Vol. X. No. 25 THURSDAY, APRIL18, 1912. THREEPENCE. NOTES THE WEEK OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS.By S. Verdad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AN AUSTRALIAN VIEWOF FOREIGN AFFAIRS. By Grant Hervey AN OPENLETTER STEPHEN TO WALSH, M.P. By Vance Palmer GREAT BRITAIN THE TERROR.By Vladimir Bobrikoff ... AND MR. G. K. CHESTERTON CHRISTIANITY. Oscar Levy AND By Dr. COALSOF FIRE. By S. G. H. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . APOLLOIN GLASGOW. Wm. McFee . . . . . . . . . . . . By PRESENT-DAY CRITICISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AUF DIE MENSUR. By Carl Eric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................... PAGE 577 581 582 584 585 586 587 588 589 590 VIEWSAND REVIEWS.By A. E. Randall ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS. William Marwick By SI-CHUANESE FOLKSONGS. Elizabeth Rendall ... By ART AND DRAMA. By Huntly Carter . . . . . . . . . PASTICHE. Aitch Ess, W. H. Higginbottom, and Morgan By Tud ........................ LETTERS THE EDITOR TO from A. Barton, Lieut.-Col. A. W. A. Pollock, C. H. Norman, R. W. Traill, G. T. Wrench, Jas. Ardsley, William H. Davies, 11. P. Willcocks, \1 Reginald Wright Kauffman ......... ... ... PAGE 592 ... ... 593 594 595 596 ............ ... 597 NOTES OF THE WEEK. THE resumption of work in the mines,-” said the Daily News ” on Tuesday, “ ought not to dull the mind of the country to the urgent questions which have emerged from the struggle.” Ought not, certainly, but that it infallibly will is even more certain. The “ Daily News ” itself has practically ceased to regard a s urgent any of the questions which emerged from the struggle, and the outstanding question which did emerge, namely, the break-up of private ownership a s applied to the mines and railways, the “ Daily News ” did not so much a s mention. All other emergent questions are, in our view, trifling in comparison with this single problem-how industry is to be reconstructed. Bolstered up it may be by means of Conciliation Boards, Wages Boards, Co-partnership, and other devices, but these will prove broken reeds under the weight of the collapsing structure. We advise such of the minds of the country as read these notes to ignore the merely suspensive vetoes which these devices offer and to settle themselves to the main problem, that of finding a working substitute for private ownership and private profiteering. “ “ Party. W e do not say that anything could possibly have come of the debate, even if the Labour members had been present; but their absence does not tend to disprove our general contention that the Labour Party has about as much brain as a rabbit and as much sincerity a s a caucus. T o Mr. J. M. Robertson, a s usual, was left the dirty job of quenching the smoking flax of the debate on behalf of the Government. *** *** Except when Mr. Lloyd George’s Insurance Bill is under discussion--when nobody tumbles more readily into the breach--Mr. Chiozza Money is always a day after the political fair. During the long-drawn-out negotiations between the Government and the coalowners and miners, and at a moment when the nationalisation of the mines was in everybody’s thoughts, if not on their lips, Mr. Money, if we remember rightly, had no more to say on the subject than the Labour members. Even King George, we understand from the Parisian papers, was both willing and anxious that this remedy should be tried, and endeavoured in vain to force it upon Mr. Asquith or, as an alternative, upon Mr. Bonar Law. But he found, unfortunately, as little support for his suggestion in the Commons as among the official leaders. Now, however, that there is not the slightest fear that the proposal will be taken seriously, but, on the contrary, mineowners are looking forward to greatly increased profits and a smaller wages bill, Mr. Money comes forward with his belated proposal to nationalise the mining industry. As showing the amount of attention the whole problem now commands, it is significant that the parliamentary debate thus begun by Mr. Money lasted in all rather less than an hour and was closed by a count-out. Fewer than twenty of over six hundred members of Parliament thought the occasion worth their presence, and these twenty did not include more than o n e or two of the members of the Labour The strike having ceased if not stopped, it would be well if the public could be induced to count up its gains and its losses. Appeals, we know, were addressed to the miners to stay their sooty hands out of consideration for the starving populace. The terrible distress they were producing by their selfish strike was the main argument of the Press’s daily lectures-an argument, too, which we have reason to fear impressed more of the men’s leaders than that good boy, Mr. Stephen Walsh. Well, now that their hands have been stayed, let the public in comparatively cool blood reckon up the bill. To the inconvenience caused to them by the strike must be added not only the defeat of the men, but the triumph of the coalowners., Both these, as we can easily prove, are positive public losses, prospective if not immediate. The miners and their families number among them, at a moderate estimate, some five million of the total population. In other words, they are a very fair proportion of the public on whose behalf the strike was presumably snuffed out. Nobody will contend that this section of the public, at any rate, has gained anything, either by the strike or by its premature and idiotic conclusion. If a million men had returned to work each with a few shillings a week more in wages, an eighth of the public at least would have been benefited by the strike. And after all, that would have been something. W e shall not dwell now on the advantages that would incidentally have followed io the rest of the public from the raising of the miners’ wages; but they would have been solid. I t is well known that widely-distributed wealth is one of the conditions of greater wealth; this is a n axiom on which all foreign trade and colonial expansion have always proceeded. But the same truth applies to our own country as to others. Reckoning the miners for the moment a s a foreign country or as a colony, it would obviously be to the advantage of the rest of us if the purchasing power of these millions of people were suddenly enlarged by some shillings each per week. Industry in general would instantly have felt the new demand, and all our factories and shops would have been set working at full time to supply the new demands. * Y * But it is not this indirect loss to the public that we 578 would a t this moment deplore, but the direct loss involved in the disastrous termination of the strike. T o begin with, prices of coal have been raised as by Hamel’s aeroplane, and they are never coming down again to their former level. Wages, it is absolutely certain, will not be raised in their totality by the new district boards; for a management, in which the men do not share, is quite equal to robbing Peter to pay Paul. Nevertheless, the excuse of higher wages will exist to justify the maintenance of coal prices a t somewhere about their present figure. As this will mean an additional tax on every coal consumer in this country-a tax amounting, let us say, to an average of a shilling a ton a t least-the sentence passed by the coalowners on the public is an annual fine. This is merely one of the results for which the public urged the conclusion of the strike and the defeat of the men. But further than this, the public may look forward to making up the deficiencies in the men’s wages by legislative and other doles. Obviously men must have a living wage, and if the public is too silly to compel employers to pay it, or to take over industry itself, the public must expect to be called upon to provide it in another form. As a matter of fact, the public has already been mulcted of huge sums in relief of low wages; by the Poor Law, by free education, by old age pensions, and by a score of other employers’ relief acts. If in consequence of higher prices and the diminished purchasing power of wages, the income of miners and others again falls below a living level, the deficiency must be made up. There are limits beyond which cheap living simply cannot be carried in a civilised country, and when the miners have taken in every available button of their belts, the public will have to come to their relief and do for them what their employers have refused to do. The upshot of the matter is therefore this : that not only will coal prices rise while wages remain stationary or decline, but the public that pays the increased prices will have also to supplement by legislation the fall in wages. The result to the public, {therefore, of the defeat of the men is a double loss; they must pay increased profits and supplement lowering wages a s well. Unfortunately there is not a single homogeneous section of the public that is yet awake to this fact. Our public in general is, we regret to say, the most stupid probably in Europe. Vaguely benevolent in regard to the wages of workmen, the public allows itself to be led by the nose by the Press of its very enemies. W e do not suppose there is a single daily paper that is not in the pay of the very class that lives by robbing the public. Yet the lies of these employers’ organs are ingurgitated by the public with apparently an inexhaustible voracity. On the other hand, the “intellect of the labour movement ’’ is no less silted over with the mud of stupidity. W h a t can be said of a Parliamentary Labour Party, returned with such effect to the House of Commons, that there declares its very own proposals to be impracticable, not feasible? W e might suppose that England was one vast lunatic asylum to gaze on the “ intellect” o the labour movement; yet this depth has f still a lower deep-the heads of the labour movement itself outside of the House of Commons. At this moment it is no exaggeration to say that not more than a dozen trade union leaders have the ghost of a notion where they are, what they are doing, o r where they are going. With what they fuddle their heads we cannot guess, since the poor devils are most of them fanatical teetotallers, but that they do fuddle their heads with something, not with ideas, is evident. Looked a t clearly, there are only two courses open for trade unionists of to-day ; to force themselves into partnership (including management) with their present masters or with the s State. One o r other of these alliances i indispensable to the future o wage-earners. As plainly as events can f speak, they have been told that nothing short of coresponsibility, co-direction, co-management, co-control, is of the smallest real use to them. Conciliation Boards, with or without Compulsory Arbitration, have broken down in England a s well as in Australia; Minimum W a g e Bills are futile; an Eight Hours’ Day is a mockery. Every one o these machines is doomed t f o reduce wages s long as their control is in the exclusive o hands of the shareholders. Wow can it not be so? It is merely ‘human nature that determines the result. Anybody can vote, said Mr. Dooley’s Kruger, if they will let me do the counting. And anybody can construct the machinery, our employers might say, if we can control the management. The conclusion f o r trade unionists is therefore unspeakably obvious ; either they must insist on joint management with their masters, or, if this is denied, they must make their masters’ lives not worth living in order to compel the State to take over industry. *** * * * This is not mere speculation on our part, nor is it wilful agitation. After all, like Mr. Stephen Walsh, we also are citizens and members of the public. W h a t the public loses we also lose. The railway strikes of 1907 and 1911have completely demonstrated the fact that out of the so-called Labour unrest we, the public, invariably come off worst; and we come off worst for the simple reason that we do not insist on a victory for the men. The railway strike of 1907, for example, was concluded at the public request by an arrangement under which Conciliation Boards were established to deal with rates of wages. But, as everybody knows now, the rates of wages were only changed to make room for new gradings of fresh economies by means of which the total wages bill of the railway companies was reduced a t the same time that traffic charges to the public were raised. Precisely the same effect was permitted and is now being legislated to follow the defeat of the railwaymen last summer. Mr. Lloyd George, it will be remembered, acting professedly on our behalf, bought off the opposition of the railway companies to the form o f the men’s demands (not to its substance) by promising them legal facilities for trustification and for raising charges again. This promise, with wondrous punctuality, is now being fulfilled, and in the Railway Bill at present before Parliament the highest railway rates of any country in the world are to be still further raised by a special Act. If the excessive charges bore any guarantee that the wages of railwaymen would be raised, our complaint would be robbed of at least half its bitterness ;but wages are not going to be raised. On the contrary, the total wages bill of the companies is going to be still further reduced. Thus, again, we shall be in the position both of adding to the profits of the capitalists as well a s of being compelled to supplement the wages of their workmen. How often must this be repeated ? But this latter proposal is Socialism, say the Trade Union Winkles; and we shall be no better off under the State than under private employers. Very likely not, we reply, if trade unionists make n o more demands of the State than o their present employers. But that is f their look-out. W e admit that State capitalism is likely to be one degree worse than private capitalism; and if Socialism meant State capitalism, we should be no Socialists. But, on the other hand, what we are urging on trade unionists is the necessity of rising to the conception of joint and equal partnership with their employers; and this partnership will be quite as possible with the co-ordinate State as with the multitudinous shareholder. The defect in the postal system, for example, is not due to the fact that the employees are State employed, but t o the fact that they have no control over their own management. Give them (or rather let them take) an equal share with the State in the administration of their industry and at once they are converted from employees to partners. At bottom, what is Syndicalism but this demand for responsibility isolated from partnership with even the public? The employers say at present that they will tolerate no interference by their employees in management. The Syndicalists among the latter reply that for their part they will tolerate no interference by the present employers in management. The two parties, in fact, of the individualist employers and of the Syndicalists, occupy merely the extreme positions of which the suggestion we 579 are making is a reconciliation and compromise. If we were Trade Union leaders we would say to the employers : W e ask for joint powers of management with you. If you refuse them, we shall turn to the State with the same demand. Only if the State should refuse our off er, would we then declare ourselves Syndicalists. Compelled thus to dismiss a s superficial the minor demand of the Bishop of Oxford for a decent table for our wage-slaves, the reply made to him by that heathen, Canon Hensley Henson, is, nevertheless, abhorrent. For Canon Henson the association of an ethical term like Justice with questions of pure economics and politics is a dangerous luxury, and one seldom to be allowed. This is pretty cool from a salaried official of a Church whose establishment maintains the religious nature of the State! For no other function, presumably, is the Church associated with the State than to symbolise and exemplify precisely the association of ethics with economics and politics. To deny this association is, therefore, obviously to invite disestablishment. Having discussed ethics, however, Canon Henson finds economics a simple matter--as indeed it is when men are assumed to be swine. In reply to the Bishop of Oxford’s plea for a fixed legal living wage, Canon Henson rests himself upon the law of Supply and Demand. “ W h a t other law,” he asks, “can determine . Justice the economic value of the work done? does not require that any man should be paid more than he earns.” True, but neither does it require that any man should be paid less than he earns, or should be barred from the use of the materials of industry, or should be compelled to sell himself for another man’s hire. The supposition of pure economics which Canon Henson makes has already been discredited even among economists. Supply and Demand actually does not conduce to an efficient industry. Supply and Demand is a fallacy of economics, abandoned long ago by every intelligent economist. Economically, in short, it has proved itself as fallacious as ethically it has always been detestable. In clinging to Supply and Demand Canon Henson is, therefore, not even in the region of pure economics, but in the region of pure commercialism; he is an even worse economist than a Christian, Regarding this latter title, which doubtless he would claim, we can scarcely discuss the subject without continuing his blasphemy. But what, we may ask, did the law of Supply and Demand do for the Founder of his Religion--did H e receive all he earned? Did the Law of Supply and Demand afford the Twelve Disciples a living wage? Have the Christian martyrs always got their economic or any other deserts? Finally, how would Canon Henson himself fare under the economic law of Supply and Demand, robbed of its ethical and religious associations? One useful handstir of work he has probably never done in his life; and he would long ago have starved if the economic law of Supply and Demand had not been suspended for him by the law of enlightened self-interest (not ethics) that induces employers to pay religious impostors to counteract the teachings of their Saviours. * * * W e repeat that some compromise of this kind is absolutely necessary a s a working hypothesis of Trade Unionism. Otherwise there is not the smallest hope that Labour will improve its position. On the contrary, f the position o Labour, rudderless, compassless, and without even a port to make, will be one of drift and finally of wreck. The private employers, for their part, have no doubt whatever of their objective. Like that of the trade unionists, it also is as simple as A B C. As the trade unionists’ true objective is to secure joint management, either with their employers or with the State, so it is the purpose of the employers to resist both these a s long a s possible. W e know how scrupulously both the railway companies and the mineowners have refused to concede even in words any managerial privileges to trade unions; and so long as trade unionists do not insist upon it, employers will continue to refuse it. Sole responsibility, in fact, is the apple of the present industrialist’s eye. By means of this simple faith he can defy all the Norman blood that trade unionists and Parliament and the public like to shed on him. Joint boards to determine the rates of wages ? Certainly. Conciliation with compulsion ? Certainly. Profit-sharing ? Certainly. Joint management ? Never. But next to defending the present rights, the capitalist o to-day is quite aware that he must disf courage the alternative. T o the discerning mind it appears obvious that if employers ref use co-management to their men, the latter will naturally turn to the State. But as naturally it will first have occurred to the employers that this alternative would be attempted; and long before the trade unionists have begun hammering a t that gate, employers are on the route and a t the entrance dissuading workmen from trying to pass. As silently tenacious a s they are of their “ rights ” of sole control are they loud in their warnings of the peril of nationalisation. But whose peril is it that edges their anguish? Their own. So sentimental are the Walshes of the labour movement that they mistake the cause of the outcry. Collapsing in piteous tears a t the moment when the gate may be forced, they cry o u t : W e are employers’ hacks before we are trade unionists ! Oh, Danton, Danton ! *** .. In the ‘‘ Times ” of Thursday Bishop Gore of Oxford drew one of the more superficial conclusions from the recent industrial unrest; it was that justice demands that a living wage should be a first charge on industry. T o those who do not yet realise that the wage-system is fundamentally immoral, like chattel slavery, this conclusion may seem reasonable enough. The primary purpose of industry is presumably to afford a living to those engaged in it; and when the industry fails to do this, the system of its organisation is in need of repair. But the Bishop of Oxford may as well realise the fact that the primary purpose of industry in this country is not to afford a living wage to its members, but to afford profits to its proprietors; and, short of abolishing the wage-system which is the natural correlative. of profiteering, no guarantees, State or any other, can possibly be given to the workers that their wages shall not fall below a living level, The “injustice” of the wage-system