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The New Age, June 6, 1908, A REPLY TO BELFORT BAX. No* 717 Series.Vol. III. No. 6) SATURDAY, JUNE 6, 1908, C*] CONTENTS. page 101 ONE PENNY PAGE 110 .‘. ... ... ... 110 111 112 NOTES OF THE WEEK . . . . .. -a; . ,.a . .. INDIAN NATIONALISM : The Faith of Arabindo Ghose .,. THE NECESSARY BASIS OF SOCIETY . .. . .. ... A BUSINESS POLICY . . . . .. ... . .. ... GOOD BREEDING OR EUGENICS. By M. D. Eder .. . FEUDAL SOCIALISM : A Plea for Natural Combination. By Captain F. P. Fletcher-Vane ... ... . .. THE TRUE GOSPEL OF FEMINISM : A Reply to Mr. Belfort Bax. By Millicent Murby . . . ... . .. . .. SOME SUGGESTED DEFINITIONS. By Edwin Pugh .. . 104 105 106 103 107 108 110 THE SERPENTINE. By Austin Priestman * How I NEARLY CAUSED A WAR. By W. R. Titterton BOOKS AND PERSONS. By Jacob Tonson . .. BOOK OF THE WEEK: G. J. Holyoake. By H. Snell REVIEWS : Anarchism ; The Child’s Socialist Reader ... . DRAMA : “ Links.” By Dr. L. Haden Guest ... . .. ART : The New English Art Club and Henry Bishop. BY Holbrook Jackson ;.. . .. . .. ... . .. CORRESPONDENCE ... . .. . .. . .. ... A JEALOUS GOD. By M. D. E. 4,. 6,. .. . 113 114 115 116 117 NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS, -All Business Communications must be addressed to Publisher, New Age,” 139, communications for the Editor to 1 & 2, Fleet street, E.C. ; Took’s Court Furnival Street, E.C. NOTES OF THE WEEK. BY such actions as its spirited questioning of the proposed visit of King Edward to the Tsar of Russia, the English Labour Party is making a mark in history. All the official forces of the day are in league against it. None of us will ever know the secret springs of the conduct of our Foreign Affairs ; they are hidden away from the eyes of democracy by veil upon veil of convention, subterfuge and official statements. Nevertheless, the results are plain enough, and it is enough that we are profoundly dissatisfied. We believe further that the people of England are dissatisfied ; and though the obedient ranks of party Liberals and Tories assent to whatever is proposed by the Court politicians, the Labour Party stands for democracy, and, we believe, for England. * * ‘* effect upon them.” And he continued : “ It would be undesirable to make it dependent upon such considerations. ” Later, in reply to a further question; he deprecated a perfectly true statement made by Mr. O’Grady, regarding the internal policy of Russia-apparently on the ground that we had no right whatever to discuss publicly the internal condition and policy of any foreign nation. * + + This, we venture to think, is not only an extraordinary position to take up ; but it is as complete a denial of Liberalism as could well be imagined, Canning, Palmerston, and Gladstone, at any rate, had no such demeaning conception either of the probable or the possible effects of an English royal and official visit, or of a discussion in the English Parliament. It is strange that as an apologist for the visit, Mr. Asquith should have attempted to reduce its significance to absolute zero. If the official visit of the King of England to the Tsar of Russia has not and cannot have any effect on the domestic politics of either nation, then in the name of commonsense we must suppose that both King and Tsar are mere ciphers, whose movements are of no concern to anybody. Mr. Asquith has emptied out the baby with the bath. * + + But if we may admit with the “ Nation ” that the Tsar at any rate is intellectually incapable of diplomatic finesse, we cannot patriotically deny King Edward ‘the possession of considerable political ability. It is conceivable that King Edward may manage England’s foreign affairs with only the aid of a permanent official ; but, as if to give the lie to Mr. Asquith’s minimisms, the St. Petersburg correspondent of the “ Times ” telegraphed on Friday that the Tsar was to be accompanied on his purely family meeting with his uncle by M. Stolypin, the Russian Premier, the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Marine, and numerous other high officers of the Russian State. That disposes of, the family party theory for Russia at any rate ; and in the face of that political muster it is ridiculous to speak of the King’s visit as merely polite and friendly. + * * The “ Nation-, ” we observe, in a vigorous article on the proposed visit incidentally denied our statement of last week that King Edward was rapidly becoming his The week has almost been spent in significant interrogation ; and a promise of a full discussion of the proposed royal meeting has been made for Thursday of this week. Of course, there are objections to such a discussion ; but they exist solely in the official mind. Objection can always be taken to public discussion even of the most intimately public affairs. And in Egypt, in India, and in Russia such discussion is made either wholly or in part a criminal offence. Fortunately in England the mandarins have lost the power of restricting discussion, at least by open means ; and thus the debate on Thursday will take: place, and, we hope, arouse from their lethargy the friends of freedom. * * * To the Labour Party as a whole belong the honours of the week. Mr. O’Grady and Mr. Summerbell deserve and will receive the thanks of thousands of patriots for their courage and persistency in the face of the manifest ‘opposition of both the Speaker and Mr. Asquith. The latter, it appears, has almost as extraordinary a theory, of England’s place in Foreign politics as he has of a Government’s place in Social Reform. Replying to‘ Mr. O’Grady on Tuesday last, Mr. Asquith assured the House that such a visit could “ have no relation at all to internal affairs in either country, nor any “ It betrays a total ignorance own Foreign Minister. of our Constitution,” writes the ” Nation,‘! “ to suggest that King Edward is his own Foreign Minister.” But what has a paper or even a traditional Constitution to say when the guardians of that Constitution are . themselves against it? We do not suggest that there is any pressing danger of unconstitutional action, since all action by the constitutional authorities is constitutional ! But we do suggest that behind the scenes of Parliament, behind even the Cabinet itself (or, at least, behind several of its members) there are being carried on at this moment intrigues * which, though doubtfess intended in patriotic spirit, are, nevertheless, an indirect denial of the principles and practice of pure And it was in this sense that democratic government. we deplored last week the obvious fact that foreign politics are being allowed to slip out of plain public control, + * * affirm that the day for alliances is over. Alliances imply military and naval co-operation of a more or less offensive, as well as defensive character. It is absurd to pretend that they have no object and no direction ; and as alliances pure and simple they undoubtedly add ‘to the ferment of pugnacity still working in all the reactionaries. of Europe. We are glad to see that the “ Times ” as well as the “ Nation ” and the “ Daily News ” object as strongly as we do to the conversion of our entente with France into an alliance. An alliance with Japan is permissible perhaps ; but in Europe. the sound policy is an extension of ententes. We should be happy to see Europe federated by a series of ententes ; there is not the least reason why, with the exception of Russia, ententes between this country and all the countries of Europe should not be established within the next ten years. They would certainly give us a security infinitely greater than the security we can derive from dual, triple or even quadruple alliances. * * * To the discussion of the Budget on Monday last, Mr. But the whole incident is so significant and raises SO Philip Snowden contributed a speech which for its grasp many questions that we cannot hope to exhaust it in a of detail, its exposition of Socialist economics, and its effective delivery has seldom been equalled in the life of few notes, Nor, we fear, will the discussion in Parliathe present Parliament. Members of the official parties ment on Thursday go to the roots of the matter. We may certainly rely on the Labour Party to do its best ; were considerably impressed, and tried in vain to controvert the main contentions. Mr. Harold Cox blurted and with Mr. O’Grady moving and Mr. Keir Hardie seconding, and a united party supporting, its best out the theory which decency has led his party to conshould be very good indeed. But we should like to see ceal, that “ one of the first duties of a member of Parliament was to protect the taxpayers’ pocket.” Anyraised the whole question of our relations with foreign thing more unlike a tolerable theory of a member of and especially with European countries. countries, Parliament’s duties we cannot imagine; though, in The Manchester School was responsible for sterilising -Liberalism in three directions. It hung round the truth, the practice is common on both sides of the House. Mr. Snowden pleaded for a Graduated Innecks of Liberals the two detestable doctrines of Noncome-Tax of dimensions sufficient to make a real intervention in European affairs, and Laissez-faire. difference in the distribution of wealth. His exposure Each of these doctrines has proved, or is proving, of the present system of alternately reducing direct and destructive of the very life of the nation. indirect taxes, thereby benefiting the rich in every * .* .* Budget, will be remembered. We should not be surWe are not concerned now with the doctrine of prised if Mr. Lloyd George, who listened with marked But regarding the doctrine of Non-interLaissez-faire. attention, made a note of it for his first Budget. ference in European politics, we may say that that doc* * * trine, at any rate, stands in need of revision. Mainly Mr. Gladstone introduced on Wednesday a Bill for by the action of King Edward it has ceased indeed to the Reform of Criminal Law which, in its way, marks have any practical value ; but like the albatross about the neck of the Ancient Mariner, it still fetters the an enormous change in official sentiment regarding crime and punishment. The main features are the inminds of old-fashioned Liberals like Mr. Asquith. Writing as Socialists, we desire to see the curse re- determinate sentence for “ criminals ” of the profesmoved. It is certain that without a considerable and a sional type, and the Borstal or remedial system for “ criminals ” of less skilful and determined character.. consistent “ interference ” in European politics we shall never get a European minimum either in the matter of We are glad to see that that staunch democrat, Mr. G. K. Chesterton, is alarmed at the first and dangerous wages, or sanitation, or education or hours of labourproposal of detention “ during the King’s pleasure.” the four minima suggested by Mr. Webb in his lecture to the Social and Political Education League of On the face of it, the proposal seems reasonable enough ; and Sir Robert Anderson in his “ Criminals a week or two ago. For it is becoming increasingly obvious that even granted an Imperial standardising of and Crime ” long ago advocated it. If, as we are told, these minima, the free competition of foreign sweated there are in London alone over a thousand skilled proindustries would imperil the Imperial standard if not fessional burglars, whose sole occupation is crime of this kind, who are personally known to the police, and destroy it in a single year. To be effective, a standard must be not merely Imperial but world-wide ; and we who take their short sentences as part of the work, it can no more afford to neglect Europe than we can would seem that their indefinite detention without any addition of punishment, would clear our streets of one afford to neglect our own dominions over seas. undesirable class of persons. * * * * * + Hence we may be sure that by sheer force of circumSo far, so good. But we must ask first, what stances England will be driven to resume, though, let guarantee their detention affords that the supply of such US hope, on a higher plane, the traditions of Canning skilled professionals will cease ; secondly, what definiand Palmerston (and let us add, of Queen Victoria, tion of their criminal offences we can adopt without whose “ interference ” in Portugal in the second year of her reign ought never to be forgotten), and to in- imperilling the liberty of whole classes of people whose terest herself as closely in the conditions of labour in burglary is even more skilful and more professional ; foreign countries as in her own. That, at any rate, is and thirdly, whether we are wise in proceeding to such the undoubted ideal of Socialism which began, it may extreme measures until we have at least made crime be remembered, as an International Movement, and less profitable than honesty. On all three questions we have our answer ready ; but we doubt if Mr. Herbert will, we hope, always remain international. Gladstone or his advisers have considered the questions + + * at all. Sir Robert Anderson certainly imagines that The bearing of all this on the question of the Royal the “ criminals ” of this type are not only few now, but visit to Russia is obvious ; but we can apply it equally are necessarily always few in number, being a kind of to the question of the proposed alliance with France. genius in the ranks of ” crime.” But we doubted it The proposal was natural enough after the extraordinary when we reviewed his book some months ago and we fillip given to the entente by the visit of President doubt it still. Again, we at least are certain ‘that the Fallières to this country last week. But we venture to causes of crime are largely economic, and due to the l JUNE 6, 1908 THE NEW lamentable fact that crime pays better than labour. So long as the honest labourer is allowed to beg his bread, so long will the soil in which the bay tree flourisheth remain. * * * Gladstone on his reWe congratulate Mr. Herbert cognition of the futility of punishment either as a preventive or as a corrective of “ crime ” ; but we take leave to doubt whether his suggested treatment is not We shall, as superficial as it is certainly dangerous. however, take an opportunity of discussing the subject during the progress of the Bill. * + * Once more the folly of handing over without guarantees to a young colony the administration of natives has been exemplified by the state bordering on crisis which has been produced by the disagreement between Natal and the Colonial Office over the proceedings in the trial of Dinuzulu. The difficulty of accepting the opinion of the “ man on the spot ” is increased in this instance by the fact that there is also a “ woman on the spot.” Miss Colenso is certainly not a sentimentalist, nor can she be accused of ignorance of the natives. Probably nobody in Natal, let alone England, knows the Zulus half so well. Yet her defence of Dinuzulu is to be ignored by the “ men on the spot ” because she admittedly and frankly believes Dinuzulu to be innocent. It is a strange perversion of justice that disqualifies counsel on the ground of partiality. One might conclude that the judges should be condemned by that very condemnation. We are still far from understanding the reasons for delaying, the trial of Dinuzulu. But we understand well enough the reasons for refusing -him counsel and papers and communication with witnesses. It is a shabby. story. * * * It appears we inadvertently fell into the error last week of attributing the lack of official support of the Labour candidate at Dundee to the National Council of the I.L.P. We are informed that the I.L.P. was not except as a constituent of the directly concerned, Labour Party’s executive, upon which body the onus of However much we may still be the defeat must fall. dissatisfied with the action of some of its constituent members we gladly exonerate the I.L.P. as a body, the more so as we believe the I.L.P. have the root of the matter in it as a Socialist Party and is the real hope of the immediate future. + * * We confess the situation is full of difficulty ; and the example of Dundee may easily lead to worse defections from the spirit of loyalty elsewhere. For example, we note that the local groups at Pudsey have determined to run a candidate contrary to the advice of the. Central In this instance, at any rate, the Central Executive. Executive are entirely in the right. There is not the least chance of the Labour candidate winning the seat ; The nor, we believe, of even “ making a good show.” day for mere parade candidatures is over ; and with a definite party in the House of Commons, subject to the fluctuations of public opinion, and therefore largely dependent on its electoral prestige, we cannot afford to exhibit a series of defeats, more especially when nothing good can be demonstrated to come of them. * * * It is true that the Socialist movement has two main concerns, one to make Socialists, and the other to return Socialist members of Parliament. Mr. Wells, we imagine, confines his attention, and would confine the attention of all Socialists, exclusively to the first. But the second is equally important. Hence it follows that the attempt to return Socialist candidates is perfectly legitimate and, moreover, is excellent propaganda. On the other hand, there is a time to attempt it and a time not to attempt it ; and we emphatically agree with the Labour Party Executive that the time to attempt it is not now at Pudsey. But the whole question of election policy badly needs discussion ; and we should be glad to afford space for it in the pages of THE NEW AGE, Indian Nationalism. The Faith of Arabindo Chose. THERE are now on trial in Calcutta some thirty Indians, accused of complicity in the bomb conspiracy. Among them is Mr. Arabindo Ghose, who for the past two years has been the directing genius of the Nationalist newspaper, “ Bande Mataram,” and the most impassioned preacher of the Nationalist faith. Arabindo Ghose is not unknown in England. He was educated at St. Paul’s School and Cambridge University, and he passed high in the examination for the Indian Civil Service, though he did not complete the qualification. His ability as writer and teacher is of a high order, and by Young India he is looked upon as a prophet of the new faith. Neither in India nor in England can those who know him credit the accusation that he has become a dynamiter. There has lately been printed and circulated in England a leaflet containing the substance of an address delivered in Bombay at the beginning of the present year by Arabindo Ghose, It comes opportunely, in view of the present situation in India, as a specimen of the political gospel that is being proclaimed from one end of India to the other, in hundreds of newspapers, and from thousands of platforms. Nationalism, the orator declares, “is a religion that has come from God. Let no man dare to call himself a Nationalist if he does so merely with a sort of intellectual pride. If you are going to accept this religion of Nationalism, you must do it in the religious spirit. You must remember that you are the instruments of God for the salvation of your own country. Nationalism is not going to be crushed. Nationalism survives in the strength of God ; it is immortal ; it cannot die, because it is God who is working in Bengal. God cannot be killed ; God cannot be sent to gaol.