PAGE NOTES OF THE WEEK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. By S. Verdad . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 THE PATH TO DEMOCRACY.-V. By Cecil Chesterton . . . . . . 316 THE END OF DEMOCRACY. By Allen Upward . . . . . . 317 *THE PORTUGUESE REPUBLIC. By V. de Braganza Cunha ... 318 AMERICAN NOTES. By Juvenal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 19 UNEDITED OPINIONS. XI.--Machiavelli and Mill . . . . . . 321 THE MAIDS’ COMEDY: An Appreciation. By Alfred E.

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NOTES OF THE WEEK. AS the time for the opening of Parliament and the re- sumption of political debates approaches, the disorder of the journalistic world begins to disappear. The bustling servants and painters and plumbers who have been in possession of the public area since the election are gathering up their brooms and buckets and departing to the nether regions, leaving us to judge their handi- work. In the present disposition of what we may call the public mind, the Cabinet itself has had very little share. What Chief Justice Morris satirically dubbed ‘‘ the energy of silence ” has characterised the Ministers from the election to the present moment; not a flame has flickered on a single pallid crest. Nevertheless, such .is the influence of that great statesman, Time, the situa- tion as it now appears in the dawning light of the new Parliament shows signs of a comparatively settled calm and a sort of renovated placidity which give promise of less stormy weather than was anticipated some weeks ago. The discussion, in short, has resolved itself into a few simple propositions, the lines of whose practical demonstrations are now generally regarded as fixed.

* * * Of the things that are immediately apparent, it is

safe to say that the Coalition on which many sensible people have placed their hopes is not one. On the contrary, whatever secret arrangements may exist be- tween the two Front Benches it is clear that for the present at any rate the parties are to resume the ap- ,pearance of irreconcileable strife. W e cannot dream -what object can be served by this proceeding, but the ‘fact remains that both parties are overhauling their organisations as if their leaders never intended the least rapprochement. Mr. Asquith might, we understand, have been seen visiting Lansdowne House, but the

PAGE BOOKS AND PERSONS IN LONDON AND PARIS. By Jacob Tonson 325 VERSES. By E. H. Visiak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 THEOLOGY .-I. By M. B. Oxon. . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 LETTERS TO AN UNBORN CHILD.--V. . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 REVIEWS : T. M. Kettle’s Essays--Alchemy, Ancient and

Modern - Famous Impostors - Henry II . of France - Innocence and Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328

DRAMA : “ Preserving Mr. Panmure.” By Ashley Dukes 331 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR from Henry Meulen, O. E. Post,

William S. Murphy, C. E. Bechhöfer, AyImer Maude, Charles Granville, John Kirkby, J. Chalmers Dixon, Allen Watkins, Beatrice Hastings, S. Skelhorn . . . . . . 332

“ Times ” continues to exhort all Unionists to keep their powder dry. All that we can say of this is that, as things are, the Unionists have more to gain by con- ciliation than by open hostility. I t is quite conceivable that if the Lords’ party had contented itself with digni- fied protest a good many moderate Liberals would have come to their support. Once, however, that they show fight the Coalition ranks are closed and not a single vote will escape. * * *

One good wrench, said Mr. Churchill, of the Veto, and out it comes. That also appears now to be pro- bable though the operation is likely to be longer than was anticipated. For instance, if the patient should prove refractory it is now certain from the time-table that the operation cannot be got over before the Coro- nation. The discussion of the Parliament Bill in the Commons and in the Lords will carry us to the very eve of the Coronation ceremonies. Then, and not till then, will it be known whether Mr. Garvin has succeeded in inducing the peerage to perform hari-kari by drowning in plebeian blood. If they should take this courageous but silly resolution, the creation of peers must, it seems, be deferred until after the. King is confirmed on his throne. This will mean an autumn session lasting, it is possible, to November or December. Our one good wrench, from these accounts, will also be a good long wrench.

* * U

Opinion, however, is hardening in regard to one aspect of the question on which we set importance. Our readers are aware that one of the chief difficulties of the Conference was the order of the contemplated reform of the Upper Chamber, whether the modification of the Veto should precede or accompany the re-composition of the Chamber itself. As a result of recent discussions, it is now generally believed that the Lords, when once their Veto is abolished, may safely be left to take care of themselves for a while. Everything, in fact, as we have maintained throughout, points to this as being desirable. Nobody knows yet, though they may shrewdly guess, what use the Lords will make of their new responsibilities. I t may be that the “ kind of looseness ” which will result from the change will prove of the greatest value to them. Their influence must, it is clear, be moral and intellectual in the future if they

are to have as an assembly any influence at all; and the preparation for this will occupy their minds for some years to come. Thus the postponement for the moment of the reform of the House of Lords may prove to be its postponement for a good many years; and in view of the manifest absurdity of setting one elected Chamber over another, we should not be sorry to see the Lords remain as they are until the next Conquest.

* * * Nobody in England appears to have considered the

current revolutionary movement au fond, however. What is it exactly that is happening? To judge from even the staidest of our monthly reviews it would ap- pear that only partisan views prevail in cultured poli- tical circles. This is shocking and contrasts humiliat- ingly with the views expressed on our domestic evolu- tion by Continental critics. W e hope to be able to publish next week the translation of an exceedingly able article by the great Italian historian and Socialist, Guglielmo Ferrero, which appeared in the “ Figaro ” of last week. Professor Ferrero’s conclusions have a practical bearing not only on the causes of the present political situation, but on its probable consequences. N o commentary that we have seen on the subject is more fruitful in suggestion.

* * * Resuming our enumeration of the settled features of

the discussion, we may add to the statement that the reform of the Lords is indefinitely postponed the parallel statement that Federalism is likewise postponed to Home Rule for Ireland. In this as in the former question the Unionists have allowed themselves to be caught napping. A decisive acceptance by the Lords of Lord Rosebery’s Reform schemes a year or so ago would undoubtedly have ensured the simultaneous con- sideration of the composition of the Lords with the problem of the Veto. Similarly, a bold scheme of Federation, practically conceived and blocked out, would, if it had been ready even six months ago, have certainly necessitated the consideration of Irish Home Rule as merely a part of it. As it is, Mr. Redmond is justified in declaring that he will not wait until the Federal spooks have materialised. Faced with this an- nouncement, the Unionists might still extricate them- selves from a difficult position by insisting on at least a Preamble to the Home Rule Bill. Preamble is all they have of promise in the case of the Lords; and Pre- amble is still open to them in the case of Federalism. That course is infinitely to be preferred to the ridiculous ’pretence that Ulster will fight. As if anybody would be alarmed by the prospect !

* * * In two other respects the situation may be said to

have settled down. When the proposal to create four or five hundred peers was first mooted, the shock to the delicate nerves of society was so great that nobody imagined the proposal could ever become familiar. I t may be discussed now in the most Druvidney-like circles without raising more than the ghost of a shudder. What appeared twelve months ago as the herald of the dissolution of all things assumes at this moment the form of an extreme, but nevertheless of a perfectly legitimate, constitutional device. Lord Randolph Churchill once said that Parliament would be competent, by a mere majority of one, to change the Constitution from a monarchy to a republic. Public opinion is now quite prepared to contemplate a smaller change by a larger means. Unionists who still suppose that the use

of the prerogative to create a battalion of peers will arouse popular indignation had better renew their c o n tact with the electorate. The real indignation as well as the substantial excuse for indignation will be confined to the peers’ own order.

* * * The other deflated bogey is the apparition of Single

Chamber government. W e have not wasted our i n k it now appears, when endeavouring during the last twelve months to convince our journalist-politicians that the Parliament Bill stops a good deal short of estab- lishing Single Chamber government. There are vast possibilities of obstruction-if that is the sole notion of lordly legislation-in the suspensory veto as defined in the Bill by the method of residuum. Even if the worst from the Lords’ point of view should happen, and a Radical-Labour Government should bombard their Chamber with Socialist measures, the damage and delay the Lords can inflict under the present Bill will be con- siderable. Such a prospect, however, assumes the dis- appearance of several existing facts which should and do comfort the Lords in their public distress. Firstly, the bombardment of the Upper Chamber with social measures of any great power of revolution in them is extremely improbable. To become at all probable not only the House of Lords would need to be changed, but the House of Commons. For another comforting assur- ance of the Lords is the fact that the prevalent views of their Chamber are indistinguishable in all matters of social legislation from those of the Lower House. Good House of Commons Tories used in the past to thank God for the House of Lords. Noble Tories can still thank God for a House of Commons so much after their own heart.

* * *

Even, therefore, if by inadvertence Single Chamber government were actually established, no dispassionate observer would predict any immediate or obvious change in the normal course of things. England would still remain what it is the aim of the governing classes to keep it, the country in which wealth accumulates while men decay. The House of Commons, it is at last be- ginning to be realised, is as faithful a custodian of the interests of the oligarchy as ever the House of Lords has been : except, perhaps, in one respect, that of man- ners. And since this is the case, the fear expressed lest the Parliament Bill should open the floodgates of anarchy, is dying for lack of food. Not much service will this argument now be able to perform for the Lords. * * *

The question has been asked why, if the foregoing identification of the interests of the Lords and of the governing Commons is true, and if, further, national democrats like ourselves anticipate no real or imme- diate economic emancipation from the abolition of the Lords’ veto, we should, nevertheless, be at pains to sup- port the Commons. The answer is twofold. First, i t is a natural impulse to wish that one’s enemies had a single neck. By concentrating in the House of Commons all the effective power in legislation we shall define, isolate and advertise the source and seat of responsibility. There being under those circumstances no higher

sovereign authority and the Cabinet its responsible office-holder. For the first time since the Tudor monarchy, the nation will have a single power on which it can call for an account. Secondly, i t must never be forgotten that with all its faults the House of Commons has one virtue : i t can be changed rapidly and easily by the people. The House of Lords undergoes change only by the slow process of natura1 selection; but the House of Commons is susceptible to the process of rational selection. That fact alone contains whatever hopes we entertain from the present revolution.

authority, t h e Commons will be indubitably the seat of

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Foreign Affairs. By S. Verdad.

LAST week I had occasion to refer incidentally to the ‘‘ interests ” of the Triple Entente-supposing for the sake of convenience that the Triple Entente still existed-as opposed to those of the Triple Alliance. I t may be worth while reconsidering just what these are a t the present time, or at all events the most important of them. * * *

Taking England first, it may be said at once that a German invasion is one of the least important things we have to fear. I t is quite possible for any country that wishes to harm us, and is powerful enough to set about it, to do so without coming near our shores a t all. A world-wide empire such as we possess may be attacked at many vulnerable points. A bit of “ cussedness ” on the part of the Ameer of Afghanistan may lead to a sheaf of diplomatic correspondence between Downing Street and St. Petersburg; unrest in Tibet will direct our attention to Pekin.

* * * The points over which any disputes are likely to arise

in the immediate future are the Bagdad Railway, Persia, Asia Minor, and Flushing. I dealt with the Flushing affair last week, and at the time of writing there is nothing of any consequence to add. Persia, as I had occasion to remark previously, is of extreme in- terest to us as its south-eastern land frontier is so near the Indian border, and successive Governments have held that British influence must preponderate in the Persian Gulf in order to prevent even the possibility of a naval attack on India from that direction. With this question that of the Bagdad Railway is closely bound up. I t is useless to blink the fact that, while on nominally Turkish territory, this is a German line, and its extension from Bagdad to the Gulf is looked upon in authoritative quarters here and abroad as being fraught with danger to British interests in this part of Asia.

* * * It may be remembered that the proposal tentatively

submitted by the British Government to Germany was that our rights, undisputed in the Persian Gulf for more than a century, should be acknowledged, and that the last two or three hundred miles of the Bagdad line should be constructed by Great Britain, managed by British officials, and generally considered as British. It seemed a few months ago that this view would be con- sidered and agreed to by the German Government, but, if one may judge from the recent tone of its inspired Press, the recent diplomatic victory gained by the Kaiser over the Triple Entente has so elated the Foreign Minister, Herr von Kiderlen-Wächter, that he is not now prepared to meet the British proposal in the spirit in which it has been put forward.

* * *

When Russia was recently forced by Germany to con- clude the Potsdam Agreement her rights were recog- nised in the north of Persia, as I pointed out in these columns at the time; but nothing was said about British interests in the south, or about German interests in the so-called neutral sphere. This middle sphere has always been tacitly regarded as British, but, if it is now as tacitly admitted to be one of the Asiatic spheres of Ger- man commercial influence, no great political acumen is needed to see trouble ahead.

* * *

As for those journalists who say that Britain should have no interests in Persia a t all, as it brings us into land contact with Russia, a Continental Power with a big army, it may be pointed out that such a juxtaposi- tion was inevitable, and has been so regarded by all

competent statesmen during the last half century. I t was inevitable that when the British gained full control in India they should have had to set about safeguarding the frontier of their new possession. This led us to China viâ Tibet and to Russia viâ Afghanistan. We had to give an eye to Baluchistan, too, and it was clear that our ordinary trading interests, as well as the special interests connected with our Indian frontier, would lead us to Persia sooner or later

* * * I t was, however, equally clear to competent observers

that Russia, gradually forcing her way to the south- east, was destined to come to grips with us at the same point. In the eighties and nineties Russia was continu- ally looked upon as the Indian bugbear, and the troubles over Herat have not, I presume, been for- gotten. The junction has finally been reached in Persia, because it has always been the aim of the British Government to keep it as far from India as possible-. Even when we take Lord Salisbury’s advice and “study large maps,” however, we shall find that there are limits to Persia, and that it is no very great distance from one end of Baluchistan to the other.

** *

Apart from the question of Persia a n d t h e Bagdad Railway, however, Turkish affairs in Asia are in utter confusion, and we should do well not to lose sight of this fact. The Kurds may, as a rule, be relied upon to engross the Armenians, and troubles in that quarter are not very urgent in the meantime; but it is greatly to b e feared that even the thirty battalions which the Young Turks are sending to the Yemen will not suffice to put down the revolt of the Arabs. The poor administrative powers of the new régime at Constantinople have landed the Cabinet in a hopeless mess, and it is now no longer open to dispute that the Turkish Government is steering- straight for destruction.

* * * The unruly elements in the Ottoman Empire, of

course, have no objection to the strong hand of a capable leader-it will be remembered that the Arabs objected to Abdul Hamid because of his timidity, not because ‘of his harshness. The ex-Sultan’s timidly powerful hand has been withdrawn, however, and the Arabs, who, like all the individualistic races of the East, sneer a t representative institutions, are seriously think- ing of governing themselves in their own way.

* + * There has been a recent “incident ” between Italy

and the Porte over Tripoli-where the Sultan’s rule, of course, is merely nominal. The Italian Government objected to the presence in Tripoli of an Italophobe writer, and the sending of three Italian warships to Turkish waters resulted in the man’s immediate expul- sion. It may be news to most people that Italy claims the same rights over Tripoli as the French over Morocco or the British over Egypt. Whenever it was found necessary in the latter years of the nineteenth century to “ bring pressure to bear ” on Abdul Hamid, it was always “ intimated ” that, if he did not comply with the demands put forward, the Powers wouId “ advise’” Italy to take over Tripoli, and this hint always brought the old gentleman to reason. The Italian Government has always contemplated the annexation of Tripoli, in view of the considerable Italian colony there and the amount of trade between the two countries, and it is highly probable that the Powers would not oppose the plan.

* * *

Our own Foreign Office is a t present negotiating with the Turkish Government over the Bagdad Railway ques- tion. Sir Edward Grey hopes to derive some advantage for Great Britain from the annoyance caused to the Porte by the Potsdam Agreement, in regard to which Turkey was not even consulted. Germany, the “heredi- tary friend ”of Islamism, has suddenly appeared in a new light, and one in which the Turks as a whole do not like to see her.

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The Path to Democracy. By Cecil Chesterton.

IV. The Popular Initiative. IN my last article I tried to suggest how a genuine representative might evoke the popular will in his con- stituency if he wished to do so. I also expressed my personal opinion that very few would wish to do so. Nevertheless, if a few did, there can be no doubt that the reaction upon other constituencies would be remark- able. A tradition of consulting the people would spring up, and the veriest hack or placeman would have to make at least some pretence of bowing to it. The discipline of the party regiments would be weakened ; the real voice of the people would begin to be dimly and faintly heard.

In this article I am concerned with those constitu- encies (comprising more than nine-tenths of Great Britain) where the member has not the smallest inten- tion of submitting to the popular will, much less of evoking it, where he is himself, either from stupidity or more often from avarice, an accomplice in the gigantic fraud which is being practised upon the English people. In such a case what can be done to awaken and organise the force of real public opinion?

The first task must be destructive. The Party System at the moment blocks every path to Democracy. Until the hold of that system on the public mind is loosened, until the professional politicians are thoroughly ex- posed and their influence severely shaken, there will be no real approximation to government’ by the common will. T o break the spell of the Party System must therefore be the first object of Democrats.

A very small organisation in every constituency could do a great deal in this direction. I t is one of the traditions of our political system that every candidate must during an election submit himself to a process of cross-examination by his constituents. This right of “ heckling ” is at present largely profitless because it is in the main exercised by two classes of men, partisan opponents desirous of catching the candidate out for the benefit of their own “ fancy,” and faddists anxious to pin him to the support of some peculiar and often silly proposal of their own. But wisely used by a little group determined to show up the humbug of politics, there are great possibilities in it.

One thing must be pointed out to anyone who wishes to employ this method. I t is perfectly futile to ask a politician to pledge himself to “ vote f o r ” this or that proposal. If the proposal is eminently popular, or if there is thought to exist a disciplined body of voters whose support depends upon it, he will generally give with a light heart the pledge required of him. But, when the time comes to claim its fulfilment, if the pro- posal in question is not acceptable to the Front Benches, one of two things almost invariably happens. Either by the “ Government’s ” control of the time table no division is allowed on the proposal at all, or, if a division has to be allowed, then the expression of the opinion of the House, even if favourable, carries the matter no further. I t is a mere abstract declaration, and the “ Government ” can always, by refusing further facilities, prevent it having legislative effect. In the last resort the candidate may be forced to break his pledge, but “ loyalty to the Party ” and the necessity of “ keeping the Government in ” will generally cover Aim.

