the fact that barometric maxima occur at intervals of seven and eleven years is instructive. * I am much indebted here, and in other places, to Mr. A. Piatt Andrew's work on "The Influence of Crops on Business in America," Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. XX (igo6), pp. 323-52. t Proceedings Royal Society. Vol. LXXVIII, A, (1906), p, 43. 1 84 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. Fluctuations of the World's Crops, The evidence which I have set forth seems to me to estabUsh pretty clearly the connection between harvests and the trade cycle in the ■ United States. In America trade sometimes fluctuates with more or less independence of the rest of the world. To understand the trade cycles experienced in Great Britain, and many other countries, it is necessary to know how the crops of the whole world vary. To inves- tigate these in the maimer which I have applied to the United States would be an immense undertaking, for the statistics which have been published are not only difficult to collect, 'but are often hopelessly discordant with regard to the methods of estimation and the measures in which they are stated. There are so many gaps, too, when no estimation was made in a particular coimtry ; and in our own, and several other countries, the figures extend back for so short a period that the task of making totals for the earlier years is most discouraging. The world's crops of wheat are pretty well known for twenty-five years past, and I have plotted the curve in Plate II.* It shows the 35-year period with admirable clearness. The annual wool-clip of all the principal producing countriest I have managed to compile for a few years past, and the result is seen in the middle curve in Plate II. It shows 35-yearly fluctuations, doubtless because the maxima and minima of the 7- and 11 -year fluctuations characteristic of particular countries occur at different times. I give also the cotton crop of the three principal producing countries : the United States, Egypt and India.J Such commiodities as tea, tobacco and india-rubber I have not had time to study in detail, but I fancy that they will show the long-period variation, and at least some trace of the 35-year period. The coffee production of Brazil certainly does so. The com crops of the whole world are most important in this connection. I have obtained figures for wheat, oats, maize, barley and rye, and have added all these together for all the principal countries of the world. To weight them according to their average value as I did for the American crops would have been too great a task, so I have simply reduced all the various measures roughly to bushels, and have then added them all together. Unfortunately too little weight is given to the higher-priced crops, such as wheat, but the results (see Table IV, column 8, and Plate II) are of consider- able interest. It will be seen that the 35-year period is again evident, though in a few cases, as in the early nineties, and again quite recently, the maxima and minima are not well marked. There * Up to, and includiog 1898, my figures are from^' Financial Crises and Industrial Depressions," by Theodore Burton ; later from the Com Trade News. t Namely British Empire, U.S.A., Argentine, Uruguay. For the last two export figures are the only ones available. Russia and Spain are the only important countries for which I have been unable to get continuous figures. X See Table IV, Column 7, and Plate II. The figures are over 95 per cent of the world's production. Plate Ml SUN SPOTS RAILWAY REC WORLDS G9h IN CROPS WORLDS C OTTON CROP (false BAiE line) 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 I900 1905 THE CAUSES OF UNEMPLOYMENT. 185 was some difficulty in getting the populations of all the countries con- cerned yeai by year, so I have not reduced the figures to a per capita basis. The enormous crops for 1902 onwards are doubtless respon- sible for the remarkable prosperity and material progress of nearly all countries of the world (except perhaps Russia and India) during the years 1904-1907. A study of these figures for the agricultural production of the whole world impresses one with the futility of many of the explanations which have been given of the origin of particular commercial fluctua- tions. The collapse of 1 873 in France is supposed to have been the result of the Franco-Grerman war. The depression of industry in England in 1902 and 1903 is put down to the South African war, whilst the great earthquakes of recent years in San Francisco, Valparaiso, the West Indies, and Messina, are sometimes quoted as causes of the present depression of trade. Trade began to revive just as the Russo-Japanese war was drawing to a close, and was brisk even in Japan, so that the theory that war can cause world-wide depression is certainly not always valid. In reality the loss of capital caused in any one year by natural calamities, and even by great wars, is small in comparison with the fluctuations of Nature's bounty. The harvests of grain in 1892 ward less than those in 1891 by approximately one thousand million bushels. If we reckon the average value of such produce at 2s. a bushel, that means that the world was poorer by £ioo,ooo,ooo's worth of goods in 1892 than it was in i8gi. The grain crops of 1902 exceeded those of 1901 by 2,500 million bushels, or ;£'2 50,000,000 worth. These figures would undoubtedly be considerably increased if we took into account cotton, wool, rice, beef, mutton^ rubber, dairy produce, tea, coffee, peas, beans, potatoes, fruit; and a multitude of other agricul- tural products. There is, of course, much counterbalancing, the crop of a particular product being good in some countries whilst it is poor in others; and in some years the whole world's crops of certain products may be good whilst the harvests of the majority of products, perhaps, are bad. I have, however, examined statistics of crops other than grain sufficiently to be convinced that, taken as a whole, they tend to vary nearly in the saime way ; so that it is quite possible that the figures I have given as to gain and loss from year to year might even be doubled if taken to refer to all the agricultural and pastoral produce of the world— perhaps, indeed, more than doubled, if we could take account of the vast rice and bean harvests of China, upon which the trade to the Far East, and much of the prosperity of Lancashire, so intimately depend. Nature of the Connection between the Weather and the Sun's Heat. I have now, perhaps, given sufficient evidence to show that harvests fluctuate considerably from year to year in a period generally of i86 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 3^ years, with a longer period superposed ; and that in America, at least, this fluctuation is closely connected with the barometric period of about 35 years in length. It will be of interest if I devote the remainder of my space to such a summary of the recent work in meteorology and astronomy as will make plain the connection of those fluctuations with the variations in the sun's heat. Accurate observations of the sun-spots have been made continu- ously since 1825, and the curve showing the variation from year to year of the sun's mean spotted area is reproduced in Plate II.* It shows the eleven-year period very plainly, and exhibits faint traces of the 3i-year period The latter comes out more clearly, though it is still quite subordinate, when averages are taken for a shorter period than a year. Another phenomenon of the sim's atmosphere gives a better proof that the 3i-year period is a real change in the sun's condition — ^namely, the average annual number of solar prominences. The curve representing these (Plate II) I take from one of [Sir Norman Lockyer's papers before referred to.t Sun-spots and prominences, however, are but indications of changes in solar activity, which we suppose to be coimected with changes in the sun's heat ; we use them only in default of direct knowledge of the sun's heat. Sir Norman Lockyer and Dr. W. J. S. Lockyer have adduced spectroscopic evidence which they interpret to mean that the sun is unusually hot at sun-spot maximum and cools to below the average at sun-spot minimum.J Last year there were published the results of an elaborate research by C. G. Abbott and F. E. Fowle, of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (U.S.A.), in which they showed by direct measurement that the radiant heat of the sun does change.§ Unfortunately, results of only two years' trustworthy observations are available, so no conclusions as to periodic variation can be drawn These investigators also attacked the question by another method, studying thermometric records of many different places all over the world, and selecting those for which their ingeniously elaborated criterion showed that the atmospheric tem- perature must vary directly with the radiant heat received from the sun. Their general result is expressed by the third curve in Plate II, which shows both the eleven-year and the 35-year periods. It is to be observed that the sun's radiation is at a maximum when the sun- spots and solar prominences are at their minimum. Unfortunately this is in direct opposition to the Lbckyers' results. A careful study of the meteorological data leads me to place more confidence in the * The figures are taken from " The Sun's Spotted Area, i832-igcx3," published by Wyman & Sons (1902), for the Solar Physics Committee. Later figures from the Greenwich observations. t Proceedings Royal Society. Vol. LXXI (1902), p. 134. J Proceedings Royal Society. Vol. LXVII (1900), p. 409. Annals of the Astrophysical Observatory of the Smithsonian Institution, Vol. II (Washington : Government Printing Office, 1908). THE CAUSES OF UNEMPLOYMENT. 187 later result than in the conclusion based on the spectra of sun-spots. It is possible that the temperature of the spotted portions of the sun's surface does not afford good evidence as to the radiating power of the sun as a whole. Bearing in mind that warm air is lighter than cold air, and thus tends to rise whilst the latter falls, it is easy to obtain some idea of the way in which variations of the sun's heat affect the weather. During summer the continents are heated more than the oceans, hence air rises over the continents, lowering the pressure there, and falls over the oceans, which become areas of high pressure. During winter the conditions are reversed : high pressure obtains on the cold con- tinents, low pressure on the warmer oceans. Equinoctial gales m,ark the change. Coastal regions, often extending three or four hundred miles inland, partake, however, mare or less of the conditions and climate of the neighbouring ocean. When the earth receives more heat from the sun the atmospheric pressure is reduced both in summer and winter over the continents, and raised over the oceans. The boundary between the continental and oceanic climates is also affected, being pushed outwaa'ds in summer and drawn inwards in winter. A further very important effect of receiving increased heat from the sun is to increase evaporation from the oceans. Gradually the whole atmosphere gets more fully charged with moisture, and the rainfall increases. When the heat radiated from the sun declines again the conditions tend 'to be reversed ; but it probably takes two or three years for the extra moisture taken up during warm periods to be precipitated as rain. Since moist air is more opaque to radiant heat than dry air, the advent of a cold period is accelerated, and its coldness is intensified, by the additional evaporation taking place during the warm period' preceding. According to' Mr. H. W. Clough, storms travel with greater velocity and in lower latitudes in oold periods. The change of average annual temperature from a warm to a cool period is only a fraction of a degree in most places, but the disturbance of the atmosphere necessarily accompanying this small change of temperature is quite sufficient to have far-reaching effects. So fax I have been referring to the short period changes ; but exactly similar effects are produced by changes of the sun's heat occurring in the eleven-year period, and in the very variable longer period, known as the "Bruckner" cycle, which averages thirty-five years in length. The effects of each longer period simply add them- selves to, or subtract from, those of the shorter period. Thus the 32-year variations are alternately increased and reduced by the eleven-year fluctua'fion. The periodic changes of atmospheric circulation affect different regions in very complicated ways because of the difference of the 1 88 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. land's physical features ; but it is easy to understand that they are a predisposing cause which tends considerably to alter the weather from yeai- to year. The manner in which harvests depend upon the weather I cannot here discuss, though the connection is now pretty well understood. Dr. Shaw, for instance, has clearly shown how English crops depend upon the rainfall of the previous autumn ; * whilst in w.aimer countries there is a direct connection between the spring rainfall and the yield of graiat Several writers have succeeded in connecting periodic variations of the weather directly with economic statistics. Bruckner has been, perhaps, the most successful,! for he gives good evidence by taking five-yearly averages, that harvests, wheat prices, and the course of trade in grain, vary synchronously with rainfall in a period of about thirty-five years. The British Isles, France, Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, and the Atlantic coast States of North America have an "oceanic " climate ; Central and Southern Russia, and the great central area of North America, have a " continental " climate. During cool, damp periods the crops of the former countries tend to be spoiled by too much wet, whilst those of the continental area are excellent, having just sufficient moisture. On the other hand, during warm, dry periods the harvests are on ' the average more abundant in " oceanic " territory, and deficient through drought in the hot, dry continental areas. This is proved by crop statistic^ for the latter half of last century, and by grain prices for the previous 150 years, for before 1850 there was not generally sufficient international trade in grain to obliterate the effects of local harvests upon prices. The Russian export trade in grain tends to grow rapidly during damp periods, when Russia has a surplus and the rest of Europe is short, and to fall off in dry periods. A similar result is clciimed by EL W. Clough§ from an examination of Thorold Rogers' series of grain prices in England since the Middle Ages, || which date from 1265. Prices of grains are highest, according to Clough, in the latter part of cold, wet periods, this relation being clearest in the earlier centuries ; but he does not give any averages of prices, or state how he reached this conclusion. H. H. Clayton,** of the Blue Hill Observatory, finds that commercial panics in the United States have occurred either during, or shortly after, periods of deficient rainfall in the Ohio Valley. * Proceedings Royal Society. Vol. LXXIV (1905), p. 552. t The above discussion of the relation of the weather to solar phenomena has had to be severely reduced. It will be printed in full, together with a historical account of trade fluctuation^, in the Economic Journal, probably in December next. X " Der Einfluss der Klimaschwankungen auf die Ernteertrage und Getreidepreise in Europa." Geographische Zeitschrift, Vol. I (1895), pp. 39-51 and 100-8. § Astrophysical Journal (Chicago). Vol. XXII (July, 1905), p. 55. 11 J. E. Thorold Rogers, " History of Agriculture and Prices " (Clarendon Press). Vols. II-VII. **"The Influence of Rainfall on Commerce and Politics." Popular Science Monthly (December, 1901). Vol. LX, p. 158. THE CAUSES OF UNEMPLOYMENT. 189 Acceptance of the solar theory of the trade cycle carries with it some important conclusions in regao-d to unemployment. It is difficult to imagine that variations of the harvests can ever be avoided ; hence there will always be a cause predisposing to fluctuations in the activity of industry. This would operate under every form of social structure, individualist or communist, free trade or protectionist. At the same time various measures might be taken which would tend to mitigate the effects of these fluctuations. A more widespread knowledge of their periodic character, for instance, would enable producers to anticipate them ; and free trade, making a country less dependent industrially on the result of its own crops, will assist. A certain amount of Government interference in the shape of insurance would also be helpful ; but I am not in favour of the State entering the commercial field to buy up surplus crops, the difficulties experi- enced by Brazil with her " coffee valorization scheme " being decisive. One method there is, however, which would be efficacious in pre- venting periodic increases of unemployment in nearly all trades— the adoption of a fluctuating wage rate. After a year or two of very bad return to the energy of lagricultural producers there is less wealth to be distributed amongst the whole community than when the harvests are good; and it is therefore impossible that the greater number — ^the manual workers — should have fixed incomes. If fluc- tuations are to be borne entirely by employers, wages must be much lower than they would be on the average if they varied with industrial activity. At present fluctuations of income are borne chiefly by merchants, employers, and certain classes of workmen, such as coal- miners and engineers. A much smaller variation than that now borne by miners would probably be all that is necessary proportionately to distribute every year's production of wealth, and thus to avoid any appreciable fluctuation of employment in the great majority of trades. No doubt this is a very unheroic solution of the difficulty, for there are many valid objections to a fluctuating income. It seems to me, however, that, having regard to the natural origin of the fluctuations, there is no option but to accept the lesser of two evils. In conclusion, I wish to acknowledge the able assistance I have received from my wife in making many of the calculations relating to crop statistics ; and to thank Dr. W. J. S. Lockyer, Mr. J. David Thompson, and other friends for kindly filling up for me some gaps in my figures for tables and plates. H. Stanley Jevons. A CHINESE SOLOMON. TSAI HSI-YUNG was a mule-driver in one of the caravans which come every year with iron pots and pans, and gold-leaf Wicilnuts, dried persimmons, felt rugs, grass hats, orpiment, and various odds and ends, from Yiinnan to the Shan States, on the borders of Burma. The caravans come down at the end of the rains, travel about all over the States, and go back at the end of the hot weather, with loads of cotton and opium, to their homes in China, before the heavy rains begin. It is a desperately hard life. The caravans start at seven or eight in the morning, after the drivers have had a meal of jerked beef or pork and rice, travel till twelve or one o'clock, unload for a couple of hours, turn their animals loose to graze, and then saddle up and go on till dark. They halt anywhere, the only absolutely necessary thing being water. The only rest they have is when they come to a market, or to a capital town, and then they are engaged all day selling their goods. On reasonably good roads they cover thirty miles a day, and in hilly country, where they scramble up and down rocky paths or earthy slopes, slippery with the morning mist, and go for miles along torrent beds mostly made up of boulders, they often do twenty miles and sleep the night under their pack-loads, with a mat spread over the top to keep off the drenching dew, of the paddy valleys. The drivers do the whole distance on foot. They go at a sort of a lope and average perhaps five miles an hour. It is only the owner of the caravan who rides, perched on a wooden saddle, heaped high with bedding, wadded quilts and miscellaneous garments. Chu Ko-Liang, the owner of Tsai's caravan, came from a large village half-way between Shang Kuan, at the north end of the Tali Lake, and Lichiang-Fu, where the strongest liquor in Yiinnan is made. He was a heavy drinker, in contradistinction to his men, all of whom were opium-smokers. It is a confirmed belief of the A CHINESE SOLOMON. 191 Chinese that a man cannot both drink strong drink and smoke opium. He must do the one or the other. If he both drinks and smokes, he dies a little earlier than he would if he took neither. Opium is the surest relief of over-strained muscles and tired-out frames. Moreover it soothes, whereas samshu inflames, and especially the liquor of Lichiang-Fu. It made Chu Ko-Liang violent-tempered. One day, on a particularly steep and rocky path, one of the mules in Tsai's batch threw its load. The saddles are made of wood, with a sort of groove, and the loads are tied on to a kind of bridge which fits into the groove, and can be lifted on and off the saddle with the greatest ease and rapidity. The bridge is something like a hairpin cut short and prised out at the prongs, or like the Marble Bridge in the grounds of Yiian Ming Yiian, the Summer Palace, under the western hills outside Peking. Load and saddle ordinarily fit very well together, but if the side of the bridge hits against a tree-trunk, or tips against a particularly big boulder, it pitches off the saddle, and nothing can save it. This is what happened to Tsai. At a sharp corner above a slope of about one in three, a load caught the cliff face and fell down several hundred feet. Two big iron cauldrons were -smashed to pieces. Chu Ko-Liang was in front when this happened, and he did not hear of it till the end of the day, when he promptly got into a furious rage. Tsai answered filthy abuse with sullen growls and curses, and Chu worked himsielf into such a passion with the violence of his own language that in the end he ran at Tsai, trying to pull his revolver out of its leather holster. Tsai took to his heels. Fortunately for him the holster was of raw leather and had shrunk ; besides that the revolver was rusty. Before Chu got it out, therefore, the muleteer had disappeared in the jimgle and got clean away. Tsai was thoroughly scared, however, and ran several miles before he felt safe. Then he stopped and sat down, and immediately after- wards darkness came on. He had run up-hill to begin with, and taken the first cit)ss-path he saw to escape Chu. ' He was not sure that he could find his way back to camp, and he thought it probable that Chu would be dangerous to face that night, so he went on up hill along a narrow track which evidently led to some village. All the mountain villages in the eastern Shan States speak Chinese, and he felt sure of a night's shelter. After half-an-hour's walk he came to a village of hill-men in a fold of the slopes. All these tribes cultivate cotton and sell most of their crops to the Chinese. At the first house he came to, Tsai therefore announced himself as the agent for a Chinese cotton-buying caravan who had lost his way, and he was promptly taken in and given food and a sleeping-plaoe. He had intended to rejoin Chu Ko-Liang's caravan, but next morning he woke with a bad attack of fever, and could not move. 192 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. He did not get over it for several days, and by that time it was hopeless to think of catching up the caravan, so he stayed where he was. For a Chinaman he treated his hosts quite affably. There was none of the domineering manner which the Celestial usually adopts towards "wild men." For their part they were rather proud to have him as a guest. He had some strings of cash with him, and later he gave them some bints about ootton-selling and the best way of growing and gathering opium, and became very popular. Before very long he established himself as cotton agent for that and several other villages, married the headman's daughter, and became a land-owner himself. He stayed for several years, established relations with some other Chinamen down in the State capital, forty miles away, or thereabouts, in the paddy plain, and made quite a considerable amount of money. Meanwhile his wife bore him a son, of which, like all Chinamen, he was very proud. When the boy was four or five years old Tsai began to think that he ought to go to school. The hill tribesmen, of course, have no schools of any kind. They have not even a written character. The Shan monastery schools seemed to him beneath the notice of a Chinaman. They teach reading and writing, certainly; but the writing runs from left to right, like English, and i^ not much more imposing to look at. Tsai knew no written characters himself, but he was for this reason all the more persuaded that Chinese was the only lang^ge fit for the son of a substantial person such as he had now become. From thinking of what he ought to do for his son, he began to think of himself. He had quite a small fortune. He would be very comfortable in his native place, and probably weuld be able to make much more money, so he gradually worked himself into a state of home-sickness. So one day he told his wife that he was going back to China, and intended to take her and the boy with him. Lati, as the lady was called, looked at him very dubiously, and said : " Is China a big place — bigger than this ? " Tsai first gasped, and then stared hard at her, and then burst into roars of laughter. " China a big place ! China bigger than thisT "You poor little insect, why there is no place but China. The rest " of the world is merely a fringe round China. This place is likg a " weed on the edge of our biggest cotton-field compared with China. "But yoti shall see. When we have sold all that cotton we have in "the shed we shall set out." Lati looked rather huffed, and said : " I don't like big places. 1 " have been twice to the town" — (everywhere in the Shan States the local capital is looked upon as the centre of the world, and is called " The Town") — •" yes, twice I have been to the town, but I don't like " it. There are too many houses, and the men are very rude, and A CHINESE SOLOMON. ^ 193 " the roads are long and dusty. No, I don't want to go. How many " nights would you be away ? Is it far ? " " Hai-ya ! Can such things be ? What barbarians these animals " are ! " exclaimed Tsai. " The town would not be a village in China. ' "Why the houses in my country are all brick and mortar and the " roads are all covered with flagstones. Never mind. You shall see. "You will be delighted with it and the little son will go to school "and when he grows up he will be a mandarin." " But how far is it ? " asked Lati, pettishly. " It will take us one and a half or two moons to get to my place. " But you shall ride, or be carried in a chair." " Two moons ! I won't go ! You can go if you like, but I will stay "where I am, and the little son, too. I don't want to see your big " towns and your nasty brick houses and your stone roads. I hate "cdl roads except our hill roads." " Oh, but you must go, and the little son must come, too. He must " learn to read and write and be a great man." Lati beat her breast and burst into a torrent of protestation. " I won't go ! When I married you the whole village knew that you " would not be allowed to go away and carry me off. I was not to " leave our village unless I agreed to it. I won't go. It is not right "to break promises and go back upon what is agreed. What has "been settled must remain settled. It is not right to take me away "to a country that I do not know and that nobody else knows. It " was agreed. The spirits have heard it, and the village elders have " confirmed it. I won't go. Between honest people, the proverb says, " a word binds fast. Were not five pigs and ten fowls sacrificed, and " did not the whole village get drunk ? How can you get over that ? " It is not allowable tO' break the most sacred decisions — the wise men's " calculations and forecasts — like this. What sort of conduct is this ? " It is against all religion and custom. I tell you I won't go. What "sort of place would this be to live in if promises and sacrifices and "the decision of the village elders are to be treated like this? I "won't gO': I won't go: I swear I won't go." Tsai held his hands to his ears and stared at her in astonishment and indignation. "Stop all that talk," he shouted. "What do you know about the " Celestial Diagrams ? What do you know about the Middle King- "dom? What do you Icnow about anything at all? If you knew " anything of the Celestial Diagrams you would know that from the "moment I married you, you became my property. If you knew " anything of China you would never rest till you got there. You "and your proverbs! The proverb says, the woman that one has "married and the horse that one has bought, one does with them " what one pleases and when one pleases. They can be beaten if " you please and when you please. I've made up my mind that I am 70L. xcvi. 15 194 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. " going back to my own country, and I've made up my mind to take . " you, too. Nothing will make me change my resolution. But if you " go on refusing to come — well, you can stay where you are ; but I'll " go, and I'll take the boy with me ! " "The boy isn't your boy alone. You can't carry him away like " this." " Oh, but I can, and I will." The more they talked the hotter they got, and at last Lati burst into tears, beat her breast, and called upon the spirits of the earth and the air and the village to help her. Then Tsai lost his temper and gave her a beating. Lati flung out of the house and rushed off to her mother. The old lady was not very sympathetic : " All husbands beat their wives," she said, "you are very lucky that he hasn't done it before. He " keeps you in the house, and you have nothing to do, and you have "plenty of jewellery — ^all from him — far more than I have. I am "the wife of the headman of the village, but I have to hoe in the "fields, and I have to fetch water, and I have to carry a basket on "my back to the bazaar. You go there in a litter, if you want to, "and you don't do a single thing in the house or out of it. I think "^you have nothing to complain of. If he goes to China without you "he'll certainly get a wife or two; I remember his telling me that "there are a terrible lot of girls there. He may come back again. " He's glot a house here, and he has got land, and he has made a lot " of money, and has quite a number of cattle and pigs. You should " go with him. But if you are fool enough to refuse to go — well, he " must give you the house, according to custom, and a buffalo or two, "perhaps, and you can hoe the fields yourself. I don't think you'll " like it. But you must let him have the boy. You can't keep him." Lati sulked about the house for a bit, and then she went off, to look for her father. He was out in the fields, a long way above the village, on the steep slope of a ravine. Lati was very tired, what with the walk up the hill and the loose earth of the field, which was being prepared for firing, and she sat down and told her story very disconsolately. The headman was very discouraging. "Wants to "go away, does he? Well, I never thought he would stay. Keep "the boy? Of course you Ccin't keep the boy; the boy is his. Tf "you can't do without the boy you must go with him. But if you "stay here the Chinaman must give you some buifaloes — I'll see to " that. He has some very good buffaloes, and I need some in my "fields. We lost a lot with foot-and-mouth disease last year. You " can come and stay with us, if you like, and you can help as you used "to before the Chinaman came." This was not at all what Lati wanted. She sat glowering for a while to rest herself, and watched some of the village girls, witK their skirts doubled up quite indecently high, breaking the clods, 4 CHINESE SOLOMON. 