“. The speaker then refers to the change that has been wrought among the people. The name of Bengali used to be a reproach among men. What has made the Bengali so different from his old self? Bengal is learning to believe. He admits that the task, looked at intellectually, is hopeless. Here is a work that you have undertaken, a work so gigantic, so stupendous, the means for which are so poor, the resistance to which will be so strong, so organised, so disciplined, so well equipped with all the weapons that science can supply, with all the strength that human power and authority can give- and what means have you to carry put this tremendous work of yours? Three or four years ago, the speaker goes on, he found the prevailing mood a mood of apathy and despair. People had believed that regeneration could come only from the outside. Now that belief was thoroughly broken. This state of despair was the best thing that could have happened for Bengal, for it meant that the intellect had done its best, that the intellect had done all that was possible for it, and that the work of the unaided intellect in Bengal was finished. The intellect, having nothing more to offer save despair, became quiescent, and when the intellect ceased to work, the heart of Bengal was open and ready to receive the voice of God whenever He should speak. When the message came at last, Bengal was ready to receive it, and she received it in a single moment. In a single moment the whole nation rose, the whole nation lifted itself out of despair, and it was by this sudden rising, by this sudden awakening from a dream, that Bengal found the way of salvation and declared to all India that eternal life, immortality, not lasting degradation, was our fate. Bengal lived in that faith. She felt a mightier faith than any that earth can give, because she held that faith from God and was able to live in it. Then that happened, which always happens when God brings other forces to fight against the strength which He Himself has inspired. Because it is always necessary for the divinely appointed strength to grow by suffering. Without suffering, without the lesson of selfishness, without the moral force of self-sacrifice, the God within US cannot grow. The speech ends with an appeal for sacrifice :There is only one force, and for that force I am not necessary, you are not necessary, he is not necessary. Let all be thrown aside as so much waste substance, the country will not suffer, God is doing everything. We are not doing anything. When He bids us suffer. we suffer, because that suffering is necessary to give others strength. When He throws us away, He does so because we are no longer required. This is a work that. God has called us to do, and in the place of those who are thrown away God will bring many more. He Himself is the worker and the work. He is immortal in the hearts of His people. In the House of Commons a few weeks ago Mr. O’Grady suggested to the Secretary for India that in attempting to repress the Nationalist propaganda the Government was setting itself against the faith and If Lord Morley could see for aspiration of a people. himself the way in which the fervid message of Arabindo Ghose is seizing hold of the people, he might be tempted to agree with Mr. O’Grady’s way of putting it. The Necessary Basis of Society. UNDER this title Mr. Sidney Webb contributes to the Review ” an address delivered current “Contemporary to the Social and Political Education League in May. Like all Mr. Webb’s writings, the article is not only suggestive, but formative. We know no living economist who leaves his subject settled in the same degree However controversial or beset with as. Mr, Webb. difficulties the subject may be, Mr. Webb is pretty sure to steer his way to a conclusion and to carry the whole boat-load of his readers safely to the same port with him, In the present article it is to be observed that Mr. Webb. writes not as a Socialist propagandist intent on peaceful penetration of the enemy’s territory, but as a sociologist simply. His view is that the necessary basis of society, whether the superstructure be Collectivist or Individualist, is the same ; and that it consists of the establishment of the National Minimum. But before discussing the four pillars Mr. Webb demands for a stable society, we may observe his acute discussion of the question often asked : whether Democracy’ is not incompatible with special treatment. On the face of it, the charges of levelling and of dealing with things in a wholesale way are peculiarly relevant to Democracy. But Mr. Webb disposes completely of the charges, and demonstrates that not only in theory but in actual fact Democracy both may be and is compatible with very high degrees of specialisation. Not only so, but Mr. Webb foresees that this principle of special legislation is likely to be more and not‘ less in evidence as governments develop. “Whilst it may have been the most pressing business of nineteenth-century governments to deal with the whole people, or, at any rate, with majorities, by far the most Important business of twentieth-century governments must be to provide not only for minorities, but even for quite small minorities, and actually for individuals.” As an example, Mr. Webb refers to the provision of schools. A century ago the provision of schools formed in England no part of governmental activity. The first need was therefore plainly to get schools, schools of a common and universalised pattern, “common schools.” But once having provided ourselves with a minimum, the work of differentiation was bound to proceed. And thus at this moment a public education authority, though remaining thoroughly democratic, provides (in the case of London) not one kind of school, but several was originally a common dozen different kinds. “What universal provision has become a highly-specialised meeting of the needs of a series of minorities-many of them quite small minorities.” Another example of this tendency of Democracy to specialisation is afforded by the later developments of “What we aim at providing to-day is not Poor Relief. relief at all, but appropriate treatment for each classfoster parents or nurseries for such of the destitute paupers as are infants, schools for such of them as are children, specialised infirmaries for such of them as are Sick . . . asylums . . . homes . . . farm-colonies or training homes . . . and dozens of more minutely specialised forms of treatment appropriate to the blind, the deaf, the crippled, etc., etc.” And all this complex differentiation has arisen on a single Democratic basis, which in its earliest forms was some undifferentiated, uniform, and common provision. Mr. Webb by no means excludes from the future of Democracy the differentiated care of art and artists. True, the usual conception of Democracy envisages the trampling Beast of Revelation, oblivious to beauty and incapable of the delicate and the refined. But in reality there is no such Beast, herd ” is an The “vulgar abstraction of the order of the “economic man ” and “the man in the street.” In actual analysis, the ‘vulgar herd ” turns out to be not an indissoluble whole, but a congeries of small minorities. Hence no uniform system of administration is possible without causing discomfort and worse to whole sections of the people ; and hence, again, pure democratic government is bound of necessity to resolve itself at last into special provisions for each constituent minority. Nor is one, minority likely to be more neglected in the long run than another. The turn of the artist minority will come as certainly as the turn of other minorities has or will come. But with this increasing differentiation of democratic government it. becomes more and more necessary to regard the function of government as consisting of the specialised scientific treatment of minorities. If the community makes no exceptional provision for the sick, not only the sick suffer, but the healthy are perpetually in danger. It is, in short, necessary, for. the whole community that. any particular minority should be specially treated. And here we come to the question of a National Minimum, which in Mr. Webb’s view “is going to ‘inspire and guide and explain the statesmanship and the politics of the twentieth century.” “In the Democratic politics of to-morrow we may expect to see the policy of the National Minimum translating itself into four main branches of legislative and executive activity.” They are A National Minimum of Wages. A National Minimum of Leisure. A National Minimum of Sanitation. A National Minimum of Education. These, then, are the basis of a stable society. Once granted these, and there remain, it is true, the specific problems of a Collectivist or or an Individualist superstructure. But they can afford to wait. Meanwhile we should have secured the necessary conditions for a state of society in which problems of the most exalted order might be securely discussed without, as at present, arousing the sickening sense of futility and prematurity. We venture to add a single word of criticism of Mr. Webb’s admirable and statesmanlike address. Can we regard in these days the establishment of merely National Minima as completely satisfactory ? With‘ the multiplication of the means of communication, selfcontained nationalities tend to disappear ; at least, in their economic and fiscal forms. In the world-democracy of the future doubtless nationalities, and many of them, will have their place, exactly as now, a single nation is composed of many minorities ; but can we be secure until our National Minimum has been more or less guaranteed by an International-in fact, by a Universal-Minimum ? It appears to us that this is the crucial question underlying the whole movement of Tariff Reform as well as of Imperialism in its largest sense. Vaguely men feel that a nation cannot stand alone in even the most virtuous isolation. If class legislation has had to give way before the tide of Democracy, may we not also expect National Legislation to give way before the movement of International Democracy ? It is this sense of the mutual interdependence of nations as minorities in the great whole of mankind that doubtless inspired in the early Socialists no less than in the early Democrats their cosmopolitan leanings. Mr. Webb does not discuss the subject, ‘does not refer to it ; but we suggest that his address was incomplete by that very omission. June 6, 1908 A Business Policy. ONE of the many faults we have to find with the Liberal Party is that it has never really discarded the obsolete doctrines of the Manchester school. Its fanatically fond adherence to the shibboleths of Free Trade is based for the most part not, as it well might be, on practical experience and a well-reasoned appreciation of the economic situation, so much as on an emotional belief in the efficacy of free competition. An overwhelming majority of Socialists are convinced Free Traders, but, unlike most Liberals, they believe with their heads and not with their hearts. The Liberal insists on regarding Free Trade as a genuine panacea for all economic ills, and when he is faced with awkward facts regarding the state of trade or employment, he distrusts his senses rather than his theory. The fundamental conception of his economic cosmology is that England has had free imports for fifty years and must therefore necessarily be a Utopia. The fact that it is not does not disturb him, because, in the first place, he is constitutionally inclined to doubt the fact, and in the second place, ifhe admits it, he puts it down as an extraordinary accident which must soon remedy itself. The Socialist objects to any tampering with the existing fiscal arrangements, partly because it is far more likely to do harm than good, but chiefly because it is a comparative waste of time and serves as a red herring to divert the attention of the country from the utterly unsound economic conditions of the wage-earning classes, conditions which cannot be essentially modified one way or the other, either by a tariff or by the absence of one. The Liberal objects to such tampering on wholly different, or to us incomprehensible, grounds. He appears to regard it not as mere foolishness, but as a sort of sacrilege. He resents it in precisely the same way that one might expect Lord Meath to resent an affront offered to the Union Jack. It is entirely an affair of his feelings. Now, this infatuation with Manchesterism would be of little consequence if it were really confined to the question of Foreign Trade. But it is not. Its emotional, almost transcendental, basis produces a sneaking fondness for other applications of the doctrine of Laissez Faire. It remains but a sneaking fondness (except in the case of Mr. Harold Cox) because no party which advocated those doctrines to-day in the market-place would get more than about a dozen of its followers returned to the House of Commons. But it is there all the same. A Liberal may vote for Old Age Pensions, for a Trades Disputes Bill, and for a restriction of the hours of adult labour, but in his heart of hearts he regrets that circumstances, in the form of electors, should force him to do so. He still cherishes a belief in Laissez Faire as part of his mental stock-intrade. So far, of course, we have been dealing with a more or less imaginary person. He may exist, indeed he does exist ; he is The Typical Liberal, the only man who really has any right to the name. Even to-day he is the preponderant force in the Liberal Party. Nevertheless, there are in that great heterogeneous majority which the Government has at its back a number of men who by no means answer to his description. And of these the most notable at the present moment is Sir John Brunner. He calls himself “ a sturdy Radical.” Some people might be inclined to describe him as a budding Socialist. For our part, we prefer to regard him as a perspicuously clear-headed business man. A few weeks ago as chairman of the party meeting which was summoned to welcome Mr. Asquith to the Premiership, he seized the opportunity to denounce Laissez Faire as a worn-out creed. A day or two later he explained his ideas in greater detail, and within the past week he has continued the campaign with a vigorous letter to the “Times.” In effect, he offers the Liberal Party a new programme, a business policy. Its main points are the nationalisation of inland transit, both railway and canal systems, nationalisation of mines, reform of the consular service, and a bountiful endowment of technical education and scientific research. As a programme for immediate use this is excellent. It offers, as it is meant to offer, to the trading community an alternative to Tariff Reform. It cannot be called a Socialist programme because of one vital omission, but it is all in the right direction. One has but to add to its items the formation of a national mercantile fleet, and it becomes practically identical with the programme outlined in “Fabianism and the Fiscal Question. ” In that tract, as in Sir John Brunner’s letter, the whole thing was treated simply as a business matter. It was shown beyond dispute that the commercial benefits to be obtained by such corporate action, cheapening railway ‘and steamship rates, and making our consular service a genuine and highly-trained intelligence department instead of the last refuge of the class to whom diplomacy or pseudo-diplomacy is the only gentlemanly way left of making a living, would far exceed the most extravagant claims of the Protectionists, and would, be accompanied