is still the same whether the wages are high or low ; precisely as slavery was immoral whether the slave-owners were kind or cruel. I t is the simplest fact in economic ethics that it is contrary to justice for one man to employ another f o r his own profit. That, we contend, disposes of the “justice ” of private ownership, and with it of all the involved ethical minutiae which relate to the more or less of wages. These latter questions are concerned merely with expediencies, in which the only principle involved is one of practical working. * * * The debate on the use of troops in trade disputes had not the effect of either establishing or disestablishing a principle; but one ray of light was cast on the reserve expediencies on which the governing classes of the country rely. Defining the duties of troops in civil affairs, Sir Rufus Isaac enumerated the prevention and anticipation of riots and of attacks upon life, as if these concluded the list ; but when pressed by Mr. Wedgwood to exclude specifically such industrial activities as driving trains, conveying goods, etc., the Attorney-General f refused. W e have no complaint to make o the principle as a principle, since it is obvious that under special conditions a national army might be required to discharge some national work that a section of the population declined to perform. But under existing cirf cumstances it is unlikely that such a state o things will arise. W h a t we now experience is a revolt of a class o workers not from national but from private service; f and we contend that in these revolts the use of troops is not only inexpedient, it is strictly illegal. The assumption that everything any Cabinet directs must be legal is clearly contrary to the constitution. A Cabinet may break the law like any other body of men; and in ordering public troops to run private railways the present Cabinet was acting, as we say, illegally. Unfortunately no judge exists with pluck enough to convict the Cabinet of illegality in a matter of these dimensions. Otherwise, we may say, the charge would have been 580 brought. The pretence that the troops were employed during the railway strike only in anticipation of riots or of attacks upon life cannot be maintained. By reason of their closer association with the public, the railwaymen were much less likely t o riot than their isolated fellows, the miners. IF the use of troops was by anticipation necessary in the railway strike, their use in the coal strike was by anticipation still more necessary. Yet a hundred thousand soldiers were distributed in the former strike and only a few hundreds in the latter. Moreover, Mr. Churchill, who was a t the Home Office in August, was replaced by Mr. McKenna for the present dispute. This is by implication an admission that the Government was wrong in August; but the error availed the railway companies very well indeed. The truth about the use of force, however, is this : an institution that requires force for its maintenance is already rotten. The fact that private ownership of the mines and railways can only be maintained by the occasional support of the army is a proof that this system of ownership has had its day. formerly. Sir George Kekewich, who supported the teachers at the Conference, knew this as well as any teacher present. H e knew that, man for man, the worst University man is generally more liberalminded than the most efficient inspector selected by an Education Committee from its staff; yet he won the gallery (and the Conference was all gallery) by declaring, Down with the artificial barriers and let the best men g o to the best places ! But who are the best, and does the new method of selection promise to find them? W i t h a spark of spirit the teachers would insist on selecting their own inspectors-and headmasters as well. Until they do they a t e a trade union, not a guild. * * * * * * Force is probably less necessary in England than in any other country in the world; for here snobbery and bribery are almost always effective, the one spontaneously and the other under gentle suggestion. W e have seen what snobbery can do with the men’s leaders during the two most recent strikes. W e are still to see what bribery in its varied forms can do with the Insurance Act. I t is well known and it is undesirable that the majority of persons who will shortly be poll-taxed under the Act are a s yet unaware of what is being prepared for them. But even if they were aware of the prospective deduction from their weekly wages, the means of expressing their opposition would be denied them; for their leaders and spokesmen have, with a few exceptions, accepted the Act on their behalf. We will not inquire too closely into the motives each of these persons had for misrepresenting their clients in this manner; but if bribery does not explain them, snobbery will. Why, for example, should we see on the latest list o Insurance officials the names o Trade Union f f specialists like Miss Bondfield and Miss Tuckwell? That Mr. J. J. Mallon, the Parliamentary correspondent of the “ Labour Leader’’ and a member of the I.L.P. (whose official member mainly opposed the Bill) should assist Mr. Lloyd George in staving off higher wages is only natural since Mr. Mallon is the secretary of the Anti-Sweating League. But Miss Bondfield and Miss Tuckwell, we thought, had a little more resisting power. * * * Snobbery, we suppose, accounts also for the remarkable dulness of the Easter Conference of the National Union of Teachers. Good heavens, to think that six million children are in the hands of these nondescripts, these hybrids of the professional and the manual classes. The rejection of Women’s Suffrage by a body, two-thirds of whose members are women, is significant enough of their spirit; but the grounds of the rejection were even more remarkable. These consisted, as nearly as we can phrase them, of the objection that women’s suffrage was vulgar and of the apprehension that politics might thereby be introduced into the academic calm of pedagogic discussions. Why, we should be having Socialism discussed here next year, said a Mr. Gwillam, of Leeds. Fancy that! But how illuminating a discussion of Socialism or anything else might be at a Conference of very Elementary Teachers may be gathered from the obscurity of the debate on the “ Holmes’ ” Circular. W e have frequently said that in opposing the present method of selecting local inspectors (that of choosing Oxford and Cambridge men blind) the teachers may easily jump out of the frying pan into the fire. And they will, unless at the same time that they make it clear that Oxford and Cambridge men are not to be given a preference they define the type of person whom they do desire. Local authorities do not become more intelligent simply by being forbidden to employ University men. Deny them University men and their choice is simply destandardised. They will fall into the old bad method of making appointments by a rather ruder form of job than W e have never denied the political ability, amounting almost to genius, of the present Cabinet; and the Home Rule Bill which Mr. Asquith introduced on Thursday was worthy of its Australian, South African, and Indian forerunners. Reservations of details, even of large details, must be made, and these include the absence of a preamble, possibly the extraordinary constitution of the new Senate, and certainly the refusal of complete Irish control of the Customs. Regarding the first, we are sorry that the Cabinet has not committed its successors to the whole scheme of a n Imperial Commonwealth, such as we have outlined many times and of which Mr. Asquith in his speech suggested that the present Bill is an integral part. For those to whom constitutional development is a practical problem, it is well known now that the scheme of the Empire is complete on paper, and only requires about half a dozen Bills to make complete in practice. Territorial parliaments for each of the members of the Imperial group, including England, with a n Imperial Parliament, composed of representatives of each of the members, and constituting the Privy Council-that is the scheme as far as it need be summarised at this moment. Irish Home Rule is thus only the foundation stone of this building as it applies to the United Kingdom, but it is incomparably the most important on that very account. For this reason among others Mr. Asquith would have been wise, in our opinion, to take for h i s motto: Solvitur preambulando. On the other hand, it is as well to remember that an Imperial Commonwealth under any circumstances cannot be made, but must grow out of necessities. Nobody supposes that Australian or South African federation would have taken place but for the local demands in the form, practically, of peremptory orders. Similarly Irish Home Rule has become as much of a real necessity to England as it is an imaginary and therefore ideal necessity to Ireland. Ireland has rigidly refused to be either coerced or bribed into absorption in the political system of the United Kingdom, with the effect that the time spent in the attempt has been worse than wasted, it has been used t o degrade both England and Ireland. Irish politicians, on the one hand, have been driven to the politics of the dog in the manger; English politicians, on the other, have been driven to adapt the House of Commons to the Irish tactics. On the whole, therefore, if Ireland has suffered much, England has suffered equally; and we may say, while wishing Ireland well, that we shall be glad to see the last of her Nationalists and Unionists in the English Parliament. Irishmen, of course, will always be welcome. * * * The signatures to the petition praying for the reprieve of Frederick Seddon numbered at the end of last week considerably over a hundred thousand. These, as our personal experience proves, might easily have been multiplied by ten if anything like a regular canvass had been made. The conclusion we draw from these figures i s that the recent judgments based on shadowy circumstantial evidence have genuinely shocked a large part of the population; and a halt is being cried to the terrifying departure in traditional English law. There is no doubt in our minds, however, that the direction of public opinion is now the abolition of capital punishment, in its entirety. Murder, we cannot too often repeat, provides a case for a doctor, not for a hangman. The plea that the abolition of the capital sentence would tend to encourage murder has been long a g o disposed of. 581 Foreign Affairs. By S. Verdad. WE were all young once. Even if I have doubts occasionally about Ramsay MacDonald there is no harm in making the general statement. Lord, how simple the world seemed then! W e didn’t stop to consider whether it was “will and appearance” or not; whether it was what we made it, or if on the other hand we were what i t made us. All problems were simple things, too. Only let us have a hand, and what we wouldn’t have done, eh? Turn out the old fogies, damn them, and let us have a chance! A Bill or two to abolish capitalists, t o break up big estates, to establish a modified gild system-we always spelt “ gild ” without the “u ”-to give every man and woman a vote, to abolish standing armies, and then, why, there you were! The application of a few modern philosophical principles, and the thing was done. *** and thus get ready for the struggle with the Brown Men-“ we live in a federative and aggregative age.’’ * * * cisely. H e wants Europe, to use his own expression, t o be floated a s “ Civilisation, Limited,” and he suggests that England should take the initiative towards achieving this desirable consummation. W h a t are we going to do about i t ? “ Such questions as these, and especially when a whole white nation asks them, deserve an answer. If we had the voice in the direction of Imperial affairs that we ought to have, and which before long we must have, we could compel England at least to formulate a reply.” Ah, the boy again ! W e must have this and we must have that, and we must and will compel So-and-so to do so-and-so. *** I have no desire, I am sure, to misrepresent Mr. Hervey, and I think I have stated his arguments con- Some of u s were reactionary, no doubt; but we felt vaguely enthusiastic. W e couldn’t quite follow the arguments of our friends in some cases, but we had no doubt that anything was better than the “system ’’ then existing. “ The present system,” “ the present constitution of society ”-how often we heard those phrases ! There was no doubt that things needed altering. * * * Then we were cast out into the world, and we found it more complex than we thought. Those of u s who went abroad, especially those of us who roamed over Asia, bumped up against realities not provided for in school-books-realities, a s Mr. Belloc would probably express it, about which there was nothing in the Catechism. The arguments we used a t debating-clubs didn’t seem to work, somehow. W e began to realise that races were very complex things, that nations were likewise complex, that the g a p separating Oriental from Occidental thought was vast in width. And closer contact with our fellow-men and women showed u s that there wasn’t much brotherly love lost anywhere, and that the human race was pretty much what it had always been. Nevertheless, we can look back-never mind over how many years-we can look back, I say, to our late teens and early twenties without our conscience weighing on us too heavily. W e said and wrote and did things that now make us hot and cold when we think of them. But we were actuated by the best of motives--and nobody knows better than we do that this is no excuse at all ! Alas ! it won’t do ; and in his second article Mr. Hervey, without knowing it apparently, tells us why : “ T h e plea for a United States of Europe is a plea for the economical safety and material progress of the world. I t is also a plea for humanity and much more. ” Mr. Norman Angell’s plea for the cessation of war was based on the same grounds. Young men, particularly young men brought up on Western civilisation, are slow in realising that “ economical safety and material prog r e s s ” never yet inspired anyone. A s for humanity, “ L’humanité, je m’en fiche ! ” was the unequivocal remark made by a well-known Italian statesman when a visitor from a northern country ventured to complain to him in halting French that the attack on Tripoli was not in the interests of humanity. *** Those Brown Men-how they are despised and reviled! And yet they have done something that no White Man has ever yet done : they have produced firm and enduring religions, the highest achievement of the human mind. When a White Man tries this sort of thing he brings about crack-brained and transient movements like, let us say, the Shakers. When the Brown Man turns his spiritual faculties in this direction he brings about Brahmanism, which has endured for some forty centuries; or Buddhism, which, as even Young Australia will find, is still a potent factor in the world; or Confucianism, or Taoism, or Shintoism, compared to any one of which “ economical safety ” and “ material progress ” are verily of but small account. Y * * * * * Still, I always take an interest in the productions of youth-man, woman, or nation. If our young folks give us something new they are at all events being dynamic, which is doubtless a very fit and proper state for young people to be in. The movement may (and generally does) lead us backward or downward; but a lucky push in the right direction may make it lead us upward and forward. ( W e know very well that the race always marks time.) So I am interested in the three articles contributed to this journal by Mr. Grant Hervey, President of the Foreign Affairs Section of the Young Australian Movement. H e is young-I do not refer to his age, with which I am unacquainted; but to his mind. His view of the world, his Weltanschauung, is positively juvenile in its simplicity. The coming struggle is between the Brown Man and the White, and Australia is particularly interested in it. Our Colonies want more men-white men-and they must come from Europe, naturally. But emigration is discontinued because, as European nations are always preparing to spring at one another’s throats, European men are wanted for soldiers. This is a foolish policy, for in the meantime the Brown Men are threatening the White Men’s colonial possessions, and may even threaten Europe itself when the nations are exhausted by struggling with one another and ruined by useless expenditure on armaments. Much better give it up, form the United States of Europe, ’shake hands, stop spending so much money on armaments (using it instead for helping the poor and developing the colonies), As for the United States of Europe, Mr. Hervey is right in saying that we want a man. (An old schoolfellow, now fat, grumpy, and slightly bald, whom I have just dug in the ribs, gazes at the ceiling through the cigar-smoke and acknowledges with a grin that we called for a Man, too, several years ago.) Why, a Man came along once, bent on forming the United States of Europe. But even Napoleon could not carry out the t a s k : he got no support from those who would have benefited. The world is human, and doesn’t often recognise its benefactors. Then Bismarck-I confine myself to modern instances-but even he found it hard enough to consolidate Germany, and the consolidation is not firmly set, even yet. Let Dernosthenes be censured by all means-we did that sort of thing ourselves. * * * No, Young Australia; you are leading us backwards. Warships and standing armies are necessary for the maintenance of “ economical safety,” and the colonies must wait for their colonists. Let me assure Mr. Hervey and his friends with all earnestness that the thought, the philosophy, of the Brown Men is more dangerous than the standing armies and navies of the White Men-much more. Where Imperial affairs are concerned, no Colony can compel the Mother Country to do anything: the home mind is the more mature. When Australia has produced a new, original, and worthy exegesis of the Bhagavad-Gita, or a worthy commentary on the Lalita-Vistara, I shall once again examine the Young Australian Movement, and possibly give it my blessing. Besides, the founders of the movement will be older then. 582 An Australian View of Imperial and Foreign Affairs. By Grant Hervey. (President of Foreign Affairs Section Young Australian Movement.) IV. THOSE who imagine that Britain and Germany cannot put off their present attitudes-attitudes of animosity and menace, preluding war and age-long conflict--omit to look back a bit. How long is it since England and France came almost to blows at, and over, Fashoda? A few passing years, more or less. And yet to-day the same two Powers, their swords sheathed, their tongues turned to softness, attend the European Concert arm-in-arm. Again, too, how long is it since Russia-monstrous bug-bear, until recent times, of the daily Press-was allegedly a t the Gates of Herat? How long since Professor Vambéry, with his Russophobia flitting like an evil spectre through his unhappy dreams, produced those beseechful pages entitled " The Coming Struggle for India " ? Not long. Not long, indeed. For to-day, even as we find the very name of Fashoda wiped o f the map, so that it may not recall f old animosities--even as we find this, so we find Russia on England's other diplomatic arm, accompanying both Britain and France in the promenade of Powers. If changes such a s these, and a s startling as these, may take place, may we not hope that England and Germany too, as well as England and Russia and France, may come into a better frame of mind, and seek in a United States of Europe a preventive for all the vexatious and mischievous misunderstandings of the past ? The coming struggle for India, the Vambérys and other weary prophets are astonished to find, is not in any sense a struggle between England and Russia. That supposititious apparition at the Gates of Herat indeed has vanished otherwhere. The coming struggle, we now perceive, is between England and the people of India--or, rather, between commonsense and the stupid methods which are a part, to say no more, of the policy pursued in the government of British India. One thing is certain. If the struggle for India, and with the people of India, arrives at the same time as the struggle with Germany, it will be a bad lookout for Britain. England cannot afford to trust to chanceto hope that the trouble in India and the war with Germany may not arrive a t the same time. Disasters of this sort generally come together. Therefore, if Britain wants to retain the mastery of India, it were well to make terms, and permanent terms, with Germany. Otherwise, when England is busy fighting Germany in the North Sea, India may burst into conflagration from the Khyber to Bengal; lighting up into a blaze of rebellion, compared with which the Mutiny of the 'fifties might seem like a farthing candle. India, a s a market for the textile products of Lancashire, is extremely, valuable to the United Kingdom--quite as valuable, in the purely commercial and non-racial sense, as either Canada or Australia; and, therefore, in order to retain possession of that Imperial asset, to strive for a proper reconciliation with Germany were t o obey the dictates of a sound and self-demonstrated policy. There is, too, another aspect, apart from the problem of India, which deserves some consideration. Take, for