Men out to destroy the oligarchy should avoid such futilities. Two kinds of questions are really useful. The first are questions directed to the exposure of the present system. In these cases it matters very little how the candidate replies to the question, or, indeed, whether he (as often happens) refuses to reply to it at all. The question is got out and sinks into the minds of some of those present. I t provokes doubt, and, when once doubt is awakened, subsequent experience turns doubt into certainty. It is in the nature of truth that when once uttered it should spread, because it con- tinually tends to verify itself. For this purpose ques-

tions about the sale of peerages, about the close rela- tions between “ opposing ” politicians and about patent instances of corruption are particularly well worth asking. The fact that slander actions are never brought against “ hecklers ” at political meetings renders it possible to say things in this way that you would not be

The other useful kind of question is a request for a pledge, not that the candidate will “ vote f o r ” a par- ticular measure, but that he will vote against the Government and especially refuse it supplies if that measure is not carried by a certain fixed date. That kind of pledge, if it could be obtained, would be really effective, for the candidate who gave it would have no option but to break i t flagrantly and without excuse (for he would have deprived himself of the excuse about “ keeping the Government in ”), or to upset the Government and with it the convention upon which the Party System rests. Suppose that in 1906 the bulk of Liberal and Labour members had been pledged not to “ vote against Chinese labour ”-which they had no opportunity of doing, for the Front Benches did not suffer the House to divide on the question-but to turn out the “ Liberal ” Ministry if every Chinaman had not left South Africa within a year ! If such a pledge had been given the arrangement which the Government sub- sequently made with the South African Jews would have been impossible. If it had been refused, how such a refusal would have enlightened the popular mind as to the sincerity of “ Liberal ” professions.

So much for the destructive side; which is at the moment the most urgent and practicable. I now turn to reconstruction. How can we get the right kind of candidate selected ?

I cannot but think that even while the Party System endures something might be done by the rank and file of the two parties to secure a nearer approximation to Democracy. While I have continually insisted that the Party System as regards the politicians at Westminster is an organised hypocrisy which is wearing thinner every day, I have never attempted to deny that the mass of people in the country who label themselves “ Radical ” or “ Tory” are not only honest, but sin- cerely enthusiastic for certain proposals for which they suppose their “ party ” to stand. Mr. Asquith has no intention--of abolishing the House of Lords, but plenty of Radicals would do so if they could. Mr. Balfour has no desire to carry ‘Tariff Reform, but there are plenty of people up and down the country who do desire it. America has a Party System, but that system is at least largely Democratic. America has “ Primaries,” that is assemblies of the rank-and-file who select can- didates and control policy. Her politics are not free from corruption, but with that I shall have to deal later. The fact remains that the candidates of both parties have to pass the test of approval by the actual democracy of those parties. This is true right up to the Presidential candidates, selected, generally after a hot fight, by great national congresses.

Why should not the mass of Radical or Tory voters insist upon a corresponding voice in the selection of candidates, hold mass meetings and choose them, and refuse to accept any local rich man or any party hack sent down from London as against the candidate of their choice ?

Undoubtedly the principal obstacle to such a policy is the control exercised over localities by the Central Caucus of the Party by means of the Secret Party Funds. The man who has the Fortunatus Purse of such a fund to draw upon has a great advantage over a man who has to rely upon the voluntary subscriptions of the people of his own locality. But a sufficiently strong drive of public enthusiasm would neutralise this advan- tage. I t is natural that, while the mass of sensible men regard politics as a generally silly, though occasionally exciting game, they should prefer that other people should pay for it. But they will pay for it themselves as soon as they realise that it means something.

Such a democratisation of the machinery for the selection of candidates would undoubtedly make the

allowed to say in print.

316

Party System far more tolerable. But it would also I think, in the long run, make it impossible. Now and then, indeed, a real issue (like Free Trade v. Protection) would be raised which would divide the people into two divergent but quite honest political camps. In such cases there would be nothing for it (in the absence of a Referendum) but to fight the matter out at an election and let the will of the majority prevail. But the artificial drilling of men into two permanent divisions, expected to think alike on all subjects, would be im- possible without the method of mingled corruption and hypnotism exercised over the mass by the rich profes- sionals who profit by it. Of that real Democracy would make an end for ever.

The End of Democracy. By Allen Upward.

COMMON SENSE suggests that there must be some ques- tions eminently fitted for decision by a popular vote, and others as eminently unfitted. Those whose minds are occupied with the former class of questions, and who think a referendum would work in favour of their own views, are naturally in favour of that piece of machinery ; and others, for similar reasons, are opposed to it.

To take an illustration which has been brandished as a lethal argument in the debate, every one sees that the directors of a private railway company must be chosen by the shareholders, while no one has yet proposed that the porters should be so chosen. Yet it is clearly a much more difficult and responsible task to appoint a director than a porter, and the mind that is equal to one must be more than equal to the other.

The reason why the shareholders are called on to appoint directors, but not porters, is because in ap- pointing the former they do, in effect, appoint the latter. Economy of time and labour is the simple principle on which the constitution of a railway or any other company is founded. The shareholders do not say to the directors : “ Ye are wiser than we; ye are fit to discern the merits of a porter, and we are not.” What they say is : “ W e cannot all of us give up our time to managing the railway, and therefore we dele- gate the task to those of us who are willing, and, so far as we can judge, able to do it for us.”

Such is the theory of the British Constitution. In the practical working of the Constitution another

element comes in, which does not enter much into the administration of a railway company, but is of great importance in a banking company.

The business of a bank is very largely confidential. Few of its customers or clients would like to have their financial position open to the knowledge of the first comer; and it would be so open if any member of the public, by buying a share in the company, became en- titled to walk into the local branch and inspect the books. For this reason the shareholders of a banking company agree to deprive themselves of a power which the ordinary law would give them. In their own common interest they agree to bestow their confidence upon the directors, and to refrain from examining into the details of the business carried on in their name and on their behalf.

A similar principle excludes the public, and even the Parliament itself, from interference in the details of such departments of Government as require secrecy in the working ; for instance, the diplomatic service, the police, and the mobilisation plans of the navy and army.

Here, then, to begin with, are certain questions ex- cluded by their nature from the machinery of a popular vote.

In practice other questions are, or tend to be, ex- cluded, on the ground that they require expert know- ledge for their proper treatment.

The judges sit to administer the law in the name of the sovereign. At the time when that word was applied by legal theorists to the King’s person, instead of, as now, to the King, Lords and Commons, acting

in unison, the judges were literally the King’s dele- gates. He appointed and dismissed them at his plea- sure, and controlled and over-rode their decisions in his own personal court-of which the Star Chamber was one development, and the modern Chancery Division is another. In addition, he took his seat on the “King’s Bench” when ha felt so disposed, and administered justice in person. There is a well-known anecdote of Henry II. trying a case between two abbeys, each of which produced a forged charter in its own favour. The baffled king, remembering the ordeal of battle, cast both documents on the floor of the court, exclaim- ing : “Let the charters fight it out !”

James I. was the last king who attempted to dis- charge this branch of the royal functions in person. But the judges had grown too s t rong; they firmly de- clined to let him have a voice in their decisions ; and from that time they have wielded a prerogative unknown to the constitution of any free country, one of which the King himself has been deprived. I refer to the arbitrary power of fine and imprisonment, without trial b y jury, for what is called “ contempt of court.” Now that this prerogative is so often stretched to punish newspapers for alleged off ences committed outside the court itself, there is a possibility of Englishmen some day awakening to i ts extraordinary and dangerous character.

There is, of course, no branch of government in which expert knowledge, or experience, is of no value, and consequently there is no branch which might not, on plausible grounds, be withdrawn from popular control. W e might fairly enough be asked to place town planning in the ’hands of expert architects, educa- tion in the hands of schoolmasters, and religion in the hands of theologians; to hand over the War Office to soldiers, the Board of Trade to political economists, nay, the supreme power of legislation itself to a com- mittee of sociologists, acting without any reference to public opinion beyond that prescribed by the rules of their science.

To that point, there are many indications that we shall ultimately come. But it is clear that we are here confronted with a new consideration, which destroys the analogy with the private commercial company. The people of England are not only the shareholders in the bank or railway; they are also the customers and the passengers. A railway company is a concern for making money, and the convenience of passengers is anly studied as a means to that end. The Post Office is run for the public convenience, and economy is only studied in so far as the public itself prefers its pocket to postal convenience.

A free country is one in which the public decides roughly at what point economy shall prevail over con- venience and vice versa.

(The Post Office is a bad illustration, because there is perhaps no institution which so plainly brings out the defects of State Socialism. The organised collection of tips by the postmen is a public scandal. The per- petual agitation of the staff for better pay is a menace for the future. The manners of the employees behind the counter compare very unfavourably with those of the private shop assistant. The prolonged efforts on the part of an outsider like Sir Henniker Heaton, which have been necessary to bring about important reforms, are a still graver symptom; and the fact that so eminent an “expert ” has never been made Postmaster- General is a national disgrace.)

The principle a t stake, it is very evident, is that of democracy. It seems to be common ground that the superior man-to borrow the Confucian term-has a right to seek the happiness of his fellow citizens, and to persuade them, if he can, to accept changes for the better in their condition. The question is whether he has a right to force such changes upon them without their consent.

To that question a great many worthy people, who honestly believe themselves to be democrats, would answer Yes, without hesitation. Most teetotalers, most educationists, most woman suffragists, and many other earnest minorities, I suspect, would gladly dis-

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pense with the obligation of consulting the people as to their pet reforms. On the other hand, we should most of us be willing to abide by the popular verdict, if we felt sure it would be in our favour.

Common sense suggests that a line must be drawn somewhere, and therefore that it is not a question for summary disposal by a logical syllogism, but one for careful adjustment, after full, fair and friendly discus- sion. No one will suggest that the nation should be driven to the ballot-box to decide on the respective merits of a set of competing designs for the costume to be worn by the Grand Sewer on the occasion of the forthcoming Coronation. Will anyone propose that the chairman of the Incorporated Law Society, chosen probably on account of seniority o r success in his busi- ness, should be appointed Expert Legtislator_ for the United Kingdom, for five years, and given a free hand over the fife, liberty and property of his fellow-citizens during that period, with no penalty in prospect but dis- missal at the end of his dictatorship?

By the theory of constitution the whole of the sub- jects are supposed to be present in Parliament, and a t one time the citizens of London used actually to attend, and testify their assent or dissent. Our present system of representation is merely a labour-saving de- vice, and no one has ever pretended-surely no one can pretend-that members of Parliament are chosen on ac- count of their mental superiority to their constituents. The institution of the halfpenny post has rendered the House of Commons an obsolete institution ; it is despised and hated by our real rulers, the permanent officials ; and it is evident that it must shortly vanish into the limbo of outworn things. A member of Par- liament, like a consul under the Roman Empire, will be a purely honorary dignity, of whom no notice will be taken by any practical man.

The question is whether it can be replaced, or ought to be replaced, by any machinery for expressting the popular will, as distinguished from the will of the most clever election agents. Are we to pass under a pure despotism? Is the country to be governed by a species of Masonic society, comprising the two Front Benches and such persons as they from time to time co-opt, and the permanent Heads of Departments ; or are the English people still to have a voice in their own affairs ?

I confess the decision seems likely to go against my private wishes. As far as I can read the signs of the times, the English people no longer wish to have a voice in their own affairs. They seem to me to be tired of liberty. Eternal vigilance, as we know, is 'its price, and it is a price they are no longer pre- pared to pay. If a young man with ambition came to me for my advice, I should say to him : "DO not dream of a parliamentary career. Go in for the Civil Service examination." And I rather gather that such is the advice now being tendered by the heads of colleges to the brightest graduates of our universities.

Republicanism in Portugal. By V. de Braganza Cunha

" IT is as impossible for such a mass of incoherent units to reconstitute a stable State as for the dust or mud of Lisbon, t o form itself into Jeronymos, that historical monument that calls up the soul of Portugal to those who now behold only its corpse," we exclaimed in con- cluding the last article which appeared in this review- strong and painful words when applied to any country. But since that article was written we have followed closely the turns and vicissitudes of a game in which the country is risking the heaviest stakes, and we repeat our conviction that the change of the label cannot alter the nature of the liquor.

The delirious dream that Portugal could work out her destinies by a Republican formula, has not come true. Things and persons are beginning to be seen in correct perspective. Matters have shaped themselves, and we have to accept the situation as it is presented.

Three months have passed since the dramatic evolu-

tion of incidents in Portugal brought the political world unexpectedly with a situation of critical importance, An ancient Monarchy was violently overthrown, a young King, full of good promise, made suddenly to quit his kingdom, and a Republic erected upon the ruins of the State fabric.

At all events, the Portuguese Revolution had the effect, as all sudden political changes have, of sending to power men who, perhaps, in ordinary circumstances would hardly have found their way there. Better things were confidently expected of these new men, because worse were rashly held to be impossible. " What are they going to do? " was a question which in the early days of last October must have been on all lips. " What have they done? " is the question we ask after they have been for three months the most promi- nent persans in Portugal.

The Revolution was brought about by the disorders and confusions of demoralised finance. The members of the Provisional Government found the country in debt, crushed by a n ever-recurring deficit, and forced to borrow at ruinous rates. They had, therefore, ample work before them calling for the exercise of the highest qualities of statesmanship. They had to devise means for lightening the national burden. But they have failed to seize the one and the only chance of winning the confidence of the sober opinion of the country, the opinion which is not led ,or misled by mere demagogic clamour or journalistic charlatanism. Instead of look- ing upon the financial difficulties from the Chancellor of the Exchequer point of view, they seem to have no resource in a financial emergency but to raise a public subscription in order to pay the external debt, amounting to forty millions sterling ! The proposal of a remedy so ridiculously disproportionate to the evil and so full of uncertainty in its operation, came t o prove that the work of reconstruction was far more difficult than these politicians had anticipated.

But instead of measures improving a financial administration that is ruinously vicious and inefficient, we have had what is difficult to call anything else than an attempt at Government sharp practices. There has been a smuggling of measures before there was time to understand them or agitate against them. But what is worse still, the men who passed these measures have exercised their dictatorial power with great ignorance or the real conditions and feelings of the people sub- jected to it, and in a blind subordination to party intrigues'. In other words, the general welfare of the country has been sacrificed to fruitless bickerings. I have no intention of taking the reader of THE NEW AGE over the still heated embers of the conflagration caused by all those measures inspired by an anti-religious fanaticism. I t is superfluous to observe that all this was in flat contradiction to their proclamations of " religious tolerance." They should have been the last men to decree the abolition of the oath even o n those who profess to be Catholics, to pass laws compelling the Catholics to work on days prescribed as festivals by the Church, and prohibiting the externals of worship. This is not all. The University of Coimbra being intimately associated with religion in its origin, and, as a matter of course, the teaching of theology being recognised in it, it was thought of supreme moment to pass a decree reforming that University by doing away with the faculty of theology; that possessed n o ecclesiastical character whatever, except that the pro- fessors of the faculty could be no others but men learned in divintity. However earnest may be the denunciation that the faculty of theology was the less happily domiciled, we have never been able to under-. stand by what hallucination it could be imagined that the University has been reformed, when the reform had to proceed alongside with that of the, secondary schools.. To carry on this battle against the windmills it has

been thought necessary that even the streets of Lisbon called after saints should be re-christened in the Repub- lican baptismal font. And the fact must be admitted' and grasped, that all these quixotic anti-clerical cam- paigns are the result of that excessive development of imagination that carries some men beyond the goal

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a t which minds more self-controlled would halt. The recent decree, for instance, authorising divorce in a form equivalent to free love, or better, making of marriage a legalised prostitution, a decree that might have waited till the Constituent Assembly had met, was no doubt dictated by some petty desire t o defy the Church. But the course taken by the Provisional Government was the very worst that lay. before it. To assert their authority over what they call a ‘‘ civil contract” they have, notwithstanding the fact that the Portuguese Civil Code authorised divorce in four distinct cases, added to these a list of seven, affording every facility to dissolve marriage, clauses that run counter to the feelings of the whole country, except, perhaps, of the Don Juan type of citizen, who will welcome the clause of “ mutual consent. ” The members of the Provisional Government, therefore, could not have Aung vitriol with deadlier aim on the morals of the nation. Time was when Professor TheophiIo Braga portrayed in eloquent and impassioned words the sanctity of marriage. It is recorded that he said that “without the indissolubility of marriage we can have no social or family life.” But once it became necessary to destroy Christianity from the platform of Republicanism, the President of the Provisional Government allowed a member of the Government to push headlong into the pitfall he has dug, the moral interests of the nation. But this question of the morals of a nation appears likely, if n’ot now, certainly in the near future, to be the rock on which the Republican barge will go to pieces.

Though prophecy may be ‘‘ the most gratuitous form of folly” it was not rash to prophesy, as we did in an article written to an English review in connection with King Manuel’s last official visit to this country, that ‘‘ if ever a Republic should be proclaimed in Por- tugal people would find the old fraud cropping up in new and more subtle forms. ” W e are now in possession of facts, and we say that they are overwhelming in the proof they afford that the Portuguese Republicanism is, to quote a simile we once found elsewhere, “new thimble-and-button or powder-le-pimple,” which may be this or that, everything or nothing, just as the jugglers please. The recent Press Law, which was said by the Republican press to have conferred advantages of an exceptionally high order, which we need not stop to define, is a flagrant example of how deceptive things are sometimes. The journalists should be freed from the shackles of special penal legislation. Such was the uncompromising verdict pronounced by the Republican press, in the days when Portugal was a Monarchy, upon the responsibility of the press. Yet these men who uttered it sanctioned, a few days after the new Press Law was passed, the seizure of the newspaper “ O Combate,” of Braga, suspended by an adminis- trative order because the paper spoke truths unpalatable to the men in power. Again, we have the destruction of the printing presses of the Lisbon Conservative news- papers by an infuriated mob, but with the aggravating circumstance that that act of savagery was followed by the official refusal to permit these papers to continue to be published. I t is difficult to conceive that principles laid down in such plain and peremptory language by men who once boasted of their exemption from all the old contrivances for repressing (disaffection could be transformed by a sudden apostasy !