by none of the drawbacks and dangers of their system. Amongst other things, this programme seems to offer the only feasible method yet suggested of encouraging agriculture and farming and food production generally in this country without any raising of prices. Leaving aside the question of wheat, it is an extraordinary anomaly that we should be very largely dependent upon foreigners for such easily produced articles as butter and eggs and vegetables. And this is entirely due, as Sir John Brunner points out, to the fact that “our home trade, as the direct result of our laissez faire policy, is unduly, shamefully overburdened by high rates of carriage.” The vital omission to which we referred above concerns the financial side of the programme. One piece of valuable financial advice Sir John gives to the Government when he tells them not to hesitate to “ borrow freely for national works.” This is eminently in the right spirit. But you cannot borrow for the permanent endowment of education and for the reform and extension of the consular service. These will have to be paid out of revenue, and as to how this revenue is to be raised Sir John says nothing. We need not repeat here our views on the matter. We have explained them over and over again, and they were well expressed by Mr. Philip Snowden in his speech on the Budget last week. We will only say that without a thorough-going revolution in our methods of taxation so as to release the middle classes substantially and the working classes altogether (except perhaps in the matter of alcohol and tobacco) all other proposals for reform are to us but as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Of course the Government have not accepted Sir John Brunner’s programme, and before they do so the party is likely to suffer many defections or resignations like that of the late Chief Whip. But Sir John is a man of weight in more ways than one. Not only does his long and faithful record in the House of Commons give him a high place in the counsels of his party, but his phenomenal success as a manufacturer gives him a yet higher position in the world of commerce. There is no man in the House more fitted than he to speak for, Then it must be remembered that the British trade. popularity of Mr. Lloyd George’s policy at the Board of Trade has opened the Government’s eyes to the POSsibility of capturing the business vote ; and if they can ” policy would help he persuaded that this “alternative them, who knows but what they may adopt it? If only we could hope that the Liberals were capable of carrying out this business programme without resorting to the absurdly slow and generally unnecessary machinery of Royal Commissions and Departmental Committees such as that which is to consider the railway question ; and if they would combine with ita really democratic scheme of taxation, a genuine Reform Bill, a sound policy in regard to land, and a comprehensive Unemployment Bill based on some sort of recognition of the Right to Work ; then, really, we do not see why Socialists should not work amicably with Liberals for some time to come, provided only that the latter become imbued with the revolutionary spirit’ sufficiently to overcome which hates delay and trifling But, in that highly improbable case, why them. ‘ Liberals ” ? 106 THE NEW AGE. JUNE 6, 1908 Good Breeding or Eugenics. Some kinds of wheat are very susceptible to attacks of and whole crops are oftentimes the rust fungus, destroyed by it ; one variety with the somewhat Western cow-boyish name of Michigan Bronze flies to rust as the Naturally, this is not a quality sparks fly upwards. that endears Michigan Bronze to the British farmer. But these rust-loving grains possess some attractions for Mark Lane ; because they are what are there known as “ hard wheats,” and make the kind of flour that is On the other hand, essential for our indigestible bread. there are some wheats which are not hard wheats, and which are immune to rust-they can pass their whole existence in the presence of the fungus and go scot free. But the miller has no use for them. * * * Now if there were some way of combining the immunity to disease of the one wheat with the “hardness ” of the other, we should have a perfect grain. This problem has been solved by Mr. Biffen, on lines identical with that of mating eye-colours in man, only as two qualities are combined it becomes a little more Starting with Rusty Hard Wheat and complicated. Immune Soft Wheat, we shall get in the first generation nothing but apparently (or unreal) Rusty Hard Wheat, because “ rust ” is dominant to immunity (nonIf we rust) and “ hardness ” is dominant to softness. now fertilise this (unreal) Rusty Hard Wheat with Immune Soft Wheat we obtain equal amounts of grain of the following four kinds of wheat :1. Immune hard wheat. 2. Immune soft wheat. 3. Rusty hard wheat. 4. Rusty soft wheat. Each variety will breed true if fertilised with its own kind ; we retain (1) the Immune Hard Wheat and discard the others. It is seen that we have a new kind of grain entirely : one that breeds true and rejoices both farmer and miller* Jc * It is easy to destroy undesirable strains when breeding wheat ; it is not so readily done in the case of man, to whom I now return. As to the difficulty, let the following instance serve in which a certain disease has been retained for 271 years. None of us sees the way about as readily in the dark as in daylight, but there are some persons who can see nothing in a bad light or at night-time ; these persons are said to suffer from Mr. Nettleship published last year a night-blindness. history of night-blindness continuing in nine consecu“The investigations (not Mr. Nettletive generations. ship’s, of course) date from 1831, when a young conscript, Pierre Mirebagues, claimed exemption from military service on the ground that he could not see at night. He was born at Vendémian in 1815, and after examination, M. Gasté military surgeon at Montpellier, finding that the lad was able to see by candle-light, After seven years’ stated that he was malingering.” service he was re-examined and his word believed. “This conclusion was doubtless assisted by the man’s assertion that his father, grandfather, and great grandfather had all, like himself, been unable to see at night.” The disease was traced back to a butcher, Jean Nougaret, know as Le Provençal, who was born in 1637, brought night-blindness to the village, and affected the In populations of the surrounding villages to this day. daylight the afflicted see well enough, but, as M. l’Abbe Capin writes, “unless the moon is up, they cannot go beyond the village at night without either a guide or a lantern. ” A pathetic picture is drawn of the wistful mother’s holding up objects at night to the children’s eyes in order to ascertain whether they have or have not escaped the family scourge. Mr. Nettleship’s pedigree contains 2,121 persons, out of whom 135 are known to have been night-blind. If the diseased parents bear a healthy child, the children of that healthy child will remain free from disease for ever afterwards-so long, of course, as they do not The continuity of intermarry with night-blind persons. the disease is not due to consanguinity ; in the long family history there are two marriages between healthy first cousins ; all the children of these two marriages remained unaffected. * * * The disease follows the same lines of heredity as did the eye-colours considered last week. If in this family night-blindness be regarded as prepotent or dominant and normal-sight retiring or recessive, an examination of the genealogical table works out in accordance with the formulae given ; it is, to make a clean breast of it, an instance of Mendelism. As we should expect, we get some good healthy stock from the union of two unhealthy parents. Jean Nougaret, of Vendémian, had three children, who were all diseased ; the eldest daughter had again three children, who were all diseased. Her eldest daughter (diseased), Nougaret’s granddaughter, begat some healthy and some unhealthy offspring. From one of the healthy children four generations of healthy offspring have been unravelled ; from another of Le Provençal’s children, some affected perIf any one will sons are found in the eighth generation. take the trouble to refer to last week’s notes, it will be seen that Jean Nougaret’s marriage was an instance of formula 3. The real way to eliminate the disease then is for the affected persons to forbear having children, and for healthy persons to have no, children by night* * * blind persons. There are many other instances now known where peculiarities or diseases are transmitted after this fashion. Among others, horny palms and horny soles, some forms of cataract, a few diseases of the cerebral nervous system, albinism in the negro, curly hair, and absence of hair. Curiosity has disclosed the following strange human document of heredity, on strictly Mendelian lines, in the mode of death. It concerns two families, known as the Drowning and the Shooting Families, both residing in the same English village. The members of the Drowning Family commit suicide by placing their heads in shallow water or immersing themselves in small pools. The Shooting Family adopts the explosive method. In each family there are some individuals who depart from life in the orthodox fashion When a “shooter ” -these are the “ recessives. ” married a “ drowner ” complications naturally occurred ; some of the children were normal, and their descendants remained so ; others were shooters, others again drowners ; whilst some poisoned themselves. The genealogical chart is like that published for eye-colours, drowning and shooting being the “dominant ” trait. [The fictional and dramatic rights of this document are * -z+ + reserved.] Which diseases and which peculiarities follow the Mendelian rules it is too early to state. It has been Mr. Mudge, claimed that race is built up of such units. for instance, instances the offspring of North American Indians and Europeans as following the law. Do Japanese and Europeans ? The following passages from Lafcadio Hearn’s letters are not without some interest : “Two of my boys are all Japanese, sturdy and not likely to cause anxiety. But the eldest is almost altogether of another race-with brown hair and eyes of the fairy colour-and a tendency to pronounce with a queer little Irish accent the words of the English poems To another corresponwhich he has to learn by heart.” dent Hearn writes that he must send the eldest boy to is no other future for him and no Cornell : “There educational place here (Japan) to which I could trust him. Very different it is with my second sturdy boy, His way is who has no trace of European blood. straight and smooth, And my third boy-sturdiest of all. ” * * * The evidence that mental characters are inherited, as this extract suggests, just like physical traits must be Goethe’s words will recur to many, and are held over. indeed of general applicability, if you are not too insistent upon the sex whence the traits are derived : Vom Vater hab ich die Statur, Des Lebens ernstes Führen ; Vom Mütterchen die Frohnatur Und Lust zu fabuliren. M. D. EDER, JUNE 6, 1908 THE NEW AGE FOR A NATURAL COMBINATION. 107 Feudal Socialism. A PLEA By Captain F. P. Fletcher-Vane. in suggesting a party called the Feudal Socialists I am quite prepared to be met with the objection that hitherto seeming political contradictions of this kind have had no great success. But this is because they were contradictions in fact and not only in name. We all remember the Tory Democrats and the Liberal Conservatives, who, though of some temporary popularity, are now as rare as orchids in a turnip field. Now, the party which I desire to see arise differs from these because the contradiction is superficial and not fundamental. At bottom the complete aristocrat, Sir Roger de Coverley or any other type we choose to take, is a potential Socialist and a possible member of the Fabian Society, while the Fabians are themselves potential aristocrats. I will try to explain. ‘My friends among Socialists claim that the policy of Individualism carried to its logical conclusion has failed. It must be remembered that this sort of Individualism is quite a new invention, and came in about 1832. Sir Roger de Coverley did not know, and certainly would have repudiated, it. Everyone admits the failure, even if the admission is unconscious by, say, a subscription to a hospital, horror expressed at the Huddersfield case, or a study of the Report of the Commission on National Degeneracy. Now there comes my friend of Toynbee Hall days, Mr. C. R. Ashbee, who tells me in his book, “ Socialism and Politics, ” how his school of Socialists propose to deal with the matter. He says that his faith “is one whose objective is the betterment of society, which objective it is sought to arrive at through a more equitable distribution, based upon a more collective production, of wealth and the sanction for which . rests upon scientific, historic, and ethical principles.” There was a man once who, tired of saying the same prayers every night, wrote what he wanted over his bed, and on retiring pointed with this thumb to the writing, and said : “Them’s my sentiments.” So I might write over my bed what C. R. Ashbee here says and confirm it in the same manner. So also would probably have done Sir Roger de Coverley had Ashbee been alive to instruct him. But it may be asked what is the connection between the Feudal and the Socialistic idea? There is no connection, because they are the same. During my election contest at Burton-on-Trent in1906 I was once puzzled by a deputation of Trade Unionists who put the question to me : Was I in favour of Land Nationalisation? Now, historically and personally, I am bound up with the principle of individual landowning ; my people possessed many thousands of acres for many hundreds of years. By a happy inspiration, I replied that as I was a believer in Feudalism, so necessarily I was in favour of Nationalisation. The deputation left somewhat puzzled, but what I said then was true, because in the Middle Ages the great binding force of Feudalism was in the fact that, nominally at least, all the land was owned by the Sovereign (or the State). Moreover, land then was the chief source of wealth. And these territories were apportioned out (just as the Socialistic State would be forced to apportion all the wealth of a modern country) according to service rendered or to be rendered. For example, the estates of my family in England to this day are held on condition that the owner shall produce so many men in time of war. In fact, under Feudalism every man had to do his job, OF course, whether he was a tenant-in-chief (or baron), a subtenant (or knight), a villein, or another. And clearly they could be thrown out if they failed to perform their one service, just as my Socialistic friends, when they are members of the Council of the new State, will be obliged to dismiss the wasters and the. rebels. Before me now lies the copy of a document of great interest; it dates as late as 4 Ed. VI. (1552). This is the grant of Penshurst Castle to a knight as a reward for the capture of the Earl of Huntley at the Battle of Pinkie, in lieu also of the ransom which the said Earl ought to have paid (he was a Scotsman, and apparently got out of it), and to keep up the state of a baronet. But in this grant it is clearly stated that the property of Penshurst was of the estates of Edward, Duke of Buckingham, from whom they were confiscated for treason, and within a year of this time (1553) they were again confiscated from the grantee, and awarded to Sir Philip Sydney, whose descendants now possess them. So Penshurst changed hands four times within three years. Therefore, under Feudalism, it is clear that the ownership of wealth was sanctioned only for service to the State, and if the service, or responsibility, thereby entailed was not acknowledged, some other fellow got it, as in this case. How then will our middle-class friends maintain their theory respecting the sacred rights of property, in appealing to antiquity for their evidence? We bagged the Saxon lands, we stole the monastic estates, we confiscated Catholic property in England and especially in Ireland, and even as lately as six years ago, in the Transvaal, we issued a Proclamation (the famous one of August, 1901) stating that if the Boer leaders did not come in before September 6 of that year, they would be banished and their estates expropriated. It happened to be a part of my duty to read this same proclamation to the Boers in my district, and never since have I felt more pleasantly mediaeval than on that occasion. But it must be admitted that this sentiment was somewhat less effective in that there was a feeling of unreality about the whole matter. And it has been shown there was much, for Mr. Fischer, the present Premier of the Orange River Colony, who was a consistent malignant, and whose estate was confiscated and given to another, had an amusing correspondence with Lord Milner. On demanded his the conclusion of peace, Mr. Fischer farm near Bloemfontein from the Government. Lord Milner wrote to say that it was already given to someone else, but that he offered Mr. Fischer £10,000 for it Fischer then replied, in the name of the authorities. Then £20,000 was offered ; the I want £20,000. owner then claimed £40,000, and proposed to double at each offer. The farm was returned to him in lieu of compensation ! Nevertheless this latest attempt at expropriation only failed on account of the lack of force. Had we ever dominated South Africa as the Normans dominated the SECOND-HAND AT HALF BOOKS PRICES!! NEWBOOKS 25 PERCENT. AT DISCOUNT I Books on all Subjects and for all Examinations (Elementary and Advanced) supplied. STATEWANTS. W. & G. 8vo, 64 I SENDFORLISTS. BOOKS SENTON APPROVAL. BOOKS Bought Good PRICES GIVEN, I CHARING CROSS ROAD, LONDON, W.C. REVISED AND MUCH ENLARGED, 7d. Paper Boards, 1S. net, Foyle, 135 Just Issued. Crown THE PRODIGY AND FREAK OF NATURE; or, An Animal Run to Brain. By KERIDON. " Well worth reading by all who are Interested In mental evolution.