19S and she came to the conclusion that she wOuld submit to not having her own way rather than do that. So she went home again. That was a sort of admission that she would do what her husband wanted. She knew it, and Tsai knew it, and all the village knew it. She looked forward to leaving the village with vague alarm. She had never known any other place, and was full of fantastic terrors. She thought the climate and the customs and the people and the food and everything would be beyond endurance. On the other hand she could not help admitting that Tsai had treated her in a way no hill-man ever treated his wife. She had never done any work, and all that he required was that she should always be well dressed and should not go gadding about alone. And she was proud of the boy. He was dressed like a little Chinaman and lorded it over all the other children of the place, most of whom were stark naked. Little Tsai was spoilt by all the women in the village and Lati came to the conclusion that she could not give him up. She never said a word to Tsai, and he never spoke to her again directly about the matter. He went about with an exasperating smile, and she got to hate him more and more. One day he said : " We're going away on the full of the moon. You can't ride a pony, "can you? " " Of course I can't ride a pony," snapped Lati. "I never saw one "till you brought them here." "Very well,- we'll get a quiet beast and a man to lead it, and that " will do for the little son, and then there's the litter." Lati made a grimace and snatched up the boy and went into the inner room. Tsai did not like it, but he had given Lati an immense quantity of jewellery, and he did not want to lose it. Moreover, he was afraid the little boy would pine away if he had not his mother to look after him. So at last they set out. Tsai had hired ten or twelve mules to carry their baggage and some cotton for sale in China, and had promised the owner to get some goods in Shang Kuan or Cali-fu to Taring back for sale in the Shan States. Tsai and the headman of the caravan rode on mules, and Lati and the little boy went in a bamboo pcJanquin, covered in with cloth to keep off the sun and prevent people from staring at her. The headman was a hardened sinner of uncertain age. He knew all about mules' ailments, and he had travelled backwards and for- wards over the border country many times, but he was an inveterate gambler, and never kept money long enough to settle down and ovsm mules himself. But he was always in high spirits, told endless anecdotes, sang songs, and kept the party amused. The Chinese proverb says: "Coachmen, boatmen, keepers of "taverns, couriers and courtiers, no matter how innocent they seem 196 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. " to be, are all better with their heads off," and Li, the head mule- man, was a sort of proof of the wisdom of this opinion. The first day he simply joked and talked all the way, but he came to the conclusion that Tsai and his wife were not on the best of terms, and he noted that Lati was very buxom and quite good-looking, besides wearing many and costly omanients. He thought he might make something out of it. So he loitered about the palanquin, and sang Shan love-songs and exchanged glances with the lady whenever he could. That night they put up at a rest-house outside a small village, and the same for another day or two, starting with the first light of day and going on till sunset. Then they reached the capital of a large Shan State on the fringe of China proper. Here there were inns somewhat after the Chinese fashion, with a narrow front on the- street, consisting principally of a gateway, with doors that were shut up at night, and inside a series of courts running back to a big yard behind, where the mules could be let loose or put in the stables that flanked one side. It was late in the afternoon when they arrived. Li went off to see about the disposal of the mules, and Tsai and his wife went straight to their rooms in the second court. Lati was very sulky, and her company was far from pleasant, so Tsai set out for a walk in the town to see the place ,and find out whether there were any Chinamen settled whom he knew and could have a talk with. He wandered about for a time, found nobody, and came back at dusk. When he got to the inn he went straight to his wife's room. Lati screamed at the top of her voice, "Oh, save me! Here's a " man come into my room. He is a thief, or a murderer, Li, come "quick, Li." Li made his appearance with surprising rapidity, almost before she had done screaming. " Are you drunk or mad ? " he shouted. " What are you doing in my "wife's room? Get out of this — do you hear! Get out of this "before you are kicked out." Tsai was so astonished that he simply opened his mouth and stared at them. In the meantime the innkeeper and the stablemen, the mafus, and' other servants of the inn had collected in a circle, and gaped stolidly. Li turned on them. " Turn him out, will you. What are you "goggling at? Do you let respectable women be frightened out of " their lives by madmen in your house ? " "'But," said the innkeeper, scratching the seat of his trousers, " he " belongs to your party. I saw him ride in with you this afternoon." " What's that got to do with it ? " said Li, with intense scorn. " Suppose he did come with me. Do you let madmen stay in your " house ? Can't a woman have her room to herself ? Out with him., " Bundle him out of this before he does any more mischief." A CHINESE SOLOMON. 197 Tsai made a lush at him, but two or three mafus seized him Ipy the arms, and after a short struggle hustled him out of the imi and shut the big folding doors. Tsai kicked at the door and beat upon it with his fists to no purpose, and then stormed up and down the street. The neighbour- hood took no notice of this whatever, for it was dark by this time, and no doubt they were accustomed to excited caravan-men; but before long one of the Sawbwa's retainers made his appearance. "What are you doing here? Stop that noise, will you," he demanded. " Don't you know that no one is allowed to shout and "make a noise except the Sawbwa's relations and people who are "mortally wounded? I tell you what it is, if you don't make it " worth my while, I'll arrest you for feloniously pretending to be one "of the chief's people, .and then you will have something to yell " about." Tsai thrust a string of cash into his hands, and the man immediately began to tone down both his language and the pitch of his voice. "^You are lucky that it was I that heard you. Ai Yum or any of the " others would have cut you down long ago. What's the matter with "you?" " They've stolen my wife," spluttered Tsai. " Stolen your wife ! Was she so nice as all that ? Had she any " ornaments on ? " " Of course she'd got ornaments," said Tsai impatiently, " and " she had my child with her." " Got your child ! What are you talking about ? When a man " steals a girl, is it children that be wants to take along with her — ^tell "me that? Talk reason, can't you." Tsai gurgled with rage, and poured out his story in a mixed torrent of Shan and Chinese. " If you can get me to the Prefect's to-night," he said, "I'll give you ever)d;hing that we find in that villain Li's " waist-belt." "That's impossible," said the guard, "you can't see the amat-ldng " to-night. It is too late. He is smoking opium, and moreover you " haven't got any presents here to give him. Besides, the magistrate "we've got here never will listen to you if you talk. He is a very "bad-tempered man. You must have your complaint written. I " will show you a man that will write it for you. He is a very learned " man, and charges very little, and he will make up a story for you " that you will be astonished at, and besides, he will tell you exactly "what kind of present you will have tO' give to the amat-lbng, and " when to go to see him in the morning. You don't Icnow how lucky "you are to have come across me. I know some akmudans (service " men) who would have had you locked up and flogged by this time." So Tsai went off with him and had his petition drawn up, and spent the night in the outer room of the complaint-writer's house. In the 198 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. morning the paper, with, a present of fruit, sugar and candles, was laid before the magistrate. That worthy had it read out to him, and then proceeded to question Tsai as to his nationality, occupation and means. Tsai replied with great volubility, and said he was well known in the next State to the south, though he had never been in this town before. " Never been here before," said the magistrate. " Oh, that means "an oimce of silver for noting your name. Very good. The fine "for making a disturbance in the .street last night is one ounce of "silver ; for taking up the time of the guard, half an ounce of silver ; " for entering this court, one ounce ; for having the petition read over, "one ounce of silver; for occupying my time, one ounce of silver; " for the time of the clerk of the court, one ounce of silver ; also two " oimces of silver for making a note of the case. Can you pay these "fees?" Tsai produced a bar of silver from the folds of his waist, along with a pair of scales, and weighed out the court fees. "This is quite satisfactory," said the magistrate. "All is now in " order. To-morrow you will appear before me here for the hearing of " the case. That will cost five ounces of silver, which you may, for the "sake of saving time, pay now. Meantime, I will summon the woman " and the man, and question them. I will hear them this afternoon, " and for the present you can go about your business." Tsai, like all Chinamen, had considerable pride, and great contempt for outer barbarians, so he retorted bluntly: "My business is to see " this case finished, and I want to be present when it is settled." The Shan is not much less inclined to esteem himself than the Chinamran, and the magistrate was very much of the "man, proud "man" type, so he fined Tsai another ounce of silver for speaking to the court without permission. The ounce was very liberally weighed by the qourt servants without reference to Tsai, and he was then pushed out of the court. He made a disturbance in the yard, and was immediately put in the stocks for a couple of hours. He was set free and pushed by the guard out into the street when the mule-headman and Lati came. Li came in very jauntily, and, before answering any of the ques- tions, handed over a bookful of gold leaf (Tsai's) for the expenses of the case. He said he knew the town and State well, and had often seen the magistrate, and was well aware of the esteem in which he was held. He regretted very much that he should make his personal acquaintance under these conditions at the suit of a smuggler and a disreputable person like Tsai. It was most annoying that a man of the magistrate's eminence, with so much more important work, should have his time taken up in this way. A CHINESE SOLOMON. 199 Lati was also questioned, and told a story which she and Li had made up together during the night. Li said he was glad he had appeared before a man of decision, and, as he left, deposited a small bar of silver, which, he remarked, he knew to be the customary fee for the summary decision of a case. As soon as they had left the magistrate's compound, Tsai made his appearance, and demanded justice. The magistrate signed to have a fid of betel given him, and said : " You are the man that wants to take away the other China- " man's wife, are you ? Well, that case is settled, and they have gone " home comfortably together." " But she is my wife, and I want my child — my son." " There was nothing said about any child. Why should you get a " child by another man's wife ? " " But she is my wife, and the boy is my boy, and I must have him "back." "'Must have him back'! I will not be spoken to in this way " while I am in the justioe-seat, and by a person devoid of all morality." The amat-long got up, turned to the small crowd of hangers-on at the side of the court-room, and said : " Take him outside and " give him twenty strokes with the bamboo." Tsai was beside himself with rage. He darted out of the court, broke away from the men outside that tried to hold him, and ran straight to the gate of the Sawbwa's palace, where a gong was hung up, and this he commenced to beat with feverish energy. Now the Sawbwa's gong was only sounded when there was a revolution, or a fire, or a mmrder at the very least. So there was immediately excitement and perturbation inside the palace. The Sawbwa himself came out from the inner rooms on the spot, and all the servants, indoor and outdoor, guards and domestics, betel-box carriers and musicians, shampooers and messengers, came rurming from all sides. The Sawbwa had a Winchester repeater, and the others had guns snatched from the rack, and swords and spears, or anything else they could lay hands on. They found the Chinaman still beating the gong and looking apprehensively at the men from the magistrate's court and the towns- people who were hurrying up outside, " What has happened ? " demanded the first man that got hold of him. " I want justice ! " shouted Tsai, " I want " "What's the matter? Who is it?" called the Sawbwa, who had taken up a position on the open verandah in front of the palace. " It is a Chinaman, most dread lord, and he says he wants justice." " Oh, he wants justice, does he ? Is he mad or drunk? Of course "you have taken his arms away?" "He brought no arms with him, and your lordship's slaves have "him fast. He is, moreover, quite alone." 200 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. "Then bring him up here. Since we are here we may as well " dispense immediate justice." Tsai was dragged up the steps by as many men as could get hold of him and thrown on the floor in front .of the seat on the dais. "Why did you take upon yourself to beat cur gong? " demanded the Sawbwa. " I want my wife. I want my son. They have been .stolen from " me by a villain of a mule-driver. I went to the court of the Prefect, " and he ordered me to be flogged." " Is that all ? Apparently you don't know what a serious thing it " is to beat our gong and what an easy thing it is to get a wife and " children. Excepting for the gravest reasons it is not permitted to " anyone to strike our gong. The least cause is general murder and "riot. Moreover, in any case the man who beats the gong must be "flogged. You say the amat-long proposed to flog you. Well, we " will do it now." The Sawbwa turned to the kneeling crowd below the dais and said : " Let the man have forty stripes with the lesser bamboo, now "on the spot before us." When the flogging was over, the Sawbwa continued : " Now that " we have got things on a proper judicial and reasonable footing you " may say what you have to sa)^ Where are all these people that you " were talking about ? We will show you that we know how to "administer justice." Tsai was bursting with rage against all creation, but he wanted to be revenged on Li, so he rattled out : " They are the muleteers at " the ' Flowery Spring ' inn. The man's name is Li, and he is an ugly, " skinny man. The woman is a hill-woman, with a lot of Chinese " jewellery, but there can be no mistake. There is no one else there " that has got a wife and a son. The boy is dressed like a Chinaman, " and he is like me, for I am his father.'' "Have them all brought. Bring the child, too. Don't keep us "waiting. The Chinaman will get cold if you are long about it, and "you know very well we must not be kept waiting. .Moreover, he "already knows that we execute prompt justice. Bring everybody "there is in the inn, if you have any doubts, and see that you are " quick about it." They were quick. They brought the whole household along at a run, and the little boy was carried on a man's shoulders. Easterns are always kind to children. The boy enjoyed his ride thoroughly, but Li was very much out of breath, and Lati, what between exercise the like of which she had not taken since she was a little girl and terror of the Sawbwa, was in a state of collapse, and lay whimpering on the floor. The Sawbwa examined them all at considerable length, but he got the same story from each of them, and could not surprise them into A CHINESE SOLOMON. 201 any admissions. On the whole he was rather a good-natured old gentleman, though, like many such people, he was rather choleric. He was also about the age when both Easterns and Westerns think it necessary to " make their soul." So he bethought himself of a stratagem. He told the servants he wanted something to eat, and said they were to bring something light. They brought among other things some cane-sugar. The Sawbwa called the little boy ,and gave him some to eat, and talked with him for some time. Then he said : " Here's another piece. Go and give that to your father." The boy was four or five years old, and, though he knew nothing' of what all the trouble was about, he at any rate knew his own father, so he ran off and gave the sugar to^ Tsai. The Sawbwa was immensely pleased. He pulled up the legs of his loose silk trousers and smacked his naked thighs, chortling to himself all the while, and then he turned to the crowd which had assembled in the meantime in the free and easy fashion common to Shan courts. "You see," he said, "they cannot deceive us. We always detect " the wroiig-doer, baffle the scheming, uphold the right, punish the " wicked, and protect the unfortunate. Not the most cunning, the most " crafty, the most deceitful, the most wily, the most specious can dupe " and outwit our sagacity and sense of justice." The whole assembly bowed down and murmured in chorus : " True, " O lord, live fojr ever. The lord is most just. The lord is quick "of apprehension like the lightning. The lord is acute beyond " earthly wisdom. Surely there is none like him — none." " That is so," said the Sawbwa. " See that you do not forget it. " And now we will go on to prove it. The old adage has it : ' The " ' thing that is true cannot be made to be false ; that which is false " ' cannot be proved to be true.' There is another saw which runs : "'The wife returns to her first husband; the land belongs to its " ' owner.' Therefore do we deliver judgment. The woman will " receive two hundred cuffs on the ear, with intermissions on the cheek " if she shows signs of becoming giddy, and then she will be restored "to her husband. The man will be flogged with four hundred cuts, •'and will pay the costs of the court. The husband will also pay " the costs of the court, and will take away his wife. The little boy " will receive the rest of the cane-sugar. Now all may go." J George Scott. BRUNETIERE. ALTHOUGH a year has elapsed since Brunetiere's death, yet an appraisement of him as a scholar is still opportune. His renown, the memory of his merits, are not those of a year, but of many years ; they may perhaps endure for all time. It may be that, by some future historian of literature, he will be placed at the head of a new epoch of literary culture. The opinion of a departed man's worth is, indeed, often better expressed when the mind is no longer affected by the influences of grief and sorrow, and a dispassionate estimate of his worth can be taken. I do not propose to write of the late French critic's personality, for he interests me only in so far as be succeeded in separating his work from his ego ; in that he was able to go, so to speak, beyond his personal impressions. I see in him two great merits : the first, the power of amassing a vast amount of literary material and dis- playing great erudition in elucidating his researches ; the second, ability and originality of method. When speaking of method in literary studies, one implies the necessajry qualities of mind and inclination for specialising. Biographical details, evolutionary periods, life dramas, all that is so interesting to a poet, should be matters of indifference to a critic. A poet's work is the combined product of brains and heart ; poetry is the reflection of a poet's ego, seen through the enchanted mirage of inspiration, whereas a scholar gives us only the result of his intellectual work. If he colours his work with personal sympathy or sentiment he errs, for he is adting against the rules which should govern the student, for whom intelligent and careful investigation, together with logical deduction, are the means employed in that work. Although, then, a great scholar's personality is of deep interest to us, it being usually a pronounced one, only the scholastic and scientific results of his labours are of value to posterity and to students. BRUNETIERE. 203 By the death of Brunetiere France lost the only man able to infuse French criticism with life, the only man able to direct the attention of writers to the canons of permanent art, and produce such men as Rene Doumic and Antoine Albalant as his followers. Notwithstanding the importance of his work Brunetiere was not popular in France, for he was antagonistic to the taste of the crowd.. Lemaitre, whose character is a guarantee for fairness of apprecia- tion, writes : " F. Brunetiere, not loving much, is not loved at all. "Those who belong to the new school hate him. Professors say he "is pedantic, and this they do that they may not be looked upon " as such themselves ; the would-be erudites are against him by " reason of conceit in their own knowledge. Neither do light-hearted "or sentimental or nervous people favour him. He is read by " women but to a very slight extent. He arouses but . scant and " cold sympathy. Notwithstanding all this, he is a somebody. His "opinion carries weight. One feels that one cannot treat him "lightly, for he is an authority." When, on the 1 5th of February, 1 895, Brunetiere sat in the Academic chair, vacated by the death of Jean Lemoine, he boastfully stated in his speech that, from the beginning of his literary career, as a contributor to the Revue des deux mondes, as a Mattre des conferences ^ Ficole normale sufhieure, as a professor and as a critic, he was ever advocating, either by pen or speech, the strengthening of tradition and the establishment of its rights on a sure and lasting basis against the stormy attacks of modernity.* Those words show us vividly his character. During the twenty years before his election he studied diligently the writers of the seventeenth century, and the result of his diligence was a work in seven volumes : " Etudes " Historiques," which gained an award from the French Academy, fti this work Brunetiere's principal aim was to grasp the artistic ideals of the period in literature, which he considered the greatest in the history of France, to draw marked attention to them as standards for literary works. Having found the artistic measure, he applied it to the literary works of our times and fashioned his own theory to them. From 1875 — 1888 he was fighting against naturalistic work. The polemical articles, published during those years, he gathered into one volume under the title "Le Roman Naturaliste," of which one can say that it is something more than a reprint of articles connected by a purpose. The aim of the voltune was to indicate to the novelists the road to permanent art. Brunetiere wished, as he says in the- *"Discours Acad^miques." 204 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. preface, to contrast the laws of true naturalistic art, such as observa- tion, sympathy for those who suffer, pity for the poor, and simpHcity of execution, with the literary neglect and love of gross themes that have nothing to do with durable art. The aberrations of those whb adopt the naturalistic style are set before us by such authors as Zola, the Goncourt brothers, and Jules Claretie; while Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," Daudet's "Les Rois en Exil," and de Maupas- sant's short stories are assets in the balance-sheet of the naturalistic writers' activity. It was not difficult to overthrow 2x)la's artificial foundation of would-be art. In the century of steam and electricity Zola became intoxicated with his own cleverness, and being neither a student of science nor a true artist, his desire was to create a new scientific literature, a new art, purely experimental and naturalistic, as the continuation and complement of physiology.* The aim of such literature was the same as that of science : to reduce the number of unknown truths — that is tO' say, to overthrow the ideal. According to some writers literary technics, especially that of the novel, depends on reproducing experiments from life. It was on such a theory that Zola founded his novels, which were nothing but the solution of scientific, physiological and social problems. Against such a theory, which would have driven away from literature genius, talent, artistic individuality, inspiration, and all the elements of creative power, independent of man's will, but absolutely necessary for the production of works of art, Brunetiere protested in the most emphatic manner. The keen critic did not spare Zola; he proved to him that he was lacking in literary and philosophical culture ; he called him ignorant, and characterised his style as that of daubing with a wisp of straw. As Brunetiere's views were broader, his thoughts deeper, his aesthetic taste more sure, so he was successful in proving that he was right when he attacked the naturalism that threpitened to raise the reproduction of vulgar life to the dignity of a new principle, and he proved that naturalistic art — if one can call it art at all — sacrificed beauty of form on the altar of brute matter; he proved also that delicate outlines and correct drawing are replaced in naturalistic works by glaring daubs of colour ; that sentiment is eliminated by street sensations ; that naturalistic art loves triviality, brutality and vulgar language ; that it prefers flattering the lower instincts of the masses to raising them to the heights of true art.t Brunetiere contended, and he was right, that a writer's reproduction of a phase of life would not make his book a work of art, for the reproduction is only the half, and that the worst half, of our ego Tn man the par't which excites the most interest is the spiritual, and * Zola: "I,e Roman Experimental," Paris, 1880. t Roman naturaliste. Le Roman r^aliste en 1895. BRUNETIERE. 205 this spiritual part is a reality ; but in order to reproduce it not only must there be perception of it, but feeling and thought as well. This spirituality, however, is not discoverable either in Daudet, or Zola, or the Goncourts, or in Malot, for they are incapable of expressing beauty or nobility in their " Japonaiseries." The only merit of their technics is photographic exactness of reproduction, and its most striking examples are Jules Claretie's novels, which are composed of notes, as if sketched by a reporter. Now reproduc- tion of life is not even realism, it is that actuality which in the course of a few weeks hsts only the value of an old newspaper. Material gathered from life, even if actually true, does not constitute literary work, the most interesting and valuable part in a book being not that which an artist takes from life, but that which he gives us out of his own ego. The commonplace praise that is so often heard about a book, or a picture, or a statue, or a drama, that it is like real life, is not only the utterance of ignorance, but also grossly insulting to a true artist ; for, to mention only five works of art, one could not say of the greatest of masterpieces, such as the Venus of Milo, the Madonna Sistina of Raphael, Lord Byron's "Childe Harold," Scott's " Kenilworth," and Westminster Abbey, that they are true to real life, the truth of the matter being that they have nothing in common with it. That which constitutes the permanent value of a work of art is its form, its unity, its harmony of composition, and, above all, its 'serenity, and these . qualities cannot be attained by naturalistic writers, for they produce their books in the midst of street noises and hospital moans, and have not the time to alter impressions into thoughts. Brunetiere triumphed over Zola when the latter published his " La Terre," the realism of which so disgusted even his enthusiastic admirers that they no longer upheld him. There was a danger of Brunetiere being carried away by the heat of the fight, and con- sequently not seeing any merit at all amongst the followers of the school he attacked. This danger, however, he escaped, for he praised Flaubert, and drew the attention of the reading masses to Daudet. When Flaubert died Brunetiere wrote a very interesting paper in his praise as a refined artist, displaying much skill in his modes of expression ; he, Brunetiere, acknowledged, too, that Flau- bert deserved a place of honour in the history of French literature for having enriched the art of writing in technics. Of "Madame " Bovary " he said : Vous ne trouverez pas dans la litter ature content- ■poraine ieaucoup de pages d^une substance plus -forte, ou d'ttn edlat plus solide, ou d'une beauie plus classiqtie. According to Brunetiere^ Guy de Maupassant's short stories pos'sess the best characteristics of naturalistic art, for in them are found simplicity of style, clearness of composition and objectiveness. He did not hesitate then to call them masterpieces. This proves Brunetiere's impartiality in his 206 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. apprciisement of works of true art, showing also that he was not blindly prejudiced against materialistic literature, but praised -every- thing that seemed to him to be good. Whilst reading Brunetiere's works we see that his mind was decidedly synthetic, never forgetting general ideas ; he always bore in mind the purpose of the works whilst studying the seventeenth century classics, and he drew general conclusions from that purpose, which went, so to speak, far beyond the subject he was studying. This tendency to reduce everything to general and fundamental questions gives Brunetiere's work permanent value. Brunetiere, while criticising a book, never forgot to ask himself two most important questions, and those were : What are the elements of a new book, and does the new trend of thought possess durability? Then he made his decision about the worth of a book not by applying the formulas of any school, nor even the canons of clas- sicism, an application of canons that one would have expected from this enthusiastic admirer of classicism, but he made his decision by' the most profound comprehension of the fundamental laws and conditions on which all theories of art must be built. By reason of this method of forming his decisions, Brunetiere was seldom mistaken, and the new critics could neither change nor add anything to his verdict, for there was nothing to be added nor any better appraise- ment made. During his literary campaign Brunetiere proved how true were the words of Ste. Beuve when he said that "the critic is " a man whose watch gains five minutes." To his almost infallible aesthetic taste Brunetiere added study of natural science ; he was well acquainted with Darwin's theory, and was familiar with Haeckel's and Spenser's works. This knowledge made him apply to literature the theory of evolution, which, in his opinion, was the greatest conquest made by the human mind in the last century. Brunetiere is the best proof of how advantageous it is to be broad-minded. In "L'evolution des genres dans I'histoire " de la litterature " he endeavoured to evolve scientific literary criticism. If from this book one cannot become well acquainted with Brunetiere's theory of criticism, which contains only imdecided pro- jects, nevertheless, one ought to read it, not only because it is the history of literary French criticism, but, above all, because the import- ance of Brunetiere's ideas are most fittingly shown on the background of historical evolution. Brunetiere attains his conclusions only after having mastered his subject and its history. In the development of literary criticism he follows Taine, and although he sometimes attacks his theories he accepts his ideas about race, environment and his- torical movements. There is, however, a difference between these BRUNETIERE. 