But while the words Liberty, Equality and Frater- nity are flaunted everywhere, Machado dos Santos, ‘‘ the hero of Rotunda,” as he was called by the Re- publican press, has elected to desert the Republican leaders at a critical moment and has founded a journal which is named ‘‘ Intransigente.” ‘‘ He must be a criminal if he is not a lunatic who raises under the Republican Party the banner of a group which acclaims him as leader,” writes the semi-official organ of the Republic “A Lucta. ” The secession of Machados dos Santos is a remarkable phenomenon and one well worthy, not of hysterical declamation, but of grave reflection. H e was the soul of the Revolution, and it is useless to ignore the fact that if there had been no Machado dos Santos, or Couceiro, a no less brave Portuguese; it would be difficult to say if on the 4th and 5th of last October there were any Republicans

or Monarchists in Portugal. He has gone, it is stated, from a freak of temper or because he did not get his way upon some matter in the promotion of those soldiers and sailors who fought for the Republic. I t is, there- fore, interesting to call attention to a paragraph that appeared in the ‘‘ A Lucta,” in which that paper, refer- ring to a letter of Machado dos Santos published in the Republican daily “ O Seculo,” said, ‘‘ W e believe that the National Assembly will come too late to occupy itself with rewards, as by the time it meets all rewards will be given by the Provisional Government that does not lack for the purpose the ability and authority.” This paragraph needs no comment. There is hardly a sentence in the above passage which does not carry with it a suggestion of the kind most mischievous in a Re- publican regime and most dangerous if listened to in a political crisis like the present.

Portugal required national improvement as well as moral guidance. Here I may be allowed to quote some words of grave political advice used in a moment ‘of the gravest crisis by Guizot. H e inquired why the English Revolution had succeeded, and his reply may, we think, be compressed in the following words: “ Instead of aspiring to alter the foundation of mankind she (Eng- land) asserted and maintained her religion and her posi- tive laws and rights; and did not carry her claims, o r even her desires, beyond the limits which they pre- scribed. With a singular mixture of magnanimity and discretion she accomplished a revolution which gave to the country a new head and new guarantees, but which stopped short with the attainment of those objects.”

An Englishman in America. By Juvenal.

ONE would think that English novelists would steer clear of Americanisms, especially of any attempt to deal with American dialect, for when they do so they skate on thin, ice. They do not cut many “fancy figures” before they g o to the bottom. I t would be instructive to know how it happens that English novelists do not hesitate when the whim moves them t o tackle a subject so difficult.

* * + To properly set down the dialect spoken, by any

American, in, these days, would require an intimate acquaintance with the individual, and even a n American novelist has all he can do to attain the reality in this matter. I doubt if there be an American writer who knows more than three oc four American dialects, and, when we consider that every State in the vast Union has several dialects, it will be seen what difficulties lie in the way of the foreign novelist.

* * * There are few Americans living who could grapple

with more than three dialects and achieve success. Mr. Frank M. Bicknell, in a recently published article, deals with the efforts of English novelists in this direc- tion. Mr. Bicknell says : “ I n one short story a n American society girl on a visit to England is sup- posed to say :‘ I’m, right glad. . . . You’re as pale a s spectres, I guess. . , . Fancy that, now !. . . . You are my guest, I reckon. . . . And here you are, my ward ! ’ Besides the unclassified ‘pale as spectres,’ we have the same speaker using idioms typical of New England, the Southern States, Old England, and, per- haps, Australia.” And Mr. Bicknell asks, “does it not suggest burlesque dialect comedy run riot ?”

* * * Mr. Bicknell quotes from the late Grant Allen, Max

Pemberton, Walter Frith, H. B. M. Watson, Quiller- Couch, and Richard Whiteing, and he says, “Now and then a skilful British novelist will almost succeed in creating a Yankee who would be fairly convincing if he were allowed to keep his mouth shut.”

* * * Mr. Bicknell winds up by this : “ A study of several

painstaking efforts to show the better-class American

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as he really is, and without exaggeration, brings to light numberless inaccuracies, not to say absurdities; a lieutenant in the Navy fondly recalls his cadet days at West Point (a military Academy), and an Army officer in Cuba so far forgets his native tongue as to speak of ‘ driving ’ a locomotive and ‘ carriages ’ over the ‘metals.’ ” I could quote much more from this entertaining article, but this is enough.

* * * A clever English novelist coming here to write a

novel o n New York, let us say, would have to settle down for a t least three years, and make up his mind to let English as she is spoke in England “slide,” and attend strictly to business and listen with all ears. A novel of mixed characters, something cosmoplitan, might be written in two years. Such characters are plentiful in New York. All he would have to do would be to frequent the places where such types are to be met, and take notes of the speech and dialect o f the foreigner in New York. But if he wishes to write of the typical Americans of New York, he could not accomplish the task under a residence of five years. While the English novelist could catch his foreign types lying round loose, waiting to be snap-shotted in the saloons, in the restaurants, in the music halls, and cheap boarding houses, ‘he would find the task of get- ting at the real New York American quite another matter. Americans here do not lie about in saloons and such places. They live, for the most part, “ u p town,” and never come “dawn town” in the evening, excepting f o r some special purpose.

* * *

To get into the smart sets would be exceedingly difficult. They d o not care for people of talent, and novelists are not millionaires. Just as difficult would it be to get into the social sets of the old families, and unless a novelist were favoured with several important letters of introduction and a ,magnetic personality, he would have to select his American characters from fashionable American boarding-‘houses and hotels, and run the risk of mistaking a mixed cosmopolitan American type for the real thing.

* * * On the other hand a n English novelist with a n ambi-

tion to write an American novel typical of the Middle West or the South, might possibly succeed after a residence in the Middle West or in the South of say ten years, but twenty would be more to the point.

* * * American types are difficult because so many

Americans resemble each other in appearance. There is anaffinity between the people of all the New England states, who are the real Yankees, but I have long known the difference between a Yankee of Vermont and a Yankee of Boston. A true Vermonter is as keen- witted as two Armenians, three Greeks or Bostonians, and four Wall Street stockbrokers. The typical Bostonian is an Englishman melted in the fires of the Revolution and recast in a coat of commercial mail with a fringe of ,metaphysics. The Vermonter, in spite of .being first cousin to the Bostonian, stands miles apart. He towers above like his granite mountains, as solitary as he is cold. He is a bolt of lightning that strikes without the aid of a lightning conductor ; he is like the wind which bloweth where it listeth. The Vermonter is unique among the Yankees. H e delves to the bottom facts of commercial problems while his cousins, the Bostonians, dabble with figures and found new isms. A Vermonter has no more time to give to isms than a young Turk has to give to an old Turk e y. * * *

The Yankees, what with puritanism, and the spoils of territory, and Calvinism turned in like an in-growing nail, and the effects of a rigorous climate, have with few exceptions become fixed and frigid in tempera- ment. Their souls a re frozen, and their own spirits dance a perpetual saraband of greed on ice that is too

thick to let their bodies and money bags go to the bottom. * * *

As for novelists who dream of putting some of the true blue types together, or taking them to pieces psychologically, a mixture something like the following might be of service : primitive tenacity, two ounces ; patience, two ounces; will power, three ounces; assur- ance, six ounces; innate independence, one pound; unconscious cynicism, one pint; the capacity of making dollars freeze to the pocket, one quart ; the power of seeing through to the north-west corner of the day after to-morrow, one bushel measure ; the love of money for money’s ,sake, one barrel ; the power of hoarding money, one hogshead.

* * * When a New Englander of the Vermont type enters

the Pit at New York, it i s like a hungry hyena arising amidst a howling wilderness of famished jackals. That New York is not ruled by the New Englanders is because they are comparatively few in number.

* * * Since my first visit to America, some thirty years

ago, I cannot say that the old familiar types have changed. The Yankee is still the Yankee, the Vir- ginian is still the Virginian, the Irish New Yorker is still the same, Donnybrook and Donegal, with a Cork bottom, hurled into the tents of Tammany, and the Teuton is the same old lover of limberger, ham, sauer- kraut, pilsner and pumpernickel ; the human elements are the same, but there is more mustard and vinegar in the mixed pickles. There is more lifting power in the chow-chow. There may be more salt in the salad, but I am in doubts about the oil. I am not saying that there is less oil, but there is more of the cotton-seed variety, and that is sticky stuff at its best. But that is just the point, it is calculated t o stick and to stay.

* * * At a certain bank here I am told there is a sign on

the door which reads in bold letters: “Smile, keep smiling.” This is the wisdom of the wise Yankee. The advice covers a multitude of thrills, incidents, errors, and admonitions. You smile like a saint while you are going to be fleeced, you smile like a philo- sopher after YOU have been fleeced, and you smile like a Christian Scientist if you have succeeded in fleecing the old Ram, which is the old Adam, which is a Wall Street broker. * * *

The smile is never out of place. Frowns do no man any good. They are wrinkle producers. They cause facial furrows deep enough to hold the seed for a crop of tares and thistles. Therefore, smile and keep on smiling, particularly if you are in New York, for here, of all places in the world, you need your best patent smiles, like the typical prize-fighter, who, after the fifteenth round, “came up to the scratch with a face wreathed in smiles,” although his front teeth were knocked out, his ears bored with holes big enough for Hottentot earrings, and his fifth rib detached from the vertebra. The smile is certainly a most useful and edifying ‘ ‘ article ’ ’ hereabouts.

* * + I t is astounding with what sang-froid the shearers

mingle with the shorn. They are there on Sunday in their seats at Church as if they felt a secret satis- faction in letting the wool of their overcoats brush the backs of their brethen assembled like sheared sheep in a corral. Philosophers wonder by what process of psychological chemistry the thing is done. What is it that keeps the fleecers and the flock on such excellent terms? Perhaps the flock comes to church to give thanks that the s h a r e r s have left them their sheep- tails, a s the Chinamen have their pig-tails, to dangle behind them-sole remnant of the shaven and shorn. But I leave this question to be decided by Yankee metaphysicians who ought to be able to thresh it out among them.

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Unedited Opinions. XI.--Machiavelli and Mill.

Your Mr. S . Verdad seems to have come in for a good deal of criticism lately.

Due mainly, I imagine, to the usual incapacity of people to keep two ideas in their mind at once. For most people, especially if they are merely students and have no acquaintance with affairs, an exclusive political theory is essential. If they admire Machiavelli, for example, they must repudiate the whole of Mill ; if they profess Mill they must abhor Machiavelli. But a practical thinker accepts both as each necessary in his place.

But are not the ideas of Machiavelli and Mill really mutually exclusive?

Not, of course, in their entirety, since each is in one sense fanatical; but there is no more difficulty in ac- cepting the contribution of each to politics than in ac- cepting the services both of a shipbuilder and a navi- gator in making a voyage. Indeed, now I think of it Machiavelli and Mill stand in somewhat that rela- tion.

You mean that Machiavelli prepares the State and Mill shows us how to employ i t?

Yes, for you have noticed that Machiavelli addresses his counsels to princes, that is, to the builders of a ship of state. Mill, on the other hand, addresses him- self to nobody in particular. I do not even remember that he dedicates his political theory to anybody in par- ticular. And naturally so, for his counsels are for all and sundry and not alone, like Machiavelli’s, for the founders of a state. Even so, I fear that Mill’s is the inferior work.

But why, if each is addressed and designed for a particular audience?

Machiavelli has the clearer conception of his aim : it is to build a stable state; a simple object, though the means be subtle. But you will scarcely be able to sum- marise Mill’s purpose in a phrase. In truth, he had no single purpose.

Is it consistent to hold both?

Was not liberty his aim? Maybe it was, but that is only a guess. I should

like in any case to see his treatise rewritten as a sequel and not as a refutation of Machiavelli. Not that Mill actually set out to refute Machiavelli, but it is obvious that the Italian thinker was never properly appreciated by the Englishman. Mill was not as timid as Glad- stone, who point blank refused to have Machiavelli named in his presence; but he was, nevertheless, a suspicious stranger to him always.

You think that a franker acceptance of Machiavelli would have cleared Mill’s mind in regard to his own work ?

If Mill had gratefully accepted the assistance of Machiavelli in building his state, he might the more safely proceed himself to employ it. As it was, I find him perpetually nervous, as it were, about the stability of society. Even his liberty is hedged about by arbitrary restrictions and safeguards as if he were not sure that he was entitled to advocate liberty at all. Suppose, however, that he could have admitted Machiavellism as a necessary factor of the state his fears for liberty would have been fewer, and his course clearer.

You imply, do you not, the simultaneous activity of Machiavelli with Mill in a state?

Precisely, for each is strictly fanatical without the Machiavelli alone would create, let us say, a

stable state, but with what object, to what end? By what principle is its stability to be measured; what, in short, is a stable state for? Without an answer to that question, Machiavelli and all his princes are merely ants

Certainly I do.

other.

building without reason, consolidating society from mere instinct. Mill, on the other hand, without Machiavelli can always be pulled up by the question : How is your state going to endure if you permit so much personal liberty; will your counsels not end in anarchy, the disestablishment of all settled and con- tinuous authority? But if Machiavelli and Mill join hands, they can each work together and each at his own task. Between them a state may remain stable while, nevertheless, perpetually expanding, secure though progressing.

You suggested a moment ago that Mill’s theory was obscure : in what respect exactly?

In respect of object or purpose. I do not regard any political doctrine as complete that does not rest on a discoverable and, if possible, stated philosophical con- ception. Mill, it is clear, never enunciated any real philosophical principle a t all. If asked why he wanted a strong state, Machiavelli would doubtless have re- plied : To increase the glory of princes. That was not an adequate reason, but it was concrete and particular. But suppose one asked Mill why he thought liberty a fine thing, what would be his reply? Again, I say, Mill would have had no single answer.

But have you an answer to the question? An answer, certainly; though I would not maintain

that it is the answer. ’But perhaps the answer of any- thing is impossible. An answer is all we can obtain. I should reply in regard to the idea of liberty that liberty is essential to variety and variety to progress. The utmost liberty compatible with the stability of the organism is, therefore, essential if it is even to main- tain itself, let alone increase its hold, in a world that is constantly changing.

That is very wel l fo r a general statement, but how does it particularise ?

Simply enough, I think. The state, it may be said,. exists solely to allow the greatest possible variety of in-- dividuals. Variety is itself a hopeful condition and a condition precedent to progress. Once constructed therefore, by a Machiavelli a state must be taken in hand by a Mill to extract from it all that is possible. Meanwhile the Machiavelli must continue to maintain the form.

The functions, however, appear to be somewhat contrary .

Undoubtedly, and here is where the mistakes of the half-minded arise. Few Machiavellians ever realise that without the Millites they are meaningless: few Millites realise that without Machiavellians they are anarchic. Their co-operation is as necessary as that of life and form; their opposition is materially indispen- sable. This being the case, may we not ask of philoso- phers, a t any rate, a recognition of the fact, and not only a toleration, but a welcome for each factor?

Of philosophers perhaps, but of political partisans ? Never of them, since they are what I call the half-

minded. Even they, however, may sometimes be made to perceive that there is a truth though they may be unable to grasp it. Would an analogy be of any use, do you think?

You might try it. The comparison of a state to a ship is familiar in the

phrase, ship of state. But until this instant I had no idea how accurate it is. For a ship of state is, indeed, a vessel in which a people may cross in safety the stormy waters that lie between two ports. In other words, a state is constructed for a purpose, and that purpose is the human one of satisfying a desire to navigate the world of being. But you will observe that the vessel must not only be built, but it must carry carpenters to repair it as well as navigators to control and direct it. Well, I would compare Machia- velli to the builders and carpenters and Mill to the sailing crew. W e who are the passengers may, there- fore, employ both for our various purposes, neither throwing the one or the other. overboard however each appears to get in the other’s way. But to give either exclusive command of the ship would be fatal.

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The Maids’ Comedy: An Appreciation.

By Alfred E. Randall.

THE test of Nietzsche, applied to this story, approves it as a work of art. I t is impossible to read it with- out being refreshed. In a n age when the terms of art are misapplied to the products of industry, it is difficult to describe it in fitting words. I can only resume the ancient use of words, and speak of its daring, its originality, its high humour, its beauty; and refer in passing to the little lyrics that Purcell would nave loved. I t has all these qualities, and more. The symbolists will find interpretations of its meaning, arguing that a work of art cannot possibly mean what it says. The optimist will have his hope increased, and his faith in the eternal goodness of things strengthened; and the pessimist will doubt that it is better to die. There is hope in the book because there is perception, and the vista centres on a purpose that may be realised. Of that purpose I need not speak. The initiated know it, and the uninitiated who fail of understanding the book cannot be instructed. A work of ar t is always a mystery, and powerful behind its seeming.

I have mentioned its daring : its explicit reference to "Don Quixote de la Mancha” justifies me. To brave comparison with the great, to assume equality with what is miscalled one of the world’s greatest romanoes, is either the impudence of a n imitator or the fine courage of a n original artist. If we know the specific difference between the books, we can judge which of these qualities is to be attributed to the author of “ The Maids’ Comedy.’’ Cervantes wrote as a romantic who had collided with reality. His comedy was satire; for disappointment made his humour harsh, and his laughter hard in the throat. Beauty had vanished from before his eyes, and he saw man as a feeding, working, breeding animal, without high endeavour or a purpose of hope; and he made “Don Quixote ” mad. In his setting, Sancho Panza was ad- mirable, and Don Quixote was a tiresome old fool who knows neither his own powers nor the forces arrayed against him. Like the Duchesse d’Angoulême, he wished to revive an ancient order, an etiquette of chivalry that had no right to exist apart from its natural exponents and creators. Cervantes was forced to the melancholy oonclusion that romance, in the person of Don Quixote, had died a natural death. . Sir Roderigo the Swart is not the hero of “The Maids’ Comedy.’’ He, too, is a monster with reverted eyes, repeating the mistakes of his prototype even in his makeshift armour. If I were a symbolist, I should write of Sir Roderigo as the type of the Past, the Professor as the representative of the Present, and the Knight of the Tassel as the figure of the Future. I t is not my business now to expound in this fashion. The author of “The Maids’ Comedy’’ is a realist who has risen to romance. The fat woman with the snake’s head, Mrs. Myburgh, Boongaier, Rogers, even Dota Filjee, are creatures of the earth commonly seen by artists. Sir Roderigo, the Professor, the lovely lad, the Knight of the Tassel, and the Lady Dorothea are real and romantic. There is magic in them. In the Professor, it is still because it is stifled; in Sir Roderigo, it is eruptive and vident because it is inappropriate. But with what charm do the Knight of the Tassel and the Lady Dorothea move in the tale! And if the Lady Dorothea returns to the Inn of the Stormberg Pass, it is because her work is done. The child of the past has inspired its spirit into the successor, and purpose informs the lad and guides his resolution. The Past and the Future meet and mingle in the Present till

separated by Time, and the way of departure is directed by the impulse. I have fallen into the trap of sym- bolism, but the daring of the author is demonstrated ; and “ Don Quixote ” is seen to be the starting place, not the goal, of “The Maids’ Comedy.’’