“Westminster Review. " Its lesson learnt, how rapid might man’s advance become ” -Literary World. " A very interesting suggestion, and Keridon ’ works out some corollaries of it with clearness and cogency: it is worth weighing thoroughly.“ -Morning Leader. “ ‘ Keridon ’ has written a highly interesting little book.“-The NEW Age. THE SAMURAI PRESS, CRANLEIGH, SURREY. MAN: by post pp.; wrappers, by6d. net,1S. 1d. post, NEW EDITION. southern half of England, there would have been no question of restitution. But we knew, every reasonable soldier knew, that South Africa, with its Dutch majority, could only be retained by consent, and had we adopted Norman William’s principles, we should have had to fight for our existence, not at Pretoria or Bloemfontein, but at Cape Town. We were, in this instance, like all other normal beings, honest by force of necessity, if there be indeed any honesty in maintaining individual ownership of land, a question which may be argued. Socialism then proposes to nationalise the sources of wealth just as Feudalism did, and to force every man for his share to do certain service to the State. Lord Roberts and the National Service League may indeed be unconscious Socialists in this. When presented fairly, indeed, every reasonable man accepts the principle, and attempts to mould his conduct in conformity with it. We call it Duty, or Responsibility, or what not, but we do it. Therefore, in one sense, Feudalism is but mediaeval Socialism, or, as I should prefer to say, Socialism is no more than twentieth-century Feudalism. Now, in these facts there is a really valuable suggestion. The Feudal-minded man consciously or unconsciously, as the result of heredity, is much more in sympathy with the aspirations of the workers than the middle-class individualist. Every political platform proves this fact, though we call it to-day the inherent respect which the people have for rank and birth. As a matter of fact, it is nothing of the kind, for rank and birth unaccompanied by this feeling command little respect from the people. The influence of the gentry is due to their freedom from the cant of caste, to their naturalness in dealing with men, a naturalness which is not easy of acquirement by the individualist of uncertain position. If I am correct in asserting that there is a natural sympathy between what we may call the aristocrats and the workers, in that both classes are disgusted at the sight of unrestrained Individualism (the bastard child of commercial governance), then the present time is a favourable one for these two sympathetic classes to join hands. Do we not hear a good deal about the middle-class opposition to Socialism ? They will gain little by their political activity it is true, for there is an element of farce in it. Their political power, which is largely the source of their wealth, is too recent to be respectable, and the spectacle of a class which as recently as 1832 obtained an undue share in the government of the country now in 1907 crying to heaven to aid them to retain not only their power, but also a major share of the good things of life, may be interesting, but certainly is not impressive. Moreover, they base their claim on a demonstrably false foundation-“ the sanctity of property “-which we all know, and soldiers most of all, is mythical. The good man who has made money by cheating his customers and underpaying his employees would persuade us that his capital is more deserving of protection than ever he considered the estates of the landowners, while we know that both kinds of property were acquired by force. But there is more of the picturesque in taking the Saxon estates in war than there ever can be in sweating women and children out of their share in the slums. For this good man forgets one rather important fact. He squeals because the “predatory ” County Council makes him fork out his pennies in the pound to support his indigent neighbours, while the feudal owner of the soil has been doing this thing through the centuries, not because he was forced, but as a duty. Neither landowner nor trader need talk much as to the rights of property, for without persuading the majority of our countrymen to pay the man in blue to protect them, neither land nor the domestic spoons would be safe for an hour. There has recently arisen a question which might form a meeting-point for both Socialists and Feudalists. This is the open sale of titles to undeserving persons through the medium of the Party Funds. To both of these classes the spectacle of a man who has no other recommendation than his wealth being promoted over the heads of his fellow-men must be repugnant. And we may even oppose the scandal without being adverse in principle to hereditary honours ; for even a Socialist, if he could find Bernard Shaw’s Superman, and being convinced that his supernal strain was an advantage to the community, would hardly object to his receiving hereditary pre-eminence. It is, of course, all a matter of degree. But there can be no possible excuse for erecting an insignificant and undistinguished person on account of his wealth to a position which implies that his undistinguished descendants for all time shall have place and precedence before other men. In permitting this scandal, it is difficult to say who is the more insulted, the King, who has to acquiesce in it, the old aristocracy, who have to admit into their ranks an outsider, or the average citizen, who is expected to give place to a man with whom he would probably not desire to sit at table. In a campaign against this abuse, Socialists and Feudalists may combine, and I feel sure that once they meet, the natural sympathy between them will cement an alliance which, when it takes place, will not only be one of the strongest political combinations, but will, on account of its aims, be one of the purest-for it means the Betterment of the World. The True Gospel of Feminism. A reply to Mr. Belfort Bax. Bax ! Oh, Rip Van Winkle redivivus -and worse ! He at least on waking knew that things had changed, and that he had to learn them afresh. But though you are unasleep, your eyes are holden, so that you ignore the water that has passed under the bridge since first you took your stand thereby and tried to stem the flow. You refer us to pamphlets written twelve years ago anent the “legal subjection of men ” -but if men are subject to men, is not man still paramount, and how can we remedy your grievances before we are in a position to redress our own? In good sooth, Mr. Bax, you entirely fail to comprehend our movement, and though your arguments prance around and cavort bravely in the circumscribed field you have allotted to them, they have nothing whatever to do with the march of progress in which our forces are harnessed. Your specious concessions as regards pleas based on abstract justice, which assume, you say, “that women are on the average substantially similar and equal to men in intellectual and moral capacity,” do not delude us. We may frankly decline to take advantage of them, and yet hold on our course with convictions unimpaired. however, that we are Do not imagine, (I hasten to oblivious to the value of such arguments. add this because I remember that you deny to women the power to appreciate abstractions.) No, they have served us well in their time during the last half century and more, and will doubtless come in again for future use, but in the long years of our struggle we have learned something which may surprise you, Mr. Bax, viz., that the mind of the majority of our brethren is constitutionally insensible to appeals on abstract grounds. Once upon a time we hoped to convert men by logic, and counted much on its irresistible and immediately convincing effect ; but we have been forced to recognise that its workings are concerns of geologic The average man likes his mental pabulum periods. straight from those mills of God which grind exceeding slowly and exceeding small ; so to economise ages and to suit current capacity, we have powdered our abstract principles to pragmatic sanctions. I will just briefly explain these before I touch your article more closely. These sanctions may be said to fall into three cateOH ! Mr. gories-social, private, and economic ; but the three are in one, the one in three-without real division. (a) Social. We urge that masculine dominance unbalanced by feminine responsibility has been very largely the cause of the disastrous disregard of human life during the industrial development of the past 150 years. Men, the wealth-earners, have had sole directing power, and the result has been the setting up of a dividend standard instead of a vital standard of communal effiI do not ignore the sympathetic efforts of ciency. masculine benevolence towards the grafting of more humane ideals on the body politic, but present conditions only prove their want of effective support. Their difficulties have been aggravated by the fact that the politically irresponsible section of the community has been entrusted with the enormously important duty of With a reckless fatuity unparalleled wealth-spending. in its appalling consequences, whilst women have been exercising a social and economic influence which cannot be over-estimated, their sphere of conscious intelligent interest has, so far as current expectations are concerned, been restricted to the home, and to the development of their instincts, already sufficiently emphasised by nature, towards luxury and their own personal adornThe result has been a feverish, extravagant exment. penditure which has multiplied the desire for wealth and stifled correspondingly the natural human care for The dethe lives from. whose energies it is drained. of a mand for the suffrage, i.e., for the full recognition political responsibility we are eager to assume, is the strongest symptom of a healthy reaction on our part. (b) Private. We understand well how far the evil effects of habit and custom incapacitate many of our sisters from even appreciating the necessity for political Their moral energy is sapped by long defreedom. Nevertheless, we urge that if the breakpendence. neck race after and out of wealth is ever to be- intelligently modified and controlled (and as a Socialist, Mr. Bax, you recognise this as necessary), it can only be done with and by the co-operation of women. They and their tastes are the great driving-power of the social wheel of wealth-they may make or mar the men who share their lives, and I am at a loss to understand how any man aroused to the needs of his time can maintain opposition to a movement so obviously directed towards the awakening and development of woman’s social consciousness. Isolation engenders individualism : at present petty barriers of disability form a fine mesh over the whole of our social structure, which impedes not only free and united action, but the full sweep of constructive thought. Remove the most insidious form of this network by a frank public recognition of the communal value of each citizen-cut the Lilliputian bonds, and Gulliver will arise sufficient in strength to defend the land from the legions of Blefuscu, whatever they may be. (c) Economic. My three categories, it will be seen, are interchangeablefor woman neither liveth nor dieth to herself alone-but supplementing the economic effects of woman’s political liberty, to which I have already referred, I may remind you that the vote would help to bring home to women. their share of responsibility for the continuance of bad industrial conditions, for the adulteration of the food they buy and the stuffs they wear, for the manufacture of worthless articles that literally impoverish the State that sanctions them, and for the vital efficiency of the community at large. I do not claim for them a mental or moral difference from men so great as necessarily to bring about any immediate revolutionary economic change, but I repeat that the existence of more than half the nation as unrecognised and irresponsible political entities is a handicap on progress which no social reformer can afford to ignore. This brief summary of our position will, I hope, Mr. Bax, suggest to you that our claims are more deeply rooted in the wisdom of the race than you have hitherto realised, and that they are to be considered on more philosophic lines than are implied in your conception of them as a demand for additional sex-privileges only. All the same, however, you are of course quite right in thinking that the movement has in prospect the improvement of our status ; but you must forgive us if your enumeration of our legal advantages utterly fails to convince us that such an aim is superfluous. In the first place, are not the very instances of favouritism which you adduce merely so many indications that justice is arbitrary, and its favours therefore questionable? Too many of your so-called privileges are nothing but blundering attempts to counterbalance the lawmade injustice which is the gravamen of our complaint. In most, we see traces of that system of coverture under which a married woman’s rights were completely absorbed by her husband, and we are not in the least inclined to be grateful for any reminder of a system so odious and degrading. Your prejudices, I fear, prevent the exercise of your usual perspicacity, Mr. Bax. We want no privilege before the law on the ground of sex alone ; and if you can turn your logic on the legal mind, and convert it to- a nice appreciation of justice based on broad social needs, and untainted by sexfavour, women will join with de-penalised men in a grateful testimonial to your beneficence. In addition to the want of subtlety displayed in your criticisms, there is a narrowness of outlook which in a man of your undoubted ability is deplorable. You are so completely lost in envy of the “privileges ” granted to the very small proportion of women who trouble the legal fraternity that you overlook the sex-penalty attaching to almost every woman-worker. The male proletarian justly complains of his wages ; but what of women who receive from one-half to one-third the amount of such inadequacy? And what of the enormous army of married women whose work has no legally-recognised emolument beyond support according to the husband’s status? These cannot afford to share your oblivion. It is indeed news to learn that we are responsible for “forging a weapon of tyranny called chivalry.” I thought in my ignorance that that fine ornament was one of men’s proudest boasts, one for which they demanded our ceaseless gratitude. We women-or must I say we feminists?