207 two great critics, for while Taine looks on a work of art merely as a document, and studies the typical man of an epoch manifested in that work, Brunetiere, on the other hand, admits that there are works which exist independent of their distinctive period. The position of the latter is that of a historian, of the former that of a naturalist. One ought not, therefore, to think that Brunetiere has improved on Taine's system by introducing a new factor into it — that of individu- ality. Taine's starting-point is quite different from that of Brunetiere, who thinks that the history of literature is the development of species, and sees the " work " on which the modifying factors of the race, environment and individuality of its creator are acting ; whilst Taine, who saw only in literature a document of culture, studies that which Brunetiere has overlooked — the man-creator. Taine, by looking for the causes which have produced a creative individuum, could not do otherwise than attribute to the artist some characteristics common to the nation in the midst of which the originality of an author is expressed. Taine could not surmise that the source of originality is that individuality which he has not even considered, for he treated history and biography as problems of psychological mechanism, whose solutions are the three aforesaid factors. Brunetiere was obliged to consider individuality as a modifying power, for he needed it as a link in the chain of theory wherein the development accomplished on the road of differentiation begins by individuum. If there is a point in common between Brunetiere's and Taine's leading ideas it is only this, that both turned to natural science. Taine's way of treating the history of literature from the point of view of natural science is not the most important point of his theory. This we already find in the works of Ste. Beuve, for, strictly speaking, Taine was a historian, and only in the theory of mutual dependence did he adopt an analogy from botany and zoology. Brunetiere was the first in the theory of evolution to express ieriium analogies ; he was the first who studied, the question as to what are literary species and their causes. Until then the Aristotelean definitions, made according to the formal characteristics of a certain number of works, which are acknowledged as standards, were accepted and sufficed. Dogmatic criticism did not ponder over questions of origin and genealogy, since it considered the literary species as stable formulas defined by arbitrary rules not subject to the influence of any'conditions, either ethical or cultural. A poetical work describing individual sentiments was labelled by the adjective " lyrical " ; one narrating heroic deeds was called " epic" ; and a reproduction in dialogue of accidents was qualified as " dramatic." It was necessary to look at literary works as at living organisms, to investigate their mutual relations, to infuse them with life in monographs in order to understand the essence of literary species. This has been done by the application to literature of the theory of 208 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. evolution, whose aim is to provide for us, in the place of an artificial, lifeless definition, a series of laws proceeding from true relations. This alone would suffice to show its raison d'itre. In asserting, however, the existence of literary species and their development only by differentiation, Brunetiere forgets that these two questions contain a third — the question of the origin of species. This he considers only once in his lecture on lyrical poetry, and he looks at it from a wrong point of view, for he. regards literary species not as permanent, but as mutable ; and yet the search for the origin of a given species is not an impossible one, since genetic criticism has accustomed us to do it almost mechanically. Consequently it must be admitted that Brunetiere declined the task consciously, perchance for the good reason that the origin of species must be looked for in those Middle Ages that Brunetiere was unable to master, and so he has given a wrong theory about the unimportance of mediaeval literature. Brunetiere considers that a deep gulf lies between mediaeval and modern literature, and he is unable to see any connec- tion between the two. According to Brunetiere the development of modern literature since the Renaissaijce was preceded by a void, a long standstill in literature, a death in all its branches during- mediaeval times : Des gualites de I'enfance, elle est passee tout aussitot aux informitis de la decrepitude, et rien ou presque rien n'a rempli Ventre deux* This is the first big gap in the system, a gap easily filled by one who is familiar with the literature of the Middle Ages, and who can bear witness also to the enormous amount of material in French literature, an amount which could not be grasped even by such a giant intellect as that of Brunetiere. To show the phases of development through which literary species pass we may take the development of French tr.agedy and comedy, which was demonstrated by Brunetiere in the brilliant lectures he gave in the Odeon Theatre in 1891-92, afterwards published under the title of "Les epoques du theatre frangais." In them Brunetiere does not consider the genesis of tragedy ; he simply says elsewheret that one cannot look for it in the mediaeval mystery plays. Although the best way to illustrate a theory is by means of the stage, yet even if we admit a dramatic critic's individuality there is little scope for his freedom of handling. But Brunetiere allows him to point out the objective laws which direct the development of species. Indeed, "Les Conferences de I'Odeon" prove the correctness of the theory that "ever)^hing is subject to evolution, that nothing remains "stationary, that literary form changes, at one time' for better, at " another for worse, but that in this change nothing is lost, yet like- " wise nothing is created."! All that was written dining the two cen- turies from 1636 — 1850 was done, according to Brunetiere, under * " Manuel," p. 37. t " Manuel de I'histoire de la littfirature frau^aise." :j: Conferences de I'Od^on, Chap. xv. BRUNETIERE. 209 the influence of the passing moment and individuum. " The influence "of the moment," says he, "is that weight under which, in all " periods of time, are pressed works of the same kind in history as "those that preceded them." As the development of species has its origin in the difference existing between an individuum and his predecessor, an individuum must therefore be considered as the cause of subsequent changes. The rules for true literary works are found in all works. The following are the laws defined by the study of history of species : first, the axle-tree of theatrical action must be some fact of general interest ; second] the stage action must be conducted by the will, and, if sometimes handicapped, it must yet be always conscious. The chief element of tragedy is a struggle. If the will struggles with a force of nature, or with destiny, or with another will, the play is tragical ; if only with some base instinct, or prejudice or custom, then it is a comedy. Moreover, these rules should agree with our feelings and leanings towards harmony, and with the exigencies of good taste. As Brunetiere connected every theory with life there was con- sequently a practical aim in his lectures on the theatre, and this aim was to prove from the experience of past centuries that one cannot introduce into any play any important innovation without coimecting it with tradition. For this reason Brunetiere was called I'komme de tradition. Two years previous to delivering his lectures he said that " as with art, so with nature, we cannot apply it to our own purposes " before knowing how to serve it ; we must be apprentices before "we are masters." Brunetiere's ideal is the continuity of develop- ment, and so he was worried by the unwillingness of young people to attend to the advice of those who cultivate tradition by their desire to break suddenly with all to which art had attained during secular evolution, with all rules and canons whose observance gave so much beauty to the classical world. It is not surprising, then, that for him Racine is an ideal artist — ce g'enie Is -plus ouvert a toutes les influences — who was endowed with the capacity of adopting all the best from his predecessors' works, and who attained the greatest height in the history of tragedy because he knew how to unite and develop all that they hjad devised. Masterly construction, dignified classical style, and richness of thought make this book of importance, and to these qualities should be added eloquence, learning, belles lettres. Among'st all the books written by Brunetiere this is the strongest, the most beautiful ; it is an apotheosis of the classical ideal. "L'evolution de la poesie lyrique en France au dix-neuvieme siecle," read at the Sorbonne in 1893, was intended to illustrate the problem of transformation or of transition from one species to another. The VOL. xcvi. 16 2IO THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. beginning of lyrical poetry can already be found in the mediaeval cantilenes, which by some scholars are looked upon as the source of French literature. Frangois Villon is considered as the first French \ync poet. Brunetiere, however, prefers to overlook the existence of lyrical poetry in the Middle Ages, and he justifies his position rather superficially, and not very clearly. Very boldly, but with small probability, he seeks the origin of lyrical poetry of the seven- teenth century in Church eloquence. Setting aside the question whether it was necessary to put forward such a doubtful hypothesis, when by following history one could solve the question for certain, let us pass on to Brunetiere's arguments, which in this case pass tradition bfr and make the book difficult to understand and not at all convincing. He, a foe of pedantic learning, is entjingled in dialectic in his search for proof of his thesis ; is full of paltry arguments, in which he seems to have no faith himself. Trying to be logical with the position he had previously taken up, he becomes very illogical indeed. He begins with Rousseau, and sees in his works the elements of lyrical poetry and eloquence, for he thinks that Rousseau has revived the tradition of Bossuet and Massillon ; he also discovers in him the dominating characteristics of sentiment and the tendency to put his own personality into the works in a way that qualifies him as a lyrical poet. However, neither "Discours sur I'inegalite" nor "Discours sur les sciences et les arts," as, indeed, Brunetiere points out, could be defined as public oratory, but remain philosophical discourses written (as we know) for competition. To prove that Rousseau was a speaker as well as a poet, other arguments than simple assertion are necessary, and such arguments are not to be found either in " Evolution des genres " or in '" Evolution de la poesie " lyrique." Then, again, in oratory the personality of the speaker is, so to say, fused with his hearers, while lyrical poetry, to be such, must be most individual, its essential elements being the personality of the author ; its subject is the effusion of sentiment, which concerns neither lay nor clerical oratory; finally, eloquence grows from the tendency to teach and convince, and this tendency true poetry does not allow. The purpose of such a treatment of historical genealogy is to con- vince us that if literary criticism is not a science it has at least a method. This Brunetiere proposed to prove by limiting its scope of investigation and by the discovery of laws governing species, together vnth. aesthetic rules. While the critic takes into considera- tion various external influences, looking for help to philosophy, psychology and sociology, Brunetiere investigates only the causes BRUNETIERE. 211 of evolution produced by certain changes in the character of species. If such were the case there would be, of course, no difficulty in discovering the laws governing literary evolution and the creative power of human activity in that field. To me, however, it appears that, in deciding whether a certain subject can be treated as exactly as it is treated in mathematics and natural science, we do not depend on the method, but the method must be decided by the subject. In science uniformity of method is necessary, for the subjects under investigation depend on laws beyond the reach of the human mind, the knowledge of which conducts us to the objective truth. It is quite different when we have to deal with the results of subjective productivity. In natural science one method is necessary, while in literature the variety of methods and theories prompts the develop- ment. The variety of literary works, the great number of genetic influences, which are different in every case, prove that those laws do not exist which would influence literary works independently of exterior factors ; on the contrary, history proves the constant changes that take place in literature as the result of adopting new elements. Not all the cations of beauty can stand scientific investigation, for they are mutable, difficult of apprehension, having their origin in sentiment. Psychology alone could help us to build aesthetic criterions, yet psychology not only gives us no elucidation in that respect, but does not even provide us with a definition of the beautiful. Brunetiere's classification of literary works, made purely on account of their absolute value, ought rather to have as a sub- stitute a classification made on account of the importance of influences as well as on account of affinity of ideas. To consider literary works apart from time and influences, as Brunetiere does, would mean giving preponderance to impressionism. The development of literary criticism during the last two decades gave us many disputations about the superiority of one or the other method. But all these were useless, for the disputing parties had overlooked three things : firstly, that there is a great difference between the method pf investigation and the point of view taken by the scholar on the subject investigated, that there can be neither a psychological, nor a philosophical, nor a philological, nor an assthetic method ; that there is only a critical one, made by means of analysis, comparison and synthesis. Secondly, that the way the subjects are grouped must depend on their nature, and that consequently one cannot analyse " Manon Lescaut " philologically, for such an analysis would give no results ; while, on the contrary, a philological method is very appropriate to the "Chansons de Roland." Thirdly, that any one literary theory cannot boast of being better than another, for each one has its raison d'kre, and is justified only by the results. Looking at different so-called methods we cannot but notice that every critic has different intellectual leanings, and that each one 212 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. perceives something different in any given literary work. One will view it through the psychology of its author; another through the social conditions among which an author lived ; yet another will study the style, construction, or idea of a masterpiece ; in a word, every critic has his own point of view. However, the most important question is the one to which Brunetiere came, and this can be expressed as follows : As we master certain historical factff so criticism must be treated as history, and those facts must be classified and set in chronological order. This,, however, does not end the task, for we know that literary works are the embodiment of society, or rather of its most eminetit members ; that they are the expression of life ; that they are influenced by and influence it. Therefore they must be treated either as dead or living organisms that lived in the intellectual world, as animals and plants live in the physical world, and to them must the method accepted by natural history and based on evolution be applied. In that way the history of literature should not only prepare and classify materials, but also utilise them and "draw conclusions as history does. The only difference between the philosophy of history and the philosophy of litefature should be this, that the history of literature must be similar to the philosophy of natiural sciences, because, while history deals with persons and incidents which are re-created by means of documents, literature deals with organisms created by an artist. I believe that the " Manuel de I'histoire de la litterature frangaise" was the result of looking at the history of literature in such a way. This is not a handbook, for it is not written in a popular way, as all compilations are; neither is it history; it is a reasoned synthesis of the history of French literature. In this book we do not find scholarly materials, analysis, or even the chronological basis necessary for a narration. Names, titles of books, of documents, opinions of scholars — all this is put in footnotes, which constitute a separate text containing all we look for in manuals of literature. In this way we have two books in one, both being very original. The principal' characteristic of this work is its continuity and consistency of reasoning, a thing that does not occur very often in Brunetiere's books. One idea seems to follow another so logically that they all constitute a perfect unity, incapable of division ; everything adviinces with the continued evolution of the subject. From the originator of the theory of literary species we should expect — as his lectures on criticism seemed to announce — ^a history of literature showing a consecutive development of species and their existence in a given epoch. We should also expect to see the BRUNETIERE. 213 influence of one work upon another. Brunetiere, however, passed on to philosophical ground, that he might, as it seems, give us some- thing new. The thread of the narration unites with the philosophy of the epoch, with Parisian society, and edmost becomes a kind of moral history of literature, for it does not give its true picture, but treats literature as an expression of national culture. Already in the " Evolution de la critique" Brunetiere had criticised the way in which the history of literature is usually written, calling it a collection of monographs, and insisting that the history of literature should have some general and synthetic idea. Conse- quently, from all ideas and streams, Brunetiere has formed two essential elements which he perceives in the literary movements of all times : esfrit gaulois, representing liberal revolutionary tendencies, Gallic humour such as that expressed by Villon, and esprit precieux, representing refinement of culture in the literary sphere, conventionality and authority. In the Middle Ages, when literature assumed a national character, French literature adopted as its prin- cipal characteristic that overgrown esprit de causerie plein d'ironie 0t de rtvolte, moderated by an opposing stream, coming from the severe scholasticism that has given to French prose lucidity and logic ; while from the Renaissance came forth the development of individuality and the loosing of religious bonds, because of the humanisation of mankind, the drawing near to nature, which, how- ever, counterbalanced by spiritual and artistic sense, was then so intense. This spirit was somewhat stifled by the Reformation, which in French literature means Calvin's teaching and its ethical severity. Generally speaking, however, the Renaissance contributed to the stability of that characteristic of French literature which has given it the humanistic imprint of the Latin mind. The esprit prkcieux ruled again over the classical period, equally in social elegance as in the character of literature, though, may be, a little too smoothly and too subject to rules. The Gallic roughness and ethical looseness replaced that decent and moral literature. From the licentious spirit that corrupted the classical ideal came forth the whole philosophico- revolutionary literature of the eighteenth century. Romanticism brought back the rights of sentimentality and aesthetic sense, while the naturalism of yesterday constituted the brutal reaction of the physical part of human nature, and the new symbolism returned the sceptre to the ideal. Brunetiere looked at the " Manuel de I'histoire de la litterature "frangaise" as at a programme which was to be developed in the proposed work in five volumes on the literature of the French clas- sical epoch. Of these only one volume was published, and the superiority of the classical ideal was not proved. Instead, the first volume of the " Litterature classique " gives us a valuable sketch of the comparative history of the Renaissance. This is defined as a 214 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. result of the literary and artrstic influence of a certain Italian style, which, having passed the boundary of its native country, has assumed very different international characteristics before having been adopted by various national civilisations. Here, once more, we are compelled to admire Brunetiere's broad-mindedness. He, towards the end of his life, proceeded to the study of comparative literature, and would have accomplished much in that direction, as one can see from the lectures he delivered in 1900 during the Congress of Comparative History held in Paris, when he admirably outlined its aim and method. There is one fault in the latter book. Brunetiere studies in the first some system, or some doctrine, or some question, then the development, and that is all. He considers it unnecessary to prove anj^hing by facts. Then, again, he does not follow the scientific method which prompts us to proceed from details to generalities and in turn to conclusions. For this reason, often, Brunetiere's thesis cannot be considered critically, for this would require an enormous mass of arguments fro and contra, which a severe critic would be obliged to put forth and then to refute. All this is the result of his f oiidness for general ideas and contempt for pedantic erudition, con- cerning which he said : Toute cette erudition que nous rassemblons Idborieusement n'est toujours gu'un moyen, jamais une f.n. From special literary questions Brunetiere's synthetical mind rose to the heights of the problem of existence, to daring questions on the aim of learning. To those regions we are led by a pamphlet entitled " La Science et la Religion," in which Brunetiere says that if learning ainis at absolute dominion over human minds it must give an answer to the following questions: What is man? What is his origin? What is his aim? What is the origin and purpose of the world ? What is human existence, and for what is it ? Religion answers all these questions in a supernatural way. The encyclo- paedists, the fathers of the nineteenth-century learning, attempted to replace dogma by rational science. The question, however, is whether science has answered that purpose. Take history, for instance ; has it discovered the general laws by which mankind is ruled, and can those laws stand as substitutes for Providence ? Has natural science discovered the origin of the human species? Does philosophy know the origin of speech? Can philosophy furnish, as religion does, a sound foundation for human faith ? Having proved that this is not so, that science has not answered this purpose, Brunetiere was led to a conclusion about la banqueroute de la science, and he contends that it is necessary to compromise, in the first place, with religion, in order that science should be able to consider only those questions which can be elucidated by natural science. BRUNETIERE. 215 I am not going to enter into a discussion as to whether Brunetiere is right or wrong in his views and arguments, for it would lead me too far ; I will only say, therefore, that the above-mentioned pan^hlet carries great weight, for the reason that it touches on important questions and because it brings to mind the principal aim of science, and one which a student must never forget. Brunetiere did not neglect the reconciling of faith with science even after that sharp polemical pamphlet, and he endeavoured to base Darwin's philosophy on a religious foundation, to reduce it to the eternal moral, to remove the discrepancies which, according to the theme of this philosopher, are to be found between revelation and science. In the book " De la moralite de la doctrine evolutive," which refuses science the right to encroach on the dominion of morals and metaphysics, Brunetiere made of Darwin's theory a simple hypothesis; he even looks upon it as if it were a simple method, whose purpose is the accumulation and classification of. facts. Besides this noticeable inclination for synthesis, Brunetiere's criticism is notable by its closeness of touch with literary works, a most valuable quality. It may be for this reason that he does not deal with them by means of commentaries, but directly by ascending the heights of creative power and grasping the writer's great ideas. In a given work Brunetiere has a familiar knowledge with all it touches on ; he grasps everything by his penetration and thorough knowledge of artistic means. His capability of understanding classical French works should be admired ; one might say that Brunetiere lives in the metamorphosis of the past three centiuries, thit he feels more at home among the classics than among contemporary writings ; he is more free amongst the authors of the seventeenth century, for among them he cannot see all the paltry things which would mar the pictures of great passions and great efforts of will; he is not worried with the little biographical details which would obscure the grand outlines of those pictures. Because Brunetiere is fond of being and knows how to become a man of different epochs directly he appreciates a given work, there comes forth in him, besides a purely aesthetic criterion, another means of appreciation also. He asks himself whether a given work is a sincere and good picture of an epoch ; for instance, he sets a great value on the works of Marivaux (little as he can say about their classical beauty), since they are a faithful representation of the epoch. Brunetiere's works open for us very wide horizons ; they show the wish to accomplish new things, although the dominating idea of his life, the theory of evolution, makes us think of the great difference that exists between words and deeds, for we must confess that he has added nothing fresh to what was said by Villemain and Taine. However, Brunetiere's work is of great importance, for there is 2i6 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, liot one literary contemporaneous question which he did not discuss, and by so doing he has proved that in France criticism is the soul of literature. In the whole history of, French literature there is not one famous author about whom Brunetiere has not written, and in all his writings there is found the deep thought that makes him a truly great critic. SOISSONS. A LETTER TO COUNT TOLSTOY ON THE RESURRECTION. [The following letter was written by Vladimir Solovieff, the Russian philosopher, to Count Leo Tolstoy, in the year 1894-5, at a time when Tolstoy's religious opinions were far from having taken that definite form which they acquired later on. At that period Tolstoy had not yet pronounced himself as decidedly on all questions of faith as he has since done. Before sending off his letter, Solovieff read it to one of his friends.^ The latter uttered some sharp critical remarks, and Solovieff, who was always excessively sensitive and diffident, refrained from sending it, and put it by for the time being. We cannot ascertain whether it ever reached Tolstoy. But quite apart from the personality of writer and addressee, the subject itself is calculated to arouse our keen interest. It is suggestive — ^miakes one think. We should not, however, lose sight of the important circum- stance that this attempt to prove the logical necessity of the Resurrec- tion was undertaken in a private letter. Hence some aspects of the question, which for the distinguished writer and his correspondent had no actuality, are scarcely touched upon. Still, such as it is, the public may read the letter with interest and profit.] " A LL our differences of opinion can be centralised upon one J-^ " concrete point — Christ's Resurrection. " I think that in your own conception of the universe (if I have " rightly understood your last works) there is nothing that prevents "one from accepting the truth of the Resurrection, that there is " something that even obliges one to accept it. " I shall first spealc of the idea of the Resurrection in general, and "next of the Resurrection of Christ. " (i) You admit the progressive evolution of our world : that its "lower forms and degrees of life pass into higher and more "perfect ones. "(2) You admit that the inward spiritual and outward physical " life wield an influence over each other ; and •"(3) Founded on that influence, you admit that the perfection of " the spiritucil being expresses itself in the individual spiritual " life subjugating the physical one, taking possession of it. 2i8 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. " Starting from these three points we are bound to arrive at the "truth of the Resurrection. " The fact is that spiritual force in its relation to material existence "is not a constant, but an ever-growing unit. " In the animal world it exists only in a hidden potential state ; "in mankind it sets itself free and grows evident. "But in the beginning this emancipation is only achieved as an "ideal, as intellectual consciousness. "I discriminate between my real self and my animal nature, am " conscious of my inner independence and superiority over it. "But can this consciousness pass into action? "Not only it can, but partly it does. "As embryos or sparks of rational life are to be found in the "animal life, so likewise in humanity are undoubtedly to be found "the beginnings of that higher perfect state in which the spirit will "really and positively dominate over material life. "The spirit wrestles with the dark longings of material nature "and subjugates them. It not only recognises them as distinct "from itself. "The greater or lesser completeness of this victory depends on "the degree of the inward spiritual perfection. "The utmost triumph of the hostile material elements is death — "that is, the setting free of the chaotic life of the material pArts "to the ruin of their rational continuity. " Death is an evident victory of unreason over reason, of chaos- "over cosmos. "This is particularly clear with respect to living beings of the "higher order. "The death of man is the annihilation of a perfect organism — "that is, of an organised form and tool of the highest reasonable " life. " Such a victory of the lower over the higher, such a disarming^ "of the spiritual element, evidently connotes the insufficiency of "its strength. "But this strength is a growing force. "For man immortality is what reason is for the animal. The " reason of existence of the animal kingdom is a reasonable being. "The reason of existence of mankind is an immortal one — that is "to say, Christ. "As the animal world gravitates towards reason, so humanity "gravitates towards immortality. "If the very essence of the world's evolution is the struggle with "chaos and death, during which the bright spiritual side, though "slowly and gradually, is still making headway, then is the Resur- "rection — ^that real and definite victory of the living being over " death — a necessary stage of that evolution : in fact, as far as LETTER TO COUNT TOLSTOY ON RESURRECTION. 219 "principle goes, a termination of it. All further progress, strictly "speaking, has but an extensive character — consists in a universal "appropriation of that individual victory, of a diffusion of its con- " sequer'cs over the whole of mankind throughout the entire world. " If under the word miracle you understand a fact that contradicts " the general order of things, then is the Resurrection a direct con- "tradiction of a miracle— it is a fact that is absolutely necessary for "the general order of things. "If under the word miracle you understand a fact that has hap- " pened for the first time, an unheard-of fact, then of course is the " Resurrection of the ' first fruit of death ' a miracle ; just such a "one as the apparition of the first organic cell amid the inorganic " world ; or the apparition of an animal amidst primitive vegetation ; " or the apparition of man among the orang-outangs. " Natural history does not doubt these miracles ; and for humanity "the miracle of Resurrection is just as indubitable. "Of course, from the point of view of mechanic materialism all "this is an absurdity. " But it would greatly astonish me if from you, from your point "of view, I heard any objection. " I am convinced that the idea of the Resurrection of the ' first " ' fruit of death ' is as natural to you as it is to me. " But the question is, has it been realised in that historical person "about whose Resurrection the gospels preach? Here are the " fotindations on which I support my conviction in the actuality of " the Resurrection of that person, Jesus Christ, ' the first fruit of " • death' : "(i) The victory over death is the necessary natural consequence " of inward spiritual perfection ; the being in whom the " spiritual principle has decidedly and definitely acquired " strength over all that is low cannot be conquered by death. "Spiritual power, having reached the fulness of its perfection, "unavoidably, so to say, overflows the borders of subjective "psychological life and encompasses also the physical life, "transforms it, definitely spiritualises it, and binds it indis- "solubly with itself. "Now that precisely is the image of complete spiritual perfec- "tion which I find in the Christ of the Gospels. " I cannot consider that image as fictitious for many reasons, " which I will not enumerate here, for neither do you consider "the Christ of the Gospels to be a myth. "If, on the other hand, this spiritually perfect man really did "exist, then, for this very reason, was he the 'first fruit of "'death,' and we can expect no other. " (2) Allow me to make the second foundation of my belief clearer " by a comparison taken from another realm of thought. 220 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. "When the astronomer Leverrier, by means of certain calcula-. " tions, came to the conclusion that behind the orbit of Uranus " another planet was to be found, and when, later on, he saw " it through the telescope just where, judging by his calcula- " tions, it had to be, then methinks he scarcely had any "reasonable ground to suppose that that visible planet was " not the identical one, the existence of which his calculations " had demonstrated, that it was not the real one, or that the "real one would reveal itself later on. "Likewise when, taking our stand on the general meaning of "the world's historical process and on the successiveness of "its stages, we find that after the revelation of the spiritual "element as a conception (in the philosophy and art of the "Greeks, on the one 'hand, and in the ethico-religious ideal " of the Hebrew prophets on the other — the idea of the " kingdom of God) the further and higher stage of this revela- " tion had to represent a phenomenon of the same spiritual "element, both personal and reaJ — ^its personification in a "living being. That being had to shew forth the strength "and victory of the spirit over the hostile bad element, with " its final expression, death, not only in thoughts and artistic ""examples, but in acts. "That is, it had really to resuscitate its material body into a " spiritual one. "Then, at the same time, we find the eye-witnesses, simple, " illiterate Jews, with absolutely no idea of the world's pro- " cesses, its stages and epochs, describing just suclf a man, "who actually, in person, embodies that spiritual element. "We find them relating with wonder, as some surprising, "incredible fadt, that that man did really rise. That is, they "present in a purely empirical way, as a sequence of facts, "that which for us has an inward logical continuity. "When we see such a coincidence we have decidedly no rigHt "to denounce those witnesses as having invented the fact, " the whole significance of which is not clear to themselves. " It would be nearly the same as though we should suppose "that the workmen who built the telescope of the Paris " Observatory, though they knew nothing of Leverrier's calcu- "lations, still had purposely arranged it so that he should "see in that telescope the apparition of the non-existing " Neptune. "(3) I will speak shortly of the third foundation of my faith in "the Resurrection, as it is too widely known — not, indeed, " tha1| that lessens its force. "The truth is that without the fact of the Resurrection the " extiraordinary enthusiasm of the apostolic community would LETTER TO COUNT TOLSTOY ON RESURRECTION. 