instance, the projected and partly-constructed Cape to Cairo Railway. The greater portion of the line, it is true, will pass through British territory; but a t least one section thereof, if not more, must pass through German possessions. How, then, is this line to be completed, and made an important factor in the development of Africa-how are Cairo and Capetown to be linked, and the link made permanent, if Britain and Germany are likely any day to fly a t one another's throats? Here is a question that statesmen the world over might profitably ponder. And it is not merely the question of the Cape to Cairo Railway. A glance at the map will show that, logically, since it includes the Boerpredominant Transvaal and Orange River CoIony , to say nothing of the Cape, a United South Africa should also include the Western portions of the sub-continent. But it doesn't. German West Africa is a thing apart. Welfisch Bay, with its splendid harbour, is in British hands, but the Hinterland is German. W h a t prospects, then, are there for the development of this area, to say nothing of German and British East Africa-what prospects are there for the whole sub-continent being brought under the sway of civilisation if German interests are to pull in one direction and British in another? Truly, as Herr Dernburg, the late Imperial Secretary of State for the German Colonies, has pointed out, there is need in Africa for hearty British and German co-operation. I t was immediately after having visited the German possessions in that continent that Herr Dernburg made his appeal. H e saw with his own eyes, as every thoughtful person must see, that what Europe requires is a common and co-ordinated Colonial policy. If Britain and Germany are not to come to blows in every quarter of the world, in West and East Africa a s well a s in the North Sea, it were needful for the thought-makers of Europe-the journalists and the statesmen-to bethink themselves of ways and means of union. For Australia, too, quite apart from the question of immigration, this problem has a vital interest. In Papua--or New Guinea, as it was formerly called-the territories of Germany and Australia are divided only by a line. By far the greater part of Papua belongs to Germany. A glance at the map--it is a good thing to look a t maps-will show that, for the proper development of all New Guinea, concerted action and a mutual policy are imperative. Unless such action and such policy be agreed upon, then it is possible that, in the administration of her share of Papua, Australia may discover an unhappy handful. When we also remember the extent of the Dutch possessions in Java and thereabouts, when we recall the spread of non-British territory in that direction and consider into whose ownership it is likely to gravitate, it will be seen that Australia, a s well as Britain and Germany, has much to think about. From us, too, the question of the New Hebrides and New Caledonia, to say nothing of German influences in Samoa and other parts of the Pacific, demands careful thought. Britain and France are on good terms with one another; therefore it is possible for a mutual understanding and a joint jurisdiction with regard to the New Hebrides to be established. Pity that the clash of British and German ambitions, moving in paths that seem divergent, yet leading to a common goal-pity that circumstances such as these, connoting the worldwide conflict of a disunited Europe and dragging the fortunes of our younger nations in their train, should prevent the solution of each and every related problem. But, a s Lord Courtney of Penwith has recently pointed out, the probable free accession of Holland to the German Empire, t o which England can scarcely object, would be a step toward3 the formation of a United States of Europe. Therefore, since Continental consolidation of some sort is inescapable, why not go straight to the solution of the matter? The British Empire wants peace with Germany. But it does not want it merely for five years or fifty. I t wants it for all time. And the only way to make peace permanentat least, amongst the Powers of Europe-is to convert Europe into a greater Switzerland. Take that peaceful nation, which fights with no one--not even with itself -as the model of a Reconstructed Europe. The thing can be done. Europe can be consolidated, even a s Australia, a s North America, as Canada, a s South Africa, as Switzerland, a s Italy-yea, even as the German Empire itself-has been consolidated. A Bismarck could do it and would rejoice in the mightiness of the task. The question is : W h o and where is Europe's Bismarck -the leader who shall make one of England and Germany, of France and Austria, even a s the old Reichskanzler made one of Prussia and Bavaria, of Saxony and Baden? The attitude of England towards Germany, to quote Lord Courtney, is a curiously mixed expression of respect, jealousy, and fear. Given a United Europe, the fear and jealousy might soon be eliminated. Only 583 the respect would remain. And it is well that nations should respect one another Respect, mutual and un’simulated, is as necessary between the Powers as betwixt ordinary men. But fear and jealousy, when they mount to the ascendant, are a million-fold more dangerous amongst nations than amongst human beings. Individuals redress their difficulties in courts of law; nations-as yet-mainly on the battlefield. And since the creation of a United Europe would remove to a central government all means of disruption-since it would place the fleets and armies of the Powers in the and German would hands of a federal authority-Briton strive for the gaining of each other’s respect. Jealousy would not pay, and fear would be a miserable and wholly unnecessary speculation. To-day, as Lord Courtney remarks, English and Germans, through newspaper and magazine articles, speeches and counterspeeches, are breeding conflict, even as it was bred between French and Germans before 1870. T h e Oversea States of the British Empire, which provide the basis for a peaceful consolidation of Europe, although they say but little, look on with mingled thoughts. If the joint and several reflections of Canada and Australia, of South Africa and New Zealand, could be boiled down, probably they would be found to yield this residual question-to wit : How would it be if England and Germany, akin a s they are in religious thought, and with a common racial origin, were now to make some endeavour to breed mutual appreciation and respect ? T o the contra-question-How do the Over-sea States of the British Empire provide a basis for International Consolidation?-there is a ready answer. Look a t Canada. Two millions of French-descended citizens not only exercise their power in shaping Canadian policy, but until recently supplied the Dominion with its Prime Minister. Sir Wilfrid Laurier is a s French as pure descent can make him. And yet he receives as large a share of British respect as if he were a s English as Mr. Asquith, or a s Scotch as the careful Lord Rosebery. Look again a t South Africa. We all remember what mournful mistakes, what pitiful ineptitudes were consummated in that century-ending conflict. W e all know what blood was shed, what agonising welter of brave but opposing troops. Yet what do we see today? South Africa not only unified, but-miracle of miracles !-General Botha, one of the ablest of the Boer leaders, become Prime Minister. And so, it seems to us that if Dutch and English‘ may agree-and after what storm and stress?-in South Africa; if French and English may collaborate in the upraising of Canadaif these things may be, and if Dutch and French, a s well as English-descended statesmen, may direct the affairs of these two countries, then surely England and Germany, as well as France and the rest, ought to be able to agree. If there were fewer Englishmen in England, fewer Germans in Germany-fewer Europeans in Europe altogether-there would be less discontent. Contented people do not quarrel. They g o about their business and, when they meet one another, get on capitally. I t is discontent that is responsible for twothirds of the fears and jealousies of Europe. The German thinks that the Englishman is better off than he is : the Englishman thinks that the German intends to follow his example and grab everything: the Frenchman thinks that the English and Germans want the earth-and so on ad infinitum. One concludes, therefore, that if there were but half as many people in Europe as there are, and if the other two hundred millions were to migrate to Canada, South Africa, and Australia, everybody would be much better off. And one’s further and final conclusion, a t least on that head, is that since Australia stands to Europe in the shape of a Promised Land; since this Commonwealth not only owns no memories of international wars, but also lies most exposed to the teeming multitudes of Asia-since these things are so, it were well if, for a start, the suppressed energies of, say, fifty millions of Europe’s farmers and artisans, German and English, Slav and Scandinavian, were let loose for the mutual benefit of Europe and of this splendid land. To sum up, while these Over-sea States are part of the British Empire, there is not a scintilla of Australian or Canadian animus o r prejudice against any other European Power. W e know that Great Britain cannot supply one half of the immigrants that these countries need; therefore we look to Germany, to a people in some respects more English than the English themselves, for the tens of millions that are required. And because we need the surplus population of Germany a s well as that of Great Britain, the prospect of a war between those nations evokes not even the vestige of enthusiasm. Why should it? W e are willing to play our part in the provision of Imperial Defence, but it is in the Pacific-and not in the North Sea-that we desire to mass the ships. T o our eyes, clearer sighted maybe than those of Europe, this North Sea business seems a veritable insanity. The world-menace is in the Pacific, not along the coasts of Western Europe; and the Australian Democracy, with its deep and all-pervading feeling of kinship for the peoples of Europe, wonders how it is that such wars a s these, such repetitions of the mad old animosities of the Greeks, are not laid under ban of the so-called “ Christian” Church. Loyal a s we are to all that is best in English tradition, we are stilI a thousand times more loyal to the better traditions o Europe a s a whole. And knowing what burdens f Europe carries to-day; knowing how many hundreds of millions are being wasted every year-knowing all this, a s well a s being aware what opportunities Australia and Canada do offer-we affirm that it is time for Europe to submit to the process of universal law. The age is, indeed, one of political evolution, wherein State joins with State and Nation with Nation, thus forming, in the phrase of the biologist, true commonwealths of cells. W e know, too, that no European Power can stand alone. Germany, having made almost frantic efforts to detach France and Russia from England, now most assiduously cultivates the friendship of Austria. This is in itself an acknowledgment of individual weakness. Also it is an admission of the real and urgent need for International Reorganisation. Britain or France, indeed, a s well a s Russia, if they stood alone, like Germany, would be equally perturbed. The need for Union, thorough and lasting, is before men’s eyes. Yet they seem to see it not. The keen-eyed Australian and Canadian, however, dwelling-like the other Over-sea brethren-in their respective parts of the world, see it clearly enough. And they are not content with their own personal apperception of the facts. I t is necessary that Europe should see it, too; and that Europe, having seen, should promptly act. The Germans have their Welt Politik, and the British their more or less vague and uncertain theory of Imperialism; but we-who stand in an attitude of kinship and absolute friendliness towards both Germany and Britain--WE want to know whether there is not a way out of the present tragicfeatured international tangle. Cannot a world-policy be initiated that will give proper scope to the energies of all Europe, let alone to those of Britain and Germany? Lord Dudley-one of the latest of our tiresome procession of imported Governors-General-has lately been talking fudge in England about the danger of Australia developing a separate, non-British national type. We might fitly urge in reply-not that Lord Dudley is anybody in particular-the terrible danger lest “Christian” Europe may prove a political traitor, by becoming a renegade from the White Man’s ethnic camp. The European who forgets his ethnic (in his admiration of his economic) solidarity ; the British person whose mind is either saturated with maudlin sentimentalism, or else --like the Cadbury crew-fixed on the Island of Profit in the midst of the Sea of Slobber: THISis the “ separate type ” that has most t o be feared; for the simple reason that it so largely controls the external a s well a s the internal policy of Empire a t the present moment. And while 1 9 1 1 may well be regarded as a year when the standard of British statesmanship fell lower than it has fallen for three generations, we Australians desire to inquire with much vigour and lack of traditional Over-seas humility whether there is any likelihood of John Bull discovering a British Bismarck during 1912? Because, a s a serious Nation, we have a disrespect for Lloyd George, and Asquith, and Sir 584 Edward Grey, and Haldane, and all that gang, that defies polite description ; and if Britain doesn’t take steps in the right direction before long-steps that will remove the possibility of a great war in “ Christian ” Europethen the democratic leaders of this Commonwealth may heave a final curse at Downing Street : the sort of curse that the Americans. heaved a t Charles Townshend-f Chancellor o the Exchequer and the Lloyd George of his period-in 1767 : and consider the advisability of negotiating some treaties, and arriving a t some “ understanding ” that may leave Britain--our wretchedly unsatisfactory Imperial relation-ut in the cold. minster smoking-rooms, the idle chatter of affluent men, the atmosphere of authority and of indolence-to taste these things is to desire a permanent grip on them. Yet the bursts of sudden anger that break forth from the working-classes from time to time do not allow such as you to rest at ease. Strikes occur such as the present one. You find that the men who returned you so perfunctorily are alive and active. Their delegates come together, using, as you say, “ picturesque but horrible language,” and there is a vehemence and determination about them that frightens not only you but the governing classes as well. I can understand your disquietude. That recklessness and spendthrift enemy is indeed appalling to a class that hates to live perilously and forms its philosophy from a tissue of evasions. You have to make a choice of service and you choose as your instinct prompts you. That fire and anger will pass away and the Cup-Tie and the Grand National will call to their votaries again, but the governing classes will remain. “ I am a citizen before I am a trade unionist,” you say, and the phrase is echoed through the Press by those who know quite well how to interpret it. Then you proceed, cautiously at first, but afterwards more confidently, to damp down the fire that has been kindled. “ T h e Syndicalists,” you say, cleverly taking the cue from your masters, “ a s k us t o break the laws and bring ruin upon everybody.” You must have chuckled a t the success of your efforts. But stay! Are you sure they have been so entirely successful, bearing in mind the larger question of your career? To-day your speeches are reported at length, and your features are made familiar to the readers of public prints, but does that guarantee you any permanent reward? Your rhetoric, it may be urged, has done more to blunt the keen edge of the men’s determination than all the vituperation of the Press. T r u e : but what security have you that the governing classes will remember that ? Gratitude, do I hear you say? My dear Sir, they have no gratitude. Only very rarely does such a motive enter into their distribution of favours and rewards. They are shrewd, and when it comes to the point are more apt to consider the possibility of future services than look back on those already rendered. Besides, they have, for men who betray so willingly, a secret contempt that is hardly veiled even in their moments of panic. Those flaring headlines with which they greeted you in the Press: cannot even you discern a covert sneer in them ? The more I think of it the more uneasy I become on your behalf. Your own Lancashire miners have Signalled their scorn of you by voting for a continuance of the strike; they will certainly remember your actions and will endeavour to kick you downstairs at the first opportunity. I urge you to make the most of your chances now. W h y not take a lesson from some of the Radicals? Be irreconcilable on one or two particular points and try to convince the Government that you are not so tame a s you secretly know yourself to be. Have you not seen how Billson, who for years has fetched and carried for the Government in the most abject way, still remains in the gloom of the back benches, while Bobson, who dangerously attacked them on some minor matters, now enjoys a seat on the Front Bench and emoluments from the public purse? Does not that convey a lesson to you? Besides, would it not nowadays be a distinction to be regarded as a ‘‘dangerous ” man? At present you are merely one of a ruck, even though your voice does (in your own fine phrase) “ reverberate through the country. ” I advise you to think it over and beware of letting yourself g o too cheaply. You are probably under no illusion as to your value, but after all the value of any commodity is really just as much as the purchaser can be made to pay. And there is a host of historical precedents to guide you. Did not this gentleman get his thirty pieces of silver, and that one his seven hundred a year? I remain, Your sincere well-wisher, VANCE PALMER. An Open Letter to Stephen Walsh, M.P. Sir,--Probably you will not be surprised a t a letter being addressed to you a t the present moment. You have contrived to be (as you have yourself somewhat fatuously remarked) “ t h e most talked-of man in England.’’ I know that you have naïvely confessed to being astonished a t your sudden access to notorietya notoriety that did not attend you when preparations But let that pass, for a strike were in progress. whether by design or lucky chance you have been dragged from obscurity and placed on a pedestal in the public view. As one deeply interested in all “ L o g Cabin to White House ” epics, I hasten to congratulate you on your success. You are on the eve of being elected to the National Liberal Club; your speeches are given the widest publicity in the public Press: it would almost seem that you are accepted by the governing classes as a man of weight and power. Yet in forecasting a prosperous future for you I have certain doubts, certain disquieting fears. Have you not made your plunge too soon, I ask myself? Is it not possible that a more subtle procedure, or perhaps an entirely different one, would have landed you more safely at your goal? That tide in the affairs of men, that you probably think about so frequently in the grey hours before dawn-have you really taken it at the flood? I am not sure : I am uneasy. Reflect a moment. You have probably spent half a lifetime in gaining your present position. I a m not sure of your origin, but I imagine you to be one of those men with middle-class instincts that occasionally appear among the working-classes. Your horror of strikes and conflicts, of anything that savours of reality, seems to me quite genuine and bears out my supposition. Your virtues are probably middle-class virtues-thrift, sobriety, prudence, restraint, perhaps even a certain capacity for business transactions. In the class slightly above your own, the class to which you temperamentally belong, you would, I daresay, have been a moderately efficient chandler or tobacconist, with strong views on temperance, Free Trade, or keeping down the rates. That was not to be. You were born in the workingclasses. The virtues of the working-classes are courage, generosity, sociability (all prodigal things that do not make for personal advancement), and, as I have said before, your virtues are different. I t is men like you they choose for their trade-union secretaries when they begin to unite. Perhaps they even idealise your qualities as belonging to another class : at any rate they find them useful in times of peace, and, fortunately for you, they generally look for times of peace. Honesty (at least in such minor matters a s the handling of money), industry of the plodding sort, caution in the arrangement of petty matters-all these you can give them. Probably you give freely, and so when they think of electing a Member to Westminster they choose you out of gratitude. Thus far have you gone. You have done well. But with your characteristic foresight you have seen that such positions a r e insecure in the nature of things, and to one with middle-class instincts what is there so desirable as security? The cushioned comfort of West- 585 Great Britain and the Terror. By Vladimir Bobrikoff. [TRANSLATED THE “ TOMSK FROM AND IRKUTSK GAZETTE. ”] London. WE of the great world find our social affinities regardless of frontiers. Thus it is that although I am in this wonderful country I have already found not only friends but colleagues in the great task confided to us of guiding and restraining the democracy. I had heard much from my earliest days of the triumph of the hoi polloi in this kingdom. Be certain that I came here with trepidation, expecting to see a t every turn the sacred principles of autocracy trampled under the feet of the triumphant but ignorant workman. Imagine, then, my delight when I can assure you that the democratic victory is only apparent and not real. I had feared the contagion of British ideas, half expecting them subtly but sureIy to undermine those principles that find final expression in the divine mission of our beloved Tsar. It has been with a humble but glad heart that during this time of the Blessed Resurrection I have knelt before the altar and, reverently raising my ikon, have offered up thanks to the Most High God that Great Britain (whose Queen Alexandra is sister to our own Dowager Empress) remains still under the guidance of men who know how to restrain and, if necessary, punish those who flout the mission of the Lord’s anointed. This may seem strange to you, yet I write with complete assurance, for I have seen with my own eyes with what wisdom is this country‘ governed, with what skill and aplomb is the democracy deluded into the belief that it is supreme, when in reality it is as rigidly excluded from the councils of the Government a s though it were not. Will it sound disloyal if I frankly tell you that our Russian statesmen have much to learn from their British confrères in €he art of grasping the substance under the admirable disguise of democratic form ? I t is indeed marvellous. Birth, breeding, property are more safely entrenched here, are more powerful, than in any country in the world. Now let me briefly tell you how it is done. When the debacle of 1832--the year of the franchise-left the aristocrats apparently crushed, they speedily showed the same high qualities as those evinced by the French aristocrats in 1792. Inspired by the sense of their high destiny, they determined that since the bourgeois had arrived, the bourgeois must be absorbed, and aristocratic principles and methods maintained. So they married their daughters to the sons of rich manufacturers and from time to time ennobled such successful traders as seemed capable of assuming the true tone and hue of their conquered conquerors. Ah! How bitter must have been the pangs of these Spartan parents, born in the purple, thus to permit their children’s blood to commingle with the blood of the lower orders! I t was the’ same fortitude that in different circumstances brought the French aristocrats to the guillotine. But what a difference! France is now a Republic (but not for ever, let us hope), whilst the sacrifices of the English aristocrats saved the august Throne. The true principles of government being thus conserved by the Christian humility of the English aristocrats who stooped to conquer, the practical administration of affairs became a problem. Just as in Russia so in Great Britain, the law was rendered inviolate and the ignorant and superstitious working classes were taught to regard it a s the palladium of their liberty. I t is here that British statesmen have proved superior to the Russian. N o law can be sustained without the support of the Church. In Holy Russia we have sought to encompass this end by maintaining orthodoxy intact. But British statesmanship saw farther. “ W h a t does it matter what the Churches believe if they all support the law?” was what was said. Thus religious liberty became the buttress of the Statute-book. All the churches in Great Britain-Anglican, Roman, Methodist, Congregationalist, Quaker-vied with each other in pro- claiming their undying allegiance to the Crown and Constitution. N o theological distractions were permitted to divert the Churches from their true function as instruments of discipline. Church members were encouraged to accumulate property and to believe that their property could only be safe under the aegis of the Christian faith,. In the Church no revolutionist, no Socialist, no Anarchist could find refuge or sanctuary. This is surely the triumph of British statesmanship. I t is a lesson that was learnt by the martyred Stolypin, whose heroic life was cut short before he could complete his noble task. The law being thus made the foundation of the British system, experience taught the wisdom of appointing lawyers to high places in the Government. The Lord Chancellor, who presides over the House of Lords, must be a lawyer, whilst the House of Commons is kept to reality by the presence of a regiment of brilliant advocates. The Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, is a lawyer, so also is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Lloyd George, whose services t o the sacred cause of property are veiled by a judicious oratory that easily blinds the common people, who are a s easily deluded as our Russian mujiks. H e has just passed a measure through the Legislature-the Insurance Act-that still more effectually binds the working-classes t o the present system, and ensures their continued servility for another generation. Then, again, the Home Secretary is a lawyer. H e it is who put those unsexed women in gaol-the women who, leaving their home nests, forgot their feminine traits and sought to become disgusting Amazons. But, my friend, let me confess that my heart is sore for these poor creatures. There is nothing more awful than the living death involved in incarceration in an English prison. I would fain hope that Mr. McKenna might introduce some of the more humane conditions of our Russian prisons. But I must not digress, even though the English prison system would make the heart of every true Russian to bleed. English law being the foundation of Great Britain and lawyers being its best administrators, we must now consider how it has stood the strain of recent events. Do you remember-but, my friend, of course you do-how the great strike in St. Petersburg nearly brought the Russian Throne to the ground and crowned Beelzebub? I can hear you asking me if there was any analogy over here. I smile happily, I send up rings of smoke in the sweet abandon of cornplete security, a s I tell you that analogy there was none. Ah ! You do not believe. Yet it is true. “Impossible,” you say, “the British workman is a terrible fellow when he is roused.” True, my friend, nevertheless. “ Then hour was it done? ” you ask. I will tell you when I stop laughing-these English are so droll. I cannot help laughing when I tell you that not a single clock was stolen from an English church. “Tut ! Tut ! ” you exclaim; “ come to the point, how was it done? ” You grow insistent, so I must tell you --after all a joke must be told to get its true flavour. Well, it was done by putting the strikers on their honour ! The British politician said in so many words : ‘‘Look here, my good fellows, if you strike, I rely upon your good sense and your love of English institutions to strike peaceably. If you promise to be quiet and to behave like gentlemen, the military and the police will not be called out.” Observe the superb cleverness, the masterly knowledge of English psychology, this appeaI to low workmen to become gentlemen. I t worked like a charm. Every striker by becoming a gentleman became also his own policeman. I t is indeed marvellous. I have been cudgelling my brains to discover the true formula of British polity, and I think I have found it. Do not jump out of your chair and condemn me as a madman when I put it in simple words. Here it is : Every extension of democratic government means the greater centralisation of power in the hands of the autocrat. “ Preposterous ! ” you exclaim. Listen patiently, my friend, for travellers see strange things. As the British House of Commons has grown in democratic diversity, the powers of the Cabinet have grown pro tanto. As the Cabinet has grown in representative strength, so, pro tanto, has grown the power of the 586 inner ring. Thus, to-day, four or five statesmenAsquith, Lloyd George, Grey, Churchill, Haldane-really govern England. If the Commons do not like it, the way out is easy. The inner ring decrees a dissolution and either continues or gives way to another inner ring. Now isn’t that really very simple? Yet so curiously constituted is the British mind that it will not admit the main fact. I was dining the other night with a great Englishman-en famille. I told him this. “It’s very odd,” said he, “how you foreigners will never understand that here in England we have discovered that the voice of the people is the voice of God.” “No doubt,” I said, sweetly reasonable, “but do you always listen to the voice of G o d ? ” “The apostolic succession is sometimes doubtful,” he rejoined. I wanted to press him further, for I realised he was not a fool, but he cut short the conversation by requesting me to join the ladies, who instantly asked me many questions about the appearance and dresses of our beloved Empress. There is much more to tell you, but space permits it not. Perhaps I may send you another letter in a week or two. But I rejoice that I came here, for now I see clearly that the Britannic Government is the natural ally of Holy Russia. The same ideals inspire their statesmen, even though their methods vary to meet varying conditions. My heart sings with a sweet rhythm: The Autocracy is safe, ever blessed i s our noble Emperor. his method, especially when it is applied to the right sort of people. But I refuse to be handled by our ingenious hangman of heretics a s a heretic myself. I need not remind Mr. Chesterton that, compared with a Jew, he, the Christian, is the heretic-and I consequently think it very wrong of him to apply the same method to me a s to the crowd of cranks, faddists, reformers, and pseudo-artists which (to my great enjoyment, I confess) he dispatches twice weekly in the columns of the “ Daily News” and the “ Illustrated London News.” No, I never said that the Church allowed the killing of children. W h a t I said was that the Judaeo-Christian doctrine of original sin, if logically applied by a serious, sombre, and passionate mind, might lead, and does lead, to suicide or infanticide. The Church, especially the Catholic Church, as I willingly concede to Mr. Chesterton, never encouraged those grossest excesses of the baleful doctrines which true Christianity contains and preaches. W h a t the Church did was very simple. If a man was too pagan, too well constituted, too healthy a being, too “lucky a stroke of nature,” it preached to him the doctrine o original sin. But if a man was f too sick already, if he was already half-dead with selfreproach, if he took the doctrine of original sin too seriously, the Church mitigated that doctrine in his particular case, it spoke kindly to the patient about “ grace,” etc., etc., so that the extreme consequences were avoided. Thus the Church did what our quackdoctors do nowadays: they neither let the patient get well nor let him die, for fear of losing him one way or the other. Of course, I do not mean to say that the mediaeval Churchmen, like these quack-doctors, were swindlers : they were not, they thought they were right, they were Christians (though superior Christians) who did not know any better. I t is obvious that the Church shifted and had to shift according to circumstances: it was handling a very dangerous explosive-not only that bomb ‘‘original sin,” but other bombs and dynamite a s well-which might g o off, and did go off, in the wrong direction, finally even against itself. Mr. Chesterton, who has a wonderful treasure of euphemisms for these tergiversations and acrobatic feats of his beloved Church, cornpares this strange, shifting behaviour with the “onesidedness of the Nietzscheans, who can change a s little as Niagara.” ‘‘The Church,” he says, “ could choose and change its course: Nietzsche, o r Dr. Levy, o r the modern spirit cannot do it.” No, they cannot; at least, Nietzsche and Dr. Levy cannot, while the modern spirit, I am sure, is even more “ shifty ” than the mediaeval Church. But to praise this shiftiness a s something wonderful is making a virtue of necessity. The wonderful changing behaviour and the “ crazy leaps and balances,” permitted to the mediaeval Churchmen, according to Mr. Chesterton, and admired by him, were due to a very good cause. The clergy was all the time on very slippery and dangerous ground. I remember having once seen in a music-hall a number of pheasants that danced most beautifully to the sound of music. Everyone admired them, but the poor birds were standing on an iron plate heated from underneath, and had to dance in order not to burn their feet. Thus were Mr. Chesterton’s friends in the Middle Ages compelled to act, and, I am very much afraid, Mr. Chesterton himself in our own days. Thus, too, were the laity of the Middle Ages compelled to act ; for the fear of something hot under their feet, encouraged as it was by the teaching of the Church, produced a sort of fitful and boisterous, but a t bottom very painful, gaiety, that gaiety which Mr. Chesterton, the able advocate of the Middle Ages, never fails to praise and always holds up as an example to the sombre spirit of the moderns and the one-sided stolidity of the Nietzscheans. I would admire it, too, just like Mr. Chesterton, only I know how the trick was done, and I prefer the majestic steadiness of Niagara to the gay dancing of the poor pheasants. As I have already said, however, I am quite willing to concede to Mr. Chesterton that he can make out a good case for the Catholic Church, which has always exercised a sort of spiritual government over its flock. Mr. G. K. Chesterton and By Dr. Oscar Levy. Christianity. answered my letter, in which I accused Christianity (or, what is the same in this respect, Judaism) of being responsible for the murder of the child whom his father killed to save him from “ the moral taint.” I am very much obliged, I say, and still more surprised that Mr. Chesterton did answer, because I thought my statement that such excesses of Christianity were due to the preaching of the doctrine of original sin was all but unanswerable. Mr. Chesterton, however, has answered, and I see, with great pleasure, that he (although he says the contrary) practically agrees with me in saying that St. Augustine was a sombre figure, that he was pessimistic through and through, and that he repented and had to repent real vices-which nearly agrees with my statement that he, too, was conscious of having a moral taint. Mr. Chesterton, likewise, I see, concurs in my opinion that the austerity of Port Royal had something inhuman about it, and that the life of Pascal, suffering as he did from the moral taint, came very near to being a slow suicide. Mr. Chesterton then goes on to say that St. Augustine left the pessimistic Manichaeans and wrote theological works devoted to disproving the extreme sect he had abandoned; and that the Church condemned the asceticism of Pascal, preferring to him the laxity of the Jesuits. I quite agree. But does this disprove my statement that individual Christians frequently suffer from the feeling of a moral taint? Did not St. Augustine and Pascal suffer from the consciousness of a moral taint? They did, undoubtedly, and Mr. Chesterton agrees that they did. Of course, the Church disapproved of this; the Church never allowed the extremes o crazy self-laceration ; the f Church never permitted that extreme Christian despair which finally leads to the killing of children. But is the Church the same a s Christianity? I t is not. The Church is a much more reasonable institution than Christianity, and Mr. Chesterton, by confusing the two, in his clever dialectical manner, can easily make out a case against anyone who says anything against Christianity or against the Church. I have long since observed Mr. Chesterton’s dexterity in mixing up these two different things, and I even admire I A M very much obliged to Mr. Chesterton for having 587 But Mr. Chesterton knows as well a s I do that, when it comes to Protestantism, we come to what Brunetière has called “ the absence of government.” This phrase, however, invented a s it is by an ardent Catholic and enemy of Protestantism, is somewhat erroneous. Protestantism is not the absence of government: it is the government of everyone by himself-“ every man his own priest,” a s the doctrine has it. Protestantism is Christianity driven inwards. In Protestantism there is no Church, no half-reason even, no acrobatic reason (like Mr. Chesterton’s) to protect the ardent Christian and sincere believer in original sin from the worst consequences of that terrible doctrine. “ A Catholic can g o to his confessor, a Protestant only to his lawyer,” as Disraeli said; and the lawyer, who probably is a n expert in all other sins, knows a s a rule very little about “ original sin ”--if he did he would not be a lawyer. Thus the unhappy modern man is left to himself, brooding alone over his utter baseness, harbouring a deep suspicion of himself and his children, looking day and night into his own bosom with that evil Christian eye that colours everything black, be it ever so bright, healthy, and natural. And then he goes and kills himself and his child. And I still maintain that this man is a true, honest, and logical Christian. I still maintain that this man, when the judge tried to prove him insane, had a right to protest. I still maintain that it was an offence against Christianity when the judge hinted a t insanity-an offence all the more remarkable a s it was entirely unconscious, but an offence more profound than any which that bugbear o Mr. Chesterton, Friedrich Nietzsche, f ever committed against Christianity. And Mr. Chesterton, who (thank heaven !) is much too good a Catholic to be a good Christian, or t o understand a Christian, pretends that this man has read scientific books, that this man, who acts under a superstition of 3,000 years’ standing, is influenced by the noisy modern spirit, and that five or six Eugenists, whose books he has read, ought to be hanged for having perverted his mind. Does Mr. Chesterton still believe that a man who worries about a moral taint has read scientific books? .If so, will Mr. Chesterton name to me those scientific books which treat of the moral taint? I t was for this statement that I challenged him a t the beginning. I did not wish the crimes of religion to be shifted on to the shoulders of Science, that poor and delicate Science, which has already a sufficiently difficult position to maintain in this mystical and romantic age of ours. But in the whole of Mr. Chesterton’s eloquent and picturesque article there was not a line of reply on this point. If Mr. Chesterton is silent on such an important matter, I may still be allowed to think that it is not so easy to reply. I may still be allowed to think that his answer is no answer, o r a t best an evasive answer, a5 was only to be expected from the great pupil of that great and clever Catholic Church. strange and diverse destinations. This country ought truly to be proud of its mining population. But, on this Sabbath day, it is my duty to consider the spiritual aspects of the problem thus dramatically presented to our hearts and heads. Even the youngest o my hearers must have realised that a great factor in f the problem is duty. W h a t was the duty of the miner, of the employer, of the public? Duty, my brethren, duty! And who but the Christian, redeemed through faith, can give a satisfying answer to that mighty problem? I t is a searching and arresting fact that during these perilous weeks the question of duty has scarcely been broached. Does this bode a slackening in the Christian consciousness of our country ? Heaven forbid ! Let us fervently pray that it be not so. Yet the voices of those who profess the faith have been strangely silent, or in the clamour of contending interests their voice was drowned. I am constrained to ask an even more searching question : W a s the still small voice of conscience also drowned in the fierce passion of material lust? This is indeed a terrifying thought to those who dwell serenely secure under the Divine Father, protecting wings of the Almighty-the who knows of the fall of the sparrow. I tremble for those who brought us to the verge of ruin lest it should be said of them, “ W h y reason ye because ye have no bread? Do ye not perceive, neither understand? Have ye your heart hardened? Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? ” (Mark viii. 17 and 18). Did the colliers forget that H e who fed the five thousand with five loaves would never forsake them? Is it not proof, if proof were needed, that the cry is ever insistent to g o out and preach the gospel? “ The harvest is plenteous, but the labourers are f e w ” (Luke x. 2). I would not have you believe, my brethren, that the questions thus asked convey condemnation of the struggling collier. F a r be it from me to condemn. The Divine admonition must ever guide us : “Judge not that ye be not judged” (Matthew vii. I ) . Let us then consider the problem of duty. W h a t is the Christian answer to the colliers’ demand? It is simple, it is comprehensive : “ The labourer is worthy of his hire ” (Luke x. 7). Observe the profound wisdom of the Divine Founder of the Faith. He does not tell us that the labourer is worthy of a minimum wage; the heart of the mystery may be summed up thus : Let the labourer be worthy of the hire o r wage he receives. Thus we discover that it is, after all, not a question of the amount of the wage, but of the character of the labourer. But character involves duty. Is it then the duty of the collier to win coal? W h a t other duty has he? Before and beyond all other considerations he must seek to perfect his character in that station in life to which it has pleased God to call him. The words of our great poet must ring in his ears :Not once, nor twice, in our fair island’s story, The path of duty was but the path, to glory. But I can almost hear some labouring member of my congregation murmur : “ W h a t of the masters? ” That question cannot be shirked. The master, too, has his duty to his country, to his family, to his servants. There is a school of thought and action in this country that preaches the abolition of the master, a school o r cult variously known a s Socialism or Syndicalism. This strange creed would trample under its feet all the canons of our religion, which clearly recognise the need and necessity of masters : “ Servants be in subjection to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is acceptable if for conscience toward God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye sin and are buffeted for it, ye shall take it patiently? But if when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is acceptable with God ” ( I Peter ii. 18,19). This is no isolated text in the Divine W o r d ; the same command is found in Ephesians vi. 5, Colossians iii. 22, Titus ii. 9. Thus we see that in God’s good providence even the “ froward ” master is a means of grace. This is even more explicitly set forth in James v. 4 : “ Behold, the hire of the labourers who mowed your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, Coals of Fire. By the Rev. [REPRINTED, CaIeb Birchinough, D.D. BY PERMISSION, FROM ‘ ‘ THEPOOPIT.”] IT is a pleasant thought that the colliers of our beloved country are now heaping upon us “ coals of fire.” Our gratitude can be measured by our sense of inconvenience and loss during the recent lamentable strike. Unkind things are being said of the collier. Apart from the Christian disapproval of speaking evil things of our brethren in Christ, the last man to deserve ignominy is the noble fellow who descends into the bowels of the earth that our engines may have power and our people warmth. Can we not easily visualise the scene? The man made black in the image of God, working his full eight hours in great discomfort, now on his back, now on his side, bending, straining to his task. W e can hear the click-a-pick, click-a-pick, pick-click, pick-click, whilst the subdued swish and swirl of the tiny truck on the tiny tramway tells of the coal being whirled to 588 crieth out: and the cries of them that reaped have f entered into the ears o the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived delicately on the earth and taken your pleasure; ye have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned, ye have killed the righteous one; he doth not resist you.” Then follows the everlasting exhortation : “ Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord.” W h o amongst us, then, can avoid the conclusions, first, that both good and bad masters play their part in the Christian economy, and, secondly, the servant or employee can only resist his master at the peril of his immortal soul? I will freely confess to you, my brethren, that when this coal crisis first arose I felt deep sympathy with the miners in what seemed a noble struggle for a more dignified existence. But it is the duty of men of my high vocation never to let their individual sympathies clash with the eternal verities. So I made careful inquiries amongst my flock, and many of them, Godfearing and tireless Christians, I discovered to be shareholders in the idle mines. They told me touching stories of how they would be compelled to restrict their Christian energies and charities in consequence of their loss of income. This led me to analyse more carefully the factors in this lamentable dispute. But I saw both sides too clearly. I t is not unknown in Christian theology for two incontestible principles to exclude each other. This has led to much casuistry in the Roman communion, a casuistry from which our glorious Reformation saved us. W e of the reformed faith have a better way. W e turn from all earthly considerations and fall back upon the gospel pure and undefiled-the gospel. that reminds us that it is “ the spirit that quickeneth ” (John vi. 63). All else is sinking sand. Let us, then, pray that the labourer may prove worthy of his hire, not by resorting to wicked and revolutionary courses, but by enduring all things ( I Corinthians xiii. 7) and remembering that even the thought of storing up the things of this life are not pleasing to God, who looks only into our hearts. If this prayer of ours be offered with humble and contrite hearts it will surely be heard a t the Throne of Grace. Amen. S. G . H. See how the sky is a pall overhead, A pall blood-red in the furnace flare! W e have conquered ! The mountain lies dead ! Deep in his bowels our tentacles hold, Drawing them out, iron, copper and lead, Screaming they rush from spigot to mould. D e a d ! The mountain lies dead! II. Spun out, the mountain’s entrails scattered lie ; Drawn thin they stretch like gleaming silver strings Whereon is played a monstrous melody As o’er them runs the touch of modern things. See the vast plough Changed from a bough, And belts of steel for a leathern thong; Binder and flail, Girder and rail, Gather and carry the whole year long. Pulley and wheel, Bobbin and reel, Sing together a n endless song; Lever and beam, Water and steam, Sing, and in singing, grow yet more strong: D e a d ! The mountain lies d e a d ! III. Slow as a craft creeps up the stream at eve The blackened mountain moved to newer life. If life it be when nothing hath reprieve From toil and filth, from lust and shameful strife. So, in her many chambers of despair Where glowed the fires of hell brought u p t o earth, The armies of the Captains faced the glare With aged eyes and lips uncarved for mirth. Among them, a bright shadow, there was One, His slender limbs of light you could descry, His cheek was swarthy with the southern sun You caught the blue Aegean in his eye! H e was a god, and like a god he moved : His feet scarce touch’d the ordure of the ground. H e was a god, and like a god he loved The dim grey mortals moiling all around. H e told them tales of rock, and flower and tree; H e told them what the mountain used to be. H e told them of his sunny southern home, H e told them of a happy Grecian isle, Of thickets where his sister used to roam, Of paths where Leto wandered mile on mile. H e told them of the limpet-studded wrecks, Their shadows shot by fish in misty mail, Of yellow sands bestrewn with marble flecks, Of sweet, leaf-hidden grapes far up the vale. H e told them of a lime-washed little town High-perched above the murmur of the sea, Where from your door, the vista looking down, Would fill your heart with purest ecstasy : (The deep green cornfields by the silver strand Foamed at the edge with almond-blossom rare, As farther out, where huts of fishers stand, Green shallows sleep beneath the breakers there.) Apollo in Glasgow. I. W e do not come here to look at the mountain : Stand aside! Our business does not permit us to stare at an earthheap. While the out-cropping stone is useless for building, And the sunshine--confound it !-obscures all our visionStand aside ! l n the distance you hear the tramp of an on-coming army , Led by the Captains of Industry over the mountain. Stand aside, You, with the muttering lips and a heart that is beating ; You, with eyes that brood on the tree-clad uplands; You, with your bright soul gazing through tears a t the summit; You, with a girl in gour arms by the side of the torrentStand aside! World-wide we sweep o’er the mountains, And the land is black with gloom : Hoarse is the roar from our furnaces, Fierce is the shout from our palacesDreamers, make room, make room ! See, how the green has grown blackened and dead, And the people faint in the soot-choked air ! So ran the tale, in cadenced accents told; (His voice was like the echo of a chime Across the sea). They listened one and old T o that sweet singer of a far-off time. Think you they heard his tale w i t h bated breath? Think y o u they followed him with flying feet? There is no mystery about his deathT h e y slew him at the Corner of the Street. WILLIAM MCFEE. 589 Present-Day Criticism. ALAS! how often must one not submit to being humbled in order to perceive truth. Nothing can be clearer to an unprepossessed mind than the mortifying fact that our criticism of ‘ Rhythm ” has in no degree influenced the Editor of that magazine. W e have not in the least helped him to recognise his errors, let alone to repent of them. He replies that he has “ n o concern with ” our criticism. I t is nothing to him that in our opinion his volume is stupid, crazy and exceedingly vulgar. Presumably, the next number will be a s poor as the last. W h a t a pity ! H e is only interested to refute our suggestion that he even remotely imitated ourselves. But that was not a charge! Positively, we began by apologising for severe criticism of a journal that was f professedly a mass o good intention. Positively, we declare that a dozen papers run on the lines of THE MEW AGE would benefit us no less than they would serve the interest o ideas. Only after examination of f the contents of “ Rhythm” did we regretfully decide that here was something we could never be proud to have inspired. With still a hope of sparing literary England yet another magazine of illiterate decadence, we, in our way, which is to boycott nothing, but to bring the fallacious into the light, showed where “Rhythm” failed to carry out its title, hoping that the person responsible for editing might be brought to see that no rhythmical arrangement could possibly be made of suohmaterial. But we reduce him to a tu quoque! H e replies that he has “ long been endeavouring in vain to discover if ‘ Present-Day Criticism ’ had any basis a t all.” Well, we should all try to amend our own faults, remembering Hooker’s admonition to yield to reason, though we may not have a very high estimate of the “ person that doth allege it.” Anyone who chooses rather to make an art of life than to exist as in an idiot’s dream, must be set on making firm his basis. There is no finding a new basis. Only those ignorant of the world’s history would suppose any single thing to be brand new. But we may discover, if we are really bent on discovery, and do not madly refuse to be helped, some old and indispensable stone lacking in our foundations. And in an age like ours, when we have all been led over so many swamps and jungles of novelties, we much too contentedly assume that we have come t o a sure footing when we arrive a t a bedded stone o r two. In the matter of criticism, precaution against over assurance is especially precious at the present day. And with some intuition of danger, the writer of this column has repeatedly warned readers that these paragraphs are nothing but notes, and, by giving chapter and verse for their basis, has confessed perpetual diffidence, advising all who were interested to examine for themselves. In rejecting Shakespeare’s concession to the vulgar of his day of sanguinary scenes, we had with us the canon of the best Greek and Roman artists : we had the best of his own work: we had the experience of Time that has said Nay to Shakespeare’s Yea, and has turned the English mind away from desire to see bloodshed. In advising young writers to value virtue as they value health, we spoke a very old truth, but one almost forgotten in our time. The word virtue, like some others that belong to men, has been vulgarised by women’s misappropriation : but its true meaning is still preserved from all botchers a n d sensation seekers. The young artist who is virtuous will live for his art so that it may rank with the excellent. H e will practise the duties of artists, cutting himself off from distracting influences, building up his power by practising in large and severe forms, fortifying his resolution by familiarity with the lives and works of great men. H e will thus ensure the permanent health of his work by cultivating his own character. There is nothing new, unfounded, or unauthorised in such advice, but it is only useful to those who have already a firm character, while to such a s run after novelty it must seem nothing but dull preaching. But all great men have modelled themselves on great men. From Greece to England the tradition is unbroken. Nor has the temporary fin de siecle decadence done more than obscure it. W e are emerging. Our danger now is o f naughty pride, lest we imagine our saved selves to be as authoritative in matters of artistic virtue as the artists who never fell. Let us then be ever so careful to profess ourselves humbly earnest, and if even a person deep in sin doth allege anything against us, not slight it altogether, for Scripture is still Scripture, even when the devil quotes it. Let us then recall a few of the dicta we have repeated from time to time, and, on another occasion, declare, as of small authority, such a s prove to be our own invention. One secret cause of feebleness among young artists is their neglect of solitude and meditation. N o t the least o literary plagues is the mania for f originality. None of the great Greeks invented the stories they have handed on. They demanded of themselves only originality of treatment, their own style in presenting a story. The artist must record i n the spirit of his own times, but that spirit has never anything to do with detail of manners and conversation. These are things o conf vention, and a single decade may make them unintelligible. Never imagine that a man who claims to have fathomed a soul, and is prepared to publish all he knows, knows very much. Extremity is occult and not to be known at all. Every generation of literary men should leave works of beauty, models which should help the after-comers to perceive, and to perpetuate in their turn, the things that redeem the soul amid circumstances of unfathomable enmity. Definite form, reserved force distinguish the artist. To attain and control these he must avoid all that does not confirm his strength, since with strength comes recognition of responsibility, impulse to ever bolder selfcriticism, and power to change many things that are inimical to the soul. To be seen dining with a bad writer should ruin a critic’s reputation. Mediocrity is not a product to treat with indifference, but to destroy wherever possible. f Persons who maintain that the seat o art is above morality are windbags. No artist would deign to embrace “ freedom.” T h e artist must limit his choice of subjects. All that is aesthetic in life has been glorified by the great dead in common. There has never been a renascence of “ realistic.” art. One who has, however ineffectively, reviewed presentday works from the above standpoints, may very well have supposed that his basis of criticism was equally clear to the world as to himself. It seems so simple a basis, the basis that art must be ‘life to the artist. In criticising “ Rhythm ” we did not depart from this basis ; and so judging, we were brought to conclude that “ Rhythm ” was the production of persons who were not living the life of art, but were running after sensationalism ; dancing with seals in delirium, dreaming of murderous hags and degenerate children, playing with sadism and devil-worship, gazing a t drunken tramps amid daffodils until themselves lost all sense of decency, studying the nude until any gross figure seemed zesthetic so it were stark naked, pampering pretty feelings until the very rivers seemed to lie in a sexual ecstasy. Is anything in all that a subject for a r t ? They are things for effeminates only ! They are the things that ruin the mind. Germany, that for twenty years has been paddling in these dirty waters, is now bathing in them. W e do not want the refuse of Germany brought over here even in pailfuls. And though the persons responsible for sousing us with Continental wash have no concern with us, we must, for our own sakes, continue to concern ourselves with them. 590 Auf die Mensur! By Carl Eric. ON the morning of the duel with Haedrich, the Marchian, I hurried round to Weber and insisted on his accompanying me to a hotel, there to partake of a big breakfast instead of his customary As we walked, I cup of coffee and two rolls. endeavoured to raise his spirits by references to the glory he was about to gain, and the least painful way of winning it. “ You’re sure to be all right; if you keep your side well turned towards him, hold out your arm as straight as a poker, and push your head forward along it, nothing can possibly touch you. Keep quite cool, and bend your elbow a s little as possible. Start off quietly with an arm-terce or two against his hilt, and parry any cut he likes to make; perhaps you’ll be able to touch him with a return. Then after a dozen bouts or so, you’ll know exactly how he fences, and then you can start attacking. But mind you answer every single cut of his; if you parry, and then wait before making the Nach-Hieb, his second will claim that you didn’t return the blow, and then you’ll get into trouble. Don’t be annoyed if you get a warning; remember : it’s three warnings for the first monitum, two for the next, and if you get all those, we shan’t have anything more to do with you, and you’ll be dishonoured. There’s no need for you to be afraid-I mean, to be worried about his height. The taller he is, the longer his arm, and the longer his arm, the harder for him to protect it, and the easier for you to chop it. That’s infinitely worse than having your nose o r ear sliced.” After breakfast, I took him into the lounge and gave him a cigarette and some newspapers. To test his condition I worked the conversation round to a discussion of Germany’s worth. From his unusual deference to my pessimism, I decided that he was worried. Half an hour afterwards we walked to the barracks, where Weber was gratified by the sight of twenty miserable conscripts practising the salute with which they have to greet any officer they may meet on the march. I t is a complicated manœuvre, nine goosesteps, starting and finishing with the right leg. Weber explained to me what they were repeating under their breath. I t may be rendered, “ Right O, left O, fat and lean O ; now, dear captain, isn’t it time? One ! two ! ” Then they would return to their ordinary step. As we watched them, leaning against the railings, we were joined by our fellow Inaktive Bursch, Bender. H e was a beefy blackguard, twenty-seven years old, studying chemistry. The previous evening, at Gilow’s restaurant, where we usually had supper, he had complained bitterly to me that whenever he miscued the red ball it turned into a mouse with two eyes. As he came up, a certain sadness in his look assured me that he was still feeling the unkindness. I t was with horror, therefore, that I heard him deplore to Weber the folly of duelling. “ I’m damned if I can see any sense in it,” he said wearily. “ After all, what good does it do? You stand up there with a beastly cold apron round your hips and a lot of tight bandages numbing your arm. Y o u have to wait for about ten minutes with everybody staring a t you and a beastly little Fuchs helping you to hold your arm up, t o save you from being disqualified before you start. The umpire gabbles some rot about it k i n g contrary to the law, and you suddenly realise that it’s going to begin; you shiver and feel yourself going hot and cold, and look at the other fellow’s muscles, and think how white and trim they are. Your second tells you to buck up, which is the least he can do. Then all of a sudden he yells, ‘Auf die Mensur! ’ and the other second, whom you see for the first time, bending right back with a leg stretched out towards you, with his sword sweeping across the other man’s face, sings out, ‘ Fertig,’ and off scuttles your little Schlepp-Fuchs, and your second shouts, ‘Los,’ and before you know where you are, you see the other man grunting and sweating in a deadly funk, and boxing blindly a t you with his sabre. You .don’t know what the devil to do, so you decide at last to hit it as often as you can. You do, and suddenly you find your second’s sword in front of your eyes, and the other second walking up to the umpire with his mask off. As he’s only allowed one question, he says, ‘ Herr Unparteiischer, war der erste Hieb gegenseitig erwidert? ’ ‘ Nein,’ says the Unparteiischer, and you get a warning for not having returned the first cut. Then all of a sudden the seconds shout, and your Schlepp-Fuchs lets your arm drop, and you bang out wildly at the other man’s face without troubling in the least to watch his sword. You feel yourself counting, ‘ One, two, three, four,’ and then your second yells ‘ Halt,’ and jabs his arm before your face, and you see a little drop of blood on the tip of the other man’s blade. Your doctor comes up grinning with a bit of cotton-wool, and dabs it against your left cheek, somewhere underneath your eye, and you realise that you’re wounded. You feel something warm on your chest, and you look down and see a dribble of blood. H e curses you for moving, and takes another lump of cotton-wool out of a saucer of disinfectant that somebody holds out to him, and you feel a s if you were watching all the peopIe laughing and talking, looking and smoking, through the wrong end of a telescope. Your eyelids burn, and your cheek quivers and smarts, and you have your second whispering to you to start off with a plain quarte next time, which your opponent won’t be expecting, instead of the usual arm-terce a t his hilt, followed by a terce or quarte a t his head or body. You open your eyes and the doctor moves off. The seconds shout, and you swing your sabre wildly round to the right, and lunge out in a mad circle. You feel the thing brought up with a jerk, and find that the seconds are in, and that the other man has got a great black gash from his ear to his chin. H e totters against the back of a chair that they push up for him, and you hear his second ask for a pause. Then his doctor fusses about him, dabbing and wiping, and all the people on the right of him cross round to the other side to have a look. Your second pushes you into the chair, and eases your bandages, which have cut into your arm. You try to drink a glass of water, and upset half of it with your shaking, and your doctor has another g o at your face. Then there’s a little hush, and you hear the opposing second ask for the Mensur to be closed, because the doctor says that his man’s wound is so bad that, if he got another in the same place, it might be fatal. So you lean up against your second, and he takes you into a dressing-room, and throws water over you. Then your doctor puts a little black buckram shield full of cotton-wool over your cut and fastens it round your head with an indiarubber band. You dress, and totter downstairs into the street, where you nearly burst with the fresh air, after the stink of chloroform. You g o home early to bed, and can’t move a muscle of your face for days because of the pain. And then they talk of a Academische Freiheit. I s this freedom, not to be able to look a man in the face without his calling you out? Why, if it weren’t that I shouldn’t have the company of you fellows or anybody else, I’m damned if I wouldn’t leave the Corps and be a Freistudent.” I saw that Weber was becoming nervous. I said, therefore, with a sneer, “ In England, thank God, we really do have freedom.’’ “ Freedom ! ” cried Weber. ‘‘ Freedom ! You are free from the necessity of show- 591 ing yourselves men. W e Germans, like our mighty ancestors, who fought all day and feasted all night and never rested, believe in the song and the sword, the fine old ringing melodies, and the glorious true bounce of the blade. Fearless, smiling, we take our stand, not like the French, who dance all over the place, but firm on our left leg, and deftly swing our gleaming swords. Our scars, are they not glorious marks of our valour? Heaven grant me some this afternoon, that, one of these days, in seventeen or eighteen years’ time, as I sit with my wife beside the fire, listening to the howl of the wind and the drip of the rain, with my children on my knee, and look up at my old cap and band, and sigh, and pick up my old beer-glass-” “ Damned good idea,” I said. “ Let’s have lunch. Come on ! ” As we did not want our man to travel about too much, we lunched at a restaurant close to the tavern where the Mensur was t o take place. Weber had a poached e g g and a cup of coffee, into which a large dose of brandy had been surreptitiously introduced. This made him so fiery that he insisted upon going off a t once. On arriving a t the tavern, we asked the porter if he knew a certain Kerr Marchia. H e took a long, dirty piece of paper from his pocket, and told us that it was proposed to perform “ Othello,” and that direction boards led from the third door in the court to the room. W e entered, and bowed civilly to the landlady, who was pouring out beer for some Marchians, whom we ignored. On a blackboard was chalked, “ F a u s t Othello Hamlet <-.” We turned sharply to the right up several flights of dark stairs. I glanced through a doorway marked “ Faust,” and saw half a dozen students with bandaged heads surrounded by a crowd of admiring friends. “OthelIo” mounted to the third story and across the landing to a curtain behind which was a corridor dotted with little tables. W e hammered upon a beer barrel, and after a little while a gigantic whiteaproned waiter accosted us. I announced Weber a s one of the two Paukanten, and asked where our weapons were. H e led us through a large room with a stage at one end. In the middle, surrounded by long deal tables and benches, was a rough grey carpet, stained with little dull brown patches, particularly where a much worn strip bisected it. T o the right of the stage was a little dressing-room, in which we discovered Lutz, our Corps servant, fencing at his reflection in a mirror. Bender knocked him upon the head with his stick, and, having thus drawn his attention, asked him if all the things were in order. Lutz replied that, on his oath as an honest man, though unfortunate and misunderstood, who had spent eleven years in the service of his country, everything was as it should be, and he had spent half the morning sharpening the sabre, so that now it was fit to shave a king with, and cleaning the hilt, which was worked with red, white, and yellow silk. He also informed us that he had a chicken in a hamper, ready for killing, if Weber lost any part of his nose. At this moment luckily the stalwart Schönhof came up grinning, followed by about forty Corpsbrüdern, who one and all greeted Weber very effusively with a handshake and a “ Guten Tag, wie geht’s? ” This concern had the excellent effect of exciting his conceit, and soon there was nothing mentioned but he and his ancestors. Soon afterwards there was a clatter of boots and of conversation, and the Marchians entered the room, headed by Haedrich, a drunken youth of great height, and von Alten, his Leibbursch and second. They raised their caps to us in a body, a compliment which we as formally returned, and took possession of the left side of the fighting space. The waiter writhed amongst them with beer, which they drank at the tables or standIng about in groups. A t last the umpire came in. He was an ordinary young man, president of the Landmannschaft Teutonia. Immediately the principals and seconds began to undress. I took Weber into the dressing-room, and rigged him out with a pair of white trousers fastened by a strap at the back for his left hand to hold, a thick clammy brown apron dropping from the lower edge of his breast-bone to his knees, a black buckram mould for his right shoulder, and broad black bindings, half an inch thick, wound tightly round his throat and his right wrist, elbow, and overarm. His vulnerable parts, then, were his head, the upper portion of his right side, his breast, across which ran the thin straps of the Axillaris and apron, his left shoulder, could his opponent’s sabre reach thus far, and two big spaces between the bandages on his right arm, which stuck out stiffly from his body. I peeped out, and saw that Haedrich, who had changed in the room, was ready. Schönhof, who was to second Weber, came at my call. H e was in his shirt sleeves, protected by an apron covering his whole body, a tall thick throat-band, a great pad along his sword a r m , and a cap with a strong projecting wire peak. There was a hush a s he led Weber out to his chair, with the worn part of the carpet between them and Haedrich. Our Corps was on the right; I stood on a table, leaning against the wall, to see over the heads of the ring and the row on the benches. After examining the sabres and bandages, the umpire asked the two principals if they were reconciled and realised that they were acting contrary to the law. Then, making them shuffle sideways with their feet together and arms outstretched until the point of each sabre touched the other’s hilt, he drew a chalk-line to mark the position of their left feet, which had always to remain stationary on it. Having bowed to von Alten, Schönhof turned to the umpire with his mask in his hand, and demanded silence for a Mensur without bindings and bandages to last thirty minutes, that is, one hundred and twenty bouts. von Alten asked for the right of starting the command. “ Command on the left,” shouted the Unparteiische. Weber bent both his knees, and crouched down on his left leg, with his right foot turned towards his opponent, ready to lunge. His Schleppfuchs helped him to keep his sabre pointing diagonally upwards to the left. Then Schönhof, putting his weight on his left leg and stretching out the right before him, took up his position on Weber’s left, almost touching his breast. Haedrich and von Alten placed themselves similarly. “ Silentium ! ” “ Auf die Mensur ! ” cried von Alten. “ Fertig ! ” replied Schönhof. “ Los ! ” “ To the “ Ready ! ” “ Go ! ” The seconds Mensur ! ” snatched their swords away till their points touched the ground, the Schleppfüchse jumped back, and Weber and Haedrich fenced half-heartedly a t each other. Four clicks of the sabres, “ Halt ! ” and the seconds flung their sword-arms across their principals, catching the fifth blow. The Schleppfüchse clutched a t their man’s wrist, and the witnesses straightened and disinfected the blades. M’nsur! ’Ti ! Los ! Weber lunged out with a terce at Haedrich’s right; it was parried, and the Marchian, jerking his blade back, made a short rapid cut a t him before he could recover. “ Halt ! ” cried the seconds, springing in, and it was seen that Weber’s chin had been very slightly cut, not enough to leave a scar. His doctor dabbed it, while the witnesses attended to the blades. ’Sur ! ’Ti ! ’Os ! They both fought warily, neither making a lunge. The next six bouts were equally ineffective, but, in the seventh, Weber, seeing that Haedrich was bending his elbow, struck successfully’ a t his underarm from beneath. von Alten asked for a pause, the strain was relieved, and the Corona discussed the fighting. “ He’s doing very well, isn’t he? ” said Bender. “ But, my God, isn’t the other man drunk? H e hasn’t done a thing since that neat Nachhieb in the second bout. He’ll have to buck up, now his arm’s hurt. Another wound, and he’ll be done for. Hallo, Krantz ! ” H e greeted our short, fat, and amorous Fuchsmajor, who had just arrived. “ Come up here, old man. Fine view. That’s right.” “ What’s happened? ” “ Oh, nothing. Weber grazed on the chin, and the Marchian’s got his arm cut.” “ Deep? ” “ No, about an inch, I think. I say, have you got a cigar? W e can smoke, I suppose. Oh, perhaps we’d better not. W h a t were you saying yesterday, about that g i r l - - ” “ Two minutes are up,” said the urnpire. “ Is the pause finished? ” Haedrich was very pale as he bent down again. Weber tapped his red and blue hilt with an arm-terce, and lunged out with a quarte. Haedrich had no time to turn his sabre to meet it, 592 and, to the horror of the spectators, instinctively drew his head back a couple of inches as the blade whistled past him. The seconds sprang in, and immediately Schönhof, raising his mask, bowed to the umpire, and asked if the opposing gentleman had not moved his head. “ Yes.” “ H e lost his sword,” suggested von Alten quickly. “ No.” “ I demand a warning-no, a Monitum in this case-for the opposing gentleman, ” said Schönhof. “ I administer the first Monitum to the left Paukant.” von Alten asked for a pause, and a group of Marchians surrounded him and his Leibfuchs, uncertain whether still to allow Haedrich to fight after the disgrace of a Monitum for carriage. von Alten pleaded that the wound in his arm had surely unsettled him for the moment, and finally the Mensur was continued. After this Haedrich held himself so firmly that a terrific slashing blow of Weber’s cut deep into his breast. Wild with rage and pain, lie began to attack. Each bout he set the time for his opponent to answer. Once, in fact, he started with a quarte t h a t would have made Weber retire, had not Schönhof sprung in with a “ Halt ! ” and caught the blow on his padded arm. “ Why ‘ Halt,’ Herr Unparteiische? ” asked von Alten. “ T h e opposing Paukant struck before ‘ Los,’ ” preferred Schönhof. “ No, of course not,” said von Alten. Schönhof stepped up to him, and bowed stiffly. “ Do you suggest that I intentionally put forward a falsehood? ” “ I did not,” replied von Alten. As Schönhof saw no possibility of an honourable Ramsch, he merely said, “ Thank you,” and walked back to his place. At von Alten’s demand, he received a Monitum for having sprung in without a due reason. A few bouts later Weber’s Schleppfuchs fainted, and had to be carried out. The umpire announced the last three bouts. In the first, both lunged out with a terce, and their blades met with such force that the end of Weber’s broke off and flew spinning on to the stage. During the “ bandage pause ” that followed, while a new blade was fitted into the hilt, the two Corps changed sides, in order to see the extent of the wounds. I found that Weber’s right ear had been badly slashed, though as the doctor had been attending to him between each bout, it had previously been impossible to know. The Marchians, we observed, looked very grave at Haedrich’s body-wound, the loss of blood from which was beginning to distress him. When the sword was ready, von Alten objected to Weber’s wrist-bandages, and it was found that there was a space of only two fingers instead of the original four. I n the next bout, each fought the first four cuts on defensive, and hit out on the fifth, to be caught by the seconds. “ The last bout,” announced the umpire. S u r ! T i ! O s ! After the usual arm-terce, Weber, hot and perspiring, slashed out a quarte. His opponent parried it, and sent in a quick teturn, which Weber struck away and followed up by an unexpected blow at Haedrich’s underarm, on the same place as before. The Marchian dropped his sabre, and both doctors ran to him and forced him down on a table. The umpire declared the Mensur over, as it had run its length. Schönhof and I led Weber into the dressing-room, and, taking off his bloody bandages, bathed him. After a while our doctor came in, and told us that Haedrich’s arm had been cut almost through, but happily he would not lose it. When Weber had had his ear and chin padded, the doctor wound some black linen neatly round the top of his head, and sewed it up, telling him not to take it off for a week. When we returned to the room we found everybody had gone but Bender and Krantz and a few Marchians attending t o Haedrich. Raising our hats to them, we went down the corridor through a crowd of students of some other Corporation, who looked at Weber’s headdress with awe. Outside the Schleppfuchs suddenly appeared. “ W h o won? ” he asked anxiously. “ Neither,” cried Weber. “ Good God! we Germans do not battle for victory, but for fame. My opponent fought to prove his honour, and I to vindicate mine.’’ [Next week we shall publish the duelling-code of Mr. Eric s Corporation.] Views and Reviews.* I CALL the attention o the Legislature to a new form f of crime. In a previous article I mentioned that Ribot was accused of purloining the ego from the metaphysical psychologists. The offence is not limited to psychologists; the philosophers are also raising the cry : “ W h o stole the ego? ” In this case, the culprit seems to have been Nietzsche. Dr. J. L. Walker, in a preface to this “ the most revolutionary philosophy ever written,” as the publisher informs us, says that von Hartmann gave “certain data from which to judge that, when Friedrich Nietzsche wrote his later essays, he was not ignorant of Stirner’s book.” Stirner was the prophet of uniquity : before Nietzsche was, I am, he might have said-but did not. He was the first who ever burst into that uproar of self-assertion that is really no more than a trumpeting of truisms. “ I am, thou art, he is,’’ children learn in a grammar lesson; and “the most revolutionary philosophy ever written ” does little more than re-assert the fact. But the full measure of Nietzsche’s crime is not yet apparent. Not only did he kidnap “ T h e Unique One,” and bring him up as a Superman, but he actually stole the Liberty that is the birthright of every ego, and gave it to his aristocrats. “ Stirner,” says Dr. Walker, “loved liberty for himself, and loved to see any and all men and women taking liberty, and he had no lust of power. Democracy was to him sham liberty, egoism the genuine liberty. Nietzsche, on the contrary, pours out his contempt upon democracy, because it is not aristocratic. H e is predatory to the point of demanding that those who must ,succumb to feline rapacity shall be taught to submit with resignation. When he speaks of ‘ Anarchistic dogs ’ scourging the streets of great civilised cities, it is true, the context shows that he means the Communists; but his worship of Napoleon, his bathos of anxiety for the rise of an aristocracy that shall rule Europe for thousands of years, his idea of treating women in the Oriental fashion, show that Nietzsche has struck out in a very old path-doing the apotheosis of tyranny.” There’s a scoundrel for you! Here are these poor Anarchists giving away free egos, all warranted to work wonders, and only one of these Unique Ones is allowed by Nietzsche to be unique. It i s a n outrage. The very quality which distinguishes these Unique Ones is Ownness, a quality that was really invented by Stirner; and Nietzsche has deprived them of it, and substituted Mineness. H e has stoIen not only “Der Einzige,” but “Sein Eigentum ” ; and as the Unique One has no other proporty, it is now dependent on charity. The offence is all the more abominable when we think how inoffensive these poor Anarchists are. They do not cry, nor speak, nor look upon the iron angerly; but Liberty is their one ewe lamb. “ W e do not ask of the Napoleons to have pity,” says Dr. Walker, “nor of the predatory barons to do justice. They will find it convenient t o make terms with men who have learned of Stirner what a man can be who worships nothing, bears allegiance to nothing.” I t is a shame to drive such simple souls to such desperation; already, they have nothing, and now even their nothing is taken from them. But the chronicle of the woes of the poor “ Einzige ” is not finished. H e dedicated this book “To my sweetheart, Marie Dähnhardt”; but the Ownness of The Unique One could not retain even her. The first * “ The Ego and His Own.” By Max Stirner. (Fifield. 