-have, of course, seen the hollowness of its pretensions long ago ; we have learned that this same chivalry is a mere stage-weapon ; demanding limelight or a rose-shaded glamour for its most effective play, and breaking short in the hand when real fighting’s to the fore. True, its knightly owners-of the carpet variety-fly to open a drawing-room door, or to fetch soft cushions for their liege ladies, and we have sought in vain their chivalrous devotion where it might have done real service-in the labour market, for instance, behind the counters where it provides seats which must not be sat upon, or in the work-room, where body and soul alike are demanded as the price of bread. And this same chivalry is of our forging? Oh, Mr. Bax! I hear an echo of the Adam-cry, “The woman tempted me ! ” Can’t you even rise to chivalry yourself? At the outset I rejected your concession as to our moral and intellectual equality. Don’t you see now that the plea is scarcely worth our making? Our wider and deeper knowledge of the social conditions resulting from supremacy of the masculine intellect has not increased our reverence : rather it has fostered a recognition of man’s slowness in “absorbing the higher functions of the species,” which we think without undue conceit we may hope to emulate, if not surpass. But if, with a struggle, we win the booby-race, is it not better that we should be consciously racing, though only in your tracks, than sitting down by the roadside, waiting till you turn back for us, as inevitably you must? It is the greatest common measure of the wisdom of the race which finds its practical effect in our legislation ; for that common measure to be increased, there must be a stability of advance which can only be guaranteed by sex-co-operation. The community has no right to expect social service or sympathies from members whom it refuses to recognise as responsible ; political neglect begets political indifference, and the moral weakness thus engendered saps the whole social structure. The resemblance between Men and Women is sufficient for men’s comprehension of at least this point, viz., that our demand for increased power is akin to their own natural expansion, and that refusal implies a stultification against which they would rebel as we do. The sociological import of the matter is in the gradual awakening of hundreds of thousands-nay, mill-ions ! for the movement is world-wide-of women who had not till recently a suspicion of the bearing of their relaThey are now learning tion to the “Roots of Reality.” “the identification of personal interest with social interest,” which is, as you very justly observe in one of your Essays, the idea underlying the new ethic. You may continue to decry the Feminist movement, Mr. Bax, but you are setting yourself against a surging tide of fresh vitality which promises a quickening and regeneration of all our social energies. Remember Mrs. Partington, and forbear so futile a MILLICENT MURBY. proceeding ! A Jealous Cod. All day and night had I prayed : “Far have I travelled, over all Hangs like a pall Wretchedness, sickness, and care, Ecstatic souls in despair, Bodies worn threadbare. Lack of faith nowhere, Among Islamite, Pagan, or Jew, Zarathustrian, Buddhist, Taoist, Osirist, Brahmin, Omankuru, Christian, Agnostic, too. All look to Thee for relief, And Thou, O God, makest no sign. Art callous or ignorant quite? Then leave me the earth to set right, I know what is wrong with mankind : The plague-spots I’ve touched, the core and the rind.” Then sudden God answered, “So be it. Six days did I labour to make The earth, of thy sore refrain ; Which twelve days shalt thou have to reshape. Omnipotent, omniscient, Thou shalt reign.” * * * * * * I laughed : mankind’s sorrow to banish Was the joy of a moment’s brief leisure ; ‘Twas Being, whilst Knowing did vanish. God’s Work was my Pleasure. * * * * * * -x Time ended, again I ventured : Now a man, not a God, in the throng. Oh ! horror, oh ! cave of delusion. No ill, not a grievance was cured ; Men spoke of the brief space of time When to live was a glory sublime : God again had forsaken the earth, He’d awakened by hasty rebirth. Thus their cry. Then my story I bruited aloud, Whilst Dispenser of Glory was I, The Maker of Ill is your God. “ Monster, Blasphemer,” they shouted. In prison I’m cast with derision, Whilst God, in my dank cell, My torture seeks to swell. Listen ! He speaks : “You, man ! to create, when I failed to set In action, a dream-world, you forget I am a Jealous God. Though Love it be thine, The Power it is Mine, I am a Jealous God.” M. D. E. Some Suggested Definitions. By Edwin Anti-Socialist, ing against Pugh. . one who argues for Socialism by arguit. Baron, Baronet. See Barren. See Barren, unproductive, unfruitful, uninventive. Baron, Baronet. Capitalist, one who possesses other people’s capital. Demos, a dirty fellow, who makes our lucre filthy. England, a rather large piece of dirt that everybody who happens to be born on it is expected to feel sentimental about. Food, fuel for the human engine. Gaol, a building or place for the incarceration of inexpert criminals. History, a picturesque romance, made up entirely of chapters of accidents. Honour, that which a man will often barter in the singular to possess in the plural. Ideal, Idealism, Idealist. See Idiotcy. Idiotcy, state of being an idiot. See Ideal, Idealism, Idealist. Idler, one who never rests. Justice, a thing we all want until we get it. Jealousy, condemnation of another’s good taste. Knowledge, a form of abstract wisdom that would seem to be more easily imparted than acquired. Lady, a woman who is entirely successful in concealing the fact that she bifurcates. Man, a creature who wants but little here below-and usually gets rather less than that. Narcosis, that last state of the Parliamentarians which signifies his apotheosis. NOW, that moment of time in which we feel least inclined to make an effort. Opportunity, a small black bird that flies by night. Opinion, that which is mere prejudice in others. Prejudice, that which is an opinion in ourselves. Quarter-day, that day of the year on which quarterly payments are not made. Radical, a Liberal of illiberal views. Socialism, the substance of that monstrous shadow which Anti-Socialists tilt at. Thief, an unlicensed robber. Usurer, a licensed robber. Vote, a weapon that is more often held by the blade than by the handle. World, the playground of the rich ; the workshop of the poor. Xerotes, the one valid excuse for drunkenness that has never yet been used in Court. Youth, an angel that we all entertain unawares: Zealot, one who collects subscriptions, The Serpentine To right, the sun, a broad pillar of gold, Shoots down the gently rippling water As if to mellow the cold breeze blowing against it, To left, the brown-and-green-enclosured water Stretches unbroken to a little yellow bridge, And over this there runs a stream Of human souls home-hastening : And behind the bridge a bank of trees, dense-green, Just touched with presage of the Spring, In blue mist delicately shrouded. Further still, some stiff, red chimneys And a waving flag half-mast ; Still further, in faint fragile grey, Two towers, square-based and with a central mast Uppointing. For the rest, the music of the town, most sad, AUSTIN PRIESTMAN Most sea-like, How I nearly caused a War, question is did it really happen? My friends say it didn’t. My enemies say it didn’t. My friends tap with playful finger on the nose ; my enemies with significant finger on the forehead. And yet, you know, it’s absolutely true. If I had the passion for proving things, I could heave you up a But it vexes me that the thing cartload of evidence. doesn’t look true ; for I always contend that if a thing doesn’t look true it isn’t true, whatever the facts may say. Let’s see what you will make of it. Once on a time I was poor. This sounds incredible, but I know it was so. And hunger, let me tell you, is an exceedingly uncomfortable and, devilish thing. Granted hunger and the distaste for honesty which is the essential factor in the journalistic temperament and you have a man ripe for any villainy. This I put down, not in a spirit of vain-glory or selfabasement, but simply to show what causes pushed me My friends do not dispute that to the shameful deed. part of the story ; they say the lie begins later. But I say if you want to shove the thing into Fairlyland, shove it all in ; and so says my wife. The dream begins, then, in an underground chamber near Fleet Street. A bloated person, with rings on his fingers and hoofs on his toes, is offering me a pen. A fair-written document lies on a roller-top desk littered with business and my three guineas. The B.P. has pointed ears. He wears a long black frock coat. There is a smell of sulphur in the air. I take the pen. I take my seat. I sign without a tremor. As the big bold slash goes across my three junior ‘ t’s ” there is a clap of thunder, a hurrying of feet, and the tinkle of a telephone bell, and with a loud ha ! ha ! ha ! the bloated person vanishes up the chimney . . . Then the scene changes ; clouds and waves begin to rock the cabin. I lie down in the bunk and think cheerfully of my latter end. Another bloated person (or is it the same?) discourses pitilessly of the lusciousness of boiled pork. The smell of the things he devours strikes through three blankets and a counterpane ... The cabin opens out on to a gangway-down which I walk behind a porter stooping between burdens. Swarms of other porters assault the air with bids of bad service in worse English. The world looks horribly fresh-painted and bilious ; it still rolls a little ; the language is like the plump of dock water on the quay . . . I am looking up at an imposing building with the words “School for Modern Languages : Native Professors ” blazoned on the front. A very quiet and docile street. The air caresses one like the smile of a happy young girl. To right and left, as I turn, I see sails of barges at anchor on hidden canals. All the houses have just been taken out of the toy-box and scrubbed. You guess they are terra-cotta ... Opposite me sit two men in crease-new lounge suits, one flushed and full in the face, with a stupid bull stare, the other with a hook-nose and keen beady eyes. They are explaining the contract. A new one, a 150 francs, secret thing now first disclosed : Monthly to be paid in whatever instalments my masters please. Weekly, 40 lessons one hour long, to be given when at midnight, for instance) and wherever my masters desire. Extra lessons when required, at a franc apiece. Start for Germany, Holland, or Scandinavia within three days of notice from my Fine of 250 marks if I leave masters to do so. Salary to be paid me up to without fortnight’s notice. end of month if I am sacked without notice and without reasonable cause (and of course there will be reasonable No lessons to be given, no paid work of any cause). kind to be done save at my masters’ will. Not to give or help to give language lessons, in or within 50 kilometres of any town, village, hamlet, or caravan wherein I have laboured, during the two years following my release. Not to speak to any pupil except during the lesson hour ; above all, not in the street. To do nothing in word, deed, thought, demeanour, or apparel to disTHE credit the school with potential customers. To act like a gentleman and dress like a shopwalker. And-for the just observance of all this rot-to deposit with them the sum of a hundred francs. Or ;-In the unlikely but actual case of my having nothing on me but a draper’s farthing, a trouser’s button, and a soaked-off halfpenny stamp, to authorise the deduction weekly from my pay of the sum of ten francs until a hundred francs have been deducted. Shades of my anonymous ancestors ! I sign ! I sign this second and more damning scroll ! Yet, O contemptuous reader, for the sake of the dream’s probability, remember that I have been anhungered. 35 francs -10 francs = 25 francs = £1. And think you in the memory of professor, professor ever set eyes on that kept-back part of the price? Then the kinematograph shifts and wobbles to and fro. Now I am sitting in a sort of railway waitingroom talking, talking, talking bran and sawdust to goggle-eyed students who stutter retorts in ludicrous jabberwocky, my mouth and brain perpetually parched and sticky. Now I am out for a scurry of fresh air between the acts. Now I am in the miserable “professors’ ” room quacking cafe gossip and shop (such shop !) with the “professors.” Now I am gulping food in the apoplectic eating hour. Forty hours a week is not much, you think? Try ! 12-1, Try how it is when the hours are 8-9 10-11, 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 9-10 ! Six sevens are 42, and my first week’s record is 45 hours. For twenty shillings and a perpetual blush of shame. Do you understand I work for a week from eight in the morning until ten at night for twenty filthy shillings ? No, sir, I get no five francs extra, Mark that, exactly five ! Now the rule is (there are go rules with 180 fines), you wait half an hour and then-no pupil-no lesson-you incontinently vanish. And I get nothing for those lost half hours? Not a farthing, not a centime, not a pice. Though it is only on pay day I find out that. Worse than all, here comes a busy sprite a-whispering, “There wasn’t no real pupils at all for them hours ; they puts ‘em on your list to stop you giving privit lessons !” A pretty dodge ! At this stage of my dream I perceive my blood is beginning to boil. Suddenly I am standing before the two, my workplan in my hand. “ I have had just 40 hours this week,” I am saying, “including three where I waited for nothing. I know for a fact a pupil pays if he fails his engagement without notice. I want to be paid, too. If you will not pay me, I work no more this week.” “ Donner und berlitzen ! ” (their favourite oath) “out you go then,” they roar, shocked and indignant. “ My money, then ! ” “When we think fit.” And a storm of invective and gesticulation rattles upon my tympanum ... The picture darkens. I am hurrying somewhere with a mission--one thought in my mind : “This is a case for the Hempire.” Patriotism outraged ! Englishman’s rights invaded ! What will they say in the “Times? ” . . . The Vice-Consul is very kind and foolish. He offers cigarettes, and suggests I should see them again. I nod the head doubtfully ... I am on the first floor landing of the school-I and the two, in hideous conflict . . . I am on the stairs . . . on the ground floor . . . I am strolling along the terra-cotta streets. I observe ships gliding on distant canals-remember having had dim glimpses of such things during the mad’ month of servitude. There is a feeling of stiffness in my left eye and of exultation in Continually I find myself grabbing at immy heart. pending umbrellas. Continually a cracking of umbrella handles is in my ears. After all, life is worth living. “Please the pigs it will rain to-morrow,” my lips are murmuring. (It does rain to-morrow! The pigs be praised) . . . A large handsome room suggestive of leathered ease. A liveried person gliding stiffly away through the door. A small round man, slightly puffed, leaning back with his eyes shut and getting at the rights of my wrongs. The Vice-Consul’s “Sir Archibald “-the English Am“But what can he do?” he asks mildly. bassador, 112 “This is a question of law.” He might frown (in MS.) I suggest. -He shifts in his chair like a man who Well, he will go down and talk to abominates action. them, and take my claim-for wages earned, for deMy heart swells with posit, for salary in lieu of notice. pride. There is some use in being an Englishman ... An enthusiastic “professor ” bursts into my attic Glorious ! and twirls his straw hat up to the ceiling. steeds, England’s He tells me all about it. Champing four wheels rumbling to a standstill, teachers and scholars craning out of window, Belial and Moloch (still wet from the Sunday?) quaking and gnashing in their den . . . And here the dream goes to smash. There ought to be a war. And this ought to satisfy you that it was But not a dream, for in a dream there would be a war. when I go to see the Vice-Consul next day he hums and They say I assaulted them and haws. Case difficult. left without notice-are going to counterclaim. Justice on my side. Custom on theirs. Sir Archy telegraphed home. Told not to make a bother. England not ready. Conservative Government in and no surplus cash (or was it Liberal Government in and no surplus courage? I forget). Better clear out. What if I take action? Case last months. Meanwhile I starve. What if they take action? Can have me imprisoned on plea I want to elope. Better clear out at once. Sir Archy’s stumped up passage money ; and ‘er, have a cigar. I refuse both money and cigar, and go home to find a counterclaim (from a solicitor) lying waiting on the Damages for assault, for broken umbrella, for ‘table. broken contract. Altogether 100 francs more than my claim. Back by the next post goes a copy of my claim, with an additional 1,000 francs for assault. And that is the last I hear of the business, because, of course, I hadn’t the money and they hadn’t the cheek to go to law. Where is it I met the V.C. again ? At a football match, I think, when he confesses the rank injustice of the world-(but why did I go to a language school?). Then we talk football, in which game he is expert, then we shake hands, and so exit V.C. into the dark. As for Sir Archy, the next and latest glimpse I have I am posing as a of him is not without its humour. Greek god at the Academy ; he and a princely person “ And curiously enough,” exare being shown round. plains the eloquent cicerone, “we have an English model this week, and English models are rare.” Sir Archy looks at me, catches my eye, blushes, and, before,” says he, “I think I’ve met the gentleman blushes again, raises his hat to me, and turns away. The princely person smiles. Perhaps he takes me for a long-lost brother, or an unpaid tailor, or something of that sort, but he surely never suspects me of having been an international complication. P.S.