221 "be without a sufficient foundation, and, in general, the whole " history of primitive Christianity would be but a series of "impossibilities, umless you admit (as some have assumed) "that in Christian history no first age existed, that it began "straight from the second, or even third. Personally, since " the time when I reahsed that the history of the world and "of humanity has a meaning, I have not had the slightest " doubt of the Resurrection of Christ ; and all the arguments "against this truth, by their very weakness, only confirm my " faith. " The only original and serious argument I knqvw of is yours. " In a recent conversation with me you said that if one accepts "the Resurrection, and consequently the special superhuman "significance of Christ, it will make Christians trust more in "the mysterious strength of this superhuman being for their " salvation than to their own moral efforts. " But, after all, what is such a misuse of truth but a condemnation "of those who misuse it? "For as in reality Christ, though he has risen, can do nothing "final for us without our own co-operation, so there can be " no danger of quiescence for sincere, conscientious Christians. " One may still admit that that danger might have existed if " the risen Christ could have had for us a visible reality ; but "under existing circumstances, when the only real personal "bond possible must be a spiritual one, which pre-supposes " individual moral labour on the part of man, only hypocrites "or scoundrels could plead grace to the detriment of moral " duty. " Moreover, the God-man is not the all-engulfing Absolute of "the Eastern mystic, nor can union with Him be passively " one-sided. He is the ' first fruit of death,' the guide, the " leader, the banner of active life, struggle and improvement, " not of a sinking down into a Nirvana. " In any case, whatever the practical results of Christ's Resur- " rection, it is not by them that the question of its truth is to " be decided. It would greatly interest me to know what you "'would say to the substance of all this." MALJA FEVER AND GOATS' MILK. ONE of the most decisive instances of th^ alleged necessity of experiments upon animals brought forward by the recently established Research Defence Society is that of the extraordinary reduction in the incidence of Malta fever since the prohibition of the use of goats' milk as an article of diet among our troops stationed in the island. The public has been dazzled with the statement that this reduction is from an annual average of 700 down to six. In the following paper I propose to show that the evidence of the potency of the germ Micrococcus Melitensis, claimed by its discoverer, Sir David Bruce, as the origin of the disease, upon which the goats' milk theory is based, is illusory. Malta fever is one of the tropical diseases which has given most trouble to our Army and Navy in the Mediterranean. It is a kind of low fever. But it is far from being confined to Malta. It is common among the filthy purlieus of Naples and all along the Mediterranean coast ; also in the Philippines, in South Africa, Egypt, Arabia, India, China, the Fiji Islands, the West Indies, and, in fact, all over the world wherever a tropical climate combines with insani- tary conditions to create a pestiferous atmosphere. The Malta people dislike its being called by the name of their island ; and, in fact, in medical statistics cases of it often pass under other names. Hippocrates described it long before the Christian era, and Galen, who lived just after that period. They recognised that it rose and fell wit,h the temperature, as it does now, going strong from April to September and then declining'. As Dr. Ralph Johnstone, of the Local Government Board, has shown, it is also largely influenced by the density of the population. In 1904 Mr. Lji:telton, as Colonial Secretary, obtained a Commission representing the War Office and Admiralty and the Civil Government of Malta, to investigate it. The Royal Society also appointed an Advisory Board to supervise the work of the Commission, under the chairmanship of Colonel Sir MALTA FEVER AND GOATS' MILK. 223 David Bruce, who, as is well known, was knighted for his supposed discovery of the M,alta fever germ. The Commission set to work in a sensible way by sending out an expert to examine at Malta the statistics of the fever ; to see if any light could be thrown on it by testing the liability to the disease of men who drank water, beer, milk, etc. Other investigations followed in the same line ; but no' difference in the cases of disease could be observed. The conclusion was that milk was not, statistically, the true cause. OdI. Bruce, however, set to work in another way. He tried to discover a microbe : announced that he had found it in goats' milk, and procured an order that goats' milk should no longer be used by the Malta troops. The milk was stopped on the ist of July, 1906. There is no doubt that the decline of fever in that and the subsequent years has been very marked, the fall from 1905 to igo6 having been from 643 to 161 cases, according to the medical statistics. But the conclusion that the goats' milk was the causa causans of the fever is a very rash one ; and still more rash is it to say that the animal experiments contributed in any serious way to its discovery. Let me consider the course of investigation pursued by Colonel Bruce. He took some 150 to 200 monkeys, kept them in cramped- up cages, and injected sea-water from the Grand Harbour into them. Dust and earth from localities polluted with excreta of fever patients, and artificial storms of dust contaminated with urine were blown not only into the cages but into the poor creatures' nostrils. But the Micrococcus Melitensis refused to enter into the blood of the monkey. Every effort was made, but it was not until the healthy creatures were forced to partake of deliberately infected milk and to eat a decoction of food mixed with the dejecta of their unhealthy com- panions that the bacteria appeared. Then the Commission turned to goats. Two thousand were examined, and in the milk of two hiindred of these the Micrococcus was found, while in the case of 1,000 what is known as the "agglutinin reaction" was obtained — that is to say, a condition of the blood whereby the Micrococci are supposed to throng together when the blood serum of an alleged sufferer from Malta fever is added to a laboratory cultivation of the presumed "specific germ." The test is an extremely fallacious one. The goats alleged to have the fever, or the conditions pre- cedent to the fever, showed no outward signs of it whatever.* The theory put forw,ard at once was that these goats, apparently in perfect health, were the hosts which distributed germs in every part of Malta. It should be added that the fever occurs in places 'where these goats are never found. Having got so far, the Commissioners reached the conclusion that goats' milk was " extremely likely" to be a dangerous article of food, * Report of the Commission, Q. 14,242. 224 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. though they could obtain no proof of this by direct experiment on man. A "fortuitous circumstance," however, seems to have settled the point in their minds. This is how Colonel Bruce told the story before the Royal Commission on Vivisection : " The Americans sent over a man to Malta .... to purchase milch goats. . . . That man .bougfht 65 goats, put them on board a steamship, called the St. Nicholas, and took them first of all to Antwerp. During the voyage in the Mediter- ranean the captain and nearly all the crew — with the exception, I think, of three or four — drank the milkof these goats, and, broadly, every man who drank the milk took Malta fever; and even when the goats got to America, in spite of all the experience that they had had, the wife of the man who was in charge of them there also took Malta fever, and the man Thompson, who had brought the goats from Malta to America, died about that time, and there was a suspicion of Malta fever in his case; so that you could hardly have had a better experiment on the action of milk than in that particular case." The precise data of this sea-story were given by Dr. Eyre in a paper read before the RoyaJ College of Physiciaiis, London, on March 12, 1908, and they axe very much at varianee with the state- ments made by Colonel Bruce before the Vivisection Commission. They are as follows : — The goats were shipped at Malta on August 19th, 1905. The ship arrived at Antwerp on September 2nd. It carried twenty-three of&cers and men and four passengers. "The members of the crew "each obtained milk from one goat in his own separate pannikin." Of the crew, eleven left the ship at Antwerp, one went to hospital with hernia, and the remaining ten were never traced. (So that when Colonel Bruce says : " Broadly, every man who drank the mUk took " Malta fever," he omits to say that more than half of them he knows nothing at all about.) Of the remaining twelve officers and men, eight fell sick at intervab of three to five weeks from embarkation, and in five out of these eight the blood showed the agglutinin reaction. Of the four men who remained well, two, it is averred, took "very little" because " the milk disagreed with them," and the other two " appear to have "always boiled it" Then came the four passengers (the owner and three goat-herds). The blood of one of them showed the agglutinin reaction, and there- fore, as he was not ill, it is presumed he was protected by a previous attack, "whether recently or remotely it was impossible to say." The man himself, apparently, knew nothing about it. Of the two assistant goat-herds "no information could be obtained," nor is any- thing said about the fourth passenger. MALTA FEVER AND GOATS' MILK, 225 Now how do these particulars, ■ which appear to have turfied the heads of the Mediterranean Commissioners, total up ? Of the twenty- seven persons who left Malta there are — Thirteen as to the condition of whom nothing is known ; One who went into hospital with hernia ; Five who had nothing the matter with them. Granting, for the sake of argument, the correctness of the agglu- tinin reaction test, there were but five cases of so-called " Malta fever" out of a total number of twenty-seven passengers and crew, who drank freely of goats' milk on the voyage. And yet Colonel Bruce told the Vivisection Commissioners : " Broadly, every man who drank " the milk took Malta fever " ! But more follows. These self-same goats were transferred to the quarantine station at Antwerp, and remained there for five days. " The staff of the quarantine station and many individuals in the neighbourhood are said to have partaken of the milk both raw and boiled during the five days the goats were detained there, but no information can be obtained of the subsequent occurrencje of cases of illness resembling the Melitensis Septicemia. ' ' Then the goats were transhipped on the SS. 5/. Andrew for New York with sixty-three persons on board. " Most of these drank of the milk, but the master of the ship and also its owners state that none of the men suffered from any illness." In spite of what the man in the street would consider an indis- putable proof that the goats had' nothing the matter with them, the milk was bacteriologically examined, and " the micrococcus found in two of them and afterwards from several [sic] more." Consequently, twenty-five, nearly half the goats, were destroyed, "as being infected and infective," in obedience to bacteriological laws, although there was not the remotest evidence that they had ■infected a solitary soul on the voyage. Now comes a peculiar circumstance. Colonel Bruce Stated : " The man Thompson who had brought the goats from Malta to America died about that time and there was a suspicion of Malta fever in his case; so that you could hardly have had a better experiment on the action of milk than in that particular case. ' ' Turning to Dr. Eyre's report on this particular case, he says ; " Their owner died in January, 1906, from ' bilateral pneumonia following influenza,' and about whose medical history, qut, Melitensis Septiccemia, no evidence can be obtained." vol.. xcvi. 17 226 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. Thus it will be seen that, out of ninety known persons who drank this milk from Malta to Antwerp and from Antwerp to New York, besides aja unknown number in the neighbourhood of Antwerp who drank it for five days whilst the animals were quarantined, and another imknown quantity in New York, there were only fiye that even the Commissioners can convict of suffering from Malta fever, and these five are judged, not by clinical symptoms (for no competent person diagnosed the malady on the voyage), but by a very question- able laboratory examination after their recovery. Colonel Bruce claims that this case " clinched the fact that the goats " of Malta act as a reservoir of the poison of Malta fever, and that " htiman beings axe infected by drinking the milk of these animals."* Such a conclusion is astounding. It is true that "the wife of the "man in charge of the goats " contracted the fever three months after the goats had been landed in America and the suspicious ones had been destroyed. For those months she had been drinking bacterio- logically pure milk. Of the scores of others who must have been drinking the milk during the voyage and afterwards not one instance of illness can be discovered. The case is clearly against, and not in favour of. Colonel Bruce's contention. Let us return to Malta. Let us see how the connection between goats' milk and Malta fever in the island is established by Colonel Bruce. In considerii^ the statistics it should be remembered that there is no definition, so to speak, no means of accurately diagnosing the fever. Dr. Eyre admits this. Practically its only symptom is — fever, with every possible variation of temperature in different cases. Diseases that axe not Malta fever at all may be, and frequently are, classified under that name. Colonel Bruce appreciated this fact, pre- sumably, when he told the Commission (Q. 14,394) " simple continued "fever is one of those vague terms in which is probably included a "number of mild cases of Malta fever." Indeed, in Q. 14,395 he had alrejidy admitted that it would be a matter of guesswork, at the end of a case, even for an experienced man, to say whether the case had been enteric or Malta fever. It may be imagined that statistics axe not under such circumstances of much value for scientific purposes. But Colonel Bruce, though he disparages the statistical method in connection with the work of the late Captain Hughes at Malta, finally appeals to it in support of his own theory. Let us therefore consider the statistics, and give Colonel Bruce the benefit of the fact that these statistics are probably worthless. But my main point is that these statistics, so far from confirming his theory, are even more destructive than the cargo-boat statistics. His table of admissions of cases of Malta fever comprises statistics from 1897 up to the end of October, 1906. When, however, the ratio of admissions to the strength of the troops is worked out for each * Kesearch Defence Pamphlet. MALTA FEVER AND GOATS' MILK. 227 separate ye.ar it becomes apparent that, although the troops were using goats' milk continuously right up to July i, igo6, there were maxked differences in the rate of attack — a. fact which shows that there must have been other factors besides goats' milk to account for them. Incidence of Malta Fever among Troops in Malta from 1897 to 1908. Year. Strength. Admissions. Ratio of Attack per 1,000. 1897 8,023 279 347 1898 7-39° 200 27-0 1899 7.425 275 37-0 1900 8,140 158 194 1901 8,136 252 31-0 1902 8,758 155 177 1903 8,903 404 45"4 1904 9,120 320 35-1 1905 8,294 643 77-5 1906 6,66i i6i 24-2 1907 5.700 II 1*9 1908 6,030 5 0-8 The fluctuations from year to year by no means bear out Colonel Bruce 's assertion (Q. 14,485) that "Malta fever cases were getting more "numerous . . . up to the year of the Commission." There is but one year which stands out prominently beyond every other, and that is the year 1905, during which the Commission was sitting at Malta. Why the ratio of attack should then have more thein doubled that of the preceding year without any alteration whatever in the general consiimption of goats' milk is a question that must immedi- ately arrest the attention of every thoughtful and unprejudiced mind. This abnormal rise is quite as remarkable as the abnormal decline in the year following, to which Colonel Bruce drew such special attention, and it is surprising that the witness was not asked to explain this phenomenon. Now the goats' milk was noit stopped tmtil July i, 1906, and yet there was a sudden drop in Malta fever admissions from 643 in 1905 down to 121 during the first six months of 1906, in spite of the fact that the troops were drinking goats' milk as before. Only a mind obsessed by a fixed idea could ever conclude that the stoppage of the consumption of goats' milk from July to October accounted for a sudden decrease of Malta fever from January to June of the same year! 228 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. But there is another curious fallacy ooimected with the Malta fever statistics. It is found by reference to the Public Health Report of Malta for 1907-8, where a tabular contrast is drawn between the number of attacks of Malta fever among the military and the civil population as follows : — Garrison. Civil Population. Average number of cases, 1899 to 1 90s Number of cases for 1906-7 „ „ „ „ J907-8 315 159 676 7H 501 The chief general medical officer comments upon this table thus : " A budget of 501 cases and 44 deaths, due to a preventible disease, cannot be said to indicate a satisfactory state of affairs, particularly in view of the striking results obtained where efficient measures have been taken to check the disease by the elimination of infected milk." But to draw conclusions from a comparison of the number of cases of disease in two communities without taking note of the relation which those numbers bear to the respective populations ih which they occur is not a method.of presenting statistics one would expect from a person holding an important official position. If, however, we correct the table for populations we find that the attack rate among the military during the first period was twelve times in excess of that of the civil population. In 1907 the ratio is fairly equalised. One would have thought that any Fourth Standard schoolboy would have realised at a glance that here was a state of things with which the consumption of goats' milk could have no possible connection. That a picked, well-fed military population should suffer so dispro- portionately to a mixed civil population is clear evidence that there must have been some circumstance or circumstances at work which cannot be explained by such a theory. And even though some plausible excuse was advanced as to why the Maltese civil popula- tion has suffered at a less rate than the military, that would not excuse the official medical authorities in their effort to persuade the public by incomplete and unscientific statistics that they are suffering considerably more. There has been, however, another control experiment going on in the Navy which presents a remarkable contrast to the conditions which have obtained in the Army. MALTA FEVER AND GOATS' MILK. 229 In order to avoid an accumulation of detailed statistical tables, I will merely present one table showing the average incidence and fatality of Malta fever occurring in the Army and Navy respectively from igoi-igo6, together with the number of days of sickness involved in each. — Incidence per 1,000. Fatality per cent. Total days' sickness. Average days' sickness per man. Army Navy 38-5 17-2 2-77 «33.640 i"7S 91,0*9 120 53 Now here are equal conditions both in the personnel of the popu- lations and as regards the use of goats' milk. And yet the attack rate of the disease in the Army is more than double that of the Navy. The case mortality is 58 per cent, higher, and the average days' sickness per man is considerably more than twice as great. Whatever excuse may be urged for this greater severity in every detail obtaining in the Army over the Najvy, one thing is absolutely clear, that even if goats' milk be a factor at all , in the disease it cannot be the only factor. And to complain of the "wastage" in the Services without properly accounting for the marked differences in the wastage is neither scientific investigation nor statistical accuracy. There is, however, yet another point I must allude to under this head before I pass on. Colonel Bruce stated (14,201) that — " We have had in the garrison at Malta an average of 700 men down with this fever, for, on an average, 120 days each up to last year. ... So that there is yearly saved to the State the services of almost a whole regiment of soldiers, and 700 men from remaining in hospital 120 days with a painful illness." How Colonel Bruce makes this calculation passes the comprehension of anyone not in possession of " the scientific mind." In the highest year on record (1905) there were not more than 643 cases. Taking the number of admissions of Malta fever for the past ten years up to 1906, the average per annum works out at only 284, so that instead of "almost a whole regiment of soldiers" (about 1,000 men) being "lost to the State every year/' there were less than 300 annually out of an average of 8,000 men ; and instead of " an average of 700 men "down with this fever for, on an average, 120 days each up to last " year," the average number, according to Colonel Brace's own figures, could not have been more than 94. And yet Colonel Brace's extra- ordinary exaggeration has been apparently accepted by the Vivi- section Commissioners, sedulously advertised by the Research Defence 230 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. Society on its platform and in its publications, and published in -public newspapers and medical journals throughout the world. I have said that the available statistics are not reliable, owing to the illusory nature of Malta fever. I wish to develop this point and to show how differently statistics look when viewed from the point of view of the goats' milk theory and fromi that of any other theory. Taking first of all the official military statistics from 1897 to 1908 under the two respective heads, and calculating the annual ratio of each per 1,000 to total cases, we get the result as follows : — Cases of " Malta Fever " and " Simple Continued Fever " among British Troops in Malta, 1897- 1908 inclusive. Year. Strength. Malta Fever. Simple Cont. Fever. Percentage of Total Cases. Cases. Ratio per 1000 Cases. Ratio per 1000 Malta Fever. SimplfeCont. Fever. 1897 8,023 279 347 1,275 158-9 i8-o '82-0 1898 7.39° 200 27-0 1.509. 204"I 117 88-3 1899 7.425 275 37-0 1,107 149-0 20"O 8o-o 1900 8,140 158 19-4 1.158 142*2 I2"0 8o-o 1901 8,136 253 3i'o 1,205 I48I 174 82-6 1902 8,758 15s 177 981 II20 13-6 86-4 1903 8.903 404 45'4 781 877 34'o 660 1904 9,120 320 3S'i 1.350 148-0 i9"o 8ro 1905 8,294 643 77-5 1,199 144*5 35'o 65-0 1906 6,661 161 24*2 508 76-2 24"0 76-0 1907 , S.700 II 1-9 323 56-6 3*3 967 1908 6,030 '5 •8 303 SO-2 1-6 98*4 It will be noticed that, except in the years 1903 and 1905, the relative proportions of Malta fever to simple continued fever remain very much the same until the year 1907. ' In the latter year there is a sudden drop in Malta fever from 24.0 to 3-3 cases per 1,000, but in these same two years there is a corresponding rise in the proportion of simple continued fever. The ratio during the full year of the sitting of the Commission, when " Malta fever " was " in the air," was only 65 per cent. ; but in 1908 the proportion rose to 98-4 per cent. — ^that is, an increase of 51 per cent. This peculiarity can only be accoimted for by differences in nomenclature and not in disease. "Malta fever" practically disappeared from the military medical vocabulary when the order for the stoppage of goats' milk went forth, and the term " simple continued fever " took its place. MALTA FEVER AND GOATS' MILK. 231 Turning to the statistics of the Navy for the same period, as sup- plied by the Medical Department of the Admiralty, a very striking contrast appeeirs throughout. Cases of " Malta Fever " and " Simple Continued Fever " on Medi- terranean Station, 1897 to 1907, inclusive. {The figures for \go^ are not yet ready.) Year. Strength. Malta Fever. Simple Continued Fever. Cases. Ratio per 1,000. Cases. Ratio per 1,000. 1897 11,920 546 45-8 552 46-3 1898 12,680 359 28-31 538 42-42 1899 13.630 195 14-3 497 36-46 1900 14,250 317 22"24 387 24-63 1901 14,070 252 17-91 323 22-95 190a 18,470 354 19-16 433 23'44 1903 18,410 389 18-41 «87 15-58 1904 19.590 333 16-99 401 20.46 190S 14,360 270 i8-8 174 I2-II ^1906 12,130 145 ii"9S 99 8-i6 190J 10,530 14 1-32 no 10-44 Now what is peculiar about this table is — 1st — That there is no such excessive disproportion between "Malta "fever" and "simple continued fever" as in the military statistics. Instead of " simple continued fever" being frequently four times in excess of Malta fever, they maintain a fairly equal proportion throughout 2nd — There are none of the sudden rises and falls as in the military table, and although there is a slight inclination in 1907 to exalt " simple continued fever" and to disparage " Malta fever," yet the average is fairly constant. 3rd — The attack rates under both heads are inconsiderable compared with the military figures. 4th — Right away from the year 1897 down to 1907 there is, with slight variations, a steady decline under both heads. ' The drop from 1905 to 1906 is not sudden and disproportionate as in the military table. 5th — The decline in " Malta fever" from 1897 to 1905 is no less thaa 59 per cent., and in " simple continued fever" the decline is as much as 74 per cent, during the same period. And yet goats' 233 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. milk was being used by the sailors the whole of that time. The decline since 1906, when goats' milk was stopped, is only proportionate to the steady decline which had been taking place for ten years. It is, therefore, perfectly clear that the stoppage of goats' milk cannot explain the decrease of "Malta fever" and "simple continued " fever" in the Navy, nor can it explain the remarkable difference in the attack rates between the Army and Navy, nor yet the variations of the one compared with those of the other. Everyone other than those possessed of "the scientific mind" will be forced to admit that there must be factors associated with the incidence of Malta fever outside and apart altogether from goats' milk which can alone explain these disparities in the two branches of His Majesty's Service. The military statistics are (no doubt quite honestly) drawn up from the point of view of the goats' milk theory. They differ fundamentally from the naval statistics, though the sailors were not less subject to the virulence of goats' milk than the soldiers. The difference of the total number of cases of fever (leaving nomenclature aside) has clearly some cause in the different environment of the men. This fact is brought out even more strongly by the statistics of fever among the civil population, to which I now turn ; premising that the civil authorities take their own view as to what is Malta and what is "simple continued "fever. Thg following table deals with the years 1897-1909: — " Mediterranean Fever " and " Simple Continued Fever," Population, 1897- 1909. Civil Year. Mediterranean Fever. Simple Continued Fever. 1897 S68 1P7 1898 510 H5 1899 822 114 1900 642 80 1901 624 60 1902-3 589 >66 1903-4 573 35 1904-S 1905-6 (fiaancial year) 663 822 26 22 1906-7 714 +2 1907-8 SOI 5 1908-9 463 II Here we see at a glance that the incidence among the civil popula- tion (numbering about 200,000) bears no comparison to that of either the mihtary or naval populations, although goats' milk forms a MALTA FEVER AND GOATS' MILK. 23s constant article of diet among the former, and is used to a far greater extent than by the soldiers and sailors. The attack rate to the population is comparatively insignificant ; and the relation which " Malta fever " bears to " simple continued fever" is in such marked contrast to that of the Army and Navy, although all three communi- ties were, until 1906, in the same condition as regards the use of goats' milk, that the above table affords still further evidence that the two maladies are one and the same thing, and the titles are mere differences of nomenclature given , according to the fancy of the medical attendants. In order, therefore, to get a fair view of the respective differences of incidence among the three populations I will combine "Malta " fever " and " simple continued fever " under the one head of " Mediterranean fever,'' and give a graphic presentation of the average attack rate for the nine years, 1897 to 1905 inclusive, during which period all alike drank goats' milk unhindered. Years. Military Cases. Ratio per 1, 000. Naval Cases. Ratio per 1,000 Civil Cases. Ratio per 1,000. 189710 i9°5 } 1,472 i8o"o 725 49'5 717 4' I Thiis, whilst the average attack rate per annum of " Mediterranean "fever" during the nine years among the military population reached the enormous total of 180 per 1,000, that of the Navy only reached 49.5, and the civil population the sniall total of 4-1. In short; the military attack rate was nearly four times greater than the naval and 45 times greater than that of the civil population. Considering that all drank goats' milk equally, none but "the scientific mind" could ever conclude that this article of diet was responsible for such vagaries in its attentions to different communities of people. Further, if we take the combined attack rate of " Malta fever " and " simple continued fever" for 1907 (there are no Navy statistics avail- able for 1908) for the three populations, and compare it with the foregoing averages, we obtain a still further marked contrast. Year. Military. Navy. Civil. Cases. Ratio. Cases. Ratio. Cases. Ratio. 1897 to 1905 1907 1472 354 iSo'o S8-3 725 124 49"5 1I-7 717 506 4" I 2-3 It will be seen that there has been a reduction all round, not only in the military and naval populations, among which the consumption 234 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. of goats' milk has been stopped, but also in the civil population, which is still drinking goats' milk as before. In the latter case the exceedingly low avercige ratio was still further reduced by nearly 50 per cent. But it will be noticed that, although " Malta fever" hias disappeared from the Army and Navy tables it still remains under another name. The military attack rate is still twenty-nine times greater than the civil, but its proportion of excess compared with the Navy, instead of decreasing has increased. This fact points to something radically wrong in the military environment, for which goats' milk cannot be held responsible. 