I t is original, not merely because it is the first sign of a belated Renaissance, but because it must give birth to new works on the same level. So many romantics in this age are afraid of reality, cannot see its proper proportions, and waste their time in reproducing its obvious features. But here is a story without a love affair, that concludes with no conventional clanging of church bells. If I may speak, in the slang of the symbolists, of the “message” of this book, I must say that it tells artists that there is still something to be done. Beauty is not yet domiciled, nor ancillary to our art. Contempt has become a convention, and to show people what they are is not the work of art. “The Maids’ Comedy” opens out a prospect of what we may be; and those who can write of what they want as soon as they dare to be out of the fashion will be impelled and inspired to do so by this tale. I t con- cludes no period, as “Don Quixote” did : it is no swan-song of the Ideal: it is a cry to the author’s kin to come forth from the chamber and resume the wonted habit of artists.

Humour, like beauty, is not well demonstrated by quotation of or reference to certain passages; it is spirit as revealed in setting and atmosphere. I t determines juxtaposition, and suspires through the characters ; surrounding everything with loving-kindness. The ridicule of Rogers, the scorn of the remittance man, the capture of the Knight of the Tassel, the patent absur- dity of the combats with Sir Roderigo, make none of the characters contemptible: blast none of them into nothingness. * Humour illuminates and reveals what satire strikes and slays. The artist, like Nature, super- sedes the existing types not by eliminating them, but by introducing a newer one. The desert is for the saint, the hill-top for the sage; but the thronged high- road is the artist’s way, and he arranges the crowd in an orderly procession, and puts a leader a t its head. Tragedy climbs by climax to a crisis, and collapses into catastrophe. But Comedy, of which the spirit is Humour, keeps a more level way; and the crowd disperses a t the journey’s end, each individual well satisfied with himself and the part he has played. We have had lovely lads who believed in beauty presented to us in fiction before; but not, as I remember, one practical enough to learn architecture so that he might realise his ideal. And if Art is not dead in England, if all the lovely lads of artists have not emigrated to South Africa, this kindly presentation of their purpose must renew their hope and quicken their aspiration, and send them once more on the Crusade of Beauty.

I t is difficult, too, to exemplify Beauty, but there are passages in this story that may be called perfect in idyllic expression. The first chapter, from the Winter of the Wind to the forth-going of the Distressed Damsels, is one example. Chapter eight, in which the ancient idol is set on its base again, is another; and the description of Dorothea’s enchanted sleep beneath the aloe tree is full of music and charm. I have no space to quote, and the story was so recently printed in these pages that it should be unnecessary. But the discerning reader, like the sympathetic critic, will dis- cover for himself passages that chime on the ear, and haunt the memory with suggestion of reminiscence; for beauty is always familiar to the artist.

I do not intend to appraise this work in relation to what are called the master-pieces. Such appraisal is, I think, unnecessary, and in this case would certainly be premature. An artist only asks that a work of art should justify its existence by its beauty, its perception, or its impulse; and “The Maids’ Comedy” has all these qualities. I t was conceived of the classic spirit, and written in the classic style; language is used with remarkable skill, and it has propriety, to use the old word, in its use of sound, and rhythm, and figures of speech. The story is emphatically literature, and I offer it a hearty welcome.

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The Patriot. By W. L. George.

THE train pulled out of the Gare du Nord with the extreme slowness of a heavy express. For some seconds the long black curve undulated quicker and quicker past the groups on the platform. These were young Frenchmen assembled to give a send-off to one of their fellows bound for England, noisy women and girls who waved their handkerchiefs to potential waiters in gay ties, and, here and there, silent straight figures in tweeds, male and female, but much alike, who at most raised an undemonstrative hand. The train gathered momentum, disappeared with a roar under the iron bridge.

The track was old-fashioned and worn-a cause of much jolting. I t seemed at times to lift the train an inch off the metals. A woman, seated with her back to the engine in a first-class compartment, dropped on her knees an illustrated English paper. A pallor had come over her face, which struck one as peculiar owing to its swollen whiteness; the eyes, too, one remembered, for their lids were red, and a purple aura zoned them with pain. Just then they were closed, and there was aban- donment in every line of the shapeless figure. The woman wore a long travelling coat of green tweed, which covered her down to the ankles. But for an occasional twitch of the lips she might have been thought asleep.

Her companions were two, one of them a bulky Frenchman, very red and hot in his frock coat and top hat, with tight boots and tight trousers, and reddish gloves which hurt his wrists.

At times he looked a t the somnolent figure with in- quisitiveness in his large brown eyes, then worried his black moustache or rapidly turned over the pages of “Le Rire.” At times, too, as he mopped his forehead, he stole a look at the lady’s escort, a look of interest t o which there was no response. The woman’s com- panion was obviously English, tall, very thin, with a long brown face, grey eyes, and well-brushed hair which was getting scanty at the temples. His crossed legs displayed the knees through the grey tweed. He seemed, as he critically examined the “New York Herald,” bored, aloof. This man’s mouth was the man -a th in hard little mouth which seldom opened, and Then showed good white teeth. Even without the clues afforded by his leanness, his yeIlowness, by the worn guncase in the rack behind which were piled some golf clubs, he could unmistakably have been classed as an English officer, probably Indian Army; besides, there was a whiteness about the woman, presumably his wife, a dry, hot-house whiteness, a lack of zest, all the lan- guor of the European who has learnt weariness in the East.

The woman moved uneasily, opened her eyes, large blue eyes which, together with her brown hair, re- deemed a little lier puffed-out cheeks. The Frenchman looked at her again, more interestedly, avoiding the blue eyes; a faint sound escaped her and he looked at her more critically. The Englishman turned to the middle page of his newspaper.

The train rattled and bumped, roaring through tun- nels, then flying through the cuttings with a swish. A groan came from the lips of the woman, who was now pa le as marble. The Frenchman made a gesture with his hand and, as he opened his mouth to speak, the EngIishman looked up. An expression of concern crossed his face.

“ I say, Molly . . . . are you all right?” he asked nervously. There was no response. The woman’s head was thrown back on the cushion; a few beads of perspiration appeared on her forehead.

“ Madame est indisposée?” asked the Frenchman, shifting in his seat. The Englishman got up and went t o sit by the woman’s side.

“What’s wrong? Shall I open the window?” He made as if to take the woman’s hand, then hesitated and refrained.

“ No, no,” she murmured, without opening her eyes, “leave me alone, Dick; I’ll be all right in, a minute.”

The Englishman looked at her as if puzzled as to what to do, then angrily a t the Frenchman. The latter offered him a small flask which, after a second’s hesita- tion, he took and uncorked. The Frenchman talked quickly, gesticulating, but the Englishman took hardly any notice of him. He could barely understand him, but merely catch the word “médecin,” which he knew to mean “doctor.” His mouth had set into a snarl of annoyance.

“ Médecin,” shouted the Frenchman, “ peraps in ze train. ”

The Englishman looked at him interrogatively, then understood and nodded. The Frenchman vanished into the corridor. The woman groaned again, caught at the seat with both hands.

“ Poor old girl,” said the Englishman. His voice was kinder now they were alone. “There, lie down. Let me put the rug under your head.”

The woman groaned. “Oh, no, no, don’t touch me.” But she allowed her-

self to be laid on her back on the seat. Her eyes were closed once more; perspiration had soaked stray wisps of hair on her temples.

“Dick,” she said suddenly, “ I can’t go on . . . . I can’t bear it. Oh, . . . . Dick, you-must put me out a t Amiens.”

“ Nonsense,” said the man; “ you’ll be all right. It’ll be over soon. There, cheer up; you know Murray said it wouldn’t be for a month.”

The woman’s head rolled from side to side. “ I can’t, I c a n ’ t she moaned. Tears of weakness

rolled slowly down her face. The Englishman watched her silently, helplessly. H e

was roused by the return of the Frenchman, red, ex- cited, mopping his face. He was followed by a short little man with a black pointed beard and spectacles. The doctor unceremoniously pushed past him into the compartment, leant over the woman. Her shapeless form was heaving. At once he raised his head.

“ You will have to descend at Amiens, monsieur,” he said.

The Englishman looked at him amazed. “ Oh, quite impossible,” he said sharply. “ I t is necessary, absolutely necessary,” repeated the

doctor. His eyes flashed behind the spectacles. “Why?’ asked the Englishman, angrily. He was

almost beside himself with shame a t this publicity. The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “I1 n’est que

temps,” he remarked t o the Frenchman. “Look here, said the Englishman, “she shall not

go off at Amiens. Understand? We must get to England. ”

The men argued, the sharp, stilted English of the doctor bIending queerly with the soldier’s curt ejacula- tions and the Frenchman’s babble. The woman on the seat now groaned at every jolt. At last the train stopped at Amiens.

“ Now, quick, monsieur,” cried the doctor; “ you have six minutes.”

“ N o . Can’t you understand English? She shan’t go off. ”

“ I1 est fou,” shrieked the Frenchman. “Voyons, monsieur. . . .” pleaded the doctor. The argument grew more violent; a little crowd

began to gather in the corridor. All through the Englishman’s “ No, no,” rang obstinately. Then more tumult, shouts outside . . . .

“ E n voiture, en voiture . . . ” The train began to vibrate, to move, gained momen-

tum, pulled out of Amiens station. Then, for two hours, the men struggled to ease the woman., shifting her, moistening her hands and forehead with eau de cologne, placing bags, rugs, under her heels. The Frenchman babbled unceasingly, offering remedies, protesting. At times the argument began once more, the doctor almost threatening, the Frenchman pleading with tears in his voice,

“No, no, no,” said the Englishman, in queer, savage tones. At last Calais, the turmoil of passengers in the corridor.

“I beg you, monsieur,” cried the doctor, “descend.” The Englishman seemed not to hear him. Careless

323

of his gun-case and clubs he seized the woman in his arms and lifted her up. As he staggered through the corridor she gave a few piteous cries, .a long wailing scream when he jumped on the platform. The doctor, the Frenchman, a crowd of passengers were following them. They passed under the frightened eyes of groups which parted to make way for the couple, this pallid man, whose every muscle seemed strained to breaking point, this woman,. grey-faced, with a twisted mouth and brown hair which fell in heavy wet masses on her left shoulder.

Then the long agony of the journey when the woman lay groaning in a private cabin with the French doctor still by her side. As the coast of England came into sight a piercing cry burst from her, then scream after scream. The doctor unsteadily wiped his forehead and bent over her, while the Englishman clenched his hands and looked out of the window towards the chalk cliffs crowned by the greenness of the downs. The paroxysm passed. But again, as the Englishman staggered up the gangway, clasping his horrible tortured burden, scream after scream was rent from it. The woman swayed limply as a wet cloth, then threw up her arms, her wild hands clutching at the air.

Half an hour. later the Englishman sat on a trunk, alone, outside the waiting room, where the woman had been laid. His head was bowed low; his eyes were fixed on the ground, but he did not move : he seemed stupe- fied, broken. His hands closed convulsively as, at times, a cry reached his ears. Some distance away a few travellers watched him, morbidly fascinated by this figure of tragedy. Then, at last, a great cry, long and echoing, rang through the awful room. Slowly, mechanically, the Englishman put up his hands and stopped his ears.

The French doctor stood before him, in his shirt sleeves, his face drawn and blotched with angry red. He walked towards the Englishman with the quick step of some ridiculous fowl, but the expression on his face, the horror, the rage of it, redeemed him.

“ Assassin,” he whispered, savagely, “ your wife is dying. ”

The Englishman looked at him vacantly as if he had not heard him; he struggled to regain his power of speech.

“ I s it a boy or a girl? ” he asked dully. “ A boy,” faltered the doctor, his jaw dropping with

surprise. The Englishman’s head sank down once more. Then

his voice came faint and far away. “Thank God,” he said, “he’s born on British soil.”

The door opened.

The Grey. By Maxim Gorki.

THE earth is the scene of a struggle between the Black and the Red.

The strength of the Black is in its quenchless thirst for reigning over Man. Cruel, wicked, and mean, it has spread over the world its weighty wings and cast the whole globe in the cold shadow of terror. I t wants mankind to serve it, it alone, and, oppressing the universe by means of iron, of gold, and of falsehood, it invokes God, with the sole object that the supreme Being shall confirm its dark power over Man.

I t says coldly :-‘‘ Everything is for me ! I am the strength, and, therefore, the soul and reason of life. I am master of all. He who is against me is against life-he is a criminal.”

The strength of the Red is in its ardent desire to see life free, rational, beautiful. Its influence works incessantly, breaks and dissipates the darkness of life, thanks to the transcendent ray of beauty, to the menac- ing glow of truth, to the soft light of love. Everywhere ,the idea of the Red has kindled the powerful torch of liberty; fervent and joyous, it spreads over our dark, blind earth the great dream of universal happiness.

I t says :-“ Everything is for all ! All are equal. In the heart of each human being is hidden a world of

(Translated by David Weinstein.)

beauty. Man must not be mutilated, transformed into the foolish instrument of a blind force. No one must be subdued, no one has the right to be submissive. Authority for authority’s sake is a crime.”

And it is of this struggle of the radiant Knight of Truth and the black Monster of Tyranny that life is made up, it is this that gives life its beauty and its tor- ments, its poetry and pathos.

Between the Black and the Red, the monotonous and niggardly Grey steps in, timid and perplexed.

I t likes only the existence that is lukewarm, an existence which is cosy and smug; and for that luxury i t is prepared to sell its soul, as a hungry girl sells her faded body on the streets. I t is at all times ready to be enslaved if only it can be assured of peace and plenty. For it life is a mirror wherein it can only see itself. I ts species are a long-lived race, for they possess all the characteristics of the parasite. Be i t an animal or a man, an idiot or a genius, who nourishes it, matters little. I ts soul is the throne of that slimy toad called Banality, its heart is the receptacle of cowardly pru- dence. I t longs to possess much and is not inclined to exert itself, which accounts for its duplicity and cunning.

When the Black conquers in the struggle for power, the Grey excites the Red with precaution :- “ Just see how Reaction is spreading ! ” When the Knight of Justice and Liberty gets the

“ Take care, Anarchy is rising ! ” Its idol is always the same :- “ Order, for me! ”- Even when it is at the price of spiritual death to the

entire land! When it feels that the Black is tired of combat, it

intervenes in the quarrel of the Red and Black, and the adversaries are duped by it-always !

I t says to the Black in a tone of respectful precau- tion :-- “ Of course, men are beasts, they require a shep-

herd; but it seems to me that it is time the pastures were enlarged. If they were given a little more of what they already have, they would still have less than they want. That will quiet them and will disarm the Red, whose strength lies in the discontent of the masses.

I t is allowed, and it organises for itself a lukewarm existence, an existence that is cosy and smug.

When it mingles with the Grey, the Black loses for a while its appearance of cruelty, but becomes more bestial and common-place. The Red gives forth still: more lustrous flames.

Then the Grey addresses the Red with a magisterial air :- “ Of course, the time has come when the Ideal and

the Real must be blended, but it is impossible to satisfy everybody a t once ! A little to-day, a little to-morrow, and in the end mankind will get all it desires. Arith- metic is the wisdom of the sage. The Black will yield if we act with prudence. Leave it to me, and I will speak to it properly.”

And whether it be allowed to or not, i t creates for itself a lukewarm existence, an existence that is cosy and smug.

The Red weakens, the Black displays its wings of tyranny in all their amplitude, life darkens, life gasps slowly. The Grey basks in happiness, peace. Its aim is but to sell and betray, it is capable of all things save to act with loyalty and honesty, and it is never beautiful.

This little double-souled vermin invariably takes up the centre between two extremes, which it prevents, By its covetous concern, from attaining its respective goal, be it absurd or ideal. In thus usurping the middle, the Grey mixes hideously the two fundamental colours of life into a dismal, dirty, weary tint.

The Grey keeps back the death of the past, it is the obstacle to the blossoming of that which is living. I t is this that is the eternal enemy of all that is courageous and light.

upper hand, the Grey whispers to the Black :-

Allow me to assist you in the matter-”

324

Books and Persons in London and Paris.

By Jacob Tonson. A PRETTY general realisation of the extremely high quality of “ The New Machiavelli” has reduced almost to silence the ignoble tittle-tattle that accompanied its serial publication in “ The English Review.” I t is years since a novel gave rise to so much offensive and ridiculous chatter before being issued as a book. When the chatter began, dozens of people who would no more dream of paying four and sixpence for a new novel that happened to be literature than they would dream of pay- ing four and sixpence for a cigar, sent down to the offices of the “ English Review” for complete sets of back numbers a t half-a-crown a number, so that they could rummage without a moment’s delay among the earlier chapters in search of tit-bits according to their singular appetite. Such was the London which calls itself literary and political ! ! A spectacle to encourage cynicism! Rumour had a wonderful time. I t was stated that not only the libraries but the booksellers also would decline to handle “ The New Machiavelli.” The reasons for this prophesied ostracism were perhaps vague, but they were understood to be broad-based upon the unprecedented audacity of the novel. And really in this exciting year, with Sir Percy Bunting in charge of the national sense of decency, and Mr. W. T. Stead still gloating after twenty-five years over his success in keeping Sir Charles Dilke out of office-you never can tell what may happen !