-If any one of my readers be anxious to test the let him buy a penny paper and truth of the picture, answer an advertisement (there are plenty of them) that reads like this : “ Gentleman (English) wanted to teach own language abroad.” W. R. TITTERTON. JUNE 6, 1908 Books and Persons. (AN OCCASIONAL CAUSERIE.) Mr. John Galsworthy’s new book “A Commentary ” (Grant Richards, 3s. 6d.) was published for Whitsuntide, and as I write this the chams, lamas, and mandarins of London letters are doubtless devising adjectives for it in the laborious leisure of their holiday. Among people who can distinguish between a real book and “The Historian’s History of the World,” Mr. Galsworthy was heavily prejudiced by the praise which was plastered over him by the master-plasterers of Fleet Street. There are a few critics whose approval would damn almost any book in the eyes of an intelligent bookman. Nearly all these chams, etc., conspired to assert that “The Man of Property ” was the greatest modern novel, except “ The Country House.” The inordinate laudation poured out upon “The Silver Box,” an ingenious but very slight and naif dramatic sketch, almost achieved the ruin of Mr. Galsworthy among bibliophiles. By the way, “ The Silver Box ” was not inspired by Anatole France’s “ Crainquebille ” ; it ought to have been. But when the lamas, etc., announced that “Joy,” the successor to “The Silver Box,” was a failure, then there began to be hope for Mr. Galsworthy. I at once felt instinctively that “Joy ” must be pretty good. And it was. It was a misunderstood play, as H. G. Wells’s “ Island of Dr. Moreau ” is a misunderstood novel. * * * Personally, I do not consider that either of Mr. Galsworthy’s novels comes within the four-mile radius of the first-rate. They both lack a sense of beauty. They are as hard and hostile, and as harsh in colour, as a portrait by Sargent. They are also almost entirely deficient in individual characterisation, being crowded with types, not with persons. Now, “A Commentary ” is frankly a collection of “characters,” and it shows very clearly the qualities and defects of the author. The general effect of the book is one of monotony. It is chiefly governed by a strong prejudice against its It is as inflexible as a cocoanut, without own subjects. the milk. All this is bad, and will assuredly debar Mr. Galsworthy from the immortality so kindly mapped out for him by mandarins, etc. I should say that Mr. Galsworthy will last about as long as Sargent, whose half-brother he is (in the arts). I read most of “A Commentary ” as it appeared, once a fortnight or so, in the “ Nation,” and that was the safest way to appreSome of the sketches are exceedingly and ciate it. dazzlingly brilliant, while others are imitations of Mr. Galsworthy written by a kind of astral Andrew Lang. The best of them reveal a writer. And when I say a I mean this I signify one who can write. writer, There is a study of a barrister who, for high praise. without knowing it, is always meeting himself. It is a pretty bit of work. * + * What Mr. Galsworthy has to do is to go out and buy Milk is a very difficult thing to buy, but if some milk. he can meet with some in his walks abroad, there is hope for him. For he has a soul, a mind, and an eye of He must also contrive to take a walk with his own. his prejudice against the successful classes, and lose it. First-rate writers have no business with hostilities. First-class writers ought to be aware that one kind of man is just as deserving of sympathy as another, and that to shed tears over the weak and the oppressed is a sign of facile emotionalism rather than of an ordered It is not morally reprehenand powerful imagination. sible to live in Bedford Court Mansions. * * * One always finds literary news of vital interest in the “ British Weekly,” and last week “A Man of Kent ” gave honour to the announcement of a final work by Mr. Clement K. Shorter on the Brontës. I much regret the finality. I had hoped that Mr. Shorter would continue his researches into the dailiness of the gifted Mr. W. M. Rossetti has sisters for ever and ever. cruelly offered us his final work on Dante Gabriel, and A Wrinkle about Clothes. JUNE 6; 1908 THE NEW AGE. now Mr. Shorter completes the gloom by this abrupt withdrawal from the field of which he was the brightest ornament. A pity ! I feel sure that all has not been said about Anne Brontë. And I suggest that Mr. Shorter ‘should undertake modest Anne’s biography in ten volumes, and that the “Times ” people should practically give it away, as they practically give away all their masterpieces. JACOB TONSON. THEINTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION. VISITS VISIT NORWAY. TO AUGUST 18th to 27th. BOOK OF THE Holyoake, Social Pioneer.* WEEK. Students of social reform will be well repaid by a careful study of these volumes from the pen of Mr. The “ Life of Holyoake ” is in many Joseph McCabe. respects the most interesting book that has appeared The period dealt since Morley’s “Life of Gladstone,” with, his long and amazingly active career, his service in a hundred honoured causes make Holyoake’s record a summary of the revolutionary energy of the nineteenth century. He was’ a singularly interesting man ; his range of acquaintances was so wide as to include practically every famous reformer of his time ; he was a zealous letter writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, and he lived to see many of the causes that he helped to start, grow and prosper. Holyoake, who was born on April 13, 1817, died on January 22, 1906, and between these 89 years the greatest social revolution of modern times occurred. When , as a youth of seventeen, he began his work as a social reformer, the workers were ignorant and superstitious slaves ; when he died they had outgrown the Church, secured most of the rights of citizenship, forced their way into the House of Commons, and put the fear of God into the hearts of the old political parties. At the beginning of his experience the wage-earner slaved for sixteen hours a day ; his food was coarse and scarce ; combination was denied to him ; he had no education, and his pleasures were either brutal or sordid ; his children died like flies of preventable diseases ; and not having a vote, he interested the statesman only in so far as he could be induced to brawl for Church or King or riot for any cause that served their ends. Some measure of the progress secured within this period may be illustrated by two acts of Holyoake himHis very first tract, issued in 1841, was a plea self. for Trade Unionism, while from his death-bed in December, 1905, he wrote a letter to John Burns congratulating him on having -attained to Cabinet rank. It is perhaps as an Owenite missionary that HolyIt was certainly that part oake’s best work was done. of his career that was ‘furthest removed from the acknowledged respectability that graced, and perhaps It required heroism and comtainted, his later years. plete unselfishness to be a Socialist advocate in those to reflect that much of what days ; and it is interesting we are still demanding was being asked for by Owen included “ infant nearly a century ago. His programme schools of a kindergarten type (the first London infant school was founded by his disciple Wilderspin in 1820) and the legal suppression of child-labour ; an eight hour day for the adult workers ; co-operation in production and distribution ; the general diffusion of science and art ; the corrective treatment of the criminal and the reform of jails ; the substitution of arbitration for warfare ; greater freedom and a wider life for women; the emendation of the divorce laws, the poor law, and the licensing law ; the suppression of the national lottery, the collective ownership of the land ; and the admission of Jews, etc., to Parliament. These ideas were assailed by forces that have now been either silenced or tamed. Dean Close described Holyoake’s Socialism as “ devilism ” and himself as “a poor misguided wretch,” a “monster,” and complained One of the dailies described plauded the miscreant.” the Owenite colonies as “Epicurean styes,” and ap*The Life and Letters of George Holyoake. McCabe. Two vols. ; 360 pp. (Watts and Co. By Joseph 16s. net.) that a depraved audience in his locality actually “ ap- countries an opportunity of making each other’s acquaintance, and of learning something of each other’s customs and institutions. At the same time the Visits serve as a medium of introduction for people of different countries who are interested in the same social movements. A stay of ten days will be made in Christiania, and a Course of Lectures (in English) will be given under the following heads :- The object of these Visits is to give people of different THE HISTORYOF NORWAY(3 LECTURES). VISITS.-The Viking Ships - Historical Norsk Folkemuseam. Museum - SOCIAL& INDUSTRIAL LIFE NORWEGIANLITERATURE AND ART VISIT. -The Art Museum-A VISITS. -Municipal Kitchen-Employment BureauElectric Works (water power)- The Cathedral School-An Elementary School-Private Schools -A Secondary School. SOCIALMOVEMENTS LECTURES). (6 VISITS. -The People’s House-A Samlag Saloon. GOVERNMENT&INSTITUTIONS LECTURES). (5 EXCURSIONS.-Agricultural College at Aas-Small Holdings and State Holdings in the Neighbourhood of Christiania. (4 LECTURES). (4 LECTURES). Concert of Norwegian EXPENSES.-The cost of the visit depends on the choice of hotels and routes. As the visits are intended to be as accessible to as many as possible who are interested in national and social movements, DO trouble has been spared in ascertaining how all expenses, not Tenguineas essential to the purpose of the visit. may be avoided. may be reckoned as sufficient for the fortnight (the lecture fee included) where a cheap route is chosen and an inexpensive hotel. Full particulars F. M. BUTLIN, will be sent on application to Hon.. Sec., MISS OLD HEADINGTON, OXFORD. ITHE IBSEN WEEK. A SERIES will OF PLAYS BY IBSEN AND BJÖRNSEN be acted (according THE During NATIONAL the last week of August, THEATRE, to custom) at CHRISTIANIA, 1908. 24. Peer Gynt (music by Edward Grieg) on August TO FABIANS FABIAN & SYMPATHISERS. A Fabian WILL BE BORNE Banner BY Suffrage Demonstrations Saturday, June 13, & Sunday, June 21. The WOMEN’S GROUP in the FALL IN ANDMARCH UNDER IT, June 13, WOMEN ONLY, Victoria Embankment, 2.30 p.m. June 21, MEN and WOMEN, Trafalgar Square, 1 p.m. BEAUTIFUL HOLIDAY CENTRE. Dean Forest, Severn and Wye Valleys. Spacious House, extensive grounds (altitude 600 ft.). Excellent piano, billiard room, bath Good roads, magnificent scenery. tennis, conveyance. Homelike. Vegetarians accommodated. Board Residence from 27s. Photos, Particulars -HALLAM, Littledean House, Newnham, Glos’shire. 114 THE NEW AGE JUNE 6, 1908 pealed to the authorities to prevent Hampshire from Atheism, with which Holy“ so hideous a pollution.” oake’s name had also become associated, was regarded as a kind of moral leprosy that could not be endured. Sceptics were not permitted to offer evidence in the Pious and peccant tradesmen took advantage Courts. of. this opportunity of escaping their debts, thereby driving Holyoake to employ in his bookshop a Christian who was qualified to do the necessary swearing It was the imprisonment of before the magistrate. Southwell for publishing the “Oracle of Reason” that proved the grave of Holyoake’s remaining doubts as to the wisdom of heresy and the cradle of his real religion. “Christianity,” he said, “had once more produced the For talk of this kind he iron evidences of its divinity.” was himself tried and imprisoned for blasphemy, two of the magistrates who tried him being parsons, while as witness against him was a well-known prizefighter. It is impossible in a short notice of this character to deal with the many causes in which Holyoake occupied Many of them himself during his long and useful life. were fugitive in character, and died when their purpose had been served, but the two causes to which he gave the strength of his life were undoubtedly the secularist and co-operative movements, both of which he helped to found and promote. Apart from the special interest that these themes have for particular readers, Mr. McCabe’s book contains much important matter of Holyoake’s connection with Garibaldi, general interest. Mazzini, and the ‘Italian movement is told with both When we remember Holyoake’s insight and power. later characteristics, it is refreshing to recall that for Italy he was prepared to help in the manufacture of bombs and to take no small amount of risk. It is noticeable, however, that the bombs never got to Italy, but were used by Orsini in an attempt on the life of Napoleon the Third in 1858. The great fight against the Taxes on Knowledge is well recorded, although less recognition is given to the work of Richard Carlile and Henry Hetherington than their heroism and endurance Both of these men were made of the stuff demanded. that Governments might break but could not bend, and when we read our NEW AGE to-day, we may fitly remember that in order to break down the iniquitous tax Carlile spent more than nine years in gaol, and that twice in six months the authorities sent smiths to Hetherington’s shop to break up his press, while more than 500 men went to prison for selling his paper. Holyoake’s own liability for fines in this connection There is so much amounted to more than £600,000. that is excellent in Mr. McCabe’s book that a too We cannot captious criticism would be ungenerous. help noting, however, that while full praise is given to the man who started as a Birmingham button-maker, became an agitator and an outlaw, and eventually claimed the friendship of Gladstone, Bright, and other famous men, almost no recognition is given to the more It is, for inobscure men who helped him to climb. notorious that he owed much to his stance, fairly brother Austin, whom “B. V.” pungently called while Mr. Charles Watts and others “Jacob’s ladder,” gave him a support which made his later conquests easy. Mr. Holyoake’s connection with Mr. Bradlaugh and his quarrels with that dominant personality are handled by Mr. McCabe as though Mr. Bradlaugh must always and Holyoake right, concerning have been wrong, which there is likely to be considerable difference of In view, too, of what Mr. McCabe says that opinion. had cordial relations ” with the Holyoake “ always Ethical Societies, it is necessary to say that these relations were limited to occasional letters to their weekly journal expressing his disapproval of some attitude that they had assumed. Holyoake’s life was both long and inspiring, but it Thrice he stood as a Parliamenwas scarcely heroic. tary candidate on independent lines, and thrice he succumbed to the pressure brought upon him to withdraw. He aroused antagonism by recanting from manhood suffrage, while the episode of his connection with Walpole over the Hyde Park riots in 1866 was at least open to grave suspicion. During the time that Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant stood in the dock for publishing the famous Knowlton pamphlet he wrote a letter to the “Times ” which was an implied condemnation of the defendants, who were as yet unjudged, while he took a Gladstonian, and therefore hostile, attitude on the oaths question in which Mr. Bradlaugh was also involved. These incidents may seem to some the blemishes on a these aside, Holyoake is to great career ; but putting be judged by the general character of his work, and Those who knew this was always helpful and creative. him after the storm and stress of his propagandist life was over, will be glad of this record of a sparkling and sympathetic personality ; while Mr. McCabe has placed every student of the nineteenth century under an obligation to him for a singularly lucid and interesting record of its ambitions and achievements. H. SNELL. REVIEWS. Translated by Dr. Paul Eltzbacher. Anarchism. S. T. Byington. (A. C. Fifield. 6s. 6d.) The. philosophical anarchist starts with the ridiculous assumption that man is a reasoning being, that he will always act on definite and set rules, and that all you have to do is to find the correct formulae. He regards our arteries as flowing not with vital blood but with The plan of this book makes it some chemical fluid. There are four chapters dealextremely dull reading. ing in a general way with anarchistic teachings ; the other seven are devoted to the consideration of seven The attempt is made to render their teachings leaders. by means of short quotations from the author’s works, occasional remarks by Eltzwith copious footnotes, bacher, and corrections by the translator. All the charm of the original writers is gone, whilst Eltzbacher’s heavy German style makes his own con“ Anomistic are the teachings tributions impossible. those of Proudhon, of Stirner, Tolstoi ; nomistic Stirner and and Tucker. ” Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tucker are also “ endemonistic.” But Kropotkin has no right to be regarded as a leader of anarchistic teaching; nor Proudhon either, although he called his teachings Anarchism ; he, like the greater Russian, are It is the central State authority really communists. they would abolish, and to this view all sensible men Stirner was not only a very dull are now coming. German writer, but he was one of the stupidest of the rationalists. He was simply a juggler with words. According to Stirner, the supreme law for each one of us is his own welfare. “ Let us seek the enjoyment of life. ” Well, modern psychology has gone beyond these quibbles, which, by the way, were so much more ably and pleasantly given by De Mandeville. Godwin is another interesting example of the intolerable moral pratings of most Anarchists. Benjamin Tucker saves himself at times by having got born in America ; still he also finds that “ self-interest should be the supreme Give self-interest a sufficiently wide law of man.” connotation and the question isn’t worth discussing ; otherwise daily observations show that men have no supreme law-they act from a multitude of reasons and impulses. They can no more rid themselves of their ancestral strains, of the long chain of descendants from the earliest monad, than can Tolstoi overcome the persistence of his wife and his children. By Child’s Socialist Reader. (Twentieth Century Press. 