'Tis true there is a marked improvement in the attack rate of Mediterranean fever among the military population, but it is never- theless five times greater than that of the Navy, whilst the naval attack rate is five times in excess of that of the civil population. Finally, in leaving the question of nomenclature I note that, whilst the Official Report for the civil population for 1908 states that there were 501 cases of " Mediterranean" (or " Malta") fever and only five of " simple continued fever," the Military Report states that they had only five cases of " Malta fever" and 303 of "simple continued fever." Thus it would seem that if you drink goats' milk you now suffer from "Malta fever," but if you do not drink goats' milk you contract " Simple Continued fever " ! Colonel Bruce told the Royal Commission (14,209): " I always encourage the use of the term ' Malta Fever,' in order to drive the Maltese to try to remove the stigma from their island. After they have purified their herds, then we will see about re-naming this fever." And he goes on to suggest that his own name shall be attached to it. ' Apparently " the scientific mind " of Colonel Sir David Bruce retains, after all, some lingering doubts as to whether the goats are as guilty as he assumes, else he would hardly talk of re-naming a fever which, if the herds were " purified," should, according to his theory, become altogether extinct! It is clear enough that the fever, call it what you will, for which Malta has been renowned, is not related to goats' milk at all. I have no doubt that it is a filth disease, and can only be stamped out by destroying the filthy conditions that breed it. I recently visited Malta for the express purpose of investigating the question, and among my fellow-passengers were some soldiers' wives returning there. They described to me the reprehensibly insanitciry conditions prevailing at St. Elmo Barracks, where they had lived for a consider- able time. To use their own words, these conditions " were enough "to produce any fever, and before we were removed to the new " barracks on the hill there was continued ill-health." MALTA FEVER AND GOATS' MILK. 235 I thought very little more of this circumstance until one day I visited the famous military hospital of the Knights of St. John, in Valetta, a fine old building, containing the largest hospital ward in the world The nurse in charge who showed me over explained that during the epidemic of 1905, when more than 600 soldiers were attacked with Malta fever, they had beds all down both sides of the greiat ward and along its centre, and she added, " they nearly all came from "St. Elmo Barracks, just at the bottom of the hill there," pointing to it as we stood upon the fiat-roofed terrace. She went on to explain that all grades in that barracks — officers, non-commissioned officers and men — ^went down under "Malta fever." Then I remembered what the soldiers' wives had told me, and I wended my way to St. Elmo Bariracks in the hope of seeing it for myself. But the com- manding officer refused me admission except as far as the chapel. This only afforded an opportimity of seeing but a small portion of the gloomy, low-lying fort, surrounded by enormous walls and uninviting moats. But I ascertained from the guard that, whereas imtil the time of the 1905 outbreak it had been populated by two battalions of troops (roughly 2,000 men), only three companies of artillery now occupied it, the bulk of the military having been removed, as the soldiers' wives had told me, to higher and healthier quarters in up-to-date barracks under better sanitary conditions. With a view to obtaining statistical information, I enquired of the Secretary of State for War as to the number of soldiers in each of the barracks in Malta during the past ten years, and the incidence respectively in each of " Malta fever" and " simple continued fever." The official reply was to the effect that there were over eighty bar- racks and forts on the island, and the information could not be supplied I then asked for the statistics in regard to St. Elmo Barracks only for that period. The answer was that they had no statistics of the strength of the troops in that particular baxracks until the ist of January, 1905, and that they had no record of illness affecting the soldiers quartered there. I thereupon asked for the figures as to strength of troops in St. Elmo Barracks, Malta, from 1st January, 1905, to date. Mr. Haldane supplied the following table: — Year. No. of Troops. 1905 665 1906 190; 1908 1909 83 165 238 229 This table fully justified my suspicions and corroborated the evidence I had obtained in Malta. Apparently the barracks were nrach more crowded prior to 1905, when some 2,000 troops were stationed there. 236 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. But the sudden drop in the strength from 665 in 1905 (the" year of the highest attack rate of "Malta fever" among the troops in Malta — ^namely, 643) down to only 83 in 1906 is synchronous with the equally sudden drop in Malta fever, which fell from 643 in 1905 to 161 in 1906. The strength of troops at the St. Elmo Barracks has remained low ever since, and so has " Malta" and " simple con- "tinued fever." Apparently in 1905 the whole of the susceptible material was used up, and the epidemic fizzled out, leaving behind just the ordinary quota of fevers among the troops generally on the island. This appears to be the simple solution of the problem, with- out any intervention of the fanciful goats' milk theory. It should also be noted that there was a reduction of 1,633 soldiers in the island from 1905-7, a reduction of 31 per cent. The problem of stamping out the fever lies in the creation of perfect sanitary conditions in the " eighty barracks and forts " on the island, and in the exercise of common sense. Great improvement has already resulted from the new medical regulations forbidding parade or bathing in the heat of the day, cutting off leave on tiie days following pay-day, and ensuring the supply of suitable headgear. But the problem cannot be solved until the Grand Harbour and Marsamuscetto Harbour, the cesspools of centuries, are cleansed; till an adequate sewage system is carried through-the island and all sewage is taken far out to sea. Efforts of great importance are now being made in all these directions, and the general health of the community is steadily improving, as shown by the fact that the death-rate among the civil (goats' -milk drinking) population is the lowest for at least 35 years. In Sliema, where the new drainage system was only completed about eighteen months ago, the death-rate has dropped from 27.25 to 23-85. In other towns and districts where there is no perfected drainage system the death-rate remains about the same, and in some cases has increased. The greatly improved condition of the Grand Harbour accounts for the improvement of the health of the sailors. Unhealthy barracks and forts determine the high fever rate in the case of the military population. It will be time enough to talk about the healthy little Maltese goat as the host of the Micrococcus Melitensis when the elementary principles of hygiene have been applied to the problem and have failed. All the evidence that we possess goes to show that the problem is one. of sanitation. Sir David Bruce has certainly not established his case. But we may hope that the publicity given to the question during the last few years will lead the Government to face the sanitary problem that lies before them. Walter R. Hadwen, M.D. FOREIGN AFFAIRS. RUINOUS EXPENDITURE AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR WAR. THE pressing need of money, making itself felt more acutely now than evef before, has become the main motive power of parliaments and governments throughout the world. In some cases the necessity of devising fresh means of raising funds for military and naval purposes has imparted a new direction tO' the foreign as well as the domestic policy of the Great Powers. Russia, legitimately eager to attract British capital for the development of her enormous mineral and other resources, is amicably sidling up closer to^ her whilom rival. Great Britain, and by a graceful captatio benevolenticB her ministry of trade and commerce under the autocratic Tsar is presided over by an able official who is commonly regarded as a staunch adherent of British constitutional tenets. Again, Russia's parliamentary representatives with the Speaker at their head have honoured England with a non-oificial visit, and entertain the- hope that the Tsar, seeing a stream of British gold flow into his dominions, will listen with greater deference in the future than in the past to the well meant coimsels of British politicians who have given a cer- tificate of parliamentary competency to " his Majesty's Opposition," and are never tired of advising him to take a leaf from latter day English history and bestow parliamentary government upon the nationalities that acknowledge his sceptre. In Germany financial cares having split that curious coalition of Liberals and Conservatives, which is undoubtedly the most astonishing piece of work achieved by Prince Biilow during the ten years of his Chancellorship, have effected far-reaching changes in the political domain. And in Great Britain the parliamentary fight over Mr. Lloyd George's Budget bids fair to be one of the fiercest ever fought since the days of Mr. Gladstone. It may lead to far-ranging results if Lord Lans- downe's announcement that the Lords will do their duty be fulfilled 238 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. in the sense in which it was generally understood. Turkey is suffering for lack of financial nourishment, her navy, like the dry bones ip the prophet's vision waiting to have the breath of life wafted into them, is still but a word suggestive of hope ; her army, although with no immediate prospect of reorganisation, is still much more than a brilliant memory, while the necessity of postponing indefinitely the satisfaction of her cultural needs is a cause of national despondency. TURKEY IS IN EARNEST ABOUT INVITING FOREIGN CAPITAL. In order to attract capital, without which the Sultan's advisers noW tardily confess that the resources of the country must lie undeveloped and the Treasury remain empty, the Government has framed an important Bill in favour of foreign investors, which will probably have become law before these pages see the light. The subjects dealt with in this Bill are strikes and labour syndicates, and the standpoint of the legislator has been that of the foreign investor. If,^ argued the Minister, capitalists with their money are to be enticed into the Turkish Empire, something more must be offered to them than they can obtain in more enlightened realms where the risks are less. In most countries the foreign as well as the native capitalist, has to battle with strikes and to reckon with trades-imions and work- men's syndicates, which sometimes handicap employers, upset their calculations, and blast their hopes. And in Turkey the germs of the same growths have manifested themselves. In Salonika, for instance, S3mdicates exist and already strikes have been organised, agfainst which the resistance of the capitalists proved unavailing. This creates a danger which the new Bill will obviate. Working men's syndicates and labour strikes are prohibited as criminal in all enter- prises carried on by the State or by foreigners exploiting a State concession or enjoying a State guarantee. This is certainly a bitter pill for the Ottoman operative. But it will be gilded very shortly by a Workman's Protection Act. Meanwhile the Anti-Strike Law is an indirect invitation to the foreign capitalist to cast his bread on Turkish waters with the certainty that he will receive it again after not too many days. And now Russia will be obliged to follow suit or resign herself to the alternative. France too — ^the rentier among the world's States — is becoming painfully aware of the necessity of giving another turn to the taxation- screw. She, too, must contribute her fair share of sacrifice to the Golden Calf which of late years has usurped the European throne of the God of War. Accordingly each class of the population looks trustfully to the others for the sacrifioe and to itself for the part of approving spectator. The well-to-db elements, who are fully repre- sented in the Legislature, shift almost every burden to the broad FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 239 shoulders of the people. And the people, discontented, axe becoming permeated with socialist doctrines, buoyed up with socialist illusions. The gulf between the working man and the bourgeois is ever widen- ing, and mere radicalism of the type that came into power with M. Clemenceau is become an abomination to the lack-alls. The entire political fabric in France is ramshackle, and through the crevices one seems to descry anarchy and chaos. Some of the speeches delivered recently by working men at meetings called by their parliamentary spokesmen have a very ominous sound about them. France bids fair to continue to be the land of social and political experiments. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND SCANDINAVIA. The financial shoe that appeared to fit Austria-Hungary as neatly as a glove is beginning to pinch her severely. People expected that it would. The bills for the grandiose preparations made last winter are now coming in, and the sums required are formidable. The new ships will also necessitate considerable outlay. In September a prograjmme will be laid before the nation's representatives. It will include four first-class battleships of 19,000 — 20,000 tons displace- ment, three cruisers of the Admiral Spaun type (3,500 tons displace- ment), a flotilla of torpedo boats, four submarines and two Danube s'hips. Altogether, the estimated cost will not be less than 270 million Austrian crowns, of which 174 millions would he payable by Austria and 96 millions by Hungary. In this perspective there is one ray of comfort for the subjects of Franz Josef. Nothing is being said about the speed with which those vessels are to be built, and that is a most important point. Like the man, who, having been condemned to death but permitted to choose the kind of extinction he would prefer, chose to die of old age, the Austro-Hungarian tax- payer may perhaps be allowed to go on for a long time to come without any additional tax for the new naval programme. But the old ones are heavy enough. Denmark, after having long lagged behind in the race for such relative efficiency as the interests of national defence demand, has at last given up the race in despair. That is the true meaning of her fateful resolve to limit her defences to superfluous preparations against a land attack which she is not likely ever to experience. And one is warranted in fearing that the independence of Denmark will nOt weather the next political storm in Europe. Sweden, on the other hand, whose people are the stuff of which, warriors and heroes are made, is exerting herself to the utmost. But the conclusion is fore- gone. She is being crushed little by little economically, and thus hindered from doing what she otherwise could and would do to hold her own among Continental nations. Industry is the only source 240 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. from which the Swedes could draw the wherewithal to keep their army in its present admirable condition and its land in a state of effective defence. But the steady inflow of German manufactured goods, many of them purporting to be of Swedish origin, bearing Swedish inscriptions and garnished with Swedish proverbs, keeps Swedish enterprise in check. And there is no remedy. A tariff war with Germany has often been thought of and sometimes proposed. But the rattling of the German sabre and the tightening of the mailed fist have, Swedish politicians affirm, intimidated the gallant Scandi- navians, whose spirit is willing but whose purses are void. NECESSITOUS JAPAN.' Japan is also in financial difficulties. The burden which the cam- paign, against Russia laid upon the shoulders of her spirited people was much too heavy for them. Even now they are tottering under it, and the knowledge of this fact, tardily borne in upon the Russians, is causing these to gnash their teeth in impotent rage at the thought that they stayed their hand at the very moment when it behoved them to strike hardest. "Another three months," General Linievitch remarked to me^ shortly before he died, " and we should have turned " the tidcof fortune. I said this at the time, but to no purpose. And "yet it was no mere prophecy, but a matter of certain knowledge. " Our fate was then in our own hands, but we laid it in the hands of "the pacifist civilians of Portsmouth." This may be a truth or a patriotic delusioiL But Japan's financial troubles have long been a matter of common knowledge, and from this knowledge Russia might have inferred with certitude the needlessness of plunging headlong into the ruinous expenditure demanded by the Amoor Railway. A hundred millions sterling would have been saved. And the Govern- ment of the Tsar, like those of the lesser Powers, are at their wits' end for money. The present Finance Minister, competent observers admit, has done his best to retrench unnecessary expenses, to cut and pare. But paltry makeshifts of this kind are inadequate. A creative act, a financial miracle, could alone supply what is needed. Hopes ajre entertained' that British capital may begin to find its way into European as well as Asiatic Russia, now that the two countries are so amicably disposed towards each other. And in the long rim it may. But in the meantime something must be done or else endured by Russia. SWELLING BUDGETS ARE REVOLUTIONISING THE WORLD. In a word, budgets are everywhere swelling with imwonted rapidity and to an extent that fills one with grave disquietude. Trade and industry run a risk of being handicapped ; prohibition may one day FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 241 be substituted for protection; class barriers, where they are still standing, are being gradually sw^ept away; the accumulation of industrial wealth is being discouraged and may yet be frankly pre- vented ; to the State will be entrusted the task of spending most of the increment earned as well as uneeimed ; the growth of culture will necessarily be checked and socialistic legislation favoured. It may seem, and probably is, ain exaggeration to ascribe all these various effects to the wasting of the national resources on military and naval armaments which was begun and is being persisted in by Germany. But the statement will not be gainsaid that Germany is now the only obstacle to an international covenant which would enable the peoples of Europe to cut down their annual expenditure at least by one- fourth. To that extent, therefore, a causal nexus between the two phenomena exists. Those British friends of Germany who seek to justify her present policy of naval construction on the ground that a great military Power requires a correspondingly large navy, will not deny that a formula could be devised which would satisfy all such reasonable aims while dispensing European peoples from the irksome sacrifices which they are now forced to offer up. But every evil raised to a certain high power brings its own remedy or palliative. Travel far enough west and you get at last to the east. One of the consequences of the incessant demand's upon the nation's generosity made by German militarism will, it is surmised, ultimately be the extinction of those parliamentary parties whose policy of expansion is responsible for this vast unproductive outlay and the elevation to power of democrats, or even sociahsts, whose advent will mark the end of militarism. Socialism, furthered by militarism, by German militarism, would indeed be a bit of caustic irony in the life of the nations. Money, the art of spending it judiciously, and the spirit of patriotic self-denial combined, are now instrumental in post- poning, and some people fancy obviating altogether, the necessity of actually waging war. But the respite is only temporary. Besides, history shows that in the long run a people may be ruined as effec- tually by wasting its present resources on soldiers, fortresses, battle- ships and ammunition as by sacrificing the lives of its citizens in actual warfare. That was the fate that overtook the old German Empire. It died of the effects of financial inanition. It would, of course, be a mistake to assimie that the present German Empire has reached this critical stage or is within easy distance of it. Thanks to her splendid army — the most formidable the world has ever seen — and her excellent navy, which is steadily growing in numbers and efficiency, she has for thirty-eight years been dispensed from risking the lives of her sons on the field of battle. To-day her people, despite their belauded love of peace, have granted their government half a milliard marks for war. Half a milliard m^arks, in addition to the other annual contributions which they make VOL. xcvi. 18 242 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. for their army and navy, their airship schemes, and their social legis- lation, constitute a convincing proof of the true patriotic spirit. And the end is not yet. Herr Sydow has drawn on the German nation for a larger simi than Mr. Lloyd George is asking the British people for. Yet everybody in Germany who takes an interest either in politics or taxation is alive to the fact that the Kaiser's government have imder- stated their needs. Count Posadowsky, for instance, who once managed the business of the Imperial treasury, stated, with charac- teristic bluntness, that at least another two hundred million marks will be required. And the German people will contribute the money unmurmuringly. The greatest land army, the second greatest navy, and the heaviest social burdens are being gladly supported by this enterprising people, who have seemingly made up their minds that their future will be on the water as well as on the land, and who at any rate recognise the "categorical imperative of duty." With them week-ending has not yet become imperative. In this one of its as,pects the behaviour of Germany is a noble s^jectacle, and even we cannot withhold our admiration. MILITARISM THE MOTHER OF SOCIALISM. But there are other and graver sides to this international money- war. The degree to which it is taxing the endurance of the masses cannot, we Eire told, be raised much higher nor persisted in much longer. Hence, unless one or other of the competing groups gives way, the protests of the democracy may assume dangerous forms and lead to dire results. Already the masses are endeavouring to apply the suggestion made in the days of yore when kings ruled in virtue of a divine right and wars often originated in personal jealousy or family feuds. It was once proposed that when two monarchs declared war against each other, in these condition?, they should be obliged to cross swords with each other and go on until one or other was killed, instead of compelling their subjects to do the fighting. To-day the masses are clamouring to have the main burdens of taxation for offensive and defensive purposes laid on the shoulders of the wealthy and well-to-do classes and to leave the others almost exempt. That at bottom is the gist of the present troubles in Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Austria and Japan. "You have the lion's •'share in the government of the country and in the wealth which the " nation produces. It is only fair, therefore, that you should also have "the lion's share of the financial burden." Such is the gist of the argument one hears against the well-to-do in most countries of Europe. FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 243 THE GERMAN BUDGETARY ESTIMATES AR£ NOT FINANCIAL REFORM. Take, for example, the German Budget. It was at firsti blazoned abroad as the embodiment of a widfe-ranging reform of the Imperial finances. At that time nobody knew its tenor. Subsequently it was seen to be little more than a sequence of expedients for raising money to pay for the military and naval armaments. The democratic Press then cried out that the Agrarians were playing false, and seeking to make the masses contribute the supplementary half milliajd marks required and were freeing themselves from liability. They looked upon the problem solely from this xmworthy point of view. Prince Biilow was more just, it is affirmed He advocated, among other measures, a legacy tax and a succession duty which would have fallen heavily on the classes. The Agrarians demurred to it accordingly.* They argued that it was the breaking of the ice, underneath which a strong current of socialist passion was flowing. " Begin there," they said, "and you will end by confiscating property altogether. As soon " as the Lack-alls come into power the three per cent, duty will be " raised without scruple." However this may be the Catholic -Centre, which was then in the Opposition, and the Agrarians who formed part of the Liberal-Conservative Block struck up an alliance, shattered the Block, and defeated certain parts o^ Prince B'iilow's Bill, this clause among others, and were credited with the overthrow of Prince Biilow. , WHO OUSTED THE GERMAN CHANCELLOR? But did the Reichstag compel the Chancellor to retire? In this country it was generally thought that it did, just as the belief still prevails in many places here that in Russia the Duma could by an adverse vote put an end to the career of M. Stolypin.f As a matter of fact both views are entirely incorrect. The Reichstag had the same right to decline the proposed taxes that the Kaiser's Govern- ment possessed to recommend them. The exercise of that right does not involve a defeat of the Chancellor, who is responsible only to the Kaiser. From the very birth of the German Empire this doctrine has been preached and accepted. Bismarck on a like occasion addressed the Reichstag thus : "If you reject our well-meant efforts * Many Germans, including Members of the Government and genuine Liberals, had also demurred to it a few years ago. t Another political heresy, which has many adherents here, is that M.Stolypin has the pow<»r to carry out his views of Russia's foreign policy, and that if he had not been ill last March when G«!rmany's ultimatum was presented he would have rejected it in a spirited way. But in reality hft knew what was happening just then, and possessed as much power to stop it while he was ill as when he was well. He is utterly powerless, and is never consulted by the Tsar on such matters. 244 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. "to make the first advance towards ■reforming taxation, you are " certainly only using your right. As for us we shall have to make "the best of it, to dt) what we can to find another issue, and to lay " the Bill before you next time. Of sensitiveness, cabinet questions "and such like consequences there can be no question, on this occa- "sion. If you are not of our way of thinking to-day, we must "console ourselves with the hope that in the future you will be." That was Prince Billow's position, and that might also have been his attitude to-day. ' The German Chancellor has been ousted from office, not by the Reichstag;, which rejected a part of his budget, accepting four-fifths, of it, but by those who attributed to this vote an importance which it did not and could not possess. The Council, composed of the repre- sentatives of the German Federal States, drew the first consequence from the vote of the Reichstag. It bowed to the unavoidable instead of making common cause with Prince Biilow. _ Money was needed for the Empire, and the Federal Council virtually said : — " Whether the " funds are raised by Catholics of the Centre and Agrarians combined " with Poles, or by National Liberals, is a secondary matter. What "we want is the money." Their only alternative tp this common- sense line of action would have been the dissolution of the Chamber. But new elections would have given new strength to the Socialists without affording material help to the Treasury. Therefore, the Federal Council vetoed the proposal. And by thus exercising its right it was discharging its duty. The Chancellor's position was not shaken; the Reichstag and he himsejf openly admitted this. On i6th June he said : " I am remaining in office so long as his Majesty, "the Kaiser, thinks that my co-operation in the conduct of the " domestic and foreign policy is conducive to the welfare of the " Empire, and so long as I myself believe that I can be, useful, con- "gruously with niy own political convictions." Thus the circmnstance that Prince Biilow remained in office until the Taxation Bill was passed shows that it contained nothing that ran counter to his convictions. What seems to have determined the Prince is the circumstance that he had for some time been "iwending on a road which led to shifting sands, and that everybody was aware of his plight but himself. Long ago he had been warned, by the Conservatives that they would only help him to pass the financial law, if he also accepted the co-operation of his adversaries of the Catholic Centre. Now with this request Prince Biilow was ready to comply, but he failed to say so in time. His sense of danger of political actualities was temporarily blunted. And the parliamentary watchman of the Cabinet assured him that all would be well ; a majority was certain. When the critical moment arrived it brought defeat — defeat but. nothing more. Unhappily for the Chancellorj however, his National Liberal alUes, imder Herr FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 245 Bassermann, spread the report that a dissolution was at hand, and that it was being undertaken at their suggestion. And this clumsy manoeuvre turned the scale. , For a dissolution the Prinoe could tiot get a majority in the Federal Council. Thus finding himself without a soljd party behind him, with no fresh means of rallying his followers, no issue out of the no-thoroughfare but return, the Chancellor made his bow and retired. That is one facet of the story. There are others. Without the Kaiser's consent, and sbmething over and above. Prince Biilow would not have made his exit from the stage of political history. That he made it so abruptly goes to show that the decisive truth only dawned upon him shortly before he left. This determining factor is said to have been the will of his Imperial master. And in support of the statement it is alleged that some time ago, but subse- quently to the November crisis and the coolness it produced between Kaiser and Chancellor, court circles claimed to know that Wilhelm II. was tired of his fourth Prime Minister and had already appointed a fifth in petto. This loss of the monarch's confidence was fatal. The rumour slowly filtered down from court to parliament.. The first party to hear it were the Conservatives, who at onoe quietly adjusted themselves to the nev/ circumstances. Then the others had wind of it — all except the Chancellor himself. And he only noticed the coldness of his whilom friendly surroundings, their slowness to respond to his lead, the predominance of obstacles in his path, and the gradual change around him, which he was unable to explain imtil the end of the last act. And then he, too, had the old lesson impressed upon him, "Put not your trust in princes." Germany will receive its additional half million marks yearly and Avill continue to lead in the military race of nations. But she is still waiting for financial reform. GRAVE POLITICAL CHANGE IMPENDING IN GERMANY. Doubtless the new taxes will weigh heavily on the people, poor and rich, and transform financial into political cares and grievances. This would be the case at the best of times, for the standard of living in the Fatherlcind is considerably below the standard of living in Great Britain. But the result will be more intense, more painful now than in average times because of the imusual depression felt almost every- where, but more especially among the working men, tens of thousands of whom are without employment. These people are being aroused from the torpor of generations. The blow dealt them has come, they are told, from the region of politics. To the region of politics they accordingly turn, eager to strike back. ' People who never before spent a thought on matters political are now becoming members of democratic or socialist parties. A new peasants' league confronts the old landowners' association; the latter day Hansa League recently 246 THE CaN TEMPORARY REVIEW. founded for the purpose of withstanding the reactionary pohcy of the Agrajjans and furthering the interests of trade and industry, is enrolling members 'by the thousand ; and other signs are numerous of the coming struggle of the masses for/those full political rights which they have been vainly expecting for nearly forty years. Those who feel sure that Germciny is on the eve of such a political contest, adduce among less general reasons for their belief the fact that the German nation is, so to say, new wine, while the German Constitution and the constitutions of the Federal States are very old and musty bottles. Nine hundred thousand souls are permanently added to the great German community every year. That is the number that remains after death has done its worst. The result of this steady growth may be gathered from the following table of the annual increase in the population since 1 870, the birth-year of the Empire and of the promulgation of the Constitution which is still in force : — 1870 40,805,000 1880 45,095,000 1890 48,241,000 1895 52,001,000 1900 60,314,000 1908 63,017,000* In other words, there is now a wholly new people in Germany, a people with other needs than those of 1870, other aptitudes, higher attainments and larger demands on life, who are rendering the struggle for existence among themselves keener than it ever was before and making the standard of living proportionately lower. This new nation feels itself hampered with political fetters and is increas- ingly eager to strike them off. The political conditions of the Empire are antiquated, being exactly what they were when Germany was a people of only 40,000,000. Since then everything has moved forward with the rapid march of progress, everything except the Constitution. And this, too, we are credibly assured, will soon have to change. The impetus