However, it is all over now. * * *

“The New Machiavelli” has been received with the respect and with the en- thusiasm which its tremendous qualities deserve. I t is a great success. And the reviews have on the whole been generous. I t was perhaps not to be expected that certain Radical dailies should swallow the entire violent dose of the book without kicking up a fuss; but, indeed, Mr. Scott James, in the “ Daily News,” ought to know better than to go running about after autobiography in fiction. The human nose was not designed by an all- merciful providence for this purpose. Mr. Scott James has undoubted gifts as a critic, and his temperament is sympathetic; and the men most capable of appreciating him, and whose appreciation he would probably like to retain, would esteem him even more highly if he could get into his head the simple fact that a novel is a novel. I have suffered myself from this very provincial mania for chemically testing novels for traces of autobio- graphy. There are some critics of fiction who talk about autobiography in the tone of a doctor who has found arsenic in the stomach a t a post-mortem inquiry. The truth is that whenever a scene in a novel is really convincing, a certain type of critical and uncreative mind will infallibly mutter in accents of pain, “ Auto- biography! ” When I was discussing this topic the other day a novelist not inferior to Mr. Wells sud- denly exclaimed : “ I say ! supposing we did write autobiography ! ” . . . Yes, if we did, what a celestial rumpus there would be ! * * *

The carping at “ The New Machiavelli ” is naught. For myself I anticipated for it a vast deal more carping than it has in fact occasioned. And I am very content to observe a marked increase of generosity in the recep- tion of Mr. Wells’s work. To me the welcome accorded to his best books has always seemed to lack spontaneity, to be characterised by a mean reluctance. And yet if there is a novelist writing to-day who by generosity has deserved generosity, that novelist is H. G. Wells. As- tounding width of observation ; a marvellously true per- spective ; an extraordinary grasp of the real significance of innumerable phenomena utterly diverse ; profound emotional power ; dazzling verbal skill ; these are quali- ties which Mr. Wells indubitably has. But the qualities which consecrate these other qualities are his priceless and total sincerity, and the splendid human generosity

which colours that sincerity. What above all else we want in this island of intellectual dishonesty is some one who will tell us the truth “ and chance it.” H. G. Wells is pre-eminently that man. H e might have told. us the truth with cynicism; he might have told i t meanly; he might have told it tediously-and he would still have been invaluable. But it does just happen that he has combined a disconcerting and entrancing can- dour with a warmth of generosity towards mankind and an inspiring faith in mankind such as no other living writer, not even the most sentimental, has surpassed. And yet in the immediate past we have heard journalists, pronouncing coldly : “ This thing is not so bad.” And we have heard journalists asserting in tones of shocked reprehension : “ This thing is not free from faults ! ” W h o the deuce said it was free from faults? But where in fiction ancient or modern will you find another philosophical picture of a whole epoch and society as brilliant and as honest as “ The New Machiavelli ” ? Well, I will tell you where you will find it. You will find i t in “Tono-Bungay.” H. G. Wells is a bit of sheer luck for England. Some countries don’t know their luck. And as I do not believe that England is worse than another, I will say that no country knows its luck. However, as regards this particular bit, there are now some clear signs of a growing perception.

* * *

The social and political questions raised in “ The New Machiavelli ” might be discussed at length with great advantage. But this province is not mine. Nor could the rightness or the wrongness of the hero’s views and acts affect the artistic value of the novel. On purely artistic grounds the novel might be criticised in several ways unfavourably. But in my opinion it has only one fault that to any appreciable extent impairs its artistic worth. The politically-creative part, as distinguished from the politically-shatter- ing part, is not convincing. The hero’s change of party and his popular success with the policy of the endowment of motherhood are indeed strangely unconvincing-inconceivable to commonsense. Here the author’s hand has trembled, and his persuasive power forsaken him. Happily he recaptured it for the final catastrophe, which is absolutely magnificent, a masterpiece of unforced poignant tragedy and unsenti- mental tenderness.

LONDON. There’s magic in London:

It glints in the air; It flashes its signals

Of joy and despair.

There’s labour in London; O , London is live!

There’s no place like London, It’s such a great hive.

But when I’m in London, I seldom am glad:

There’s sorrow in London ; O, London’s so sad!

There’s magic in London; O, London is grand!

I ne’er can forget her, On sea or on land.

E. H. VISIAK.

SCHOOLBOY. Schoolboy, O, schoolboy, so frolic and fine, Sure you have drunk of miraculous wine! For what can you see in the wide world so grey To make you sing merrily all the long day?

Schoolboy, O, schoolboy, your vision so bright, Is dazzled and blind with excess of delight : Yet not for the riches on land and on sea Would I your detestable oculist be !

E. H- VISIAK.

325

Theology .-I. By M. B. Oxon.

I ENTIRELY agree with all that Prof. Dobbs and his editor have said in your columns. Although I fully realise the difficulty and perhaps the impossibility of arriving at the knowledge required, yet I am going to venture t o make some suggestions on the subject.

A more or less definite thesis, however imperfect its conception or treatment may be, serves at any rate to delimitate roughly a field for controversy, and from con- troversy-carried on without animus and with a desire t o clear ground rather than to raise obstructions-good may result. The scheme which I wish to propose as being more nearly that of the ancients than are the various schemes of the world at present held as ortho- dox, is the outcome of a good many years of desultory but varied reading. Although gratefully recognising my indebtedness to others for nearly all I have to say in these articles, I shall for the present at any rate give but few references to authors, and this for various reasons. A very important one is that to do so would entail the rereading- pencil in hand-of all that I have read, and even then the passage which suggested any given idea might be found on examination to have aimed a t suggesting quite a different one. Further, as we are here dealing but little with “ facts,” so called, the weight of “ autho- rity ” is not an unmixed advantage. The question of what the ancients thought, which is what we are here discussing, is not to be decided by authority but by whether the proposed values satisfy the equation.

As I have said, the view put forward in these papers is that to which my reading has led me -- I give no guarantee with it. This is an age of guarantee mad- ness-guarantee an item of news absolutely correct, a patent medicine infallible, or an entire stock below cost price, and people who should know better will tumble over one another to surrender their judgment to an unknown person whose statements are his own con- demnation. The object of these articles will have been entirely frustrated if anyone believes them for any “ better ” reason than that the ideas appeal to him. This is not really such a foolish remark as it may at first appear. A little consideration must show us that at bottom all belief or choice of opinion is a personal one; when we say that it is based on authority we are really behaving as ostriches. For we have ourselves selected the authorities in whom we will trust. The only exception-and this but a partial one-is in the case where, for religious or other reasons, we look on ourselves as “ miserable worms,” and as such un- worthy of an opinion. Worms we are-on the cosmic scale-or rather caterpillars or maggots-and mankind as a whole is engaged in the various pursuits of spin- ning a cocoon, turning into a pupa (otherwise called a n “ imago ”), and eating his way out to be a butter- fly.

The misunderstanding of authority arises from the fact that we confuse the outer-may we say communal world?-with the inner, in which there is no one but Us and our God. In the com- munal world authority is necessary; no one but a fool would expect to escape the authority of a railway time-table. But in the inside world “ we are what we are,” and only by acting it do we become anything else. So these views, in so far as they apply to t h e standpoint of the ancients, are subject to authority, but only the authority of “ facts.” The criterion is whether they fit the facts; the proof of this that the facts do not require undue manipulation. But the question which may arise for each reader as to how far this scheme does represent the universe-although it is a point which I am leaving entirely aside, for reasons which to anyone who understands the last few paragraphs must be obvious-is one which cannot be settled by authority, as we shall see in greater detail later on.

The mistake lies in the word miserable.

I should like at the outset to try and disarm some criti- cism by saying that, as the result of the views I wish to suggest, my inclination is to believe the dogmas of modern religions more fully than many of their nominal adherents. My understanding of them may be different, and the comparative values which I give to them not those generally accepted, but if it can be shown that another estimation than mine satisfies the conditions better, it is all that I ask.

A basal difficulty in treating of such matters is the variable, and often indefinite, meanings conveyed by different words in different contexts and to different persons. For this reason, as well as another which will appear later, I shall make free use of ana- logies and what I would call physical diagrams. I trust that my readers will on such occasions believe that the parables are really intended to convey a meaning which could not have been more easily conveyed with any certainty, by a simple statement.

I think it was Poincaré who drew attention to the fact that although we speak of the space in which we live as a homogeneous conception, yet it can without much difficulty be dissected up into the spaces due to our sense of sight, hearing, touch, etc. By the blend- ing of these partial sensations, the fuller conception has unconsciously been arrived at. My contention is that the same is true in the case of the universe, and that the reason we do not understand i t or each other when talking about it-the different religions, both ancient and modern-is that we have each chosen one “ sense organ,” as it were, with which to contact it.

I t may be apparent by now that the title of this paper is not used exactly in its ordinary meaning. Mythology or cosmology might be considered better names. Cos- mology I would accept, as will be seen in a moment. But the word mythology has acquired a connotation perhaps more misleading than theology. From being the Science of Myth, that is Folklore, it has become applied as an adjective to the subjects of the myths, with a meaning of nonexistent, much as Theology has, in the opposite direction, become applied, and (except for scoffers), with a meaning of actual, to some of the driest bones of academic discussion.

I suggest, then, that, on the analogy of what we know of space, there is a chance of getting a wider understanding of the universe by trying to combine different ways of considering it. The two which I think we have closest to hand may be described by the words theological and cosmological, but for most readers the interdependence of the two ideas may not be self- obvious, though it apparently was so to the ancients. But, as the words do not exactly express my meaning, I will avoid mistakes by calling them anthropocentric and cosmocentric.

This is not a metaphysical controversy as to whether or not the world and its contents exist as we know them apart from our consciousness. I should like here to take as a statement, and not only as a pious and figurative remark, the words “ in Whom we live and move and have our being.” There are many phrases apparently quite as figurative which are accepted as statements of facts, and a mere denial of this one will not serve to put it out of court. The scriptures of all religions say that God created the world, and for the religious this must suffice. The others I must beg for the present occasion to accept my statement that it seems to me less complicated to believe that there is something which intervenes between me and the sky when I come indoors than to explain my observations otherwise.

Perhaps a diagram may make the relation between theology and cosmology more clear. If we look at a clock we may, and the ordinary man does, think that the most important part is the hands, or the bell, or the alarum, and that the most important fact about them is that they should point to the right time. Inside he sees “ wheels.” From the mechanical point of view, the part of importance is the pendulum, to which all the rest of the clock is an appendage. Except for a certain purpose-- videlicet, to catch the train-it is immaterial what time

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the hands show, or whether the clock actually “ keeps time.” As long as the pendulum always beats equal intervals, all the rest can be allowed for. Inside there are wheels, but more interesting than the wheels them- selves are the points at which they touch, because it is there that the invisible energy is for an instant recognisable as it passes from one to the other. And this clock is our universe as viewed by the ancients. Whether it is also a true picture of the universe does not for the moment interest us.

And these are the two ways of looking at it. The anthropocentric view regards the universe as having a purpose -- one had almost said a utilitarian purpose-the judge of the utility being man. The sun sends forth its heat to make the earth habitable. Does man send forth his heat to make something else habit- able? The earth goes round the sun-no one thinks why-but incidentally it serves to mark the seasons and days and years for man. This universe is com- posed of entities, and here we have to note that what is “ visible ” from this point of view in the universe is just what was “ invisible ” in the clock. We do not see the wheels, but the transferences of energy-and these are what we call entities, whether they be gods, men, worlds, or trees. “ Matter,” “ consciousness,” and all the other

‘‘ things ” are (as Reynolds has suggested for matter, but not, I think, in the way in which he has suggested the points of discontinuity, friction, stress, lack of har- mony, between the (‘wheels. ” W e are only conscious of discontinuities. In “ matter ” we only recognise differences; a drop of water is lost as soon as it drops into a puddle. With consciousness we only recognise change of intensity of stimuli.

I t may be asked why we do not call these two points of view the religious and the scientific instead of anthropocentric and cosmocentric, and the reason is interesting. I t is that neither religion nor science occupies either of these posi- tions. One of them may in some matters incline more towards one than the other, but, taking the average, they are almost undifferentiable, and on the neutral point between the two positions. This is one reason that the struggle between them is so fierce and the reconciliation but superficial. Were they further separated there would be no question of a compromise on details nor of disagreement on essentials. They are both anthropocentric. Their “ anthropomorphism ” is complete. Man is a forked radish. Their centres are only as far distant from each other as are brain and heart in their bodies. I am here, of course, only speak- ing of the ( ( orthodox,” both in religion and science. By orthodox I do not so much mean adhering to “ well- founded dogma ”-conformity--as adhering to the ‘‘ anthropomorphic ” standpoint. In religion the adventurous are beginning to realise that man is not only a forked radish-that “ soul and spirit ” is not only an “ abracadabra.” In like manner the leading scientific intellects recognise that “ energy is a more important thing than matter, but the ordinary man, though he does use the new phrase-that “ matter is a mode of energy ”-uses it still much as the religionist uses the word soul. Although “ ether is modified in structure ” where included in matter, yet the concep- tion of a universe in which matter only marks the inter- ference between “ spheres of energy ” is still only for the few.

The controversy of “ Appearance versus Reality ” has really entered on a new phase with the modern advances of science. I would suggest that the two- pointed view which I am advocating leads to a classifi- cation of ideas concerning the question of Reality. Even if it really leaves the fundamental question untouched. No doubt a t bottom Reality is a meaningless word in the same sense that Infinity is a meaningless word. The root of Reality lies beyond our ken. The fact that this scheme permits of a “ grading ” of appearances should prevent much idle talk, removing as it does the point of combat to the more fundamental question of the Reality, or otherwise, of the scheme as a whole, and

permitting of agreement on details, subject to the acceptation of the scheme. The root idea which it emphasises is the solidarity of the universe and the fortuitousness of the relations between subject and object on which depend all our conceptions of things. All our different conceptions of the universe are, in fact, the results of different points of view, of different per- spectives, and I am maintaining that by an understand- ing use of these different perspectives or ‘( sections ’’ i t is possible, if not to construct an ideal, a t any rate to verify, corroborate, and relate the different views, more or less complete, which have been handed down to us in the scriptures of different religions which have had their inspiration from superhuman sources, as, too, the results of experimental (as differentiated from theoretical) science, which are, in fact, the direct answers of Nature to our questions.

Letters to an Unborn Child. V.

MY DEAR CHILD,-I am becoming bewildered. I hardly know whether I am on my head or my heels. Truth, we know, is stranger than fiction, but it is not so well- ordered ; fiction might well be described as truth articu- lated by art. I thought that you were a reality, and that these letters were a genuine attempt to prevent a real catastrophe. But the progress of events puzzles me. Things happen just as they should do in a tale. Think for one moment, and you will be convinced that the events are the synopsis of a story rather than a series of actual occurrences. What madness in the idea of communicating with you through THE NEW AGE! Yet I am sane and sober enough, respected by estimable people a s a worthy man not given to imagina- tive flights. As if to verify my reputation, a miracle happened, and I am in communication with you. Mad- ness is seen to be a very matter of fact. Then the villains entered. Two letters through the penny post, supposedly written by children of mine and claiming me as their father. This should have happened in a story, but the evidence of my senses convinces me that it happened in fact. I dismissed them, and devoted myself to my task of dissuasion. I seemed to have succeeded when new complications ensue. Your mother wishes to be a mother in fact as well as fancy, disparts herself from my denial, and proffers welcome where I have written warning. Is this a dream? Are you in very truth an unborn child, or a r t thou but an infant “of the mind, a false creation proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain ” ? Am I a father, or a fantastic fabler ?

Here I stand with divided forces, uncertain of imagination and reality. If I have invented you, there is clearly no need to address you through the medium of a weekly review. I need only recite the arguments to myself to arrive at nihilism. Yet how can I explain your letters, and your mother’s desire for your pre- sence on this hypothesis? Those other letters purport- ing to be from you are very fact. Yet everything happens in the well-ordered sequence of invention. En- lighten; me, if you can. In the meantime, I will as- sume that you are a real being, and address myself to what you have of reason. Perplexed as I am, I do not doubt that if you are an hallucination, you are, at least, a veridical one. That is something, and sufficient for my momentary assurance.

Your mother insists that you shall be a real, live lady. To my remark that there never was such a thing, she retorts that it is the business of a creator to bring into being what did not previously exist. Parentage, she says, must pass through an empirical stage if it is to become a science; and she asserts that the failure of eugenics is due to its insistence on elimination rather than experiment. If we were all eugenists, the race would die out in one generation, she insists; and, in my opinion, this is a logical sequence of science. I have reminded her of the ne quid nimis of the Preacher : “Be not righteous over-much, neither make thyself over-wise : why shouldest thou

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destroy thyself?” But who can reason with a woman successfully? She sneered at the Preacher as being Tennysonian. “ Knowledge comes, but wisdom lin- gers,” she quoted with that peculiarly irritating as- sumption of triumph ; and proceeded to argue that as I had assumed you to be a very knowing person, know- ledge personified, you should come, and having learnt wisdom, should linger here a while. You can see how involved is the argument. I know not where to begin to set her right.

For what has a lady to do with knowledge, and how can a lady learn wisdom? As she is not a lady, your mother cannot speak from experience : but prediction is easy to women, whose facts are always of the future. A lady’s acquaintance with knowledge must be super- ficial, she said, with that strange precision of language that sometimes distinguishes her statements. A lady has no curiosity, and never looks below the surface of things. Her relation to knowledge must be that of a patron, not a pedant: the future Eve will not eat the apple, but be content with the gardener’s description of its properties. And a lady learns wisdom by mar- riage, she concluded with unnecessary obliquity of satire. Frankly, I can find neither rhyme nor reason in these remarks. A s a prevision of what your life will be, they seem to me more formidable than attractive: her welcome is worse than my warning.

If you have essential. knowledge, as follows from my assumption of your being, superficial knowledge cannot allure you. You are already a noumenon, but to become a phenomenon would be to indulge the nearest freak of fantasy. That you could then “ac- cammodate the shows of things to the desires of the mind,” a s your mother supposes, is perhaps the wildest dream of a disordered imagination. And the phrase itself is not original. Only a woman would save her Bacon’s definition of poetry to attract the young; for economy ’tis beloved of all the sex. The incongruity of Bacon with poetry must be apparent to you, and your mother’s proposal that you should be superficially ac- quainted with things should arrest you on the threshold, when Bacon is the first thing offered to you.

But the gravamen is in this, that you should learn wisdom by marriage. If I am to believe your mother’s boasting, she was wiser than I before the event. She knew that “marriage is a covenant wherein nothing is free but the entrance,” as Michael, Lord of Montaigne, has it phrased. But if she had wisdom before mar- riage, it is clear that she is no wiser now; for she proposes an exactly similar education for you, with presumably the same nugatory results. Women, like water, find their own level, and there stagnate. But men become wiser by marriage, and I protest that your mother is misleading you by her proffers. Be born a woman, and you may be wise; but if you wish to in- crease in wisdom and stature, you must be born a man.

This is, in many respects, a very unsatisfactory letter. Your mother has had so much to say that the sense is much obscured, and I am so perplexed that I cannot elucidate her meaning. She seems to be right, and yet she is so wrong : she reasons logically from unreasonable premisses, confounds subject and predicate, and arrives a t seemingly irresistible conclusions. I am over- whelmed by her illustrations : she even asked me to accept you as a symbol of the Eternal Recurrence! I t is true that, in this case, I am not sure of reality, but I am not the man to be satisfied with symbols. And I do not doubt that if you will calmly consider the matter, you will conclude that the invitation is more terrible than the prohibition which it includes.

My case Seems to be weakened by your mother’s de- fection, but is in reality much stronger. For if she ranges herself on the side of the unborn, I have only to follow suit and we shall all be in No Man’s Land. Lest words should harden into things for u s , I beg you to be explicit in your reply. I d o n o t wish to create an Homunculus, even by the magic of my words. I would rather that you were one more of my imaginings, and as deadly dull as the rest.