1S. 6d.) A good “ children’s ” book is one that is acceptable to all children-of whatever age. This is nothing of the kind. At best it is “ not so bad in parts.” We are sorry to see that the managers of the Twentieth Century Press who produced that most excellent tract on Socialism and Art have themselves so little understandSin. ZION’S WORKS contain explanations of the Bible, which free mankind Read Vol. V., p. 87, and the " Discourses,” Vol. XII. IN THE PRINCIPAL FREE LIBRARIES. The from the charge of UNITARIANISM AN AFFIRMATIVE FAITH,” “ UNITARIAN CHRIStianity Explained” (Armstrong), Eternal Punishment ” (Stopford Brooke; ’ Atonement ” [Page Hopps\ given post free -Miss BARBMY Mount Pleasant, Sidmouth. U ing of the art of printingwe have seldom seen a worse piece of printingand we are still more sorry that Walter Crane should have had anything to do with it. His drawing of William Morris is execrable, to mention only one, and as for the piffling ornamental border to the pages- we might have stood it once, but to have It repeated round every mortal page is intolerable. When will people learn that under present commercial conditions it is only possible to produce plain unornamental Even the material used must be of the things ? plainest. Some of the The contents are not much better. moral tales are passably good, more particularly that one called “ The Rain of Gold,” but on the whole the text is written at the worst Sunday-School level, and are such as would neither amuse nor elevate any proper child. The poems with which the volume is sprinkled are even worse than the stories, and the child who reads “then everyone would have plenty of money like he himself had . . . .” would certainly not learn English. Wagnerian Romances. By Gertrude Hall. The (John Lane. 5s. net.) For those to whom Wagner’s stories are unfamiliar In rather over four this book may prove interesting. Hall has retold the hundred pages Miss Gertrude romances which have delighted the whole civilised The romances themworld by their musical setting. selves are, from a literary point of view, but poor stuff, dramatically uninteresting, philosophically opaque. It is only when they are vitalised by the force of Wagner’s In this year of music that they become at all possible. grace many of us are blasé about Wagner, and unashamed ; and it would take more than the literary skill which Miss Hall possesses to stimulate our tired minds This book to any interest in the plots of these operas. is the latest contribution to the large heap of superfluous literature which has been deposited outWe grow old quickly, side the temple of Bayreuth. and such a book as this insists all too strongly that If nobody would write anything Wagner is dead. about him for twenty years, he might have a chance of salvation. also asking for money. These and other incidents convey admirably the family position and the idea of the greatbusiness. In the Second Act Pancras announces to his brother Hein that he is going to marry again after 24 years of single life. The woman he has selected is his young housekeeper, Marianne. This scene between the brothers was the best in the play. In it Pancras reveals to Hein the terrible sexual struggles through which his celibate life has dragged him, and tells how he has with his own hands “ as a monk ” forged enough links of iron chain to cover the whole road from Berlin to Amsterdam. Nevertheless, Hein is sceptical (his own wife who comes on early in the FABIAN ARTS GROUP. ON A LECTURE SOCIALISMIN RELATION TO THE HEARTH, THE THRONE, AND THE ALTAR,” By E. BELFORT BAX, At the CLIFFORD’S THURSDAY, INN HALL, Fleet Street, JUNE 4th, at 8 p.m. on NOW ON SALE. The June “ IDLER.” UNIQUE BERNARD NUMBER SHAW BERNARD SHAWIN PORTRAIT AND CARICATURE. By Illustrated Special Article on HOLBROOK JACKSON, and DRAMA. Herman THE Heijerman’s “ Links.” Stage Society must set itself a higher and a more suffi“ Links ” is neither experimental standard. It is a good ciently novel nor sufficiently experimental. solid drama of the life of Pancras Duif, with a background of Dutch family experiences, but it does not show us enough. Do not imagine that I am not fully aware that there are hundreds and thousands of persons to whom even That, in fact, is one of the Pinero may be a revelation. Similarly reasons why I am a revolutionary Socialist. there are, no doubt, many persons to whom HeijerBut man gives something otherwise unobtainable. no great effort is made to do this, the effort is all concentrated on giving a picture of one particular kind of This is Dutch life, and one central Dutch personality. sufficient for average solid drama, it is not sufficient for good drama. The one thing which would redeem it, the revelation of a personality as the unique thing it essentially is, we do not get in “ Links.” So revealed, any personality is enough for the central theme of a drama, but those we have to furnish out of the store of our own experiences, and clothe with our own makeshifts, must, if they are to justify themselves, be the prophets of some new and great ideas. “ Links, ” Ltd.” is the name of a company which has been built up by Pancras Duif, who started as a working smith. When the play opens Pancras is just celebrating the dual event of the conversion of his business into a company and his own recovery from an illness. Pancras has retired from the management of the company, and his youngest son is now managing director. Father and son quarrel ; another son and a son-in-law come in asking for money, and they quarrel. A telegram is received from another son, the student Toon, with all the best Portraits Caricatures of G.B.S. by MAX BEERBOHM, JOSEPH SIMPSON, F. C. G., E. T. REED, NEVILLE S. LYTTON, FREDERICK H. EVANS, WILL ROTHENSTEIN, RODIN, and others. And Two Photographs of G. B. S. by Himself. To be had of all Newsagents Railway bookstalls. & PRICE SIXPENCE. See the " IDLER" for June, BOUGHT, BOOKS SOLD& EXCHANGED BEST PRICES given for good books. NOW FOR A POSSIBLE THE FIRST PRICE. OBTAINABLE ‘HE SOUL OF UNDER SOCIALISM. Cloth AT TIME MAN of gilt, post free, 3s. beautiful penned. By Oscar Wilde. 8d, exposition The most brilliant and socialism ever Other books by the same author always in stock. CANNON (successor, D. J. RIDER), 36, St, Martin’s Court, Charing Cross Road, scene, and having been exhibited goes off again, isa fearful example), and sums the matter up by saying that if Pancras wants to put an end to ‘his life there are many simpler methods. Hein’s grimly comic humour was very effective here, and later on, when his prophecies have been realised, not by marriage, but by the furious opposition of Pancras’ family to marriage, the turning of each comic prophecy of Hein into tragedy The tragedy begins to was a striking performance. materialise obviously in the plotting which goes on among Pancras’ children in the third act ; one of them has stolen some papers of Pancras, and on the strength of the eccentricities these display has called in a that “ mental pathologist ” to aid them in deciding This family scene was not pretty, and Pancras is mad. with I daresay quite real ; it compared very favourably Pinero’s family scenes in “ The Thunderbolt.” The people were living people, but their ugliness and their reality were not interesting. An incurable Socialist philosophy assures me that in some relation or other all persons are fine, or are seen in a perspective of fine things, and to see them in a perspective of best parlours and teacups is repellant. It is a worthier thing to show a man a drunken hog than And Heijera middle-class cantankerous respectable. man’s people are all as it were moving about inside their clothes and inside their conventions. They are too appallingly limited to come into contact with any less limited thing ; in Jan’s house, for instance, they have forgotten where they put the Bible. This is the Pancras talks of his sexual weak spot in the play. Bible texts, and struggles, and is fond of quoting assumes a severe puritanical morality as a matter of course ; these things imply a certain religious-moral outlook which ought to be emphasised. Had Pancras brought himself and his family into relation with the savagery and grandeur of the Bible their limitations Exactly would have assumed their true perspective. by doing this Miss Margaret Mack, for instance, was able to light up and display her terribly limited people in “ The Gates of the Morning.” And it is this lighting up and display that constitute permanent drama. For Heijerman’s “ Links ” will pass away when we cease to be interested in other social fashions, and in the social conventions of the people there exhibited. In the fourth act the tragedy drives on to its rather improbable conclusion. It contains a grisly scene between the “ mental pathologist ” and old Pancras, in which the doctor collects evidence of alleged insanity, a scene in which a brother and the brother-in-law bully Pancras’ prospective wife into hysterics, and the scene in which she goes away and leaves him “ alone, ” on which the curtain comes down. But the play is not finished. No permanent impression is kept. We were all quite well aware before this that middle-class families in small towns exhibit the savage ferocity of cannibals without their picturesqueness. This knowledge has been stated to us again, and here we are just as we started. There is in “ Links ” enough material for comedy or for tragedy, but only development enough for comedy. It is amusing to see silly limited people cynically displayed before us in comedy ; the humour of the specIf we tacle brings them into general human relations. laugh at a scene, however savagely we may laugh, then that scene has achieved. But a tragedy to which we are not indifferent must go deeper than this. A comedy brings us into touch with the democracy of humour. A tragedy must bring us into touch with the democracy of some great idea, of some religion, of some great personality. “ Links ” stays on the outskirts of all these things. Its discussion of the struggles of chastity, of the monk forging the links of chain enough to cover the road from Berlin to Amsterdam, is not human enough, it is too particularly pathological. Something of the lack of effect in the play is probably due to the translation. On several occasions there appeared to be lapses, although without the original before one it is difficult to judge, On one occasion, however, Pancras writes letters to his son and his brother, and begins “ Worthy Son ” and “ Worthy Brother. ” This is, I presume, a literal translation of the Dutch idiom. But as this beginning of a letter is purely formal among Dutch people, and corresponds precisely to “ Dear Son ” or “ Dear Brother,” there is no advantage of local colour or otherwise gained by the quaint phraseology. It would have been better also to have inserted deliberately a small amount of description of the “ small town in Holland ,’’ where the action takes place, in order to enable us to realise its physical, mental, and moral surroundings. As it was, it might have been any manufacturing town, anywhere. All the acting was good, the Pancras Duif of Mr. Fisher White, and the Hein Duif of Edmund Gwenn particularly so. None of the women characters were very much individualised, that of Gerritje perhaps the most so, and into this Miss Clare Greet poured a good deal of concentrated vitriol. Marianne, the housekeeper of Pancras, was very sketchy, and one suspects almost entirely the creation of Miss Edyth Latimer, who, however, was not able to make Marianne’s quite unexplained behaviour in leaving Pancras credible. L. HADEN GUEST. ART. The New English Art Club and Henry Bishop. I often wish that the more modern of our art clubs would make it a rule to hold their exhibitions in the dark days of winter. I don’t put this forward as a reasonable idea. It is a whim. I could talk reason into it had I the mind, but then my whim would be no longer a whim, and therefore of less value. It is due to my readers, however, that I should say that the basis of my whim is probably a love of light. I find this same love of light, of light in all its innumerable effects, its subtleties, its pranks, its experiments, is the predominant note of modern painting : of the art of paintThe modern painter is ing -where it is most alive. mainly and consciously concerned with light, but he does not merely record its effects-he captures and imI repeat my desire for exhibimortalises it. Therefore tions in the days of little light-so that there should be brightly illuminated oases for men when the sun seems aweary of shining. My mind ran along this line of thought as I walked through the galleries of the New English Art Club in Dering Yard, Bond Street, on a recent bright morning. Surely the motto of this club should be, “Let there be I Tower A 1d packet makes 15 delicious lightbuns with certain success,Almond, Lemon, or Vanilla. FLOUR. ‘ PLASMON is the Best part of Nature’s Best food-MILK, and increases the food value enormously.“ -Lancet. Tenfold Nutriment, in Tins, 9d., 1/4, & 2/6. ELEGANT METAL BOX of PLASMON ART Foods, Book, and “ Truth ” Booklet, Cookery post free, 1/6. ON,Ltd. (Dept. B.J.), Farringdon St.,E.C, PUBLISHERS’ Including all Latest Also New CURRENT REMAINDERS, LIST purchases, Greatly Reduced Prices. at of POPULAR REPRINTS, MAY Now Ready, WILLIAM GLAISHER, Ltd., Remainder and Discount Bookseller, 265, HIGH HOLBORN, LONDON. Greatly Extended and much Improved Catalogue LITERATURE STANDARD BOOKS HANDY the BEST FICTION, etc., ed. AGE. light,” for that obviously is the keynote of almost Even the most casual every picture in the exhibition. glance at this collection of paintings convinces one that What such a motto and such an aim would be worthy. does it matter if the light be sometimes dim or, as is oftener the case, just a little-strident? These are but I would far rather the accidentals of right action. spend my picture hours in an exhibition where one had occasionally to resort to “blinkers ” than in one where one was perpetually forced to close one’s eyes and find understanding by a process of mental illuminationlike looking on the world by candle light. My demand of a painting that it should first please the eye by revealing the manifold. qualities of light playing upon material things, is always satisfied at the exhibitions of the New English Art Club. Here and there, it is true, my eyes ached at some too self-conscious adventure in colour, Miss Alice Farmer’s “A Sunny Day in Winter, St. Ives, Cornwall,” with its clamorous blues, or the challenging “ Kop-how ” of But these were exceptions. GeneSpencer F. Gore, rally the light was revealed in generous inevitable rays, as in that fine harmony in white and green, “The Flour its delicately-informed Mill, ” by Sydney Lee, with shadows and finely-composed lines, and the excellent landscape of P. Wilson Steer, “The Outskirts of a with its masterly control and beautifullyTown,” imagined revelation of an evenly distributed light. The exhibition has several excellent landscapes. by J. P. Salwey, “Willows,” by “ Ludlow Town,” David Muirhead, Mark Fisher’s “Sheep Grazing by the Roadside,‘! Bernhard Sickert’s “A Fruiterer’s Shop, San Remo,” and “ Sirocco, Ischia,” Alexander Jamieson’s “ An Old Part’ of Paris,” C. J. Holmes’s “ RougeProf. Frederick Brown’s “ St. Sauloe, Evenmont,” ing,” and the three delightful canvasses of Lucien Pissarro, to name but those which impressed me most. The peculiar riches of the exhibition are, however, W. Orpen has to be found among the portrait studies. achieved a masterpiece in his portrait of “Professor compelling in the conMayor. ” There is something Every line and tone is insummate art of this work. The figure lives by the certainty of the evitable. and colour sense painter’s vision, his superb drawing are seen in the lines of the austerely coloured face, the rich black folds of the professor’s gown, and the unique and perfect seal-brown of the curtain which forms a quietly sumptuous background. Near by is another reIt is a realistimarkable canvas by the same painter. cally grouped portrait of a “A Bloomsbury Family ” There is seated about a table in a formal restful room. humour in the painter’s treatment of the subject, in the studied naturalness of the grouping and the quaint combination of modernity and an almost antiquarian dilettantism. William Nicholson contributes two little gems, one a portrait of a motorist, the other a little brown and P. Wilson Steer’s “ The grey seascape of great beauty. Morning-Room ” is a masterly portrait study of a young girl clothed and surrounded by the most delicious fabrics that ever took life from a painter’s brush. Will RothenBerenson ” is a sincere stein’s portrait of “ Bernhard and excellent piece of work. There is a spiritual personality in the revelation of character which is considerably aided by the painter’s clever work in the key I was impressed by the exceptionally fine of blue. drawing of Miss Ewen John’s portrait of “Miss C. Boughton Leigh” and by William Gore’s clever study of a little girl dressing, which he calls “The RoseColoured Petticoat.” A. E. John has two canvasses Of the and several drawings, and all are interesting. SPECIAL OFFER to Readers of 117 former, I liked the subtle- charm of “The ‘Infant Pyramus,” with its daylight weirdness, its haunted blues and greys, its sinuous ancient-cum-modern females, and its fantastic Pyramus, like the ghost of a golliwog. His other canvas, “ Olilai,” pleased me less, perhaps because the lady’s brows are decimated by a wreath of stiff and obtrusive curls. There is an excellent portrait of “ Edward Carpenter ” by Henry Bishop, and a fine little landscape, “Woodcutting on the Banks of the Yonne,” by the same painter. The portrait is a conscientious piece of work, with subtle colouring and strong lines. It is at once a realistic portrait of the philosopher-poet and, an appreciative interpretation of his personality. I had the good fortune to view a fuller selection of Mr. Bishop’s work at a semi-private exhibition in Chelsea before seeing his exhibits at the New English Gallery, and I had fully recognised the undoubted genius of his earnestly executed work. This is evident in his portraits, but even more so in his landscapes, particularly in those recently brought back from Morocco. He is a painter with a full sense of the qualities of light, and he can put more vitality into that difficult quantity, a white wall, than most painters. He recognises the irridescence of white, and some of his Morocco walls are as radiant as pearls, yet they retain the essential brightness of white clay under the rays of a sub-tropical sun. These canvasses have the rare distinction of impressionism without pose. HOLBROOK JACKSON., CORRESPONDENCE. hold himself responsible. Correspondence intended for publication. should Be addressed to the Editor and written on one side of the paper only. SPECIAL NOTICE.