has been given by the new turn of the taxation screw. Whether this agitation, which, to the thinking of German demo- crats, prepares a vast political change, will influence the war of military and naval expenditure is impossible to determine. For while democratic Germany is waiting resignedly for the full flood of liberalism which shall bear it to new and tranquil shores, the storm-clouds that have been gathering so loiig may burst at any moment. Of the new Chancellor, Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, tmder whose premiership these fresh political movements are being inaugurated, *Cf. Frankfurtir Zeitung, iith July, 1909. FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 247 there is nothing new to say. He is a man of a sane, buoyant con- stitution, of considerable courage of heart and understanding, an eloquent speaker, whose delivery is monotonous, but a man who is much more than his words, a counsellor who descries the smallest danger when planning, and ignores all but the greatest when carrying out a scheme. He talks like an unassuming Englishman, and acts like a thotightful and patriotic German. In foreign politics his rdle must of necessity be that of a secretary, an executor. To him it is an unfamiliar land ; consequently the Kaiser will have much greater scope for action in that field, which he has made peculiarly his own, than he has ever had before. Prince Biilow gone ; Holstein dead ; Hamann suspended on a charge of perjury ; nobody of note to lead, guide, or restrain. Whatever else may happen owing to this dearth of politicians, the growth of the navy, the efficiency of the army, the progress of aviation — in a wordj all things connected with Imperial defences are certain to continue to be furthered by money, skill and forethought. FRANCE AS A NAVAL POWER— PAST AND PRESENT. France is decided to keep abreast of the times, if not in naval efficiency at any rate in naval expenditure, which is commonly taken to be the outward sign of efficiency. And if it were merely a question , of goodwill she would probably regain her lost position of second maritime Power. But the will is not everything. Neither is money sufficient, indispensable though it is. Something more is requisite, and this other condition is precisely what the French nation seems to lack constitutionally, and what no mere parliament can bestow. Meanwhile a naval programme exists, and the supreme marine council which drafted it had it accepted by the Government which has just been overthrown. But there is nothing creative in the new scheme, nothing remedial in its recommendations, nothing ambitious in its aims. . It is a forced move, which endeavours to secure for the Republic the fourth place among the world's naval States. Formerly France was second only to Great Britain. To-day she comes also after the United States and Germany. The reorganised navy is to consist of 45 line-of -battle ships, 12 scouting cruisers, 60 torpedo boats, 64 submarines. These vessels are to be distributed over four centres. The cost of each of the new armoured battleships is estimated at ;£'3,200,ooo. The realisation of this programme will necessitate an outlay of not less than 3,000,000,000 francs, or about ;^ 1 20,000,000. In Radical circles there is an outcry against this lavish expenditure on the navy. But the adherents of the Government answer that France cannot afford to lag behind in the race for military and naval 248 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, superiority, or say rather efEciency. What they might also urge with truth is that not all tHis money will be spent on the navy; a con- siderable portion will find its way elsewhither. That is, at least, the rule. Last winter the French people were treated to more than one tinpleasant surprise when the Minister of the Marine, M. Picard, asked for 300,000,000 francs. " Reform is more needed than money," argued the Nationalists, and M. Picard was obliged to endorse this view and content himself with a smaller sum. A Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry was created, which made a careful investigation of the unsimned comers of the Ministry, and found a scandalous condition of things there — so scandalous, indeed, that the members of the Osmmittee decided to divulge nothing more about it until they had finished and presented their ofiicial report. HOW TO BUILD AN INEFFICIENT NAVY. The Report is now ready, and on reading it one is surprised not that France should have been ousted from the second place among the world's naval Powers, but that slie should still occupy the fifth. The Marine Ministry would appear to be organised on the happy family model. Half of the of&cers — ^just one half — are buried in prefectures, on boards of management, committees, and at other posts which take them away from the service. And very often the heads of one of these departments are at daggers' ends with the heads, of another department, much of their energy being wasted in thwarting each other's schemes for the benefit of the State. There are no reserve supplies of ammunition beyond what are stored on each of the ships, and these amount to no more than three-quarters of the quantities prescribed by law. On board the Patrie the Commission found six guns of the ig02 type from which not a single shot could be fired, and ten guns of the 1885 type instead of the type of 1902. On board the Rtpublique similar discoveries were made. The six line-of -battle ships of the Danton type are to be ready by 191 1. Quite ready, people said and believed. But the Commission has ascertained the fact that this does not mean that they can be employed in that year. Far from that. Neither the guns nor the ammtmition will be delivered before 1 914, or even 191 5. But neither will the dry docks be ready at which those warships are to take in their provisions of coal and ammunition. There is no imity of direction in the service. There are a dozen different centres, each, one independent of the rest. The system may best be characterised by this one fact ; during the past ten years the Ministry of the Marine expended 3,450,000,000 francs on the navy, or about 400,000,000 more than Germany spent, with the result that it slid dovm from the second to the fifth rank among the naval Powers of the world. France FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 249 has broken the record in this respect. Obviously reform is much more needed than money. Whether the fall of the Clemenceau Cabinet, "which might have been prevented if all the Premier's followers had been in their places, vdll clear the way for reform is doubtful. FRANCE'S INDEBTEDNESS. For new taxes the present movement is peculiarly inauspicious. Money is sorely needed for other purposes. The social reforms which are now contemplated require heavy outlay. And unlike Russia, which was poor while its Government was rich, the French nation is wealthy while the Government is necessitous. And this year's Budget has to provide for new expenses amounting to nearly half a milliard francs. Thus there is a sort of family likeness among latter- day budgets and naval programmes which is at once amusing and pathetic France, however, has peculiar chaxacteristics of her own which distinguish her from all other Powers. She affords a typical instance of a nation in decay. In the days of Napoleon I. the French people represented 27 per cent, of the entire population of Europe. To-day it amounts to 1 1 per cent. And its indebtedness has gone up as its population went down. France's public debt is now the largest of any. It is computed at 29 milliards, or say ;^ 1,1 60,000,000, to say nothing of the millicirds of the floating debt. In the year 1852 the public debt of the French nation amounted only to five milliard francs. To-day it is over 29 milliards. No other Power has increased its financial obligations at this rate. Although the popu- lation constitutes no more than 11 per cent, of the inhabitants of' Europe, its indebtedn^s is one-fifth of that of all the nations of the globe. This enormous burden works out at the rate of 750 francs per head of the population, whereas we in England, who come second on the list of debtors, owe 410 francs a head, the Germans only 90, and the citizens of the United States 70 francs. It is only fair to stdd that there is one other State which in this respect outdoes even France. It is Honduras. The citizen of that Republic has sunk still •deeper in the slough of national indebtedness than his French brother, for his shoulders have to support the burden of 1,315 francs. The French people are slowly awakening to consciousness of their almost desperate plight. The Journal des Dibats, for instance; commenting on M. Caillaux' Budget, writes : " Athwart M. Caillaux' " remarks peeps the mania of greatness. He appeals to the example "of certain other States which are also passing through a severe " crisis. But apart from the circumstance that the mistakes of other ""nations do not constitute a justification of our financial prostration, *'it should be borne in mind that in respect of finances France cannot "aptly be compared with her neighbours. For we are the only 250 THE CONTBMPORA R Y RE VIE W. " nation that has contracted a debt of 30 milliard francs and has a "population that remains stationary. Under such conditions the "annual increase of our Budget by 100,000,000 francs must in a very " short space of time bring us to the verge of ruiiL" And the Temps chimes in as follows -. — " What dangers has the near future in store " for us ? Little by little the nation is yielding itself up to the sway " of socialist ideas. Little by little the force of private initiative is "being supplanted by the power of the State and by the wasteful " management of business by officials. The purchase of the Western "Railway will necessitate an expenditure of which the Finance " Minister is afraid even to speak." And no way out of the difficulty has been discovered. In twenty years Germany will have double the population of France, and doubtless many other advantages over her decaying rival. RUSSIA IN THE TOILS. The Russian Budgetary Estimates for 19 10, which were approved by the Council of the Empire on the 2ist June, deal with the for- midable total of 2,596,000,000 roubles, or about ;£'26o,ooo,ooo.* And the general outlook is as dismal as in Western countries, not to say more dreary still. Hence the Financial Committee of the Upper Chamber, eager to set the waters moving, presented a list of ten reformatory desires — pia desideria one might aply term them — whicH are not likely to advance any nearer to realisation for a long time to come. They are recommendations to the Government to adopt cer- tain measures of retrenchment, of economy, and of encoturagement to trade and commerce, and to bring foreign capital into the country; They remind one of the advice given by a sympathising friend to a nervous marksman who was competing for a prize at Bisley ■- " All "you have to do, my boy, is to hit the bull's-eye, and the prize is ■■ yours. See, there it is ! " The Finance Minister, M. Kokofftseff, who discharges a difficult and thankless task with unflagging assiduity and conscientiousness, delivered a speech on the ten desires of the Committee, which diffused a roseate tinge over the financial and economic outlook. That was his duty, and he performed it ably. Count Witte turned up the reverse of the medal, and held it aloft for inspection while he delivered a running fire of comments on the details, biting comments embodying dismal data that could neither be refuted nor slighted. He enumerated the ten wishes of the Com- mittee, analysed them, held them up against the dry light of facts and figures, and then subjected them to the action of his solvent criticism. As Count Witte is still the greatest authority on Russian * It should not be forgotten that^the Russian Budget includes the State railways, which with ordinary good management ought to be made a source of large profits. But ordinary management is seldom good in Russia and good management 19 extraordinary. FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 251 finances in the Tsardom it may not be amiss to glance at the much discussed problem from his angle of vision. Everybody who takes an interest in foreign politics is keenly interested in Russian politics, and the essence of Russian foreign policy now hes precisely in the financial question. Whether Russia will be able to resume her former place in the hierarchy of nations in time to influence the destinies of Europe depends almost entirely upon her financial and economic condition. And nobody in Europe can speak on that sub- ject with as much authority as Coimt Witte. The members of the Duma, to whom the people of these islands recently offered a most cordial welcome, gave utterance more than once to the legitimate hope that the relations of the two natioiis might become fraternal, that commercial transactions between them might be encouraged and increased, that British capital might find its way more often to the Tsardom and Russian produce to Great Britain. And we all — or nearly all — fervently re-echoed the wish. As it happened this, too, was one of the ten desires of the Financial Committee of the Council of the Empire, who asked the Government to revise the statutes that foreigners who bring capital into Russia reasonably object to. SHOULD BRITISH CAPITAL BE INVESTED .IN RUSSIA?— WITTE'S ANSWER. This is what Count Witte said : " You demand a revision of the "commercial, industrial, agricultural, fiscal and other statutes which "hamper the free application of labour and capital and generally the " development of trade ; for you are preoccupied with the interests " of commerce, and are desirous of contributing to the normal groAvth "of commercial and industrial life in the Empire. But, gentlemen, "do you imagine that these things have never been thought of "before? Truly, they have supplied food for long and anxious " reflection and motives for numerous projects which have been duly "embodied in proposals. And all that can now be looked forward " to is that certain insignificant measures may perhaps be carried out. " For the root of the matter is this : the topics on which you touch " in your recommendations cut deep into the problems of the "nationalities among us. And the final upshot will be that neither " the Government nor you yourselves will brook any amendments in "the existing statutes and methods. WHY RUSSIAN TRADE AND INDUSTRY CANNOT YET BE DEVELOPED. "Then where do the obstacles lie? They lie in the necessity of " granting a certain degree of liberty in order to further the scheme — " that is to say, you must not go on insisting that everything connected 252 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. " with commercial matters shall pass through the Council of Ministers "and the Departments of Ministries. Let joint stock companies be " founded without any such formalities by means of a simple declara- "tion. Turn the matter over as you will, you will find that this is " an indispensable condition for the development of our industry. " Yet this is precisely what the Govemment could not, and you will "not, allow. " The fact is we have in force a whole series of different national "disabilities, varying according to places and occupations. FOREIGN LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANIES DISCOURAGED IN RUSSIA. " Let us suppose you wish to establish a limited liability company "to carry on business at Saratoff, and that the board of maiiagement " consists of two members whose names end in 'off' and three others " whose names have the termination 'stein ' or ' berg.'* Now such a "company cannot be sanctioned. On the other hand, however, no " notary public would trouble himself to be on the look-out for such " cases. Consequently the formation of companies by simple declara- " tian is out of the question. Take another instance. Let us suppose "that in the district of Turkestan some other joint stock company " wants to establish itself. People will at once murmur and ask why "are they all coming from Lodz with names ending in 'ski'? We " must have names ending in ' off.' But how can this desire be com- " plied with if you allow companies to be floated in virtue of a mere "declaration without further formality? The fact is, that no other " set of proposals is so eminently calculated to raise and lend sharp " actuality to the problem of our nationalities as those to which your "recommendation give prominence. WHY GENERAL POLITICAL EQUALITY IS STILL IMPOSSIBLE. "Until an end has been made of the problem of nationalities by "the grant of general political equality (and we are still far, very "far, from that) the method of founding limited liability companies by means of a simple declaration cannot be adopted. * Count Witte is alluding to the demand that a certain proportion of Russians, real Russians, shall be members of Boards of Management in Limited Liability Companies; names ending in "berg" or "stein" are generally Jewish or German. FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 253 " All statutes and all commercial and industrial modes of procedure "will consequently continue to be referxed to the council of ministers "or else to the minister whose Department is mainly interested. All " statutes and commercial or industrial methods have to reckon with "our idiosyncracies which eliminate or, at any rate, limit to an extreme "degree our commercial freedom. But once you reject the simple " procedure of forming companies by declaration, you have achieved "as good as nothing in the direction of industrial and commercial " liberty ; because throughout the world to-day the simple declaratory "method of procedure is everywhere in force. You talk now of the "freedom of applying labour, etc. These are very pretty phrases. " But we seem to have heard them before. At present we hear them " chiming on one set of bells, but five years ago we heard them rung " out on cinother set. To-day's conversation may appear different "from that of five years ago, but in reality it is one and the same. "And the final result will be this, that when circumstance thrusts "forward the national problems and presses them upon your attention "you yourselves will cry out ' Halt ! ' For instance, did not the " Moscow representatives of trade and commerce raise the question " (and I do not at all reproach them for it) by asserting that certain "measures were peremptorily called for in order to exclude Polish "manufactured goods from entering Moscow? " It was strange to me when reading your report to note the under- " lying assumption that the recommendations which you now make "had n^t been put forward and considered years and years ago. I " can assure you that all these proposals were indeed mooted ; but "only mooted. For they involve problems which are at present " insoluble and therefore will not be solved by you. Hence you may "give utterance to whatever desires you will, but you cannot solve " these questions, because their basis is the problem of nationalities. ■^Do you deem it possible to interweave with the financial and- "economical life of the Empire elements of police guardianship and "political administration? Or is this needless? If ever a time ■■ comes, and it is granted you to see it, when you will answer : ' It is " ' needless,' then assuredly Russian labour will receive an enormous •' impetus and you will not recognise Russia ten years thence, so great " will her progress have been. But I feel bound in conscience to tell " you that at this present moment I should not myself venture to go to "such lengths. And for that reason I can well understand that the " Government is not prepared to advance so far. Hence, if any "measures be taken at all they are sure to be trivial. One govern- " ment looks upon the matter from a broader, another from a narrower " angle of vision. But what it all comes to is that we here in Russia "cannot at the preseiit moment put in force cill those measures of , "commercial freedom, on the application of which almost everything "hinges in foreign countries. 2 54 THE CON TEMP ORAR Y RE VIE W. THE INFLUX OF FOREIGN CAPITAL IS MERE TALK. — WITTE'S EXPERIENCE. " I would fain offer a few brief remarks about another matter of a "kindred nature. You say (and it is become quite the fashion to "say it of late) that what we now need is foreign capital, and what " we ought to do is to attract it into the country. Well, when I was " Minister of Trade and Commerce I preached this doctrine for eleven "years. And for eleven years I encountered difficulties to its realisa- "tion, and I am sure that you, too, who are only about to pass from " general velleities on to the terra firma of practice will be confronted " with the selfsame difficulties. And you will check yovur own selves. "This is how we here reason: 'foreign capital,' we say, 'is indis- '" pensable to our industries ; and when we receive it we shall benefit " ' by it exceedingly, but, of course, foreigners who come here among " ' us must not be allowed freely to dispose of that capital. It is " ' theirs to give the money and ours to dispose of that money, either " ' ourselves or through Russian men of straw.' " For if a company put on its board of management three foreigners " and two Russians, its statutes would not be sanctioned. There must "be three Russians, orthodox or Lutheran, and then there may be two "foreigners. But if there be three or four foreigners, or if all are " foreigners, then there will be heard the outcry : ' You are flooding " ' Russia with foreigners ; you are selling Russia ' — some will say to " the English, others to the Germans, or to the French, according to " their political mood, and in the end they will cry, ' You have sold " ' everjkhing to the Jews.' After all, this talk of foreign capital is "talk and nothing more, for when it comes to deeds yoij are sure to "impose such a host of restrictions that every foreigner will say 'Xand I know what I am talking about), ' God be with you and with '"the interest which you give us on our money. And now for " ' Heaven's sake leave us in peace, and release us from the tortures "'which we have been enduring.' I say nothing- now about the " condition in which foreign directors of factories and foreign opera- "tives at present find themselves." That is the view taken by Coimt Witte on the subject that is perhaps uppermost to-day in the minds of the Russian and British peoples. What he said was listened to in silence, and neither in the Council of the Empire nor in the Press of Russia, which takes a delight in attacking him, has any word been uttered calculated to refute his contention or mitigate the dreariness of his forecast. Everything is admitted. The only reproach made against him is that he did not hold his peace, seeing that he had nothing pleasant to say. FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 255 DISSOLVING VIEWS OF PERSIAN POLITICS. The Persian tangle has at last been taken up by a new set of men who are confident that they can unravel it. The enemies of the Shah, fortune favouring, have now got the upper hand and deposed the impotent despot ; in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king. But the Constitutionalists may well be more successful than the Absolutists without ever being successful. And they still owe the world, whose sympathy they crave, some proofs of their ability to transact the business of the State with tolerable efficiency. Hitherto they have achieved nothing in any sphere, parliamentary, diplomatic, or military. They failed dismally everywhere. The nation would seem to be suffering from creeping paralysis and its representatives from political locomotor ataxia. Doubtless the deposition of Mohammed AH is a boon ; but the removal of little Ahmed Shah from his mother's lap to the Peacock's thJrone may easily prove a curse, and not only to the unhappy child. The whole Kadjar dynasty is tainted with the original sin of conceited incapacity, intensified by monstrously cruel instincts. Some monarchs of that house have been cunning; not one has been wise, prudent, or patriotic. Even enlightened egotism seems foreign to their nature. If the protecting Powers had been able to reconcile it with their principles, or dovetail it with their practical policy, to wink at the appropriation of the throne by a Bakhtiari prince, ther0 would be some grounds or, say, rather some pretext for hope. It is humiliating to read of the reactionaries of yesterday becoming converted to-day to the principles of constitutionalism. In Persia, however, where the national type is strongly marked and individual differences are perhaps less noteworthy than in western countries, this phenomenon is not so revolting as elsewhere. The Iranian people have not yet realised the master fact that, if they want personal liberty and national independence, they must fight for them. Nor may they fight as heretofore by proxy — or if they do it will be with results akin to those which accrued to the horse in the fable when he called in man to defend him. In the parliamentary struggle the Persians have been as helpless as in the field. Only a month has elapsed since the General Council of the Persian Liberals despatched the following humiliating telegram to the Speaker of the Turkish Parliament, Ahmed Riza Bey : "We " have the honour to inform you that the General Council of all the "Liberal Committees in Persia has just elected you to represent "the Persian people before all the parliaments of the world, and "hereby confers upon you full powers to defend our Constitution." Analogous powers were bestowed upon the filibusters from the Caucasus, who came to fight the Shah for the Persian insurgents. One of these, an experienced bombist, narrated his experiences 256 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. recently to Russian friends with a touch of humour which is not often found among jjeople of* that country and profession. "I was not thought much of at first," he said, "I was a mere foreigner. . But very soon I rose in the popular estimation. I was hoisted into this eminence, so to say, by my first bomb. It burst with a tremendous explosion that almost annihilated my political friends as well as blowing their enemy to shreds. That was my first success. Bombs were a revelation to the natives. You should see the Orientals eye my bombs with respectful curiosity at a distance, and keep their gaze riveted on me with a feeling of awe. I felt like a living idol, and they acted Hke humble worshippers. Whenever they met me in the streets they bowed down before me in abject terror inadequately suppressed. . . ." The deposition of Mohammed Ali is an interesting item of news. It is hardly more. Of the kaleidoscope of latter-day Persia one may truly say -plus ga change, plus c'est la m^me dose. ■ E. J. Dillon. No. 23. LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, LIST OF CONTENTS. 1. POEM: ALPHA AND OMEGA. By Eric Clough Taylor ... 2. ANTI-CLIMAX IN GREAT TRAGEDY. By Museus 3. REVIEWS Mr. Macphail's Essays in Politics; Sainte-Beuve ; The Laws of HowEL THE Good; The Life and Letters of George Bancroft 4. SHORTER REVIEWS: -"Wind and Hill," etc. ... ' 5. NOTICES OF BOOKS 6. NOTES ; : page I 3 6 •7 22 24 ALPHA AND OMEGA. FIRST Buddha taught that man's mean life Rolled in the grooves of endless pain, From Coil, and Coil, to further strife. E'en from Nirvana bom again ; Yet was not Life discomfited; but mirth And laughter echoed o'er the ancient earth. " The Nile swells not ; nor sprouts the blade," The Egyptian crying, m his woe To Isis and Osiris, prayed That he should all his banks o'erflow ; But when he quenched the land with fertile floods, Lo! they rejoiced and half forgot their gods. 3 First, on Olympus, Zeus ordained i The Fates should cut the human span : Contemning men, o'erweening reigned As god, yet stooped to lures of man : Yet, though the Paramour of Mortals hurled Olympian fire-brands, mortals loved the world. VOL. xcvi. 19 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. So came Cuchullairi: so to Huns And Goths, Valhalla came, and went, And Thor, and Odin lit with suns The spiritual firmament, And headlong, round the teeming nations' brain Religions rose, told Noon, and set again. Came Christ, the soul's astronomer, Like Him of Pisa, tried for Sin, "Seek not without to compass her " The Keaifenly Kingdom, is within" (Hear, the soul's Galileo telleth it!) "'Tis we who circle God: God moves no whit!" Still the scarce-vanished Age recalls Oppression's cry. Revolt's advance. When Feasts of Reason, Festivals Of Nature stormed the heart of France : *They had their Hour, until the decked torch spurned Atheos' head, and Wisdom's figure burned. Yet, though Thought's motions wax and wane. Still may we hear, despite the Noise Of all the slaying and the slain. The solace of the Inner Voice, And though Beliefs as radiant bubbles ,seem. Believe they float upon a deeper stream. 8 Others shall yield them to dismay. And mourn the creed that slumbereth. The privy watchword of the day Become the morrow's shibboleth; New voices in the wilderness shall hail Some pregnant Word, that may not all avail ; * In the Feast of Nature held in opposition to that of Reason Robespierre attempted to set fire to the Effigy of Atheism, but the wind carried a gpark that fired the EfSgy of Wisdom. (Morley's Robespierre.) LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. 9 Truth watched; Truth waited for a while, Nor scorned, nor feared, for her own sake,. The Totem, or the Funeral Pile, The knight's Red Cross, the Martyr's Stake ; Courage and Kindness still would comfort them Who yearned to Mecca, or Jerusalem. lO But in the Temple, in the Grove, The Sacred Tree, the M3^h, the Mind, Moves something of a vaster love Beneath, above, before, behind, And, from the Symbol and the Sign set free. The Love that was, foretells the Grod to be. Eric Clough Taylor. , ANTI-CLIMAX IN GREAT TRAGEDY. THE remarkable performances last month at the Royal Court Theatre of Sophocles' Elecira, in aid of the Bedford College Building and Endowment Fund, aroused close attention in the minds of large and critical audiences. The fact that the rendering was given in Greek did not diminish in any way the interest created, though doubtless many of those present were unable to follow in detail the actual text. The plot, however, was familiar, the acting was realistic to the last degree, the personalities of the characters being seared into the mental vision of the onlookers, and the com- plete sense of great tragedy was brought home not only by Miss Calkin's vivid rendering of the part of Electra, but by the atmosphere of sound created by the Greek- language, its persistent minor key broken again and again by the high, sharp notes of passion. The choral songs were pleasing, but out of touch with the tragedy, which sustains its prolonged intensity without the necessity of such relief. To some critics this great play seems open to censure, on the ground that it ends with what is, or seems to be, an anti-climax. The plot has much in common with the plot of Hamlet. Clytem- n^stra, with more cause than Gertrude, was unfaithful to her husband, Agamemnon. When the injured hero returned to Mykenas he was 4 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. slain by Clytemnestra and her paramour, yEgisthos, who thence- forward jointly reigned over the Argives in his stead. Electra, the Hamlet of the tragedy, at the time of the murder saved her brother, Orestes, and sent him by the hand of the Paidagogos to Strophios of Phokis. She for eight years continued to live with her mother, Clytemnestra, and her stepfather, ./Egisthos, ever in revolt, ever ill- treated, ever harbouring her hate and plotting for the day when Orestes will be a man and come to Mykenas and avenge his father. The story is familiar enough. For all those years the girl eats out her heart, while her easier-minded sister, Chrysothemis, gets such pleasure as may be out of this present world. The contrast between the two natures, one of the subtlest things in all tragedy, was admirably brought out in the performance. The long-looked-for Orestes at last secretly appears upon the scene with his faithful guardian and Pylades, his friend. They realise the danger of the adventure, and determine to spread the news of the death of Orestes so as to lull all suspicion. Electra knows naught of this, and when the news of the death comes, we are presented with scen^ that touch the great deeps. That there is real maternal grief and remorse in the heart of Clytemnestra is clear enough. It is the touchstone for her soul, and the test is more natural, we venture to think, than the test prepared by Hamlet for Gertrude. But Shakespeare was intent on awakening the sense of sin ; while Sophocles left that alone for ever. His Queen justified her sin in burning words. She needed grief to awaken her hiraianity. But the sorrows of Electra' are of another kind. Death had not only brought her loss ; it had brought her loss of revenge. And it was revenge that she lived for, not love. Chrysothemis sorrows for Orestes in human fashion. Miss Williams finely rendered this essential contrast. Electra's sorrow is inhuman, devilish. Her grief is for the loss of opportunity to sin. It is as necessary for the dramatist to re-awaken humanity in her as in Clytemnestra, and it is done in a manner that only the greatest dramatists have attained. When Orestes himself bursts from his disguise the human woman is awakened; the devil in Electra is put to sleep. Human love wells up in its tenderest fashion from the heart of sister and brother alike. For the moment the guilty mother, the abhorred iEgisthos, are forgotten; she, the hungry sister, has him in her grasp ! Orestfes, come at last ! Electra, after all, is htunan ; human as Clytemnestra, human as Chrysothemis. But the devil of revenge awakes again, and the awful matricidal deed is done ; done, to add to the final horror of it all — a touch of horror unknown elsewhere in literature — ^as the unhappy mother prepares for burial what she believes to be the ashes of the son who is even then about to slay her. Now the problem before Sophocles was, should the action of the play stop there? The climax was reached; no other LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. S deed could pile further clouds of lurid guilt and accomplish- ment on thi^ imheard-of horror. Should all end with a last choral cry of despair? Well, opinions may differ, but to the -present writer it is plain enough, if the whole tragic scheme of the play is to be carried out, that it could not end there. The aim of Sophocles all through the play is to humanise his characters, to make them real, to keep them human. The slaughter of Clytem- nestra was not merely an act of revenge, a wiping out of shame. It was inhuman; a devotion to the gods by beings who' arrogated to themselves godlike powers of justice. When the deed is done the revulsion comes. " How fare ye now, Orestes ? " cries the dis- traught Electreu How is the tragedy to be brought 'back to the plains of this mortal life? Who was the real sinner, the seducer, the traducer ; the gross human sinner ? Not Clytemnestra, who some way or another, like Gertrude, was more sinned against than sinning ; not Clytemnestra, but .