YOUR RELUCTANT FATHER.

REVIEWS. By Herbert Hughes.

The Day’s Burden: Studies, Literary and Political. By T. M. Kettle, M.P. (Dublin: Maunsell and Co. 2s. 6d. net.)

Ireland is not in the habit of producing books of first- class essays. This volume, consisting principally of critical studies which have appeared in various journals and reviews, is, therefore, of more than usual interest to those concerned with the aspects of modern thought in that country, although to the merely casual observer of Irish affairs its metaphysics can scarcely seem typical or representative. The quality of being typical or representative of Ireland is not generally understood in this country; it is not, for example, understood that Ireland has been dying for a thousand years, and is not dead yet. Ireland is so weak that it is always conquered, and so strong that it is always unbeaten. Ireland is so old that it has always had a dead language, and so young that it is always producing a new literature. And while it requires some three hundred Englishmen, met in solemn conclave, to pass some finicking Harbour Bill for an Irish town, one Irishman from that town can manage the customs of the Chinese Empire and another can lay a cable across the Atlantic. Such a spectacle is typical of the economy of English government. And in contrasted relation to the some- what vigorous revival of a purely national literature such a book as this, which has nothing to do with that revival and a good deal to do with literature, is truly typical of the national temperament. There has never been a period in her history when Ireland was not self-conscious and self-critical, and it is the clash of four million moods of four million temperaments which has produced the paradox we call Ireland. Mr. Kettle’s essays make melancholy reading, for while they are in turn vigorous and languid, critical and apathetic, sarcastic and humorous, through all there runs an insistent undertone of pessimism. I t is this pessimism, in deep contrast with the infant hopeful- ness of the Gaelic League, the ancient romanticism of the Parliamentary Party, the enthusiasm of Sir Horace Plunket, and the ecstasy of Mr. Yeats’s poetry, which places Mr. Kettle in symbolic relation to the Ireland of his generation. Mr. Kettle is, however, as much concerned with international Socialism as he is with merely local Nationalism. He is as much attracted by the mysticism of Francis Thompson as he is by the philosophy of politics. In publishing his book in Ireland he is conscious that it contributes little or nothing directly to the national propaganda, and in a somewhat unnecessary Apology to an Irish audience indicates that a “ national literature that seeks to found itself in isolation from the general life of humanity can only produce the pale and waxen growths of a plant isolated from the sunlight. ”

The most vigorous of these essays is that on Written Constitutions. Mr. Haldane has made a speech in the House of Commons in which these words occurred : “ I agree that it is most unfortunate that we should have to introduce a t any time a written provision into an unwritten constitution. ” This had been received with the usual chorus of “ Hear, hear,” and Mr. Kettle, whose personal experience of Parliamentary life is even shorter than Mr. Belloc’s, launches into a witty and eloquent attack on the prejudice of the English jurist : . . . There is nothing peculiarly English in this dread of documents. It is characteristic of all primitive societies. You have one form of the superstition in the Arab who

‘ expects to be cured-and often is cured !--by rolling a piece of paper with a doctor’s prescription on it up into a ball and swallowing it. You have another in the contemporary farmer who cannot be induced to keep accounts. He prefers to work on an unwritten constitution, “like his father before him.’’ The result is that when he gets to the Bankruptcy Court he has to go without even the ‘poor consolation enjoyed by the rest of us, namely, an exact knowledge of how he got there. . . . Toryism has imaged the vague unwritten regime, which is its opportunity, as a natural and

Of course.

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organic growth. But change the image. Say, instead, that it IS like music-hall patter, made up as one goes along. . . . In speaking, before an Irish audience, of the first principle of representative government, namely, that the will of the majority of chosen representatives must prevail over the minority, a principle implicit in the constitution of every State, he is asserting a truth that many Irishmen have asserted until they have been blue in the face.

Deny that principle [he says] and you cannot pass a single legislative Act ; you cannot levy a single tax. In the long history of English insolence there is hardly anything else so insolent as Mr. Balfour‘s demand with regard to our [Irish] University Question. He said, you will remember, that no Bill could be introduced to realise this reform unless there was absolute unanimity among all interested parties in Ireland. Had he applied that maxim consistently to English political life, to political life anywhere, the result would be that no government could continue for twelve hours. In proclaiming it Mr. Balfour was proclaiming him- self an anarchist.

The bitterest essay in the book was written after some days spent in an Assize Court.

. . . Think of the colossal pretensions of this court- house-this drab granite building, with the unwashed mud on its pavements, and the susurrus of the crowds that sweat and chatter about it! It is a temple to the problem of Evil. It is a temple to the mystery of Death. And when you have uttered these three words you have called up the whole moral, intel- lectual, and metaphysical side of humanity. . . . As you look up at the bench your eye is caught by a veritable decadent touch-the judge’s flowers. . . . This time they are ragged, white chrysanthemums, in a vase of blue china. . . . It reminds one of Baudelaire’s Fleurs de Mal, Blossoms of Sin.

Mr. Kettle doesn’t try to solve any part of the eternal problem of crime and punishment; he merely reflects upon it, regarding it from a sympathetic but literary point of view, spinning beautiful cultured phrases the while. An elaborate essay on Otto Effertz, the author of “ Les Antagonismes Economiques,” the bizarre and original German thinker who became a Socialist “ because Socialism is the only form of economic organisation that will allow him to be a gentleman,” should interest readers of this review, as it is, I think, the only critical exposition of his work which has appeared in English. “ On Saying Good-bye ” is a suave essay, reminding one of the manner of Mr. Beer- bohm a t his most melancholy moments with a sort of reluctant virility in it that is fascinating. “ A New Way of Misunderstanding Hamlet ” and “ The Fatigue of Anatole France ” are studies of considerable intel- lectual penetration if in method a little roundabout. Mr. Kettle in rhetorical mood is most unlike himself. Last summer an ode from the pen of Mr. William Watson had appeared in the principal Unionist paper in Dublin counselling Ireland to “ forget her past, burn her national title-deeds, and throw her destiny in the hotchpot of Empire.’’ (The words are Mr. Kettle’s.) The following is taken from a reply, entitled “ Too Much Watson,” which appeared in an evening paper the next day.

It is a temple to the problem of Evidence.

We Irish, to be brief, Are nowise grievous for the sake of grief. I pray you, dry those sympathetic tears. They rust the will; and, Will, your nation’s sin Is no dead shame, meet to be covered in, But a live fact that sears. Cancel the past? That ye amend the present, and are just. Go, knock your head on Dublin Castle walls: Are they irrelevant, historic dust, Or a hard present-tense? Search through the large print of the Statute Book For your much-valued Lords’ benevolence, And, swept in vision westward, snatch a look At that dim land, where hunger claims to be The honoured guest in every family; And the slain sun writes, in a scribble of shame, The word of utter Hell, Clanricarde’s name.

Soothly when it befalls

This is a merely momentary aberration. forgotten his rôle of pessimist and dreamer.

Mr. Kettle has Now, if

these verses were only accompanied by the Orange Drum -! * + *

By Alfred E. Randall. Alchemy, Ancient and Modern. By Stanley

A carefully written monograph which solves no riddles. I could have wished that Mr. Redgrove, with his knowledge of modern chemistry and his sympathetic understanding of mystical thought, had tried, at least, to determine the truth of such transmutations as those noted from Van Helment and Helvetus. But where I expected the chemist, I found the biographer. Mr. Redgrove says : “ Testimony such as this warns us not to be too sure that a real transmutation has never taken place. On the whole, with regard to this ques- tion, an agnostic position appears to be the more philosophical.” I t is useless to quarrel with a book for not being what it does not pretend‘ to be, and this book is intended only as a brief account of the alchemistic doctrines, and their relations to mysticism and to recent discoveries in physical science, together with some particulars of the lives and teachings of the most noted alchemists. The sketch of Cagliostro is based on Mr. Trowbridge’s book published last Octo- ber ; and Mr. Redgrove quotes the atomic weights given by the International Atomic Weights Committee for 1911, which is sufficiently up to date. The book would have been improved, I think, by more exposition; for Mr. Redgrove’s language is extremely technical at times, and the condensation of so much matter (the whole book is only 141 pages) does obscure the issue for the general reader. The book has sixteen illustrations, but lacks an index.

Famous Impostors. By Bram Stoker. (Sidgwick,

This is a series of historical sketches of no particular interest, and written without distinction of style. Perkin Warbeck (or Pierrequin Werbecque, as Mr. Stoker prefers), Sebastian of Portugal, Stefan Mali, the False Dauphins, and “ Princess Olivia ’’ are the political impostors. Paracelsus, Cagliostro, and Mesmer occupy another section. Mr. Stoker gives no bibliography, nor does he refer to his authorities; so I must remind him that Mr. Trowbridge’s recently published book on ‘‘ Cagliostro ” demonstrated that there was no evidence for the identification of Caglio- stro and Balsamo. I should also like to tell Mr. Stoker that his sketch of Mesmer is not convincing, and the report of the Commission of the Faculty of Medicine in 1784 has been criticised by Binet and Fèré amongst others. Mr. Stoker says a good word for Paracelsus, and denies that he was an alchemist and magician. Mr. Stoker, indeed, says that these state- ments of his belief “ are too silly for words ” ; he calls them “ malignant twaddle.” As there is doubt of the authenticity of the books attributed to Paracelsus, and it is therefore a matter of difficulty to determine what were his real opinions on certain subjects, I should have been better pleased if Mr. Stoker had settled this question. “ Whoso settles the canon defines the creed,” said Huxley. There are several sketches of witches and one of a witch-finder; and then Mr. Stoker introduces us once more to Arthur Orton, the Tichborne Claimant. A few sketches of women as men precede sixteen pages wasted on “ Hoaxes.” The Chevalier d’Eon and “ The Bisley Boy ” complete the volume. The “ Bisley Boy,” per- haps, was Queen Elizabeth: there is no evidence for or against the idea except a legend at Bisley. Mr. Stoker says in his preface : “ That this story impugns the identity-and more than the identity-of Queen Elizabeth, one of the most famous and glorious rulers whom the world has seen, and hints at the explanation of circumstances in the life of that monarch which have long puzzled historians, will entitle it to the most serious consideration. In short, if i t be true, its investigation will tend to disclose the greatest

Redgrove. (Rider. 4s. 6d. net.)

Jackson. 10s. 6d. net.)

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imposture known to history; and to this end no honest means should be neglected. ” Mr. Stoker has found a subjec t for his next book, which I hope will be better than the present volume.

* * *

By Huntly Carter. Henry II. By H. Noel Williams. (Methuen. 15s. net.)

Biography has recently had a long run and has made a great demand upon the credulity of its audience. Books for ancestor-worshippers have poured from the press, which may be said to be enveloped from beginning to end in an atmosphere of joylessness. Foremost amid the historic bone-yards of Europe it was inevitable that France should attract the largest amount of attention and become the unhappy centre of countless raisings from the dead, as well as the unhappy hunting ground for those engaged in the traffic of illustrious corpses, and those that a r e anything but illustrious. France is apparently inexhaustible ; for her warrior kings and her womanly queens were legion; and these brilliant persons had many sides as well as lovers, to say nothing of exemplars and imitators. So her bottled and potted monarchs, and mistresses and paramours, and exemplars and imitators continue to be paraded in spirit before us till aching eyes and jaded nerves shout out in protest. But unavailingly. To some persons there is a strange and irresistible fascination in white- washing or in tar-and-feathering the bright and beau- tiful, or the brutal and bestial, as the case may be, that went down before the call of time and remained limp and helpless like a well-ordered prize-fighter who has laid heavy odds on his opponent. And in spite of all warning, they continue to dig up shells in which the snap and vitality of living interest were no longer to be found. In some of them, indeed, the snap and vitality of life o r youth were never present. Henry II. is a case in point. As a king he was a very feeble affair. Those wise persons that knew him bestowed upon him the title of a “roi fainéant,” and he deserved it. As a thoroughly lazy king he has come down t o us. I t was his wife, Catherine de Medici, who did all the mischief.

She mainly ruled Henry aided by another woman old enough t o be his grandmother, the notorious Diane de Poitiers. The best thing about Henry was that he came from a great stock. His father, Francis I., was a remark- able monarch; and his grandfather, Louis Pater Patriae, was still more remarkable. The latter managed t o place France in so prosperous a condition that he was justified in prophesying that Francis was not qualified to carry on his work. The prophecy came true. Francis got into trouble with Charles V., Iost the battle of Pavia, which, with subsequent events, caused a serious drop in the prestige of France. In the time of Francis the great religious question also came t o the front. Politics entered the Church to reappear later a s the Huguenot question which became as much a political as a religious problem. In fact, the religious motive coloured everything. When Henry came to the throne not only was the prestige of France pretty low, but a tremendous religious reform movement was sweeping over Europe. France was still struggling with the Austro-Hapsburg House. A civil-religious war had broken out between the people, the Protestants being led by Coligny, the Catholics by the Duc de Guise. The massacre of St. Bartholemew was one of the results, and was largely due to the ineradicable hatred with which Catherine de Medici regarded the Protestant party. Finding that the latter were becoming aggressive, owing no doubt t o the strength gained from the reverses of France, and were plotting t o seize the reins of power, she proceeded to checkmate them. This broad religious movement, running partly through the reign of Francis and all through that of Louis, is the only matter of real account that deserves to be treated and traced. But Mr. Williams makes no definite attempt to trace it. He begins with Francis I. and devotes a number of chapters to his struggles with the Hapsburg House, and his desperate efforts to maintain his political reputation and political existence after all was lost (to use Francis’

very words) a t Pavia. His unsuccessful attempt tu strengthen his position in Italy by marrying Henry t a Catherine, and in England by a n alliance with Henry VIII., is stated clearly. But the religious colouring i s weak. Though we can see France beginning t o sink under the religious wars-the peculiar form which the religious movement took in France-we are unable to see the action of those reformers elsewhere who a re indirectly the cause of her punishment. The influence of Calvin, Luther, and Rabelais deserves to be noticed. Again, more stress should be laid on the relations between France and Turkey seeing they had an impor- tant effect on the future of French foreign policy. As t o the fourth important fact concerned with the reign of Francis, namely, the part he took in the Renaissance movement, and the impulse which he gave to new activities in art , literature, and thought, Mr. \Villiams makes no announcement or pronouncement. After watching the long and not unattractive innings of Francis one does not turn with much interest to the doings of his son. From the beginning of his career Henry is on his knees to Europe, and it is evident his feeble attempts t o regain his feet can only end one way. Strongly influenced by the Guises, and upheld on t h e one hand by his wife and on the other by his Mistress, his attitude recalling the homely picture of Moses sup- ported by Aaron and Hur, seeking Heaven’s interven- tion on behalf of the Israelites who are engaged in con- flict with the Amalekites in the valley below, he muddled through a n inglorious career, exhausted the treasury, scattered the usual quantity of coronets and diadems, sowed the seeds of revolution,, and leaving France worse off than he found it, made the usual royal exit to the accompaniment of a full orchestra. Mr. Williams faith- fully follows the struggle of Henry with the Hapsburg House, and also offers us an unappetising dish or two of the facts‘ of his daily life, family complications, philanderings, etc., etc. But when all is said one has to confess he has undertaken a thankless job. The age of Henry II. is a negligible one. As the numerous por- traits, reproductions from contemporary and other paint- ings, drawings, etc., and the endless trying footnotes tend t o s h o w it did not produce the greatest characters in French history. But for one fact it might be avoided altogether. This fact Mr. Williams has failed to set prominently before us. W e do not see religion becoming a political problem and changing the face of France, and of Europe for the matter of that.

Innocence and Death. By M. V. Dent. (Methuen. 3s. 6d.)

This selection of pathos in prose and verse, inspired by death and the child, recalls Blake’s lines “On Another’s Sorrow.”

Can I see another’s woe, And not be in sorrow too? Can I see another‘s grief, And not seek for kind relief?

Mrs. Dent is conscious of the grief of mothers and fathers who have lost their own little Nells, and hastens t o offer relief in I 50 o r more appropriate quotations, the many and varied expressions of writers from Shakes- peare t o Dickens, Browning, and Barrie, who have imagined or have actually experienced the loss of a little Nell or May Queen, and have hastened t o crown the child with affectionate glory. The noticeable thing about this anthology is that it refers entirely to good children. I t bears out Ruskin’s words “that extremely good children {but especially girls) usually die young. The pathos of their deaths is constantly used in poetry and novels. I t seems, therefore, that God takes care, under present circumstances, t o prevent, or at least to check the glut of that kind of girl.” This being so it is obviously the duty of all girls to die young, that is if they desire to reach heaven and t o be immortalised in pathetic poetry and novels. Those who neglect t o d o so a r e referred to Mrs. Dent’s charming book for proof of the many beautiful sentiments that may be lost to us through their folly.

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Drama. By Ashley Dukes.

“ Preserving Mr. Panmure” (Comedy Theatre). IN his choice o f the descriptive title “ a comic play,’’ Sir Arthur Pinero has shown! subtle discrimination. Comedy is a breath of the Comic Spirit; the comic play may be (and is in this instance) no more than a port- folio of cuttings from the comic newspaper. Comedy dances upward to a view-point, buoyed by wit; the comic play has a s infinite a range downward, from droll caperings upon the surface of life t o gropings in the nethermost bowels’ of humour. But the effect of each type marks the distinction most clearly. If, a s Meredith wrote in the Prelude to the “Egoist,” in comedy may be observed “ the singular scene of charity issuing of disdain under the stroke of honourable laughter,” in “ Preserving Mr. Panmure” we discover a guffaw issuing of contempt under the thumbscrew and the rack. The instruments of torture are mani- pulated skilfully, by the hand of a master technician. The victims are well chosen for all the qualities which compel distaste and ensure that the contempt shall be earned. A certain rude justice in the penalty cloaks its horror discreetly, and even adds t o the diversion. Vice is rebuked ingeniously; virtue does not escape unre- warded. The traditions of the theatre are notoriously just. And Sir Arthur Pinero, not content with mere manipulation, proves himself a penetrating critic of his own method. He names the affair “a comic play.” Incapable of dignity, wit o r grace-the essentials of comedy-he chooses deliberately the alternatives, of clowning and intrigue. “Anything for a laugh” becomes his motto. H e gets the laughter-occasionally. But it is dishonourable.