-Correspondents are requested to. be. brief Many letters weekly are omitted on account of their length. “RAGGING ” SOCIALISTS AT CAMBRIDGE. To THE EDITOR OF "THE NEW AGE." On Tuesday, May 12th, at about 10.30 p.m., a party of undergraduate members of Trinity Hall entered the rooms of Mr. E. W. Patterson for the purpose of “ragging” them. They broke all the glass in the rooms and retired. The damage is estimated at several pounds. They then pursued Mr. R. E. Gomme, who was crossing the court, and squirted him with water from syphons. On Saturday, May 16th, the same party occupied the time from 10.15 to midnight in searching for Mr. Gomme and Mr. A. W. M. Bull. At 12.15 they entered the rooms of Mr. D. O. Pawson and found these gentlemen within. The door was “ sported,” and entry must have been. obtained either by a skeleton key or by the key of the staircase, supplied by a sympathetic head porter. Mr. Gomme and Mr. Bull were forcibly conveyed down the staircase, passing the’ head porter, who regarded the scene with indifference, The New Buildings were reached, and a bath was placed in the middle of the court, into which the objects of attention were successively plunged. Mr. Gomme was then released. Mr. Bull, however, was followed to his rooms by three of the party, who asked him whether he “believed in the aristocracy of intellect.” They then drenched his bed with water. Mr. Shirres, the Vice-Master, contented himself with rebuking the offenders. He declined to take any action with regard to the means by which Mr. Pawson’s and Mr. Bull’s rooms had been entered. The following are the names of the “ raggers ” : Mr. R. Boyle (cox of the ‘Varsity boat), Mr. K. F. T. Caldwell (son of the Master of Corpus Christi College), Mr. B. A. Campbell, Mr. G. W. Coles, Mr. C. P. Cooke, Mr. P. A. Cooper, Mr. P. C. Dickens (reputed a grandson of Charles Dickens), Mr. W. H. Edgar, Mr. E. S. Hornidge, Mr, A. G. Lomax, Mr. D. C. R. Stuart (the famous ‘Varsity stroke), Mr. J. L. L. Sweet, and Mr. J. F. A. Trotter. Mr. Gomme’s unpopularity with these gentlemen is due to 20,000 10/6 DIAMOND STAR FOUNTAIN Your guarantee-Money SELF-FILLING & SELFan instant. Nonleakable, Marvel of Simplicity. Every part guaranteed replaced free within 2 years. 71, High Holborn, Wanted. PENS Fitted with 14 ct. solid Gold Nib, for 2/6. UNTIL WITHDRAWN, sent on approval on receipt of Postal Order. Fine, Medium, Broad or J Points. Twin-Feed and Spiral to regulate Flow of Ink, 15/returned if not fully satisfied. FECTION TAIN THE NEW AGE ” as an Advertisement. CLEANING PERFOUNPEN. Fitted with Nib, and Any 14-ct. solid gold for 10/6Fillscleans itself in of our Readers desiring a really genuine article cannot do better than write London. W.C., and acquire this bargain. No other Penlike it for Reliability. to the Red Lion Manufacturing CO., Ltd. Steady Flow. and Smooth Writing. Agents I the fact that he is College Secretary of the Cambridge University Women Suffrage Association and a member of the Cambridge University Fabian Society. Mr. Bull is also a member of both these organisations. The latter has been told that he must either resign his membership of the Fabian Society or give up his rooms in College. Mr. Trotter on the Tuesday informed Mr. Gomme that he was “unwise, being a Socialist, to come to a Conservative College.‘, While Mr. Gomme was being conducted across the court on Saturday he enquired of Mr. Trotter, who at the moment was clutching the back of his neck, the reason for this treatment. Mr. Trotter replied : “You have held a Socialist meeting in the Hall ! ” Mr. Gomme denied this. “Then a Fabian meeting,,, said Mr. Trotter, ‘ Or a woman suffrage meeting, or a Radical meeting, or a Liberal meeting. ,, Mr. Gomme denied all these accusations. “Well, we are going to bath you, anyhow,‘, concluded Mr. Trotter. NO attempt is here made to do more than to give a bare outline of what occurred. X. * MR. BAX AND FEMINISM To THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE. Might I ask Mr. Belfort Bax to reconsider his nomenclature? To regard the ability to vote as a privilege is surely new to the British constitution. The vote of a member of an Association is a part of his responsibilities as a member. Women have not votes because they are not regarded as responsible members of the body politic. To the same fact ma be traced many, if not all, of the “ privileges " which Mr.Bax enumerates, and of which he complains, Let him then co-operate with those who wish to establish the position of women as responsible members of society, and some of these inequalities may fall away. ARTHUR ST. JOHN. + * + To THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.” Your readers are doubtless puzzled by the vigorous argumentation of Mr. Belfort Bax against the “feminists.‘, Socialists are all accustomed to listen with respect when Mr. Bax speaks and so they do now, but surely no one is now convinced. Some instinct tells us that the note he is now sounding has a flaw in it. May I point out where and what that flaw is? He is forgetting that one of the fundamental differences between the psyche as it lives and finds expression in human relations and the physical cosmos is that the former has nothing at all to do with number or weight, while the latter is entirely governed by these. Let me add, by the way, that, to me, this is fatal to Haeckel’s view that the psyche is but one of the many physiological functions of protoplasm. No specialisation of protoplasm can make it anything but a physical compound. The Oriental proverb hits off the truth as to ideal human relations; the bad man is the one who says : “all mine is mine and all thine is mine ‘, ; the righteous man says : (‘all mine is mine and all thine is thine.” Mr. Belfort Bax is too righteous-too exact about the mechanical balance. But the good man, in the sense admitted and dimly understood by all the world, in spite of its jibes and shruggings of the shoulder, is the one The who says ((all thine is thine and all mine is thine.” psyche, indeed, in its highest phases seems to differ from the matter with which it is inseparably associated in that it grows and thrives, not by acquisition, but by expenditure. This may be a greater puzzle to your readers than Mr. Bax’s article in last week’s NEW AGE. But it tries to call attention to a truth which has been hovering over all the advanced races of mankind now for thousands of years. The world’s greatest religious teachers have been those whom it has most vividly possessed. Indeed, while Socialism will have to be founded in “righteousness,” it can only be HENRY M. BERNARD. matured in" goodness.” * * * To THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.” Permit me, before it is too late, to call the attention of your readers to some of the more serious legal errors in Mr. Bax’s article on women, of May 30th. I. In evidencing cases of unfair legal favouritism to women, he says: “ . . . . a husband may be imprisoned for non-payment of his wife’s debts.” The law is; if she make a specific contract since marriage, it binds her own property, existing or future, unless it is settled without power of anticipation to her separate use. If she made a contract before marriage, her husband is only liable to the extent of such assets as he may have received with her, on marriage; and, if she has made no personal contract but merely acted as his agent, his authority, which is only prima-facie presumed, may be revoked by his giving notice to the particular tradesman serving her, and is in any case revoked if she leaves him without his consent, or where he is otherwise legally providing for her after separation ; so that in this respect Mr. Bax’s remarks require much qualification. II. “The husband is responsible for any slander or libel which she may commit -while the wife escapes with absolute impunity.” This is bad law, the husband is liable for his wife’s Torts certainly, but jointly with her. III. “She is free to leave her husband, he has no legal power to compel her to return. She, on the other hand, can obtain an order for restitution of conjugal rights, by which he is ordered to return, or she can obtain alimony.‘, Another error; in case of desertion either party can petition for restitution ; and, as imprisonment for non-compliance with the order has been commuted to pecuniary damages, there is no reason why he should not be indemnified out of her estate. IV. The statement that a wife enjoys practical immunity from all criminal offences of which the husband is the victim can scarcely be taken seriously. On the other hand, there are undoubted anomalies existing at present in the law of husband and wife, and not all on one side, witness the cases of divorce and guardianship of children, and it is therefore a matter of regret to legal reformers that Mr. Bax in his anti-feminist zeal should have so overstated his case. HENRY H. SCHLOESSER. * * * UNISEXUAL CRIMINAL LAW. To THE EDITOR OF ‘(THE NEW AGE? Mr. Heath’s somewhat scurrilous attack upon myself in your issue of May 23 I consider unworthy of notice, and do not propose to bandy words with that gentleman. Lest there should be any of the readers of THE NEW AGE, however, who from Dr. Oldfield’s letter this week, think that I unfairly saddled his views, as expressed in your number of the 25th April, upon the Society of which he is president, perhaps you will allow me to state my case as follows :Either the Society in question does or does not adopt the views of the article in question. 1. If it does, my allegation as to its professed aim being in effect no better than a feminist trick I consider fully justified (for the reasons given in my letter of May 16). 2. If, on the contrary, as a Society, it repudiates, or at least does not endorse, the one-sided feminist theories of its president, why does he, while soliciting adhesion and assistance for its aims, at the foot of an article advocating these theories, not clearly dissociate the latter from the official object of the Society? There can surely be no doubt that any ordinary impartial reader would, like myself, connect the appeal at the close with the substance of the preceding article. E. BELFORT BAX. * * * THE FLORENCE PRESS. To THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.” We have been reading with interest the remarks contained in THE NEW AGE of May 23 anent the Florence Press books which will be printed in the new fount designed by Mr. Herbert P. Horne. Quoting from the prospectus of the Press, you say that it is announced that the publishers to the Press, i.e., ourselves, will " issue the Florence Press books in reasonable editions, neither very small nor very large, but that the books will not be reprinted in the Florence types.‘, Having proceeded to consider “the depraved and foolish pleasure of an ass grazing in Bedford Park,,, which, having become possessed of a copy of one of these Florence Press Cadbury’s unequalled Cocoa purity, is and for nourish- ment, Cadbury’s is essentially the purest Cocoa; made amid the purest surroundings at Bournville. in England’s Garden Factory I. strength. An invaluable food ; a delicious and healthful-drink. June 6; 1908 THE NEW AGE: 119 books, “ dwells on the artificial rarity of the volume,” you express the hope that the Florence Press will “live up to its opportunities and decide to sell as many beautiful books as they can coax the public into buying.“May we draw your attention to the fact that your paragraph, friendly as it is, rather mis-states our position. The issue of smaller books by other Presses-we shall do no wrong if we instance the three best known of them, i.e., the Kelmscott Press, the Doves’ Press, and the Vale Press-has usually numbered 200 to 350 copies. An edition of 500 has been the absolute exception. In accordance with the desire of the founders of the Press that “the best possible printing should be produced at the least possible commercial price,” we have advertised our initial issues as of 500 copies, and we have advertised them at prices which leave no more than, if as much as, an ordinary publishing profit. In the two books, as distinct from. the trial pamphlet, announced by us, we are further giving to purchasers a series of the best attainable reproductions, in one case of the work of a Quattrocento miniaturist and in the other of two of the most promising young English artists. The cost of these productions will amount to at least from 33 to 50 per cent. of the cost of the entire volume, and yet we are offering the volumes for sale at far lower prices than those charged for mere print-and-paper volumes issued by other private Presses. We shall be only too pleased when the day arrives upon which we can confidently print an edition of 5,000 copies of a Florence Press book. We venture to write you this letter because your paraThey are even graphs are likely to cause misapprehension. likely to persuade “asses grazing in Bedford Park ” to think that they may buy the books as a speculation. The last thing we desire is to afford room for speculation in these books, for such speculation inevitably brings about a crash, e.g., compare the present price of William Morris’s masterpiece, the Kelmscott “Chaucer,” to-day and some five years ago. CHATTO AND WINDUS, Sole Publishers to the Florence Press. * * * THE DUNDEE ELECTION. . To THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.” On pp. 82-3 of your issue of May 30 last there is about a column of editorial notes in which the old confusions between the I.L.P. and the Labour Party unfortunately reappear. Your Note-writer takes the " administrative council of the I.L.P .” to task for certain matters connected with Mr. Stuart’s candidature at Dundee, which were referred to in a discussion in last week’s “ Labour Leader.” He ought to have known, and your readers should know, that these matters had nothing to do with the “administrative council of the I.L.P.” whatever, but were the affair of the executive of the Labour Party solely. Mr. Stuart never attempted to run under the I.L.P. He was nominated by the Postmen’s Federation, banner. and sought the endorsement of the Labour Party. The relation of the N.A.C. of the I.L.P. to the affair was precisely that of the executives of the Boilermakers or the Gasworkers or the Engineers or the Fabian Society, or any other body affiliated to the Labour Party-that is, they had no direct locus standi in the matter. Any blame or praise which is to be found in connection with what occurred must be bestowed on the Labour Party. The cases of Colne Valley and Dundee, instead of being parallel as your Note-writer says, are precisely opposite. For what occurred at Colne Valley, the N.A.C. of the I.L.P. must take all responsibility; it never came before the Labour Party at all. For what occurred at Dundee, the Labour Party must take all responsibility ; it never came before the I.L.P. at all. After putting the Labour Party’s sins (if sins they be) on the I.L.P.‘s shoulders:, your Note-writer goes on to increase their pressure on thus poor scape-goat by extolling in contrast the virtues of the real culprit. (‘We say all this with the more confidence because in many respects the Labour Party, of which the I.L.P. is an important section, is making extraordinary progress. . . . The change of attitude on the part of Trade Unionists has been astonishingly rapid, and is very largely due to the good temper and able management Far be it from me to object to of the Labour Party itself.” these well-earned pats on the backs of the Labour Party leaders. But remember that it is these men, and not other men, whom you must blame, if you want to blame anybody, about Dundee. It is the “able managers ” of the Labour Party-Mr. Henderson, Mr. McDonald, and the rest-whose doings Mr. Stuart resents. You may go further; it is their settled policy of caution and loyalty to all the elements in their federation against whose exemplification at Dundee Whatever you think of that Mr. Stuart is up in arms. policy, you must credit it and its chief administrators, Messrs. Henderson and McDonald, not only with its occasional mishaps, but- with the immense volume of its daily successes. R. C. K. ENSOR. By Rev. C. L. DRAWBRIDGE, M.A. kindling sympathy with some phases of modern thought are very refreshing.” MORNING POST :- ‘ In style, matter, and temper it is a model of what popular apologetic should be.” suggestive passages, apt quotation,the breadth of view, and the the. THE NEW AGE:--” The author’s, grip of his theme will be readily conceded. The clear expression, the flowing thought the many LONGMANS, GREEN ROW, & E.C, CO., 39, PATERNOSTER ONE AND SICKNESS ASSURANCE WHAT 1s. A MONTH AND ACCIDENT ‘ASSOCIATION. WILL ALL DO: Not exceeding,-but according to the number of Members.) 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