^gisthos. And so, in the mere rough-and- tumble of a duel, iEgisthos, coming in bucolic fashion unawares upon the scene — coming with the awakening effect on the conscience of the knocking at the gate in Macbeth — is hurried to his doom. It is an anti-climax, but it is absolutely necfessary if the characters of the play are to be brought back to that humanity which it is the whole object of the tragedy to display as humanity living and moving under the dire cloud of a dreadful heredity. ' Shakespeare uses the anti-climax with not less skill and power. He deliberately introduces Fortinbras after the death of Hamlet in order to restore the human note. For the same reason he has a long and deliberate anti-climax after the death of Juliet. In King Lear and Othello; so infinitely more elaborate than Any other great tragedy, while it is true that there is, strictly speaking, no anti- climax, yet the climax is suspended and divided in the most subtle way in order to produce exactly the same effect. One breathes after the death of Desdemona. The sense of human love is awakened by the cry — " Had she been true ' If heaven would make me such another world Of one entire and perfect chrysoKte, I'd not have sold her for it." Then comes the stabbing of Emilia and her cry "What did thy song " bode, lady ? " ; the long explanation of lago's devilry ; then Othello's death followed by the final dentmciation of the dumb lago : " O Spartan dog More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea!" So, too, in King Lear the climax is in continual suspension : the death of Regan, the death of Edmund, of Goneril ; then the 6 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. maivellous scene of Lear with the dead Cordelia ; and, last, the death of Lear. The actual point of climax is the cry^ — ' ' This feather stirs ; she lives ! if it be so It is a chance that does redeem all sorrows That ever I have felt." The rest is really anti-chmax, humanising the whole matter, though it actually includes the death of Lear. Macbeth ends with a complete anti-climax. The climax comes when Macbeth iheajrs of the death of the Queen, and cries in all the bitterness of battle with victory in the balance — ' ' She should have died hereafter ; There would have been a time for such a word, — " More than two scenes remain, which clear up the position and bring the mind back to the common day. The place of the anti-dimax in great tragedy is, indeed, scarcely less important than the climax. Without it the tragedy could not give its message to humanity, could not make the mind realise the lessons that every great spiritual struggle, every fearful crash between ideals and human passion, has for the daily lives of men and women in a w(jrk-a-day world. MUSEUS. REVIEWS. MR. MACPHAIL'S ESSAYS IN POLITICS.* We have no hesitation in asserting our belief that Mr. Andrew Macphail's essays on imperial politics and the future of Canada will materially affect the attitude of responsible thinkers throughout the Empire and in the United States, and will do much in the way of giving: form and direction to honest constitutional and economic opinion in all English speaking communities. Mr. Macphail's incisive prose style reveals a mind of extreme ability stored with the best literature and trained by direct observation. His literary gift is inherited, for he writes on Canada (as he tells xis in his delightful way) "from the standpoint of one whose forbears were cast away upon "these shores three generations ago with only a copy of Horace as "equipment for begiiming life in a new world;" but his personal *Essays in Politics. By Andrew. Macphail. (Messrs. Longman, Green & Co., price 6s. net.) y LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. 7 powers of observation have been vitalised by his intimate acquaint- ance with the history of diplomacy and politics East and West during the last century and a half. His essay on "British Diplomacy and " Canada " is a brilliant and perfectly just defence^ of that diplomacy against the attacks of Sir Wilfred Laurier. The history of our efforts on the part of Canada ought to be better known in the Dominion, and some little recognition given to the patience that has distinguished our relations with difficult though well-meaning neighbours. Indeed, Mr. Macphail in his essay, entitled "The Patience of England," rightly dwells on the fact that "England has never rid herself of the " old instinct that she is yet responsible for the people of the United "States." It is proper that that should be so. The higher that, life moves in the scale of moral being the more lasting are the ties of motherhood and fatherhood They do not end with adolescence, and they do not depend upon contract. If this is so with the United States, it is certainly not less the case with the Dominions beyond the seas. These essays analyse from successive points of view the essential chaxacter of the relationship between England and Canada, and, incidentally, the oth^r dominions. Mr. Macphail, in his ironical, elusive, biting fashion has some hard well-deserved raps for England. He knows our faults, but he also realises our needs and necessities and sorrows. " We visit England in increasing numbers. We look upon the factory workers of Nottingham, and the dwellers in the Black country, the impoverished farmers, the voters who live in White- chapel, and the daughters of these voters, those peripatetics of the Circus. We see the riches and the vices of the world, from Chili to Japan, poured into London as into a sink, corrupting the national life at its very source. The obligation of sympathy and commiseration is engrafted upon the old loyalty .... " One person out of ten in England is partially or wholly a pauper. They do not work because they are not obliged to. Neither would we. It is much more comfortable for a lazy man to loaf on the pier, enjoying the cool breezes which come up the Channel, or watching the sunshine fall upon the green fields and ' the dear white cliffs of Dover,' than to labour in the hot harvest fields of Saskatchewan., He knows that in the end there will be a commodious poorhouse wherein he may spend his declining years, or a pension as a reward for his life-long laziness. These are the people we want. We will make men of them, or demonstrate that there is nothing in them of which men can be made. We have no poorhouses here. If a man will not work neither shall he eat. January will attend to the rest. We are a ruthless people against all but undeserved misery. A man who will not fight for his food will not fight for his king. That is a wise saying. The spirit of England is not dead in those big bodies; it is only sleeping and starving.j ... If only those strong, idle men could be compelled to come upon our plains, their bodies and their spirits would be rejuvenated." 8 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. There is a truth, a charity, and a generosity about this that pierces our natural and cold reserve. The words we have ventured to italicise seem to go to the heart of the question, " What can Canada do ? " Canada can do this. But at the same time we must say that thousands of workers home here, and every minister and ex-minister of the Crown, do realise (though often in mistaken ways) the terrible extent of our social evils, and are striving day and night to eradicate the cancer from our body politic. We are not merely trusting to Provi- dence, though we have a stubborn, immovable Calvin-like belief in our pre-ordained function in the evolution of the social order of the world No doubt Mr. Macphail realises this, for he is a lover of and a believer in, the England that is his as well as ours. But he does not hesitate to denounce the danger that is involved in certain suggested solutions of our social and economic troubles. He illtistrates in the most direct, logical and terrible fashion the danger from the history of the United States and Canada He feels the fearful injury that must result from the adoption of Protection as a means of solving any problem, and especially of solving the problem of Imperial Unity. It would not be fair to call Mr. Macphail a Free Trader. He is not a .politician with a label. He is a man who has lived in the midst of Protection, and knows all that it means, and it is plain that to his mind no man can remain a Protectionist arid be both honest and able. In all the masses of literature that haVe appeared in this country on the subject since May, 1903, we have not seen anything like Mr. Macphail's riddling indictment of Protection. It is cold, full of grave irony, and absolutely destructive. The havoc that Protection has played with the public life of the United States is beyond belief. Here the danger might socially be less terrible for we have an elastic Constitution. But assuredly it would lose us the Empire. Mr. Macphail warns us that both the United States and Canada will at no distant date abandon Protection. Their very life depends upon such action. We venture to believe that if we adopt Protection and these nations renounce it the economic centre of the world will shift from Europe to America But Mr. Macphail is only dwelling on the economic side of this problem in order to enforce the lesson that an Empire cannot be bound together by Trade. " An empire based upon preference is at the mercy of every country which chooses to offer a better rate. . . . Until Imperialism is divorced from Protection it will be a tainted thing. England rules because she rules justly. When England adopts Protection she will become corrupt. Then she will cease to rule. That is why so many Canadians who love the Old Land, and are > willing to die in defence of their old homes, will have nothing to do with an Imperialism allied with a Protection which, in time, will leave them without a country which is worth dying for. They take Mr. Chamberlain at his word when he said at Newcastle, LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. g 2oth October, 1903 : ' I think that, without preferential tariffs we will not keep the empire together ' ; and they say frankly that, if that is the only condition, , the empire might as well fall apart, and soon as well as later." This book should be read as a warning from over-seas ; but ajiart altogether from the warning the book should be read. It is the work of a striking prose-writer certain to make his mark ; of a thinker who Ictiows well how to drive hopie his deep and considered belief ; and of a patriot who realises that the cornfields and icefields of Canada are as much England as the orchards of Kent and the commons of Surrey. SAINTE-BEUVE.* Mr. Harper tells us that his book "has the advantage of being " the first one in the English language devoted to the life and works " of Sainte-Beuve." The fact is not altogether surprising. The truth is that pontifical criticism has been long dead. The line of the Pontiffs is exhausted. Matthew Arnold is likely to survive (despite Mr. Meredith's criticism) as a poet of a very high rank, while the prose of both Renan and Sainte-Beuve will not easily pass into the dusty morrow of dead books. But their criticism is largely lost (save to the elect and faithful) for good or evil in the critical attitude of mind, objectively destructive, subjectively constructive, which is noticeable in the minds of the multitude to-day, and first became apparent in the mind of Sainte-Beuve. The criticism of these three writers on questions of religion is, indeed, dead beyond resurrection. Probably no one competent to speak accepts to-day the criticism of Renan, Sainte-Beuve, or Arnold on matters of faith. No one of the three had the special material, the special knowledge, the intricate technique, without which high critical opinion on the historical basis of Christianity is grotesque. Yet each lent the great contemporary authority of his name to vital doubts which, coming from such souroesj were falsely assumed by hundreds of lesser men to possess a real critical value. Weight was added to these doubts by the fact that all three writers possessed, fundamentally, religious minds, and craved for thfe solaces of faitL But, in fact, their pronouncements on religion were absolutely uncritical, for they violated the first law of criticism — th^t the subject criticised should be approached with exhaustive knowledge, and viewed not from a point of view but by means of a survey that left no point of view out of account. * Char/es-Augustin Sainte-Beuve. By George McLean Harper, Professor of English Literature in Princetovvn University. French Men of Letters Series. Edited ■by Alexander Jessupp, Litt.D. (J. B. Lippincott Company, price 6s. net.) :o THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. Perhaps few belter examples can be found of criticism of this latter type than Mr. Harper's book on Sainte-Beuve. It is scrupulously fair. The author approaches the subject with an exhaustive knowledge of Sainte-Beuve's writings and of the facts of his life. There is no aspect of an intensely complex personality that is not considered and weighed. Though naught is set down in malice, Mr. Harper lays full and necessary stress on the grave moral defects of Sainte-Beuve's life, on his heart-breaking disloyalty to his best friends, on his want , of character in the highest sense of that term. We are made to see how these shortcomings perverted the due development of his almost incomparable intellectual gifts, obscured a native goodness of heart, and silenced a sensitive conscience. But we see also not only how great his gifts were, but with what effect they were used. Sainte- Beuve, by the use of a critical faculty of unexampled subtlety and penetration, reinforced by the wealth of his literary knowledge, actually created standards of literary taste, and made it impossible for authors and critics of a later age to abandon the standards of achievement which Sainte-Beuve derived from the great authors of the seventeenth century, or ever again to dispense with the appeal to nature and reality. Charles- Augustin Sainte-Beuve, bcrn on December 23, 1804, was the posthumous and only child of Charles Frangois de Saint-Beuve, an excise official at Boulogne, himself the son and grandson of local- officials. His mother was Mademoiselle Augustine Coilliot, whose " father was a sailor of Boulogne, and her mother an English woman." The critic's father was a man of large literary tastes, who at heart sympathised with the Revolution, but who had also deep in his nature a sense of orderliness and method. His mother, too, was orderly in the extreme, and in her careful education of her son inspired him with her own acute powers of observation and discrimination. He was sent to a secular school, but was for some considerable time a practising Catholic. He was a brilliant schoolboy, and obtained full knowledge of mediaeval as well as French and Latin classics. In 1 8 18 he desired to learn Greek and went to live in Paris, and became oiie of /'the best scholars at the College Charlemagne. In 1821 he joined the College Bourbon, and attained further distinction. His teachers had been Freethinkers, and he imbibed both their ideas and their radicalism. In 1823 (the year that his mother joined him in Paris) he entered the Medical School, which he attended for four years, with results that affected his intellectual attitude through life. But the immediate results were evil. He became morbid, introspec- tive, and discontented. The intellectual strain of years of high study had become too much for the boy passing into manhood. In 1824 he joined a paper founded by his former teacher, Paul- Frangois Dubois^ and took to reviewing as a bird to the air. The Globe represented the views of a group of intellectual radicals. The LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. n influence of Wordsworth's poetry over Sainte-Beuve at this time cannot be over-rated. It was, indeed, responsible for the direct influence that he soon after this date exercised over the development of Victor Hugo's muse. He was largely responsible for the. form that the French Romantic Movement took, though be himself never at heart sympathised with the movement. We may doubt, indeed, if he ever fully sympathised with any movement, though he was in touch with many. In 1828 he published his criticism of sixteenth-century French poetry, and also some selections from Ronsard. His third volume was Vie, Foesies, et Pensees de Joseph Delornie, issued in 1829, a book that mirrored his morbid conception of himself at the moment. Its chief value to us is its critical force. His further original work consisted of various volumes of poems and sickly stories, printed between 1830 and 1843. He had a narrow stream of real inspiration, but this rapidly ran thin, and was supplemented by a sham sentimen- talism without merit, and a. realism that pointed the way to greater writers. Sainte-Beuve' s poetical achievements v/ill not survive. In 1830 many of his colleagues left the Globe to take office under the new administration, and that paper became the organ of S^int- Simonism. " Sainte-Beuve's last review appeared on March 22, 1831. He was .already at work for the Revue de Paris, and at once joined the Revue des Deux Mondes. His income was small, but sufficient for himself and his mother. In 1834 he began his great work on the Port Royal. Mr. Harper gives us a good account both of the fascinating subject and of the book itself. "It appeared in five large octavo " volumes, containing altogether nearly three thousand pages : "Volume I. in 1840, Volume II. in 1842, Volume III. in 1848, and "Volumes IV. and V. in 1859." No stronger prooof of the com- plexity of Sainte-Beuve's personality is required than his absorption in a subject of such spiritual significance as the history of the Port Royalists. His work was reviewed by Renan in i860. Renan's defence of the critic's choice of a subject is characteristic .- " The depth " of observation and the taste for the great studies of the soul which "distinguish the illustrious academician were bound to lead him "towards religious history, a field which shows human nature in its "rarest and most curious mood." It is clear enough that he was fascinated by the subject, which appealed to the noblest instincts of his nature. The work gave opportunities for his unique power of analysing character, while the corporate nature of the society appealed to him. Yet it was a strange theme for such a man in such an age. But Sainte-Beuve analysed his own character with not less insight, delicacy and veiled acerbity than he applied to the character of others, and it may well be that he knew full well, he who had no illusions, that, could his nature have freed itself from the terrible chains and fetters that time had forged around it, he would without one regret 12 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. have turned from the' world that he had at last conquered, even as Le Maitre, the great Port Royalist, had done in 1637. We cannot trace here in detail Sainte-Beuve's curious career. From 1838 to 1849 he conducted "a series of critical campaigns" dealing with all the hteraiy activities of the age. He attacked and destroyed the influence of Chateaubriand. In 1848 he accepted the professorship of French literature at Liege ; a year later he returned to Paris. In November, 1850, his mother, a great force in his life, died. From about this time a new gravity and sense of certainty appears in his critical work. He is at last a critic speaking ex cathedra and ruling the entire world of French literature. In 1853 he was made an officer of the Legion of Honour; in 1854 Professor of Latin Poetry at the College de' France. His critical work from this time onward was magnificent. He stood alOne in Europe, and his weekly causerie passed at once into literature. " Indeed, for receptivity, for general conceptions and wealth of detailed information about literature and all the concerns of litera- tures—history, philosophy, and personality — we look in vain for his equal this side of Erasmus. With Erasmus he had much in common. Their characters, their purposes, their careers, their fates, have curious points of similarity." His greatness as a literary critic stands beyond all doubt. His own age felt his dominance, and shivered under the lash of his incor- ruptible judgment. He had no critical " method " or theory of taste. He was a critic who stood alone. The senatorship conferred on him by Napoleon added nothing to his greatness, though it increased his personal happiness. His death in 1869 spared him much. His ■■ adventures in politics, indeed, were as unhappy as his misadventures in religion. THE LAWS OF HOWEL THE GOOD.* , The student of English mediaeval law has long needed a new version of the laws of Howel the Good with a sufficient critical apparatus. The text is invaluable as throwing light at every turn on the origin of many contemporary rules of laws and customs in English law. The Rev. A. W. Wade-Evans has, apparently, not had this special object in view, for he tells us that "this "book is intended " primarily for the student of the political history of Wales, but it is " hoped that others also will find it useful." We confess that we are * Welsh MedicBval Law : being a Text of the Laws of Howel the Good, namely, the British Mufeum Harleian M.S. 1353 of the i$tk century, wrth Translation, Intro- duction, Appendix, Glossary, Index, and a Map. By A. W. Wade-Evans. (Oxford : at the Clarendon Press, price 8s. 6d. net.) LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. 13 more interested in the booli than in the object with which it is, written. Howel, the son of Cadell and grandson of Rhodri the Great, inherited Rhodri's ideals, modified and enlarged, through the influence of 1;he famous Asser, by the ideals of Charlemagne and Alfred. Rhodri controlled, what Mr.jEvams calls Welsh Wales from the Irish Sea to the Severn, and his policy was to bring the whole of Wales under the control of his House. This king was killed in a border battle in 877, and his possessions were divided among his three sons: Gwynedd and Powys (North Wales) went to Mervyn and Anarawd, and Deheubaxth (South Wales) went to Cadell. Howel succeeded Cadell in 909, and set himself to bring the whole of Wales under one law. The laws here edited are in a large measure the results achieved by this considerable administrator some time before his death in the year 950. Unfortunately, we possess no early manuscript that gives us the exact stage of codification reached by Howel. Mr. Evans here gives us not an Amalgam- text (such as was provided by Mr. Owen in his " Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales," edited for the Record Office in 1 841), but a complete MS., "the oldest and most important," of a South Wales type of about the year 1285, supplemented where gaps occur from a MS. of the first quarter of the fourteenth century. There are six MSS. of earlier date, but none before 1175, when the Normans "had long interfered with Welsh affairs and had taken ".permanent possession of the majority of the patrias of South Wales." We may, therefore, expect to find evidence of Norman influence in all the extant texts, but at the same time we may be sure that they are all descendants of " some one ultimate original " from which sprang, we may believe, three tj^es that reflect local modifications in the three divisions of Cymru to which they were apparently issued by King Howel. When we turn to the text of the laws we find a field of enormous interest still practically tpiworked in its relaticajship to English con- temporary law. In order to consider the multitude of questions that arise adequate knowledge is required' of the extant Saxon laws and canons and of that mine of learning. Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law. It is not possible here to do more than indicate the scope of these Welsh laws. Mr. Evans' Analytical Summary is excellent, and it is difficult to praise too highly his translation, which is lucid and terse, but yet preserves in some subtle way the aroma of a far distant age, and sugigests its poesy and idealism. A touch such as this mollifies a monstrous amount of law : " The origin of bees is " from paradise and because of the sin of man they came thenoe ; and " God conferred his grace on them, and therefore the Mass cannot "be sung without the wax." This note on the cat deserves to be immortal : " The teithi [legal characteristics for the determination of "value] of a cat are that it should be perfect of ear, perfect of eye, " perfect of tail, perfect of teeth, perfect of claw, and without marks 14 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. " of fire, and that it should kill mice, and not devour its offspring, and "that it should not be caterwaulirig every new moon." The reference to the perfect tail is possibly a reference to the breed of the Isle of Man which was in close touch with Wales. It is curious to note that the doctrine of scienter with reference to a dog (the right to one bite) practically existed in the Welsh laws, which speak of a " dog accus- " turned to bite " as a particular class. The first third of the work (roug'hly) is taken up with the laws of the Court as they appertained to the king and queen and the twenty- four officers, and the peculicu: protection or exemption from arrest belonging to or emanating from each of these persons. There were nine superior officers, the Chief of the Household, the Priest of the Household, the Queen's Priest, the Steward,_the Judge of the Court, the Falconer, the Chief Huntsman, the Chief Groom, the Page of the Cham- ber. If we compare this list with the fifteen inferior officers we get at once a glimpse of life as it was lived in actual fact a thousand years ago in the Courts of Forest Kings. " Bard of a Household, Silentiary, " Queen's Steward, Doorkeeper of a Hall, Doorkeeper of a Chamber, " Groom of the Rein, Candle Bearer, Butler, Cook, Footholder, Mead "Brewer, Server of a Court, Physician, Chambermaid, Queen's Groom " of the Rein." The list is not without its humour. A Silentiary was needed in the presence of the Bard while the Mead Brewer and the Physician are in close proximity. The open air and the ringing hall are brought together in the two lists, and one thinks of Arthur and the Rotmd Table and of Guinevere the Queen. "When the King "shall will to hear a song, let the chief of song sing two songs con- "cerning God and the third of the chiefs. When the Queen shall " will to hear a song in her chamber, let the bard of the household "sing three songs softly lest the hall be disturbed." We turn from the laws of the Court to the "laws of the Gwlad," that is to say of the peo;^le and their land. The criminal law and the law of evidence are full of interest. The payment of Galanas and Sarhad^ — fines in respect of crimes and accompanying insults — was divided among kindred of the wrongdoer to the fifth cousin. This, as. Mr. Evans points out, was designed to check feuds. The amount paid depended on the status of the person injured. Crimes fell intO' four classes: murder, arson, theft, and violence. Insult is in effect a crime. The law of evidence is equally elementary but very shrewd: thus the evidence of a thief on the point of execution against a fellow thief is to be accepted. A man at the point of death caimot lie : but the second thief convicted on this evidence is not to be executed. He is to be a thief for sale. The law of land is very elaborate, and likely to be of the greatest possible value in tracing the growth of English land law. We greatly doubt whether the Welsh word Maenor can be distinguished from the English word Manor. The meaning of the words is very nearly LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. iS identical. The French origin may be due to the admitted early French influence in Wales. The use of the word in England may . have come from Wales. There are other words of French or Latin origiri, such as Canghellor (Chancellor). We find very similar manorial customs in English and Welsh manors. Thus in England a villein could not send his son to school without the lord's permission, but if in fact the son went to school and became a priest he was then free. It was the same in Wales. " Three arts Which a ta€!og [villein] " is not to teach his son without his lord's permission : scholarship " and bardism and smithcraft. For if his lord be passive until the "tonsure be given to the scholar, or until a smith enters his smithy, " or a bard with his song, no one can enslave them after that." It is not possible here to deal further; with this fascinating book. Mr. Wade- Evans' striking introduction, his scholarly sketch of the Ccirliest history, his careful Welsh and English texts, his invaluable Appendix on the "General relation of four earliest -texts," and his critical apparatus all combine to make the work one of which Welsh scholar- ship may be proud. THE LIFE AND (LETTERS OF GEORGE BANCROFT.* The career of this remarkable man, of whom America is justly proud, may be summarised in the words of Mr. R. C. Winthrop on his 90th birthday: "You have both written the history of your " country and made yourself a part of it." The fourth son and eighth child of able and religious parents, George Bancroft was born in 1800, and brought up in the simplicity and economy of a Dissenting minister's family. " Plain living and high thinking with a vengeance," wrote Rev. Dr. Hale to the author. The boy's thirst for knowledge overcame the difficulties of meagre instruction till he went to Exeter, where, under Dr. Abbott, the great teacher of the day, he was prepared for Harvard. During these two years he was too poor to go home. On receiving his B.A., President Kirkland, whq accurately gauged his powers, sentTiim to Europe to complete his education. Two years were spent at Gottingen, studying philplogy and Orientalism, and receiving his Doctor's degree in 1820. He then proceeded to Berlin, and afterwards to Paris, winning golden opinions, both for talent and industry, from his professors and the eminent men to whom they introduced him. A strong sense of duty, a high ideal of the noble life and what its aims should be, preserved him from the moral dangers which beset the critical years of youth, which he records as worse in London than on the Continent. In Rome St. Peter's impressed him as "the noblest shrine man has * The Life and Letters of George Bancroft. By M. A. De Wolfe Howe, (f ondon : Hodder and Sloughton, price i6s. net, 2 vols.) 1 6 THE CONTEMPORAR Y RE VIE W. "raised to the God of Christians." His stay in the Eternal City was brightened by the kindness of Princess Pauline Borghese. On his return northwards he spent a day with, Lord Byron (not less interesting than his earlier interview with Goethe) at Monte Nero, near, Leghorn, a visit which appears to have been mutually pleasant, and heightened by the beauty and charm of Countess Guiccioli. A few weeks later he was home in Worcester, and .seriously debating for what line his brilliant education had best fitted him. The little affectations so easily acquired by young people abroad were resented by his friends, and treated, it appears, with somewhat unnecessary severity. He began as Greek professor at Harvard, and prepared for the ministry. He soon found himself out of touch with the surroundings, for which his larger life had unfitted him, and with Mr. J. G. Cogswell, afterwards librarian at New York, the Round Hill school was started. Absorption in his own studies, so long pursued in solitude, and his short sight were drawbacks, which decided him to sell his share in the school and devote himself to literature and politics. His marriage with Miss D wight in 183 1 delayed his identi- fication with the Democratic party. She died in 1837, leaving two sons and a daughter.