Let us glance for a moment at the figures of the torture-chamber. First of all, there is Mr. Panmure himself,-a creature admirably named, but barely worth preservation. Mr. Panmure, in his youth, was “ a loose fish.” H e bears traces of the period in a furtive lip, thin muddy hair and symptoms of paralysis. With the approach of decay he takes to religion and delivers nightly sermonettes t o his household. The sermonettes are instigated by his wife, and in part prepared by Josepha Quarendon, his daughter’s governess. Mrs. Panmure belongs properly to a con- vent. Two mysteries about her are not explained ; the one, that she married Panmure, and the other, that she failed tor find him out. Josepha is a perfectly commonplace young woman who appears, at first, willing to be flirted with. Panmure plays the part of Potiphar’s wife to the extent of snatching a kiss ; upon which Josepha mounts a moral perch. Her very natural objection, it would seem, is not so much to being kissed as to being kissed by Mr. Panmure. In any case, the incident sets the house by the ears and provides Pinero with material for his four comic acts. Very clumsily the fact of the kiss is revealed without the name of the offender. (The clumsiness is inevitable. This author is a n expert in technique for effect, but his technique for conviction is atrophied by disuse. He knows the sharper’s tricks too well.) Josepha volunteers only that it was not Mr. Panmure who assaulted her, and leaves the other women raging with suspicion of their husbands and fiancés. The remain- ing possibilities a r e Reginald Stulkeley, M. P., a pre- posterous Tariff Reform politician ; Talbot Wood- house, his private secretary; Alfred Hebblethwaite, M.P., a lewd old rascal with all the Panmure vices tempered by good nature and a stronger constitution; and a nonentity named Hugh Loring. Hebblethwaite is promptly made first favourite by his wife, a woman of experience; and the chase proceeds. Panmure’s

daughter Myrtle, an incredibly pert little prig, adds her squeak of encouragement to the pursuers. This child is typical of Pinero’s comic method. She i s amusing only a s the stage donkey of a pantomime i s amusing, and fortunately she is soon put to bed.

The intrigues of the third act supply the real motive of the play. Josepha visits Stulkeley and Woodhouse to ask one of them to shield her by taking the responsi- bility of the kiss upon himself. Stulkeley (beneath his pomposity the Pinero gentleman) hesitates to press chivalry so f a r ; and Woodhouse is in the same dilemma. Josepha threatens to pass the night in the garden, now deep i n snow, and even ruins her dress by way of proving herself in earnest. She is promptly rescued, dried and comforted ; and presently emerges from the neighbouring bathroom, wrapped in Mr, Panmure‘s. dressing-gown. Her disgust at finding herself in this garment, of course, betrays the author of the kiss. s h e is packed off once more, and Pan- mure arrives to carry out a mock inquisitorial search for the philanderer ; Panmure furtive but truculent, Panmure morally outraged by the presence of a liber- tine beneath his roof, Panmure leering, insinuatory, confidential, with his “Now, boys, own up,” Panmure spreading the contents of a complete Pandora’s box of hypocritical devices. A single word is enough to prick the bubble of dissimulation, and he grovels basely. The appearance of his wife and the remaining guests leads (as the musical programmes say) to a crescendo passage for the wind instruments; in point of fact, to a general scrimmage approaching a free fight. In the midst of the uproar Talbot Woodhouse comes forward unexpectedly and takes the burden of the kiss upon himself. “Good boy !” is Mr. Panmure’s whispered comment; but from the others Woodhouse receives a bad quarter of a n hour. The reprimands a r e interrupted by the gong for prayers. Mr. Pan- mure’s sermonette is due. Curiosity and morality alike being now satisfied, the company adjourns t o worship in tolerable peace of mind. Panmure remains t o snatch a mouthful of Ibran’dy and a final glance a t his manuscript. But Josepha has her revenge. She seizes the sermonette, tears it up and throws it into the fire, motioning the wretch to meet God and the servants as best he may. Ignominiously he makes for the dining-room. Curtain.

I t seems that Stulkeley and Woodhouse both want to marry her, and, appropriately enough, they settle the difficulty by drawing lots for. the first proposal. This has troubled some sentimentalists, but Pinero is per- fectly consistent. Josepha, as a heroine without property, is-clearly bound to marry somebody; and no amount of sophistry will convince me that it matters whom. Stulkeley, in fact, wins; and as Josepha appears to like him, all is well. By way of benediction Mr. Panmure arrives and confesses unctuously to the original offence. And there the matter ends. A comic play.

This entertainment touches the low-water mark even of the present season in the theatre. I t is laborious, dull and painfully ou t of date. There is not a line in i t which might not have been written twenty years ago, and barely an original stage trick from beginning to end. This is no new development for Pinero. He has never been more than a ponderous mechanic with nothing t o say. As for treating a trivial theme with fantasy, illusion and lightness ‘of touch--as soon set a hippopotamus to string beads. He can gird a t cant in the manner of the “Referee” (witness, beside Mr. Pan- mure, the Ridgeleys in “His House in Order ”), he can play solemn leap-frog which passes for wit, he can stage-manage sham Ibsen or Anglicised Sudermann to- perfection ; but create he cannot. H e is for ever balancing the necessities of stagecraft and the lowest common measure of the intelligence of the stalls.

There is some good acting to be seen a t the Comedy. Over-production and stage-consciousness go hand-in- hand with the machine-made play, but Mr. Arthur Playfair, Mr. Dion Boucicault and Mr. Edmund Maurice have come through the drilling process well.

In the last act Josepha herself is disposed of.

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LETTERS ’TO THE EDITOR. A CRITICISM OP THE THEORETICAL BASIS OF

SOCIALISM. Sir,-It may interest those Socialists who are familiar with

the theoretical basis of Socialism to consider the new light thrown upon the social problem by the Banking Reform League. Modern economists agree that the evil of our social system is under-consumption of necessaries, such under- consumption resulting from unemployment and low wages to workers. The solution of the problem lies evidently in the direction of the creation of a stronger demand for labour: the Socialist recognises this since he proposes that the State shall establish fresh factories and gradually enter into competition with private employers. But the Socialist who takes account of the laws of political economy regrets that his scheme necessitates State interference and the

radual limitation of freedom of contract between indivi- duals. Mr. Clifford Sharp, of the Fabian Society, admitted before a meeting of the British Constitution Association a year or so back that the assumption of the control of in- dustry by the State was a form of slavery; but, he added, Socialists asked how present evils could be remedied without this slavery.

Granted that the evil consists in a lack of demand for labour, and that reform must be in the direction of fresh competition with present owners of machinery, the Banking Reform League draws attention to a series of State restrictions upon indi- vidual liberty which directly prevent the capable workers from obtaining possession of machinery.

The beginning of co-operation and also of progress in commercial relations consisted in the system of loans of capital from a man who had more than he needed to one who could be trusted to make good use of capital lent him. Then gold, affording a more general purchasing power, was used. Then arose the banker, or usurer, who specialised in the profession of valuing the integrity of local applicants for credit. Obviously, the essence of credit issue by such a banker was the announcement to the community that a certain individual could be relied upon to produce value within a given time, and that goods might therefore be given to him; the gold issued was only a means of making this announcement. Presently the banker found that the com- munity would accept and circulate his paper promise to pay gold on demand, in place of the actual metal. By this means he was able to issue more credit than the exclusive use of the metal gold would have permitted, and also to issue it at cheaper rates, the process resulting in a fuller monetisation of the productive powers of the community.

Now, had this system been permitted to freely evolve, gold would have finally been dispensed with altogether in the channels of exchange, and the charge for the banker’s issues would, under competition, have fallen to approxi- mately the cost of his appraisement labour only. But the State early granted a monopoly of the right of paper issue to a private corporation which had helped it through a crisis, and, with but a few-concessions, that monopoly has persisted right down to the present time. Macleod states that in the early days of the introduction of machinery, the factories were largely set up upon bankers’ credit. Is it not manifest then, that if credit, instead of being per- mitted to increase in volume proportionately with the growth of productive ability in the community, is artificially re- stricted, the power to set up factories will fall into the hands of a few: the mass of hand-workers will be undercut and driven to offer themselves for employment in these few fac- tories, and sweating and low wages become the genera1 rule? Is it not an equally legitimate assumption that, had freedom of banking existed, the capable handworkers would have gradually set up factories for themselves and com- peted with the first employers; that every introduction of such competition would have increased the wages of workers, reduced the profits to organising labour and cause a reduc- tion in the price of manufactured goods, thus spreading the benefits of the introduction of machinery over the entire community ? Such competition would only have ceased when wages became so high and the profits to employers so low that it was not to the interest of the next most capable worker to turn employer. Let Sociologists ask themselves whether this does not explain their formula of the “Monopo- lisation of the means of production in the hands of the few,” a formula which is quite inexplicable on the mere grounds of the lessened cost of production of goods by machinery at the time of the industrial revolution.

Our banks have since endeavoured to evade the State pro- hibitions by making advances in cheques. Loans are thus made to the extent of many times the amount of gold in the possession of these banks. The disadvantage of the cheque, however, is its lack of circulating power: we only accept cheques from those persons in whom we have personal trust. Hence the majority of cheques are returned upon the

Here we approach the root of the matter.

bank of issue after making one payment only; the banker relies upon the chance that the amount of cheques issued will be approximately balanced over a certain period by the amount paid in. But the prohibition of the bank note com- pels the great majority of the people to use gold in exchange, and since the bank-note prohibition exists in every civilised country (foreign systems were usually copied from the English) there has arisen an enormous demand for gold throughout the civilised world. Hence results the struggle for gold which is continually proceeding. Most other civilised nations have protected their gold store by reserv- ing to themselves the right to exchange their notes for silver in times of keen demand for gold. But we, to please our financiers, maintain a free gold market, that is, we permit anybody who can obtain Bank of England notes to export gold, the very life-blood of our home exchange system. An increase of prosperity in any one country, in the absence of the power of free note issue, enormously increases the de- mand for gold there, and the metal is inevitably attracted from other countries, especially from England, to the con- fusion of all home commerce

We have seen that ex- ploitation at the industrial revolution can be explained by credit restrictions. I t is only necessary to bring our in- quiry up to date by pointing out that fear of credit strin- gency compels our banks to-day to confine their loans fur the most part to holders of gilt-edged security, such as stocks, shares, mortgages, etc.-security that can be de- pended upon as being saleable even in times of credit stringency-thus excluding five-sixths of our ordinary manu- facturers from the benefits of credit. Inevitably the wealthy- firm gradually crushes out its smaller rival. Inevitably the manufacturer is driven to convert his business into a joint- stock company, because the State has prevented him from obtaining advances a t low rates from a bank. In the present congested state of industry the only hope of fresh competi- tion is from smaller ‘‘ combines,” but any considerable calls upon our restricted credit market again, harden i t and ruin even the previously existing industry.

Socialists are agreed that it is the distribution of g o d s which is at fault. Can we hope that they will undertake the examination of the mechanism of distribution, namely, credit? Is it not obvious that if credit be restricted in a community wherein wealth depends upon machine owner- ship, merit-the power to do things better than is normally the case-will be prevented from exercising its natural com- petitive power, and from supplanting inferior methods ? Both Socialist and Individualist economists are theoreti- cally agreed that Communism is an ultimate ideal of human society. Communism, however, demands perfection of human trust. If we repose trust in an untrustworthy person his thievish propensities are encouraged by the opportunity offered. Hence the institution in civilised communities of the system of exchange, in which we only give up the results of our labour to that individual who can bring us evidence that he himself has produced value, which evidence is money. In primitive times the money itself must be valu- able. As mutual trust increases we use paper guaranteed by a professional judge of integrity. Later on perhaps the individual’s I O U will circulate without professional en- dorsement, as a preliminary to the ultimate Communism. But mutual trust is a shy blossom which develops soonest under freedom. Let d e individual choose those with whom he will co-operate, and also the terms under which such co-operation shall be carried on, when we may rest assured that the system which is to the interest of the majority will be gradually evolved. HENRY MEULEN.

Here is the root of the matter.

* * * T H E SURPLUS OF LUXURY.

Sir,-I beg to say that Mr. Alfred Ollivant pays impro- priators of unearned income an excessively flattering com- pliment by making “luxury” the root evil from which destitution has grown. The social foam-and-scum which consumes the “ surplus of luxury ” neither established, nor does it do much to maintain the economic terrorism dear to the heart of the British Destitution Association-I beg pardon, I mean the British Constitution Association. Every vestige of “luxury’ might vanish without the least reduction in the volume or intensity of destitution. But the disap- pearance of destitution will so purge human society that, in a short time, social foam-and-scum must vanish of its own accord. I t is a complete inversion of the true causal relation to make “luxury” the cause and destitution the effect. This might be left to Liberals, Radicals, and Henry-Georgites. Socialists must treat destitution as the primary evil which must be stamped out by means of a system of statutory income-insurance for all alike. How little our foam-and- scum class is able to resist such direct action was made manifest when the House of Lords, the vigilance committee of that class, had to pass the non-contributory Pensions Act, with full knowledge that it was demoralising,” that is to say, destructive of the class-morality which justifies the

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impropriation of unearned income of one minority at the price of actual destitution for another minority and economic security or inability to destitution for the income-earning majority

I hope Socialists will likewise be suspicious of the praise which Mr. Ollivant bestows on “ a noble and non-penurious poverty. The task of praising poverty in any shape or form may safely be left to the various branches of the clerical profession, of which preachers of Tolstoy’s gospel form what is perhaps the latest-torn branch. Socialists have come to kill and bury poverty, not to praise it.

O. E. POST. * * a

HAND AND MACHINE. Sir,--Mr. Grenfell’s letter in your issue of January 5 was

a necessary qualification of mine, and in penitent silence I allowed his mistaken challenges to pass. Your correspon- dents of last week, however, and Mr. Huntly Carter’s per- sistence in theoretic error, strongly indicate that more must be said from the practical manufacturer’s standpoint.

Mr. Grenfell tells us that “the homespuns made by the Somerset weavers a t Clevedon” are better for technical ex- cellence than any machine-woven fabrics. I t is strange that the clothing trades have never heard of such cloths. On the contrary, the standards of textile technical excel- lence applied to machine-woven are far higher than those applied to hand-woven fabrics. I happen to have a witness to this whose authority will be accepted by most of your readers. The managing director of a co-partnership mill in Yorkshire, the friend of Ruskin and William Morris, weaves serges and worsteds by machinery. Standing one day in his finishing department, I commented on the rigour of the viewer and the meticulous care with which the fine darners renewed every slightest flaw, and he replied : Yes ; but they (the cloth buyers) demand perfection from us; if these were hand-woven bigger faults would be passed over without a word.”

Mr. Grenfell also adds : “ I say nothing of the muslins and other fabrics of Benares and Dacca,” implying, I assume, that these fabrics are quite beyond our weavers. Let me say broadly that the machine-woven muslins of Glasgow beggar in every textile quality the same fabrics woven in or around Benares. There are now few muslin weavers at Dacca. In reference books on India, the muslins of Dacca are always mentioned. Sir George Watt, I think, mentions as wonderful a yarn spun in Dacca district so fine that 178 miles could go into a pound. That was very good for hand- spinning. But if our friends who frequent South Kensing- ton Museum would take a journey to Reddish, the manager of Houldsworth’s mill could show them yarn spun on a hand-mule for the Exhibition of 1851 which gives over 300 miles to the pound. Go on to Bollington, and in the Fine Cotton Spinners’ and Doublers’ Association mills there, you may see cotton yams being spun which give 190 miles to the pound, and that not as a speciality, but for use in the thread mills of Messrs. J. and P. Coats.

Mr. Quennell refers me to certain fabrics exhibited in South Kensington Museum. Some of those fabrics were woven as purely art products, under conditions quite im- possible in this country. I t is not my purpose to advertise the goods of any firm; but if Mr. Quennell will look up a London Directory, under the heading “ Silk Manufacturers,” he can select one or two addresses in the City, within a very narrow radius, and in these places will see silks of a quality, both in weaving and design, sufiiciently surprising.

Most of those fabrics, I admit, have been woven on the hand-loom; but what sort of handloom, and by whom? An example which ought to command the respect of the Arts and Crafts Guild is the practice of Edmund Hunter, St. Edmundsbury Weaving Works, Letchworth. Mr. Hunter conceives a combination of colour and form, which he works into a design; he writes it down on pointed paper in terms of warps and wefts; he schemes the cutting of the jacquard cards, the tying of the loom harness, the setting of the warps, and the picking of the shuttles with weft. Having directed all these operations, the master craftsman leaves the weaver to carry through the mechanical operation, and weave the cloth. Who is the artist ? Not the weaver, surely ! If it be said that Mr. Hunter ought to weave out bis designs, I answer that we cannot spare him to such mechanical labour; we want his vision, not his physical strength.

On the contrary, I would supply tireless, accurate, obedient mechanical, power-driven servants to our artist craftsmen, so that they might realise with ease and delight the visions of things useful and beautiful they see.

Mark that those looms upon which art fabrics are woven are complex machines, though operated by human energy. I had intended to summarise briefly the progressive develop- ments of the loom, and to ask our friends at what point they would stop; but your space is too valuable in my eyes to admit of longer trespass.

WILLIAM S. MURPHY.

‘ SHAKESPEARE -BACON. Sir,-Pardon my drawing your attention to a matter

which you have already discussed, but I feel it my duty to inform you that the Bacon-Shakespeare mystery is solved a t last !

The mystery that has occupied the minds of the greatest literary stylists of the day (from Sir Edwin Durning-Law- rence, Bart., downwards) and the advertisement columns of the great journals (from the back page of the ‘‘ Daily Mail ” downwards) has been solved at last, by me, and for all time. ’

Oh, that I should rush in where Sir Edwin Durning-Law- rence, Bart., fears to tread, and should solve the crypto- graphic “ honorificabilitudinitatibus ” by anagram into the English tongue. For he can make nothing better of it than “ H i ludi F Baconis nati tuiti orbi”-“These plays, F. Bacon’s offspring, are preserved for the world.”

“Honorificabili- tudinitatibus:” tells us that, if Ben Jonson was bald, Bacon wrote “ Love’s Labour Lost,” and, therefore, all ‘( Shake- speare’s Plays.”

I will keep you in suspense no longer.

That is not quite literal, I admit. Literally it is:- IF JON. IS BALD BACON W R I T T THIII.

When we remember that Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence, Bart., has a split foot (I refer to the fifth foot in his hexa- meter), slight eccentricities in this true version must be pardoned or applauded.