2s. 6d. net.) 593 American publisher of this book, Mr. Benjamin R. Tucker, says in an introduction : “ A word about the dedication Mackay’s investigations have brought to light that Marie Dähnhardt had nothing whatever in common with Stirner, and so was unworthy of the honor conferred upon her. She was no Eigene. I therefore reproduce the dedication merely in the interest of historical accuracy.” Think of it, and weep. The Unique One’s Own had too much Ownness, but no Mineness, in her composition; and the vengeance of these poor Anarchists takes no more violent form than reproducing the dedication to her “in the interest of historical accuracy.” O Marie Dähnhardt, wherever you are, believe now and tremble; lest a Stirner fate be yours. Philosophy is not my province. If it were, I should argue that we could not have a philosophy of the ego without a definition of the ego; that just a s Descartes’ “ Cogito Ergo Sum ” was only an affirmation of the existence of thought, and not a proof of the existence of the ego, so Stirner’s assertion of the existence of his ego and its uniqueness is not only incapable o proof, f but is contrary to fact. A man who will say : “ I am not an ego along with other egos, but the sole ego; I am unique,” is wrong; there are others even within himself. “ Two souls,” said Goethe, “ dwell within my breast.” “Only two,” comments Ribot. “If moralists, poets, dramatists, novelists have shown us to satiety these two egos in a state of conflict within the same ego, common experience is still richer; it shows u s several, each one excluding the other as soon as it advances to the front.” Griesinger has written : “ Our ego at diverse times is very different from itself; according t o age, the various duties and events of life, the excitations of the moment, a certain complexus of ideas, which at a given moment represents the ego, develops itself over and above all the others, and advances to the front. W e become another and are yet the same. My ego a s a physician, a s a scholar, my sensual ego, my moral ego, etc., that is, the complexus of ideas, of inclinations, and of directions of the will that are designated by these terms, may a t any given moment enter into opposition, and repel each other.” I t will, of course, be seen that both these writers assert the existence of an ego that embraces these individual egos; but that ego is not Stirner’s ego. I t is not a cause, but a consequence : it is not a creative and active power, but an expression in consciousness of the coenaesthesis. “ T h e ego,” says Ribot, “ is not an entity acting where it chooses or a s it pleases; controlling the organs in its own way, and limiting its domain according to its wish. On the contrary, it is a resultant, even to such a degree that its domain is strictly determined by the anatomical connections with the brain, and that a t one time it represents an entire body, less an individual part, and at another time the half of a body, and in parasitic monsters such a limited domain that it does not suffice to support life, and is expelled accordingly. ’ ’ Stirner’s ego is none of these. H e demands liberty for himself, but he is himself only so far as he is unique. That which he shares with others is not his, and he cares nothing for it, asks nothing for it. The liberty that he proclaims is simply this, that the self that can own a body, a mind, a country, a universe, and a God, has a right to everything that it can possess. Stirner’s philosophy is simply the philosophy of the possessive f case, and the Unique One is only a part o speech masquerading as a psychological entity. English Philosophers.” B y William Marwick. To the series entitled “ The Channels of English Literature,” edited by Mr. Oliphant Smeaton, Prof. James Seth, of the Moral Philosophy Chair, Edinburgh University, who on the wrapper is, by a slip, described as Professor of English Literature, has contributed an interesting and, on the whole, well-proportioned account of “ English Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy.” T h e volume is fittingly dedicated by an old pupil to the doyen of British philosophers, Emeritus-Professor Alexander Campbell Fraser, “ distinguished alike as a representative and as an expositor of English Philosophy,” the Editor of the standard editions of Berkeley and Locke. The aim of the volume is “ to trace the chief stages in the development of English philosophy, through a study of its leading representatives in their relation to one another and to the general movement of English philosophical thought.” The writer’s effort has been “ to concentrate attention on the epoch-making philosophers rather than on the less important figures in the movement, and on the actual thought of the individual philosophers rather than on the logical sequence of English philosophy as a chapter in the development of ideas. Moreover, in accordance with the plan of the series, as well as in accordance with the facts of the case, English philosophy has been regarded as a form of English literature. At the same time, the term ‘ philosophy ’ has been interpreted in a strict sense, which excludes such writers a s Carlyle or Matthew Arnold. ” The title “ British Philosophers ” would have been a more accurate one, seeing that the Irish Berkeley and not a few Scottish names, from Hume and Adam Smith to Fraser, Stirling, John and Edward Caird, etc., fill a prominent place in this study of English Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy. But the precedent of the “ English Men of Letters ” series has evidently been followed, and a s the medium of expression is the English language one need not find serious fault with the choice of title. In the suggestive Introduction, Prof. Seth rightly insists that “ English philosophy is entitled to be called literature in a sense in which the philosophy of perhaps no other nation has the same right to the name.’’ Many of the philosophers are entitled to rank among the masters of English prose. “ The untechnical as well as the literary quality of the style of English philosophy is doubtless in some measure due to the fact that its chief representatives were not, like the great German idealists, university professors, but men of affairs, in close contact with the life of the nation.” Another distinguishing mark of English philosophy i s its unity of type. Of the five dominating namesBacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume--Croom Robertson says these philosophers “ display a greater general similarity of intellectual vision than can be matched, for such a succession of first-rate minds, from the history of any other modern people.” The case is otherwise with the various systems of German thought. But the contrast, says Prof. Seth, must not be overestimated. Three main features differentiate English philosophy from the philosophy of the Continent. “ These are ( I ) its experiential and inductive method, as distinguished from the rationalistic and deductive method of Continental philosophy ; (2) the epistemological character of the former, in contrast with the ontological character of the latter ; and (3) the practical or ethical interest which dominates the English, a s contrasted with the metaphysical and speculative interest which dominates the Continental philosophy. ” Prof. Seth is a distinguished representative 5s. net.) *” A. E. R. English Philosophers.” By James Seth, M.A. (Dent. 594 Ethical Principles, ” which has gone through many editions, shows. The English mind is practical, and not only does it place action above thought, but it is apt to depreciate the practical importance of knowledge, and to conclude that the limitations of human knowledge paint to practice rather than speculation as the real destiny of man, and that for the practical conduct of life faith is a better guide than rational insight, and probability serves where certainty is not to be reached. This attitude is not peculiar to English philosophy, and is the characteristic attitude of Kant, who refuses to leave the solid ground of experience, and repudiates the “ rational dogmatism ” of his predecessors. Even for Spinoza, with all his intellectualism, the moral and practical interest may be said to be supreme. Hegel, as Prof. Seth states in his ‘‘ Study,” “ of all modern philosophers, has given most adequate expression to the essential principles of the ethical life, alike on its negative and on its positive side,” and quotes from Dr. Hutchison Stirling’s “ Lectures on the Philosophy of L a w ” that “ to Hegel . . . culture, education is required for both [mind and body],” body and mind being a t first immersed in nature and requiring enfranchisement-the hard labour against mere subjectivity of action and against the immediacy of appetite, as against the subjective variety of feeling and the arbitrariness or caprice of self-will. Thus the subjective will attains to objectivity and the actuality of the idea. The volume is divided into three parts, dealing respectively with the seventeenth century philosophy under Bacon, Hobbes, the Idealistic Reaction of Cambridge Platonism and Rationalism, and Locke with his Problem of Knowledge ; the eighteenth century under Berkeley and the New Idealism, Hume and Empiricism and Scepticism, the Moralists, and the Revival of Rationalism in Price and Reid; and the nineteenth century in three chapters-I. The English Development of Hume’s Empiricism ; II. The Development and Consequences of the Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense, and III. The Idealistic Answer to Hume in ( I ) the Spiritual Philosophy of Coleridge and Newman, ( 2 ) Absolute Idealism in its earlier version in J. F. Ferrier and John Grote, and (3) in its later version in Stirling, E. Caird, Green, and Bradley. Perhaps the only somewhat unsatisfactory page in the whole volume is that devoted to Dr. J. H. Stirling, the man who was the first real interpreter of Hegel in Britain, and who showed that the man who answered Hume was not Kant but Hegel, and himself contributed to the effectiveness of that answer, and has won a place for himself in the philosophic succession not inferior to Hume, as a Scottish philosopher of European significance. If Hume, so distinctively Scottish, has so profoundly influenced European philosophy, not less has European influenced British philosophy, and so cosmopolitan is philosophy, like the sciences and every other intellectual discipline, that it is difficult to draw a strict line of demarcation, and say this is English or Scottish, or German o r American. While Prof. Seth states that “ The Secret of Hegel ” (1865) “ marked the inauguration of a new era in the development of English idealism,” he criticises its style and method of exposition, omits all reference to the improved one-volume edition of 1898,and somewhat grudgingly admits that “ its importance and its influence at the time of its appearance are not to be under-estimated. ” Lord Haldane’s estimate, in the preface to “ James Hutchison Stirling : His Life and Work,” is far juster : “ Stirling made the meaning a s plain as that meaning could be made. But to penetrate into the inmost significance of reality can under no circumstances be possible without the severest effort a t concentration, and this the book demands. . . . I doubt whether a more remarkable piece of exposition has ever been accomplished in our language.” As I hope to deal with the philosophy of Stirling itself in another article, I shall say no more at present. Present Tendencies in English Philosophy forms a fitting conclusion to a most interesting volume, written in good literary style and with complete mastery of the literature of English philosophy. of the ethical interest, as his chief work, “A Study of Si-chuanese Folk-Songs. By Elizabeth Rendall. HYMN TO AMITABHA. (Called by the Chinese, ‘‘ O-mi-t’o.’’) Like beads upon a silken string, Till seven days have ceased to be, The jewels of Thy Sacred Name I thread upon my thought of Thee. O-mi-t’O, O-mi-t’O, O-mi-t’o ! Buddha of Boundless Light ! Toward the Western Paradise, Across the many fathom’d sea, Beyond the narrow doors of death, I lift Thy Name in thought of Thee. O-mi-t’O, O-mi-t’O, O-mi-t’o ! Buddha of Boundless Light ! LIEN MEI’S LAMENT. My days are spent in hopeless grief, My cheeks are wet with helpless tears, No maid so sorrowful as II cannot meet the coming years. Came cruel famine to our land, And round us many lay the dead; My father brought me to the North, And bartered me for bread. No maid so sorrowful as I ! Ye gods, give pity, let me die! O hut beside the mighty fields, Where straight and tall the poppies stand, Where fierce the yellow sun beats downThe glory of our landI cannot tell their weary speech, Their frosts have entered to my soul; Home of my heart, see where I lie Beside my untouched bowl! N o maid so sorrowful as I ! Ye gods, give pity, let me die! LAO’S ADVICE. The bride-chair jostles in the street The white-robed mourners pacing slow, The merry cymbals clashing meet And mingle with the cries of woe. Wherefore, remember thee, my son. With grief and joy beside thee still, Walk unaffrighted through the land. Forget not, in the midst of ill, The touch of joy upon thy hand. Wherefore, remember thee, my son! T H E DREAM-MAT. One little yawn-says baby is sleepy; Next little yawn-bring the cushions of red. O hush thee, my baby, the dream-mat is waiting The little dark head. One little nod-haste, and close draw the curtain. Next little nod-is the coverlet spread? Nay, hush thee, my baby, the dream-mat is waiting The little dark head. One little sigh-a happy dream hovers, Next little sigh-all the charm words are said, So rest thee, my baby, the dream-mat is holding The little dark head. 595 Art and Drama. By Huntly Carter. As a rule a full-blown novelist writes novels because he has an instinct for descriptive writing, and a grown-up dramatist because he has an instinct for dialogue. But the distinction is not clear to makers of fiction even of a high literary quality. Such a novelist will tell you that if he has not the magic of dialogue-writing he can call in a collaborateur. H e never seems to imagine that the result will be a fake written for the entertainment of the six silliest or perverted persons in the world. Because the corrupt Press will pour butter over him and the box-office stick bright sovereigns in it, he will have it that he is doing his best work, and certainly the stage is the place for him. crimes. Even a worm on a hook would writhe to see a man drink his tea out of a saucer, and attempt to pour out the tea through the handle of the pot. Its verdict on the latter would be non compos. * * * * * * I do not think that Mr. H. G. Wells will take the hint that the theatre is not the place for him. How could he when he is being honourably served by a pack of critics who encourage rubbish and fools and discourage advanced plays and original minds? Still, I am going to give him the hint. I am going to advise him not to produce any more farces obviously written for the entertainment of tittering schoolgirls and sniggering teachers. So far the Vaudeville Theatre has had a reputation for appealing to a ’igh-class audience. Its entertainments of the purely farcical or musical comedy order have always drawn Brixton, Clapham, Battersea, and have no doubt had much to do in breaking down the ring of suburban theatres and transforming them into ’Appy ’Alls for ’Appy ’Arriets. I do not mean to say that the Vaudeville forms of entertainments are not wearisome, or that some of them are not undesirable from a standpoint of art. But compared with “ Kipps,” they certainly take a lofty position in the branches of dramatic fare. In “Kipps” Mr. Wells appears to have got into the nursery. There is no need to dissect further this example of the novel-play. It gets weaker and weaker as it proceeds. Half the third act is taken up with the reception of people who are to meet Kipps, the other half, of the struggle of the Kipps’ will, with further stupid obstacles. Kipps discovers that the maid who serves the tea is his old flame. Kipps thereupon renews acquaintance with her, and during the rest of the scene is torn between his duty to the visitors and his duty to the girl. The fourth act reveals Kipps down in the kitchen renouncing his new friends and abducting the slavey. The whole objection to the play is that it is a bad one, and Kipps is a silly fool, and thoroughly inconsistent. H e is of a highly nervous type that would be sensitive to his imperfections, would seize every opportunity to improve himself, and would certainly shrink from the notoriety his new acquaintances hold out to him. Mr. Wells has taken such pains in his book to describe the shortcomings, illiteracy, and the misguided efforts of Kipps to escape from the toils of inborn characteristics, a s well as those of birth and bringing-up, and to emphasise the wrigglings of the poor devil to a painful degree; and then he, or someone else, has taken such pains to distort his character, that there is only one conclusion--Mr. Wells ought not to have anything to do with the stage. “ Kipps,” in his own words, makes me “ feel sicky.” *** * * * Let u s dissect this cat-lap production. Its theme is a character. The character is a wretched little draper’s assistant who has been fascinated by Albert Chevalier’s impersonations, and inquires of his girl, “Does yer love me?” whereas as a full-blown draper’s assistant he should say, “ What, you love me? Why, certainly, Madame ” - ( a little nervous cough)-“ Ann, I should say. Love is our sole department, is it not? Cash forward ! ” Next there is the story necessary to develop the character. This story in Kipps’ case is the familiar one of a feeble-minded youth coming into £53,000 and how he got rid of it with a little assistance. In the play we do not see much of the distribution of funds. The first act opens in a draper’s store, with everybody looking for Kipps. Kipps has got mislaid, and it takes half an act to find him. When he does arrive his garments are torn in divers places, and he has swelled head. The fact is f he has had an accident and a night o f with the “ gent wot cawsed it.” The gent in question is an actor, with a large voice and a thirst to match. Kipps is sacked by the governor, an amorphous mass, who looks more like a jelly-fish than a self-made thousandaire. Then comes the good news that touches the noblest part of all present. The ignoble part of Kipps slips through the floor, and nothing remains but that desirable article, a golden image worth £53,000 Where have I seen this curtain before? Let us pass from Mr. Wells to Mr. Eden Phillpotts. Mr. Phillpotts once wrote a book called “ The Secret Woman,” wherein an affair between a man and woman, a murder, a suicide, and so on, were tricked out for public enjoyment. I will not stop to contend here that such subjects damage the public mind and taste, and form some of the worst features of fiction. The book was redeemed by some admirable descriptions of scenery, which, like Hardy’s, provided an appropriate background for the characters and created the mood, which was preserved throughout. But on the stage the scenery was a mere finger-post directing nowhere, while the characters had been whittled down to dreary examples of pathological types. How dreary may be gathered from the book published by Messrs. Duckworth. Apparently Mr. Phillpotts is a gloomy pessimist in love with a set of gloomy, low-spirited persons, who, with two exceptions, are fond of talking about murder and suicide or committing crime. The exceptions are the two high-spirited persons, one who talks and laughs and is killed off, while the other has her life ruined t h r o u g h his death. If Mr. Phillpotts knew his business as a playwright, he would reverse the process-kill off the low-spirited types, and emphasise the value and sterling character of the highspirited ones, and give us scenery t o match. * * * * * * Act I I discovers Kipps in his own room, which resembles those put on the market by East End furnishing auctioneers at four shillings a month. Kipps has girded up his loins, and is going for lumps of manners, handed out by his solicitor. The dialogue between the two reveals a tremendous struggle of will against obstacles. The struggle is whether Kipps ought to have a stand-up fight with the “ H ” family, and whether he should eat peas with a knife. This deeply moving act is brought to a close by the visit of certain females, who are after the golden-image-Kipps. Kipps continues his mannerless course, and we simply writhe under one revelation after another of his Another gentleman who has busied himself in a steady output of fiction, and is now equally busy capturing the human and emotional side of theatre audiences, is Mr. Arnold Bennett. I do not suggest that he is a failure in letters, but there is no doubt that he measures his stage entrance by monetary reward. H e absolutely ignores the fact that what i s wanted to put the stage on a higher level is not the appreciation of the public, but a little more good work on the part of authors. The business of dramatic authorship is over-ridden with incompetent people. The sort of incompetence I mean is to be found in “Milestones,” a t the Royalty Theatre. This thrice-told tale of three generations who respectively live in the Mid-Victorian age of wood, the late Victorian age of iron, and the present age of steel, will compete with the pill trade. It will make money rapidly, and in quantities. Crowds will surge to see the same things done three times over. The marvellous transformation of actors from youth to old age in the course of two hours or so will fill the gaping multitude with amazement. How is it done? Has not Clarkson been busy? 596 Pastiche. GODS OWN COUNTRY, LIMITED. New York. A religious revival of unprecedented proportions will be held in this city as the culminating feature of the nationwide campaign of the “National Men and Religion Forward Movement.” This movement has the moral support and financial backing of a group of well-known financiers. Display advertisements are being published daily in the sporting pages of all the New York newspapers, as follows: “This advertisement is issued to say to every man, woman, and child in Greater New York that the Churches are sincerely interested in the people and want to help them in highest ways. If you want to know more about the Men and Religion Forward Movement ask the editor or the nearest clergyman. “ Electric signs of similar import have been placed at points of vantage along Broadway. --Vide Daily Newspapers. THE EUGENIC EUGENE. WITH the growing interest in the science of eugenics-the adoption of which is, from time to time, advocated in the contemporary Press-we may look forward with confidence to the time when our husbands and wives will be carefully selected for us by the State. Under such Utopian conditions scenes like the following will be common enough in “ society. “ Lord Eugene Fitz Blitespotte sank limply into a chair; his long, well-bred fingers clutched nervously at his antiseptic trousers as he emitted a little certified non-phthisical sneeze. Absent-mindedly feeling his pulse, a certain thrill of pride ran through him as hè became conscious of the steady flow of his ultra-marine blood-blood that had coursed uninterruptedly through interminable miles of ancestral veinage. H e sneezed again. With a start he turned pale. For over a thousand years no Fitz Blitespotte had ever before sneezed twice in a lifetime. “Thank goodness !“ he sighed, “she need never know !” Crossing over to a safe, he unlocked it and produced his certificate of health, glancing with pardonable pride at the huge Government seal. It permitted him to marry, provided the bride could produce an equally blameless bill of health. As he soliloquised a slight tapping at the door was heard: entered the Lady Belinda Bellair, his official fiancée. “Why, dearest,” she remarked jokingly, “you do look Mue !” Eugene thought of his blood and remained silent. With an effort he advanced and printed a sterilised kiss upon Belinda’s forehead. Obviously embarrassed, he addressed her : “Belinda, I have a very unpleasant duty to performremember, it is not for my own sake, but that of the State -and futurity !