* In 1837 Bancroft received his first Government appointment. Collector of the Port, which he held till 1841. Writing, ledturing and political campaigning filled the next four years, when he was appointed Secretary to the Navy. Eight months after a Naval Academy was formed, to be for the Navy what West Point already was for the Army. This, and the National Observatory which he perfected, are enduring claims to the gratitude of his country. In 1846 Bancroft was appointed United States Minister to England. During the three years he held this post he assisted in the modifica-' tion of the postal relations, arid also of the laws of commerce and navigation between the two countries. A strong Republican, his comments on them are caustic as well as keen. The hospitality and kindness he received did not blind him to the condition of Ireland- and the grinding poverty of the English poor. It is curious to read in 1846: "The country is as full of apathy as possible, yet there is " a deep foreboding of the future ; it seems to me the form revolution "will take is through finance." Bancroft thoroughly enjoyed his intercourse with the leaders of thoaight, science and politics, Macaulay especially gaining his admiration, while he recognised, his partisan judgment. Bancroft's election to the Institute of France, unsolicited and unexpected, gave him great pleasure ; his frequent visits to Paris enabled him to collect materials for his "History," to make acqtiaintance with Guizot, Lamartiae and Thiers, and gained him some interesting * In 18^8 he married Elizabeth, widow of Alexander Bliss, of Boston, by whom he hart one dsuphter. LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. 17 interviews with Louis Philippe. Much as he enjoyed the refined and cultured society of both countries, he felt three years long enough to be good for him, and was glad of his recall. "France cannot "help being a Republic," he wrote in 1849. Louis Napoleon as Emperor he considered " la reaction tout pure." His return to America was saddened by the death of his remaining ' daughter. One son settled in Massachusetts, the other in France. His " History of the United States" (of which one volume had already appeared) was more than ever the absorbing interest of his life, and he brought to the work the immense stores of books and MSS. he had accumulated in Europe. The struggle between the North ,an3 South he viewed as the instrument of Divine Providence to root out slavery. His somewhat contemptuous opinion of Lincoln became sincere admiration, and he was chosen in 1866 to pronounce his funeral oration, in which he handled British politics very severely. In 1867 he was appointed Minister to Berlin, where he remained till 1874, thus witnessing the Franco-German war and the formation of the German Empire. For this ,post his early education at Gottingen and Berlin had peculiarly fitted him, and also his sympathy with the German character. Interesting conversations are recorded with Bismarck, the King and Queen. He wisely entered into all the society of Berlin, learned and scientific as well as diplomatic. His sketches of Bismarck, Deak, the Hungarian patriot, and Andrassy can only be glanced at, but that on Von Moltke has a tenderness unusual with Bancroft, whose intellect was distinctly cold. The one subject rousing strong feeling was his country, and if to the European reader there is too much of the "Bird o' freedom soarin'," it must be remembered that only by enthusiasm can great work prevail. The death of Mrs. Bancroft at 83, after 48 years of companion- ship, was a heavy blow. The rest of his life was employed in preparing the biography of Polk and that of Martin von Buren. This last he completed. The extraordinary powers of work he retained till the last year of his hfe, the wealth generously shared with the less fortunate of his friends, the memory stored with recol- lections of the leading men and women in both worlds, made a personality combined of statesman, scholar and historian difficult to surpass. It is pleasant to see the acerbity and dogmatism of his earlier works mellowed and softened in his later years. SHORTER REVIEWS. Mr. Geoffrey Winthrop Youngf opens his striking volume of verse, entitled " Wind and Hill " (Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., price 3s. 6d. net), with the remarkable poem " Wind," which first appeared in the Contemporary Review for April, 1909. This poem struck a new note and gave the promise of a new poet. The further poems in this volume will enhance Mr. Young's reputation. It would be difficult to find such vol. xcvi. 20 i8 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. - TTH"n*J?^ 0/ charm and profundity as is to be found in " Ideas." noL wS / '\^ f ^^t'^*^' "^^"^ " Nescience " has that Shelley-like note which (without anything m the nature of imitation) thrills through ^nV Jr"llu'^°''u- • "^ '■"^^ Wordsworth's danger of too mulh contact with the obvious. The danger, perhaps, is little to be feared wfien nature is the theme, but with human nature it is different. We notice this in the poem " A Sisterhood," which with all its charm does not rmg qiiite true. On the other hand, " Shadows" is true to its niystic heart. The book is, we do not doubt, the precursor of much important work. There is little space for quotation, but we venture to give this description of a Faun from the last-named poem : And once I saw him : where the dim Vistas of misted oak enfold The burning lyre of sunrise, swept By summer and sweet air, A swaying shadow-bronze, that leapt With brown life glowing on each limb, Golden in youth, and bramble-gold Flame of his wind-blown hair. ' ' With flying feet he trod the dew From echoing sward and hollow root. And clapped the shallows of the stream With wild exultant grace; Cool reed-notes shrilled the russet-flute. And sun-brown arms tossed in the gleam That flashed a forest laughter through The morning of his face." In the light of recent events at Constantinople, it is instructive to read in this volume " The History of Twenty-five Years," by Spencer Walpole, Vol. IV., 1876 to 1880 (Messrs. Longmans and Co., 2 vols., price 21s. net), the futile attempts made after the Crimean War to force reform upon Turkey^. Sir Spencer Walpole considers this the deplorable cause which "let loose the dogs of war" for twenty- five years in Europe down to the last Russo-Turkish campaign. Fear of Russian influence led to the guarantee of the integrity of Turkey and treaty barriers against Russia. The .union of Moldavia and Wallachia, under the Austrian Colonel Couza, proved unworkable, and the crown was offered to the present King of Roumania, Prince Charles of HohenzoUern. That Napoleon was right in this policy is now clear. Outbrea!ks in the Lebanon necessitated foreign interference, the fortunate appointments of Lord Dufferin and Fuad Pasha to Damascus restored order, and the Lebanon was placed under a Christian governor.. The accession of Abdul Aziz, who proved even moire disso- lute than his brother, was followed by insurrection in Crete, and revolt's in Bosnia and Herzegovnia. The Andrassy note, claiming the inter- vention of , the Drei-kaiser-bund, and, later, that of Berlin were unfortunately not supported by England. The purchase of the Suez Canal shares by Disraeli and the interference in Egyptian finance, with Lord Derby's refusal to join the Berlin Memorandum, isolated Great Britain. The murder of Abdul Aziz and succession of Murad, who was deposed in three months, led to the accession of his brother Abdul LITERARY SUPPLEMENT., 19 Hamid. The Bulgarian massacres, denounced in Gladstone's magnifi- cent rhetoric, was followed by the Russo-Turkish War, the treaty of Berlin and Lord Beaconsfield's annexation of Cyprus. Sir Spenoer Walpole's comments on the Tractarian and Broad Church Movements with their effect on architecture and art as well as on theology and literature, can only be glanced at, though they well repay reading — but we cannot agree with his conclusion that agnosticism is the final goal of thoughtful and earnest minds. The final chapter on Irish Home Rule and the " uncrowned king " is very interesting. The abolition of flogging in the Army and Navy was carried by the obstruc- tive policy initiated by Mr. Parnell and supported by Mr. Chamberlain. Sir Stafford Northcote, who came into office with a large balance, found himself in six years with a revenue barely equal to the exipendi- ture.j He began by reducing the income-tax 2d', in the pound ; he left with an additional 5d. imposed. The wars in South Africa and Afghanistan were expensive and unpopiilar ; the improvement in trans- port, both in America and our own mercantile marine, raisedl the importation of 17,000,000 bushels of wheat in 1869 to 122,000,000 in 1879. Hence arose an acute agricultural depression affecting landlords and tenants alike. The volume ends with Mr. Gladstone's return to power. Sir Spencer had intended to add a chapter on the annexation of the Transvaal and the Zulu War, but did not live to do so. He was a strong party man and his judgment of political! opponents is distinctly coloured by his prepossessions. But in the pathetic quotation with which he ends, " if I have done well, it is that which I desired ; " if meanly, it was that I could attain to," we have a humility that disarms all criticism, even were we inclined to make it, on a book that will form material for future historians. There can be no doubt that economists and the economic reviews will have to deal at length with this most important volume, entitled " Austrahan Socialism " (Messrs. Macmillan and Co., price 4s. 6d. net), in which Mr. A. St. Ledger, a Senator for the State of Queens- land in the Commonwealth Parliament, traces the origin and the various developments of Socialism in Australia. Mr. St. Ledger writes with dignity, with a sense of history, and with an appreciation of style that combine with full knowledge of his subject to make a book of very real value. His complaint that the Labour party suppresses in Parliament the Socialist views that they announce on the platform seems to us to show that there is a good deal of unreaUty in Australian Socialism. The people at large cannot be in favour of a movement that hides its head. The Australian public must be easily deceived if it is deceived by such a device. It is, on the other hand, pleasing to read Mr. St. Ledger's tribute to the high moral standard of the Labour party .J " As a party and in their Press organs they have strongly ^ "supported a high standard of moral life. Their official; Press is one « " of the ' cleanest ' in the world and the general morale of the party "is of the highest. They number probably quite more than the " averagie proportion of men of singularly honest, upright, industrious " lives." Mr. St. Ledger puts in a clearway the salient characteristic of what is generically call«l Socialism. " Is the State subordinate to " the individual, or the individual to the State? The Socialist (in ' ' practice) asserts the latter proposition ; the democrat the former. 20 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. " Modern civilisation is based on the former principle; all (or nearly " all) past civilisation was based on the latter." This is wonderfully well put. Socialism is degenerative ; but by Socialism we do not mean much regenerative effort that goes by that name to-day. It is not possible here to review this book which deals" with the objective of Australian Socialism, with its earliest theoriesj its fight with Liberalism, its political emergence in 1890. Mr. St. Ledger carefully traces with strong disapproval its economic developments in practice and its curious relation to high or exclusive tariff. The book should be read by all English students of economics and by all English politicians. Mr. C. E. Woods "Study in Pauline Philosophy," entitled "The " Gospel of Rightness " (Messrs., Williams and Norgate, price 5s.), is addressed to those who regard Pauline thought " as no longer in keeping " with the liberal thought of tOKiay . ' ' Mr. Woods tells us that " St. Paul " for many thinkers is as obsolete as Tertullian or Calvin. He speaks " a language no longer understanded of the modern mind, which is " growing steadily in the belief that it is too rational on the one hand, " and too mystical' on the other, to find satisfaction in the religion of ' ' its birth. ' ' We cannot agree that this is the attitude of any real students of St. Paul, but there is always room for new consideration of his profound thought. The title of this study is taken from a phrase in the First Chapter of Romans. In considering the PauHne use of the words " Rightness " and " Faith," Mr. Woods lays stress on the fact that we are not dealing with a systematised philosophy since we are considering lines of thought definitely connected with the history of the' religions that lie behind Christianity. This latter fact accounts for the, absence of clear definitions. " He uses words which were the common " property of his spiritual ancestors . . ... the vocabulary of St. ' ' Paul is . practically the vocabulary of the pre-Christian Hermetic " treatises." This is going a little too far. Mr. Woods, however, has chosen to consider Pauline thought from this point of view. We are told that S/t- Paul's "whole teaching is based on the implicit recognition" of the Logos doctrine of the Alexandrian Schools, and that his doctrine of contrasts or duality lies hidden in much earlier thought. The Apostle also shows us, in his Gospel of the Rightness of God, that Higher Unity or Tertium which modern philosophy has wielded with such force. Mr. Woods proceeds to discuss " the five great antitheses, or opposed "states of being, which constitute the subject-matter of the epistles" : the Old Man (Flesh), the New Man (Spirit) ; Si^ (Death), Grace (Life) ; Wrath (Glory); Adam (the Natural Body), Jesus (the Spiritual Body); Law (Works), Gospel (Faith). The book proceeds to examine these antitheses, both from the abstract and the concrete point of view, " and " finally to show the perfect balance of each in the state of Christhood, " or Rightness, the attainment of which is the goal and raison d'itre ' ' of Christian discipleship. ' ' We wish that we could devote more space to Mr.j Woods' thoughtful and valuable book. . It is ,a distinct contri- bution to the vast literature that has gathered, round the letters of St. Paul. ' Much of .this book, " Military Needs and Military Policy," by the Right Hon.* Arnold Forster, M.P., with an Introduction by F.-M. Earl Roberts, V.C, K.G. (Smith, Elder and Co., 3s. 6d.. net), has already appeared in the Standard,, in October, 1908, but to it, LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. 21 in its present form enlarged and revised, a pathetic interest is attached from the author's death while the book was in the Press. From the disturbing words of Lord Roberts in support of Mr. Arnold Forster's able but discouraging presentment of the situation, it is plain that they think George Meredith was not wholly wrong in holding ' ' that " only the landing of foreign artillery on our shores " would rouse the general public from the apathy with which problems of national defence are always regarded in this country. That we look to our Navy as the first line of defence is, of course, true ; but as Lord Roberts rightly insists, our vast land frontiers in India and Canada must be defended, and for this we must have a highly-trained Regular army. Mr. Forster argues that to spend millions on a Territorial army, largely composed of raw boys, and to expect them after fifteen months' training to withstand the picked men of highly trained and disciplined Continental armies, is to court disaster. But of course no one expects this. At the close of the Boer war our army was in a state of efficiency, and all will admit that had this state been maintained it would have enabled the formation of the Territorial army in place of the Volunteers to be of higher practical utility. Mr. Arnold Forster visited the great fortresses of France and Germany, and in all he found a system of preparedness, discipline and efficiency, which he contrasts with our own. His suggestion of an Auxiliary Naval Force for maritime coast defence, is of the highest value, and we are glad to find it recognised. The excellent material in the Territorial army is fully admitted, but he insists that this material cannot be disciplined, trained and organised in fifteen months. History has repeatedly shown that patriotism and good intentions alone have never yet availed, and citizen armies have always gone down before Regular troops, a fact recognised and acted on in every War Office in Europe, and not likely, we hope, to be forgotten by our own. Many of us remember the Franco-Prussian war, and how the levies of raw boys, patriotic, undis- ciplined, and untrained, who formed the Territorial army, were mowed down by the German troops. " On ne badine pas avec la guerre." To one whose soul was in his efforts to rouse the nation to what he considered the dangers of the present policy, it was deeply painful to find many who in 1903 were in entire accord with him now holding opposite views; but this is one of the inevitable results of making our defences a party question. The fifth volume of Signer Guglielmo Ferrero's work, "The Great- "ness and Decline of Rome" (William Heinemann, price 6s. net.), translated by the Rev. H. J. Chaytor, deals with the Republic of Augustus and covers the period from 21 b.c; to 14 a.d. Signer Ferrero insists that Asiatic Hellenism welcomed the worship of Augustus as a first stage of a new kingship, which would enable it once more to rise triumphant in Western Asia. We wonder if this point can seriously be taken? It is an ingenious but, we are tempted to think, an unsound suggestion. The peace concluded with the Parthians in 20 B.C. ended tilie idea of a great Roman Asiatic Empire. Central Asia was to be closed to Rome, but, on the other hand, the Parthians agreed to abandon the Mediterranean, and so Rome found it possible to pursue her destiny in southern and central Europe. More- over, social reform (if such a term can be used), was now possible. The social laws of the year 18 8^0. intended to effect the moral and 22 THE CONTEMPORAR Y RE VIE W. economic reorganisation of the aristocracy are here discussed at length. It resulted in the dominance of a lawless, pleasure-loving democracy, but did not save the old order. An int^esting chapter deals with the re-establishment of the ludi sceculares — an act that was intended to fix m the public mind the commencement of a new era. No stage effect was too showy for Augustus; it was not accident that brought together social reform and the new era. But attention was drawn away from Rome and her unrealities by the war that broke out in 16 B.C. in Europe. This was followed by the Ligurian Revolt and a crisis in the European provinces. The complete conquest of the German lands solved this crisis. The volume traces, in interesting detail, the rest of the reign. It was an age of mbnied democracy. Aristocracy in all its senses had vanished, but wealth and national prosperity, for a time, succeeded ' to the decay of aristocratic ideals. Signor Ferrero devotes hi^ brilliant pen to a striking analysis of this movement. Mr. Chaytor's translation is living and excellent. ,The period is full of lessoris for the present day. NOTICES OF BOOKS. We have much pleasure in commending the Rev. Henry F. Henderson's volume, entitled' " Calvin in His Letters " (Messrs. Dent, price IS. 6d. net). Hb gives us an excellent outline of the life of this immortal Frenchman, who was born in Noyon, in Picardy, on July 10, 1509, and died at Geneva, the scene of his labours, struggles and conquests, in 1564. His intellectual gifts were enormous. His famous Institutes of the Christian Religion appeared first, in Latin, in 1536, and enlarged editions followed in 1539, 1541 (French), and 1559. He never altered his original views on election and reprobation though he felt how terrible they were. It is strange that a man holding such views should have been the cheery, homely, wide-minded, loving character that his letters — he was a ceaseless correspondent like all the Reformers — show him to have been. But his sense of election was very evident in every act of his life. He believed, and showed that he believed, that he was a definite agent of God., His stern government of Geneva in the interests of public morality, his iron sense of discipline, and his fine statesmanship in respect to the unity of Protestantism are admirably exhibited by Mr. Henderson. Volumes of good sermons suitable for home reading and capablfe of stimulating the mind and touching the heart are less common than might have been expected when we consider the enormous output of religious publications. " The Chambers of Imagery, and other Sermons" (Robert Culley), by the Rev. John H. Goodman, is, we think, of this high type. An eloquent and earnest writer he appeals not only to the emotions, but to the mind and to the ideals of all classes. His phrase " Men are made by what they aim at " is a fine saying, but not more true than his insistence on the undoubted fact that godliness has the promise of this life as well as of that to come. "Your conscience, your consciousness, is my court of appeal. You " know that to make a full stop and turn in a new direction is a LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. 23 "necessary thing; that apart from another life, purity and integrity " and unselfishness are best in this." This is from a sermon on "The "Call of Clirist." The address which asks " Is Pain Reconcilable " with Divine Benevolence? " throws some new light on that ol problem. But few thinkers to-day find a stumbling-block in tb existence of pain. The Rev. Holden E. Sampson, of Turks Island, West Indies, has issued two volumes entitled, " Progressive Creation : A Reconciliation "of Religion with Science" (Messrs. Rebman, Ltd., London, price 2is. net), being the first part of a work of vast length, which will be completed by the issue of a second part entitled, " Progressive Redemp- "tion." Mr. Sampson exhorts the reader "to study Progressive " Creation as an ex parte statement, and reserve his final judgment " until he has studied the thesis to its conclusion." We, therefore, refrain from criticism, but venture to say that the work appears to be a prose poem of considerable power., Unfamiliar dogmas as to re-incar- nation and the life after death abound, while special knowledge as to the remote past as well as the remote future is asserted in a manner that belongs to the poet. We are told that in " the primitive time, " anterior to the ' Fall,' the human family was divided and subdivided " into distinct species, and the racial conditions were totally unknown." It may be ^o, but Mr.^ Sampson g^ves us no authority. The aufhor aims at " repairing the ancient edifice [of religion], building up its broken " walls, and strengthening its defences and armament against the "world — its perpetual and hereditary foe." Mr. Sampson's method of doing this convinces us that the work is a poem. Dante attempted a not dissimilar task, and we see no reason that the importunate leisure of Turks Island should not be employed in this not ungrateful task. On the other hand, this may be intended as a theosophical work, in which event we regard it with less interest. In any event we with- hold detailed criticism for the present, except to express appreciation of Mr. Sampson's vigorous prose style. We must draw attention to the new impression of the volume, entitled " English Church Teaching on Faith, Life and Order " (Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co., price is. net), by the Bishop of Durham (who writes on " The Life of the English Church "), the Bishop of Sodor and Man (who writes on the " Order of the English " Church "), and Canon Girdlestone (who writes on " The Faith of the " English Church," and supplies " brief notes on some texts which are " frequently misinterpreted or misapplied "). It is a useful little book, and Canon Girdlestone deals most carefully with the fundamental distinctions that separate England from Rome. The Decrees of the Council of Trent and the Articles of England are contrasted in parallel columns and bring home anew the reasons that still make any union with Rome impossible. Dr. Drury's " Conspectus of Church History " is a useful piece of work. His essay on the historic episcopate is interesting. He claims that it is a lineal descendant of a sub-apostolic order. Apostolic the order is not, and we doubt if it can be called sub-apostolic. 24 ' THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. NOTES. . "^q!^ ^°'^'®*y ^'^ Comparative Legislation, founded fifteen years ago by Sir Courtenay Ilbert, is one of those learned societies doing sound work which rarely attract any public attention. Its object is to study and collect information about the laws of other lands, more particularly other parts of the British Enjpire, in order that the legislation ot this country may be based not only upon the experience and knowledge of Englishmen, but also benefit by the proceedings of other legislatures. There may be some risk, of slavish imitation, but that can hardly result if there is the thoughtful and careful study advocated by this Society. Increasingly the importance of the subject is receiving general recogni- tion. The International Congresses which have been held during the past summer upon various subjects give evidence of the general move- ment, so that the Society of Comparative Legislation may be considered to have chosen an opportune time for seeking wider publicity for its work. In the Journal of the Society, edited by Sir John Macdonell and Mr. Edward Manson, has been published, as its principal feature, an annual survey of_ the legislation passed by the numerous legislative bodies of the British Empire. The reviews for the ten years 1898-1907 have been consolidated, and the lacunae supplied under the editorship of Mr. C. E. A. Bedwell, Librarian of the Middle Temple. The work will form four large volumes, to which Lord Rosebery, as President of the Society, has contributed a preface, and Sir John Macdonell an introduction, directing attention to some of 1;he more interesting features of the survey. The work will be published shortly by Messrs. Butterworth and Cd. » * * Attention may be directed on this side of the Atlantic to an excellent reading list on Scotland, issued by the New York State Library. Its aim is "to include popular modern works in English on history, " description, religion, literature and art." It may be doubted whether it is any more correct to describe the Episcopal Church as the Anglican Church than it would be togive that title to the similar body in the United States, but ecclesiastical matters are generally a difficulty to students in other countries. While on the subject, a reminder may not be out of place of the excellent little manual concerning the Church in Scotland, in Rivington's Oxford Church Text Books, since it is not included' in the New York Library's list. * » » Slowly women are taking up library work in this country, though not to the same extent as in the United States, where the proportion of women to men is about twO' to one. It is noticeable, however, that in the higher posts the proportion of men is greater. In many respects the professions of teacher and librarian are similar, for the latter tends, in an increasing degree, to require training and specialised knowledge. A baccalaureate degree is considered essential as a prerequisite, and for the best library training in the United States two years of graduate work are now required, while to secure a doctor's degree at least three years are necessary. In the highest post salaries of ^1,000 per annum or more are obtainable, yet men have been content to take professor- ships with smaller emoluments because the profession has been regarded as one " discredited by the trail of the feminine," to use an expression of an American writer. The different attitude of mind of _ the English- man can be suggested by an attempt to realise the dignified seats of the staff in the Reading Room of the British Museum in the occupation of women. TURKEY AND EUROPE The Crisis in Turkey By Edwin Pears The Origin of the Revolt in Turkey By Halil Halld Bey The Secret Treaty between Servia and Austria-Hungary By Strojan Protitch From Rustchuk to Belgrade By Isabel Armstrong The Imaginary Peril of England The Naval Controversy , By "Conning Tower" Six German Opinions on the Naval Situation By /Eneas O'Neill What Every German Knows By Austin Harrison British Finances and Imperial Responsibilities By J. Ellis Barker The Strength and Scope of Colonial Navies By Vado Our Insularity By H. A. L. Fisher The British Navy By Sir Nathaniel Barnaby. K.C.B. The German Naval Case By Michel The Naval Situation By Sir William H. White, K.C.B. German Armaments and the Liberal Government By J. Ellis Barker THEOLOGICAL PAPERS An Early Christian Hymn Book By Dr. J. Rendell Harris Preanimistic Religion By Andrew Lang Spiritual Healing By Dr. A. T. Schofield The Pessimistic Tendency of Pantheism By W. S. 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Stua'rt Jones. Illustrated vith five full page plates. Ovid and Shahespeare's Sonnets. By Sidney Lee Earthquakes and Their Causes By C. Davison, F.G.S. A Century of English Music By J. A. Fuller Maitland Innocent the Great By W. Barry, D.D. The Reform of the Poor Iia-w The Meaning of Modernism By Prof. Inge Mr. liowell on English Party Government By Prof. Dicey The Memoirs of Madame de Boigne By P. F. Willert The Near Eastern Question I. Austria-Hungary By A. R. Colquhoun. With double-page map. II. The Turkish Empire By G. F. Abbott Lord Morley and Indian Reform TTnion in South Africa The Centenary of "The Quarterly Review" Illustrated with seven portraits = PRICE,, POSTPAID, $1.25 ===« Leonard Scott Publication Company 218 FULTON STREET Hudson Terminal B lock NEW YORK «*» The publishers reserve the right to increase the price of this issue at any time without notice Published 4 times each year in January, April, July, Octobe® The Quarterly Review I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. APRIL, 1909 The Centenary of Tennyson Evolution and the Church Evolutionary Ethics Pragmatism < TTie Essentials of Great Poetry The Remains of Ancient Painting Ovid and Shakespeare's Sonnets Earthquakes and their Causes A Century of English Music Innocent the Great The Reform of the Poor Law The Meaning of Modernism English Party Government The Memoirs of Madame de Boigne The Near-Eastern Question Lord Morley and Indian Reform Union in South Africa The Centenary of the "QHarterly Review " JULY. 1909 •I. The Centenary of Darwin : Darwii» his Modern Critics. By Prof. Pouji . II. The Making of an Epic : Firdusi and Homer. By Walter Leaf i III. A Journal of the French Revolution. By Austin Dobson i ' IV. New Light on Sidney's Arcadia. , By Bertram Dobell V. The Mystical Element of Religion.' Bj the Rev. George Tyrrell VI. Recent French Poetry: and Racine. By F. Y. Eccles VII. Early Flemish Painters. By Sir Mfeirtin , Conway f VIII. Tolstoi and Turgeniev : A Contrasti By the Hon. Maurice Baring IX. Recent State Finance and the Budget" , By Sir Robert G ffen, K.C.B. X. George Canning and His Friends. By , J. A. R. Marriott XI. The Privileges of the House of Corn mons in Regard to Finance Bills. B H. C. Malkin XII. The Centenary of the " Quartedy;^rv.< view" Conclusion. The Edinburgh Review APRIL, 1909 JULY, 1909 I. German Imperial Finance I. II. Halley's Comet II. III. The Principles and Practice of Labour III. Co-Partnership IV. IV. The Poetry of Carducci V. Pragmatism V. VI. The Economics of Empire VI. VII. French Literature from the Rennais- sance to the " Classic Age " VII. ^III. The Poor Law Report of 1909 VIII. IX. Two Canadian Poets : Pre Chette and IX. Drummond X. X. Social Psychology XI. XI. The Political Scene South African Union The Mystical Element in Religion • ' The Navy The Naturalist Transition in Freni Fiction Fallacies and Superstitions The Problem of Hungary International Prize Law and the Dec, laration of London Modern Dutch Panting Frontiers, Ancient and Modern Richard Jefferies The Government and the Country Leonard Scott Publication Co., 218 Fulton Street, NewYoi ASK FOR IT -f^i # GALLAGHER SOAP THEN BUY IT II The new Cigarette J • new blend, made of new tobacco in a new wayr it yields a soft, deli- cious refresliing smolce. it gives a new pleasure to tobacco-lovers, it is THE Cigarette of tlie day. Tlie higli-grade Cigarette. |[ If you are interested in building a building of any sort, you will be interested in The Architedural Record Send for a Sample Copy^FREiE The Architedural Record Company 11 to 1 5 East 24th Street, New York 841 Monadnock Building, Chicago r-;? r ■~^^:fm'W^mwm:mm USE IT ^^ss> EVERY =s «DAY ^Ik^ IN THE WEEK ylord Bros. Inc. 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