“VVRITT” is obviously Elizabethan for “WROTE” Now Bacon, Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence, Bart., and I have all discovered that “i” is the ninth letter of the alphabet and “s” the eighteenth, “i” and “ j” being the same letter. Therefore, two “ i ”s = two nines = eighteen = s ”; thus THI I = THIS.

Now, what has struck nobody before is that after “honori- ficabilitudinitatibus” in the Quarto is a colon followed by “Thou ” with a capital “T.” Why should “Thou ” have a capital letter, except after a full stop? There you have it. It is a full stop, and the other dot of the so-called “colon” belongs to the hidden sentence, and should be written after “JON,” thus making it “JON.,” an abbreviation of “JON- SON.”

“ J O N ” then, is Ben Jonson, who wrote the introductory poem to the Quarto, and also made several remarks about Shakespeare, mentioning him by name. Rightly enough, Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence, Bart., neglects these sayings in his book. Instead, therefore, of the absurd sentence ‘{. . . thou art not so long by the head as hi ludi F Baconis nati tuiti orbi: ” we have the plain and clear state- ment “ . thou art not so long by the head as if Jon. is bald Bacon writt this.” Thus it is obvious that, if “rare Ben Jonson ” was destitute of hair, Bacon is Shakespeare ; and I challenge Mr. Sidney Lee and the shade of Shake- speare to find any flaw in this proof.

Although Jonson is represented in his pictures with a plentiful supply of hair, is it not likely, nay probable, that it was a wig that he wore in order to further the success of Bacon’s conspiracy? The curliness of his hair goes to support this theory.

For these reasons,. which I have given, I defy anybody to deny that, if Jonson was bald,

I repeat: BACON IS SHAKESPEARE.

BACON IS SHAKESPEARE. After this, I cannot but concur with a young Baconian

who sent me the following:- With Durning-Lawrence, I hold in abhorrence

The contemporary writers Who thought so are blighters,

All those who think that Shakespeare wrote.

And are not worthy of any note. C. E. BECHHÖFER.

* + + MR. RANDALL AND LEO TOLSTOY.

Sir,-In reply to Mr. Randall, who said that Matthew Arnold [‘warned Tolstoy to leave theology alone,’’ I pointed out that this was not so ; the fact of the matter being that, although Arnold valued Tolstoy’s novels very highly and wished him to write more of them, he also considered his works on religion to be “of high value and importance,” and was far from wishing him not to write more of them a lso Mr. Randall’s reply leaves the matter where it was. He continues to misunderstand Arnold, even after the matter has been explained to him.

I also pointed out that in the current (third) edition (as also in the second edition, Oct. 1908, p. 449) of Vol. I. of my “ Life of Tolstoy “ Merezhkóvsky is mentioned ; but, as Mr. Randall says he cannot find it, I can only suppose that the publishers have supplied him with a belated copy of the first edition,

In all that relates to Tolstoy’s life and character, Merezhkóvsky relied on Anna Seuron and S. A. Behrs,

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whose works I used firsthand (checking their statements from other sources and from my own personal knowledge), and I, therefore, had no need to go to Merezhkóvsky for what they give.

Moreover, it gives a clue to that writer’s state of mind at the time he wrote his attack on Tolstoy to find that, after admitting that Anna Seuron is unreliable, he shuffled the evidence in such a way as to lead unwary readers to suppose that things she said had been said by Behrs--a credible, though not always careful, witness.

While pleading that he has devoted only three words to the mendacious tittle-tattle about which I complained, Mr. Randall in the very same number of your paper has an article on (‘What is Art ? “ in which he again quotes his favourite authority as saying of Tolstoy: ‘(Under the peasant Christian’s pelisse we get, not a hair-shirt-no : linen, lavendered and voluptuous with eau de Chypre and Parma violets‘” ; which is Merezhkóvsky’s quite inexcusable embroidery of a few words of Anna Seuron’s.

Many of the world’s worthiest and best thinkers have been vying with one another lately to do honour to the great man upon whose grave the earth is still fresh, and it is sad to find anyone--with a soul that oozes through his pen to stain the paper upon which he writes--eager to misrepresent, deride, and belittle Tolstoy.

Mr. Randall’s letter and article bristle with points one would like to deal with, were time and space of no conse- quence ; but as they are of consequence I will confine myself to pointing out that in his efforts to reduce Tolstoy’s defini- tion of Art to nine words Mr. Randall has omitted the important clause, which says that: “TO evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced,” and, having evoked it, to pass it on to others by external signs ‘(is the activity of art,” etc. (“What is Art ?7y p. 50). Had Mr. Randall retained and understood those words he could not, without obvious absurdity, have fogged the issue in the way he has done.

If I tread on a man’s corns and he involuntarily shrieks with anguish at the very time he is suffering from physical pain, then, though his cry may convey his feelings to the hearers, it is not art, for he has not intentionally re-evoked a feeling he has previously lived through. But if someone pretends to have had his toe trodden on and shrieks so naturally that he causes his hearers to share feelings of discomfort he had formerly experienced, that is art under Tolstoy’s definition ; which is intelligible enough to those who care to understand it.

Bernard Shaw hit the nail precisely on the head when he commenced his review of ‘(What is Art ? ” by saying : ‘‘ This book is a most effective booby-trap. I t is written with so utter a contempt for the objections the routine critic is sure to allege against it that many a dilettantist reviewer has already accepted it as a butt set up by Providence for him to shy at.” He went on to say that “whoever is really conversant with art recognizes in it the voice of the Master.”

Instead of recognizing the voice of the Master, he informs us that Tolstoy was “simply stupid ‘,! This recalls to my mind the time when Gladstone was advocating Home Rule, and his foes spread a report that he was off his head. The rumour became so general that eventually Chaplin ventured to make use of it in a speech in the House of Commons. When Gladstone rose to reply, he first dealt with other matters, and then, turning to Chaplin, spoke words to this effect: “Conscious as I am of my many infirmities, and of the burden laid upon me by advancing years, I yet hope for a while to be able success- full to encounter opponents of the intellectual calibre of the Right Honourable gentleman who has just sat down! ”

Mr. Randall does not do so.

AYLMER MAUDE. + * * POETRY AND THE REALITIES.

Sir,-Many attempts have been made to define poetry, yet the general impression is that poetry eludes definition. A man who feels what poetry is does not wish to define i t ; he is satisfied that he can recognise it when he sees it. But, whatever poetry is or is not, its effect is certain. Poetry produces in both the poet and his reader a state of mental intoxication. The mixture or composition of the periods of the poet is a sort of mental brew, which has an effect upon the mind that may be compared with the effect of alcohol. This is, of course, true of poetry in verse form and poetry in prose form; true, too, of the poetry of the religions and the poetry of paganism. To this intoxication we owe the great religious systems and the Greek drama, with every thought that has grown sut of them, and every action that has been a consequence of them. We may, then, ask: How far do these mental visions, seen and experienced in a state of verbal intoxication, correspond with realities? It is a question which has much vexed my mind, stirred the depths of my soul; for whilst accepting the theory of evolution, and recognising that the abstract and the imaginative In man’s mental composition are largely, if not wholly, the result of the employment of words, I would fain discover

that the spiritual side of our nature is not built upon fictions.

I am convinced that through words and their employment in creeds and poetry man has strayed more or less from reality; that in the majority of the human race insanity is prevalent as a consequence ; that an abnormal outlook upon the world has been made a condition of human life by the word-conjuring of poets and teachers. But is there a residue after allowance has been made for the effects of this word-conjuring? To answer this question I turn my atten- tion to the white abstractions, as distinguished from the coloured and emotional abstractions, of the human mind. On this side we have at once to admit that the abstractions of mathematics are always contiguous to reality; that, through positing certain things as self-evidently true, we have arrived at truths not self-evidently true, that is t o say , not immediately verifiable by the senses. Yet the formulae which represent these truths not immediately verifiable by the senses represent real facts. We are prepared to accept the results of juggling and conjuring with mathematical signs as contiguous to reality. The intoxication of these white abstractions leads us to truths ultra-sensuous. Has the intoxication of coloured and emotional abstractions any power to do the same? It will be at once clear that the metaphors of an Isaiah, a Homer, a Dante, a Milton, do not lend themselves to some general formula representing a universal truth. Herein, therefore, lies a fundamental difference between emotional and mathematical abstraction. Mathematicians postulate the real and arrive at the ultra- sensuous. Poets and philosophers postulate the ultra- sensuous in terms of the sensuous and arrive at nothing acceptable to universal humanity. Emotional abstractions are accepted by the individual as true or false according to temperament. Mathematical abstractions depend, on the contrary, for their acceptance on nothing temperamental. The result is unity of thought and progress in the physical sciences on the one hand ; disunion, aberration, confusion, and a thousand social ills on the other. Yet if , in the case of emotional abstractions, postulates are agreed upon, as I believe they can be, we should proceed to adjust individual and national life to such postulates. The result of such adjustment would, of necessity, be the establishment of some religion more universal than any of the great systems that the world has hitherto known. The poetry of religion is a human need. At the present moment, in spite of the apologists who claim universality for Christianity, that need is unsatisfied, because reason is not a t one with Christian dogma. It behoves us to strive for the satisfaction of that need in a way that shall meet the demands of reason.

CHARLES GRANVILLE. * * * “ T H E GREAT ILLUSION.”

Sir,-If we are to take, as a valid answer to Norman Angell’s great book, S . Verdad’s assumption of the necessity for expressing the will to power through a strictly national or imperial medium, what becomes of Socialism?

If the effort to unite the will to power of the world’s pro- ductive workers on a commonsense basis of material interest is foredoomed to failure by the persistence undiminished of race- tradition and race-prejudice, what ground have we for supposing that the greatest obstacle to Socialism’s progress in any one country--viz., the individual desire to boss and tyrannise-will prove less indomitable ?

Even if we assume, with or without rhyme and reason, that the two instincts are essentially different, and that the inter-neighbourly bar is removable while the international bar is not, are we to take it that (as Blatchford says) social reconstruction must wait on the national defence? If so, how much social amelioration may we ’expect when the demands of national defence have gone up and up and up in consequence of Mr. Verdad having made scaremongering a legitimate business? For the will to power, of course, implies a constant and strong opposition will to power.

If, on the other hand (notwithstanding Blatchford), social Iegislation is to proceed concurrently, what will be the measure of sufficiency in national defence? Will it be the difference between the cost of the social reforms popularly demanded at any given time and the total amount of the reserve available at the same time for all national purposes? If not, what will be the measure of sufficiency, and why?

I don’t deny the force of Mr. Verdad’s assertion, though I don’t admit it. All I ask is: Under Mr. Verdad, how are we off for Socialism?

JOHN KIRKBY * * * THE CENSORSHIP O F LITERATURE.

Sir,-Pray accept my congratulations upon Mr. Jacob Tonson’s timely comments anent the new censorship of literature, and, if space permits,. you may allow me, as a married man, to put forward a view of the caw that I ven- ture to think is of importance. The National. Vigilance

334

Society was presumably created to suppress the White Slave traffic, a most laudable object; but are they not by their action in endeavouring to put down works that describe life as it actually is, rather “cooking their own goose”? For years parents have made the vital mistake of keeping from their children the facts of life that they in after years will have to face. What happens when they find themselves eye to eye with the stern realities of everyday existence? They are ignorant of the world and its ways ; they fall ; and then along comes the National Vigilance Society to redeem them.

Is’ it part of their policy to create the fallen that they may have the credit of redemption? I hardly think so. Why should a book that describes the actual cold-blooded facts of a seduction be banned as against one that leads young girls to believe that at the moment of peril there is always a hero to come in at the right moment and save them? Heroes of the pretty-pretty stories that are dished up for the delectation of the young innocent female are not always to be found in certain West End hotels where many girls are taken to dinner and seduced. A girl goes in ignorance and comes away in despair. Why? Because the cruel realities have been kept from her by those who consider it their duty to bring children up in innocence and ignorance.

Literature of a purely sensual character conveying no moral or object should be censored-and that rigorously. Books dealing in plain language with the problems of life, more particularly the relations of the sexes, are needed, especially when so many girls are entering into city life with its traps for the unwary.

Some time ago I read certain chapters which were ex- cluded from a novel written by Mrs. Percy Braby, entitled “ Downward,” as being too actual for publication. They dealt with the awful experience of a girl a t the hands of a doctor (sic) about to perform an illegal operation. Without these chapters the book ran on quite pleasantly, and in order not to offend the morals of the good they were excluded. Result: A girl, thinking in sweet ignorance of the truth, reads the book. She may come face to face with the situa- tion: It’s nothing, my dear. There is always an Adonis with curly hair ready to marry girls in trouble. You’ll live happily ever after in a country cottage. Had she read the terrible experience related in the suppressed chapters she might have taken to heart the moral undoubtedly conveyed and the terrible truth would have so impressed her that she may not have fallen.

The Puritans say the truth must be hidden in sweet ignor- ance. The Public should say, and that now, Enough of this mock hypocrisy; we will educate our children freely, and relieve the National Vigilance Society of its right of redemp- tion.

Let Sir Percy Bunting turn his attention to the suppres- sion of the elderly cads frequenting the West End, accost- ing ladies with offers to buy them the pretty pretties dis- played in the shops, and in their minds longing to buy their bodies for their own lascivious pleasure.

Why, the fall of man was brought about by a woman’s ignorance. Had the Vigilance Society existed then, how different the world might have been.

J. CHALMERS DIXON. * * *

THE LATE SIR CHARLES DILKE. Sir,-The death of Sir Charles Dilke has brought us face

to face with some disquieting facts. The attitude which the Press has seen fit to take up is enough to rouse the peculiar kind of contempt that one feels when men who are either ignorant prudes or clever hypocrites attempt to gloss over one of the most real tragedies in English political life during the last fifty years with comfortable moral reflexions. The bother is that it is the English public who are the dupes of this conspiracy of silence, and it is difficult to view the matter with a contempt that is either detached or dis- passionate. The matter is simple and pointed: it has been dealt with by Mr. Wells in “ The New Machiavelli,” and by Mr. Granville Barber in “Waste,” and must therefore not b e expected to have been honoured by consideration at the hands of the exponents of official journalism.

Sir Charles Dilke has perhaps a more encyclopaedic knowledge of political detail a n d was therefore a good and useful politician) than any public man, with the possible exception of Mr. Sidney Webb. His career was cut short by a private affair in which the newspapers have with one consent labelled “painful,” and (by the implication and de- finition. of that word) have avoided all careful consideration of that affair. The “Times ” was particularly offensive. Its leading article, after a short description of Sir Charles Dilke’s political qualities, which appear to compare un- favourably with those of Mr. Chamberlain, ended with the following disgraceful paragraph : --

“His prospects were destroyed by a very painful affair, the only good point in which (italics’ mine) was the evi- dence it afforded that the British public insist on a reason- able standard of morals for their public men. . . it is hard

to say that the public were unduly uncharitable.” Nothing about public utility: nothing about the loss the nation is to suffer because of the denial to her of the services of any great man, who happens not to come to abide by the moral decalogue !

However, this is not the most distressing feature of the situation. I t is pretty notorious that most of our modern statesmen have private vices. Because Sir Charles is im- plicated in an affair which was necessarily public, he is dropped in pious horror, and the country is deprived of his services forever: because our modern rulers are involved in affairs which we know as individuals but not as a public, we are content to wink one eye, and nothing said. I t is this conspiracy of silence which is so appalling. Sarcasm is vain and voiceless when confronted with a gigantic public sham like this. We can only think how pitiful and petty are such suburban shibboleths, and echo Mr. Granville Barker in saying “ O the waste of a good man ! ”

ALLEN WATKINS. * * *

THE NEW AGE. Sir,--It is my fortune, being born under the sign of the

Waterman, to be forever pouring out what I must consider to be heIpful ideas. Mr. Allen Upward evidently objects both to my ideas and my manner of expressing them. In his contribution deploring the possible closure of THE NEW AGE columns to such articles as the “Leaf of English His- tory”-extraordinary notion of Mr. Upward’s; and what a curious state of mind which could evolve it!-he manages his apparently inexhaustible supply of brimstone and treacle so as to leave a small dose even for me-that bit about “heroising ” the Houndsditch burglars was undoubtedly meant partly for me.

I do not heroise criminals when I declare that their double burden of heredity and persecution is no fit sight for humane eyes. It is only natural that humane persons should defend these unfortunates against the increasing severity of‘ our jocular bench. Mr. Churchill’s brief, bloody, and unsuc- cessful tenure of office is an appalling foretaste of what we may be in for if the judges are not checked. The criminal is being driven to despair. Faced with the cer- tainty of a savage sentence, every burglar will shoot, and we shall have hangings daily, as in the good old times. If Mr. Upward really believes that the next Vandal invasion is to come out of the slums, let him go preach the justice of such a catastrophe to that half of the nation which thrives upon the slum-dwellers ; bid them abolish the slums ! Let him cease complicating simplicities and scolding enthu- siastic correspondents for quarrelling, who were unaware of any quarrel. Let him, this visitor from Above, at any rate first abandon his interest in the crime ring before h e may hope to chide, with any success, my efforts, however bungling and ill-instructed, to reduce the persecution of criminals.

BEATRICE HASTINGS. * * *

THE FABIAN “WHAT TO READ.” Sir,--I do not agree with Mr. R. B. Kerr’s valuation of

the best English books on Socialism that have been written during the last twenty years, but I do agree with his criticism that “What to Read ” is ridiculously incomplete. Not only is the list defective, but the classification of books is badly done. Surely “ Contemporary Socialism,” by John Rae, and the “Psychology of Socialism,” by G. Le Bon, ought to have been placed among the critical and anti-socialist writers rather than among non-socialist authors. Mr. Kerr perhaps goes too far in suggesting that the most recent literature on the subject is the best. As a matter of fact, some of the best books on Socialism are comparatively old. In my judgment (though I write as an Anti) ono of the very best books from the Socialist stand- point is “Liberty by L a w ” by George Lacy, published in, 1888, yet few Socialists seem to have heard of it, and, of course, it is not included in “What to Read.” In other sections the Fabian compilation is still more faulty. For example, in the section dealing with Free Trade, Protec- tion, and International Trade, the list is Iudicrously de- fective.

S. SKELHORN. * * * “ ALMOST ABSOLUTELY.”

Sir,-It would be interesting to know if the above words, when written conjointly, are good English ? They appear in the election address of a Unionist candidate who has been a schoolmaster for 37 years in a great public school, and who is anxious to represent one of our time-honoured uni- versities in Parliament that he may there call the country’s attention to matters of secondary education !

w. P.

335

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