“ Belinda curled her lip, revealing an upper row of faultless, Government-stamped teeth. “Go on, Eugene,” she said. “ It is about your-our-projected marriage,” he said awkwardly; “ I fear there may be some obstacle.” “Have you not got my certificate ?” Eugene, who always wore it, wrapped in iodoform gauze, next his skin, was silent for a moment before nodding a reluctant assent. “Is it that you think a Bellair not good enough?” she hissed, regardless of the absence of sibilants ; “do you not know that we trace our origin back to the early Saxon kings ?” Eugene, who certainly ought to have known by this time, remained mute; he eagerly scanned her features for any trace of her guilty secret. “Belinda, I will come to the point at once. Is it true that your great-great-grandmother, on the father’s side, was threatened in her youth with incipient housemaid’s knee ?” With a scream Belinda sank on to the couch, overwhelmed by the enormity of the suggestion. “ Coward !“ she shrieked, “ coward !-to throw an ancestral knee in my teeth !” “I was thinking of the State,” blandly retorted Eugene. “Besides,” he continued, “there are probably faults on both sides--.” “Her torso was impeccable !” sobbed Belinda. Eugene, in attempting to suppress a smile, sneezed. “ Give me back my papers !“ shrieked Belinda, rising and advancing like a tigress-more or less. “Really-- --,” stammered Eugene, “a Fitz Blitespotte has never been known to sneeze in the past!” As Belinda tucked her certificate into her muff and crossed towards the door she smiled over her shoulder: “I was thinking of the State and--Futurity!” W. HUGHHIGGINBOTTOM. It’s all very well for THE NEW AGE so ruthlessly to squash the modern novelist because of what it obstinately calls “ his pernicious realism” ; but, my dear fellow, your precious paper ought certainly never to forget that the first duty of all social reformers is concerned with the origin and sources of social disease, for if there were no dung-heaps there would be no flies. Er-er-yes ; o-of course. But why be a dirty little fly? MORGANTUD. Would all the seas were wine, And He my golden sun, And I His cup divine To dip into that brine And drink till life was done! O God’s own country, lighted With splendour wild and freeFor our poor world benighted Vast sewer of liberty ! Though very much alive-Your famous sinks putrescent, Tight-lidded-now “ revive. “ You plan revivals splendid Where Godlike man is priced; Millions shall be expended To sell the stock of Christ. Once men of God exhorted The hearts of men of old, But now is Heaven supported By Yankee men of Gold. By dollars and insanity Shall God be advertised, And bankrupt Christianity By brokers subsidised. Full every cent invested Will buy a soul for GodT h e Evil One be bested And Crime thrust into quod. Fork-packers of Chicago Shall gather from their swine‘NowChristian lambs !-a cargo Of dividends divine. Let Pontiff Pierpont Morgan, With triple beaver crowned, Play hymns upon the organ And pass the box around. And John D. Rockefeller Ten thousand souls assoil With fingers that might smell a Wee bit of Standard Oil. Form trusts for men’s salvation; Sell shares in spirit’s wraith ; Insure against damnationBuild factories of Faith! Go set the Church bands blaring, And down the Great White Way, Electric sign-boards flaring : “Come, brethren, let us prey.” ” A space you lay quiescent, O God’s own country, mated To folly huge and crass, With guts of gold you’re fated T o think with brains of brass. O Gad’s own land and people, That make the nations laugh, Go rear on every steeple Your god-the Golden Calf. Then give the calf a saddle, And while your banners whirl, Go set in it astraddle The sacred Yankee Girl. Then, loud with laughter roaring, Earth’s slaves may corne to view God’s favoured folk adoring Its god-and (goddess too. AITCHEss. PRESENT-DAY CRITICISM. A LOST BACCHANTE. MORGANTUD. 597 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. ,THE COAL STRIKE. Sir,--I was much pleased to see, by the articles in last week’s NEW AGE re the jellyfish calling themselves leaders of the labour movement, that someone is awake to the facts of the position. Whither are they leading? And their fellows-by the what do they expect to win-for methods they adopt ? I was not about in 1832, but I have read what had to be done to win the fight. I did march from the Embankment to Hyde Park in 1867 (?6), and I know what had to be done to win. (I did not leave the park till 10.30.) I was not in England in 1884, but I accept the historians’ account of what had to be done to win. I was present and know what was promised, with intention to perform, by meetings of our neighbours in 1874, 5 , or 6, in answer to the famous “J’y suis, j’y reste.” The people won. I was present in Hyde Park, prepared, at the anti-Chinese labour demonstration. The authorities were a bit afraid of what John Bull might do. But the next two days the exploiters’ Press was jubilant. J. B. for the future stood for Jack Bullock; all the dangerous fire was extracted; he could be yoked and trusted to work anywhere, and “eat off your hand” or the scraps in your back yard. “ The people are not dangerous ; it is only the leaders.” Now the leaders are “pacified”; they have been shown that more can be gained by siding with the “leisured class” than by fighting for the workers. As I read to-day, “ Miners ordered to return to work.” They have not obtained a two-thirds majority to terminate the strike (the miners struck €or a schedule o wages), yet f these, our latest masters, order the cattle “back to the earth’’-and the bowels of it at that. And I suppose the bullocks will obey. These are the new tactics. It used to read : “ Be up and doing ! Acquit ye like men !” Now we read: “ T h e miners’ leaders, a t the outset, advised the miners to make the strike a holiday. They cheerfully obeyed.” Said the leaders: “Leave it to u s ; we’ll see you righted.” Then they had a game. Puts one in mind of the Boer War. Then the “strikers” and their friends (about 500,000 all told against less than 100,000 Boers) had their pianos, mouth-organs, hockey, cricket, and ping-pong sets, with wibbley-wobbly for indoors, and’ took the field. The outcome of this kind of warfare is that the Boer is, or will presently be, doing pretty much a5 he likes; and we have to pay the costs of the sporting trip. I have been praying that I might live to see at least the commencement of the great social upheaval so long promised and overdue. When I learned of the chance of a big strike I prayed it might take place. Recognising the misery that might follow in the wake of an unsuccessful strike I still prayed, never dreaming that nothing was going to be done. That the time was to be passed by the officers running in and out of conference chambers. Again I am reminded of the Boer W a r : when the officers danced in the enemy’s halls and whispered their plans for to-morrow in their partners’ {the enemy’s daughters) ears, who told them to come again and yet again. I t worked so well. This is the latest method of wearing down the courage of J. B. I was quite prepared to (‘go down,” if needful, in a big attempt. Now I suppose I must pass away without m wish being granted. What a pity that great Chinaman has just left our-no, theseshores. H e might have led us on to victory. If only 250,000 miners had marched to London, carrying their little picks to show they were real miners, a general strike of principal London workers would easily have taken place; and in writing history we should have been true to facts in saying: “Nationalisation of the mines ‘was now secure.’ ” *** public has already paid for it in the terrible prices of coal they have recently been paying. And the cynic says: “What is the use for all your striving?” The only suggestion hitherto made (short, of course, of nationalisation) is that of maximum prices. But the difficulties of such a course are enormous. How can a Government fix prices? To do so, it would have to go into the whole cost of production and distribution of each article, as well as keep in touch with the variations in the prices of raw materials and the vagaries of supply and demand. I t would have to decide what was a fair profit and what was a fair rate of interest. The thing is incredibly difficult, and altogether outside the range of “ practical politics.” But is there any alternative? What is the matter with this--“A Minimum Wage Based on the Cost of Living.” This would be a comparatively simple matter and immensely effective. No matter how prices went up, the worker would get his full wage and good conditions, for some workers would not penalise others. The advantage of this proposal is that conditions are already prepared for it. The Board of Trade for some years has published a report on the cost of living of the workers, taking the most commonly used articles and giving each of them its due value. Out of these figures it constructs an index number. That is if a certain year’s prices are taken as 100, and the average goes up ten per cent. the following year, that year’s index number is 110. If the minimum wage varied with the index number it would be a real minimum, and would mean that the workers were actually getting a larger share of the wealth they produce, and not fighting for a will-o’-the-wisp. Once put this idea before the workers, and I am convinced they would seize upon it with avidity. The capitalists would shriek at such a proposal, but then it is only a matter of time, when they will have to submit or step out. To one who,-like myself, is a wage-worker, and in constant touch with them, it is one of the most striking and hopeful features of the past twelve months how the spirit of the people is rising. That we are on the verge of revolution, and that it is time we had one, are common expressions in circles where a few years ago such statements would be denounced or ridiculed. The miners’ defeat will only lead to union on a larger scale, regardless of leaders if they do not fall in. All hail the good t i m e The swift death of war is better than the torture of slavery. And who knows whether it is not the birth pangs of the Co-operative Commonwealth ? A. BARTOS. * * * DOLOROUS DEMOCRAT. A REAL MINIMUM WAGE. Sir,--The recent coal strike has brought the question of a minimum wage into prominence, and every humane man believes that not only miners but every class of workers ought to be guaranteed an adequate minimum wage In fact, it is no doubt the fear that all workers will eventually demand such a wage for their particular craft that has made the Government adamant to the demand that the schedule should be put into the Bill which has been forced from them. The propertied classes foresee a n end to their power of limitless exploitation, and they are right. This strike is but the rehearsal. The real drama has yet to come The great objection to the minimum wage is that, even if obtained, it is of very little value to the worker, on account of the rise in prices which always follows. I do not say that from an economical point of ’view it ought to follow. Theoretically, the opposite result should take place, but the capitalists of to-day are so well organised that they can make the public pay, and consequently do so. Everybody expects to have to pay for the miners’ minimum wage, if he gets it, and also if he does not. I n fact, the Off. FINANCE AND T H E PEOPLE. Sir,-To what end does Mr. Bechhoefer “hasten to the combat”? What has he refuted? What has he defended? That he entertains a very poor opinion of my perspicacity, in comparison with Mr. Thorn’s, he has undoubtedly made manifest; but who cares? Certainly not I. My letter published March 21 contained a definite challenge, to which Mr. Bechhoefer has given no reply. It will, I suppose, be granted that prosperity is a result of wealth ; that diminution of wealth involves decreased prosperity; and that it is, therefore, better that a few should be wealthy than none. There is pleasure in working in the case of naturally industrious persons, yet that pleasure would be seriously impaired by the absence of reasonable remuneration for the work done. At all events, writing now as one who is obliged to work hard for his living, such is my own conviction. Is there any man who would not be rich if he could? Or any who will deny that, having become rich, and at the same time, let it be assumed, grown also selfish, he could avoid, if he would, becoming an employer of labour by any means whatever, except by being ultra-miserly? So long as a rich man causes money to circulate it is of comparatively small consequence how he actually expends it. Call a man a fool, if you will, for spending five shillings on an abnormally early peach or indulging other extravagances, but do not forget that others make their living by supplying such wants. Some men spend the best years of their lives in making fortunes which, in their old days, they spend freely. Others prefer to leave their wealth to be enjoyed by their successors. Would any trouble to amass wealth had they not confidence in the honesty of their neighbours, on which the “ rights of property” are based ? Would similar keenness in business or manufacture be shown by men who had merely to earn salaries as overseers? I trow not. Human ambition is a very forceful factor of the financial problem. And now, sir, I will ask you to allow me to state again the original challenge. I asked Mr. Thorn, and I now ask anybody else who pleases, “to state a process whereby the present wealth of this nation can be transferred, without loss of volume, from the few to the many and in conditions that will ensure the immediate creation of fresh industries to replace those which now depend upon supplying the wants of the more or less monied classes.’’ 598 Wealth, like a balloon, consists inwardly of what is intangible. Clutch hard enough to break the envelope of “credit,” and the contents, now so valuable, must instantly be lost-as the gas from a balloon. Of wealth in coin there is, comparatively speaking, little. Had I a goose that laid golden eggs I hope that I should not be so improvident as to kill it in order to snatch ephemeral increment of gold in hand. Meanwhile, I bear in mind the parable of the “Belly and the Members,” and, as an impecunious member of the British commonwealth, I am thankful to know that that organism has still a fairly large belly. I would gladly change places with any rich man who suffers from no mental or bodily affliction and whose wife or children are not a sorrow to him, but, although I realise the impossibility of effecting such an exchange of conditions, by fair means or by foul, I do not for that reason wish that there were fewer rich men, but, rather, that there were more of them. (Lieut.-Colonel). A. W. A. POLLOCK *** GOVERNMENT BY LAWYERS. T H E NEW I.L.P. CHAIRMAN. Sir,-I should like cordially to support the suggestion in the article signed “ L’Audace”’ concerning the chairmanship of the I.L.P. Mr. George Lansbury’s courageous efforts on behalf of that first principle of democracy, “the right to be in the wrong,” in expressing one’s sentiments, deserve prompt recognition by the Independent Labour Party. His chief opponent, Mr. W. C. Anderson, as “L’Audace’’ justly remarks, is a comparative newcomer. Nor has he the democratic spirit. I remember last month listening with amazement, at the annual meeting of the National Land and Home League, to Mr. Anderson’s fervent defence of property-voting, by which two London subscribers of 5s. were enabled to vote down country members u p to fifty. The latter probably would spend many pounds in connection with the Land Reform movement; yet the 5s. “banker’s order ” subscribers could sweep the organisation with their faggot votes. Mr. Anderson is a bureaucrat. Mr. Lansbury C. H. NORMAN. is a democrat; that is the choice. *** Sir,-I see in THE NEW AGE of February 8, 1912, that you promise to advocate Tariff Reform if a Unionist leader can prove that Tariff Reform will raise wages in proportion to profits. I, personally, feel most deeply the extreme suffering of the poor; and I have studied this question for many years. I believe that a tax on imported manufactures, that is to say, fully manufactured articles from foreign countries, will exclude a large number of these, which will then be made at home. Prices need not rise, as there should be plenty of competition among British manufacturers, and, as we British export almost all manufactured articles, the exclusion of foreign manufactures cannot cause any scarcity, so that there will be no true reason for a rise in prices. But if we make these articles in England there will be a vast increase in employment in the United Kingdom. Asquith, and other fools, maintain that if we exclude a foreign manufacture, and make it at home, British working men will gain no extra employment, because they will lose the employment of making some British article to export to pay for the foreign imported manufacture. This is the most utter folly, as all trade is exchange. If Tom Smith makes a p a i r of boots in London and sells them, with the money he gets for these boots he will buy some other British-made article, and so give a second set of British workers employment. But if Tom Smith sends these boots to France to be sold, then the French will gain the second employment in making, say, a silk handkerchief to send back to pay for these boots, so that the silk workers of England will be deprived of their employment by the importation of a manufactured silk handkerchief from France. So that the employment of Tom Smith in making boots to sell in France is neutralised by the loss of employment to the silk workers. Now, I think you will admit that a great increase in employment will tend to raise wages generally, as employers will offer higher wages, as men will become scarcer, as they will be employed. I also believe most strongly in helping all poor people to settle on the unoccupied lands of our Colonies. Inexperienced families might be coupled with experienced partners, and the Government should lend money to start’ on, which should be paid back with interest. I also believe that working men should strike for a share of the profits, not for higher wages, as then they would improve their positions, and not live from hand to mouth. Let people go to Galgarry, in Canada, or to Australia and work the land, and become owners of land. ROBERTW. TRAILL. TARIFF REFORM AND WAGES. Sir,-If anger has any right to a place in a letter, if a subject has any right to pour out his contempt for his Government, then may I be allowed, in your columns, to voice my intolerable feeling of anger and contempt against our lawyer Government ? I see before my eyes a picture of the miners facing hunger and destitution, with the same serried determination their forefathers showed in the squares at Waterloo, and on the other side I see the employers exhibiting a determination I also cannot help but admire. I take no sides in the question. How can I ? I t is only a part of the system, and it is the system I would destroy and change, and not the symptom. But at least I can recognise bravery and determination, however blind they may be. The greater, then, must be one’s contempt for our so-called Premier-what irony lies in the word! What can Mr. Asquith give, except that which he himself possesses? He has cold, the coldest reason to offer, and when his only gift fails, and he is called upon to be a statesman, instead of an engineer to a machine run on rational principles, what else has he to proffer but phantom show-the spirit and not the body? What sort of dry, emotionless creature must he be to offer this wretched Bill to opponents drawn up almost in battle array? His fear and incapacity lead him to the modern refuge for impotence, namely, the breaking up of all large national questions into little local ones, and the shelving of all individual responsibility by spreading it out upon a committee. How long, then, are we going to allow lawyers to form the so-called Government ? After all, the employers are the upper class, whether we will or n o ; they are the actual governors, and the employees must settle directly with them, peacefully or by arms. But these interfering lawyers, who form the Government, by their very profession are merely intermediaries between the disputants. “ If those in authority have not the confidence of those under them,” said Confucius, “government of the people is an impossibility.” Well, the employers have not t h e confidence of those under them, and there will never be any peace until there are masters who can earn confidence. The issue is direct enough, then why in heaven’s name do we allow all these lawyers to fatten on it by compromise, bluffing and shuffling under the name of Government? G. T. WRENCH. *** Sir,-In the interests of that accuracy for which your columns are noted, may I point out( I ) That in September last the Court of Criminal Appeal, presided over by Mr. Justice Darling, quashed a conviction and sentence of death passed upon a man named Ellsom by Mr. Justice Avery earlier in the same month. The reason for this course was misdirection by one Judge at the trial. ( 2 ) If a Judge, in the exercise of his duty, passes sentence of death after the jury have found a verdict of Guilty, why is he “more homicidal than just.” I t not infrequently happens that a Judge is bound to this painful duty after summing up for an acquittal-e.g., in the Stinie Morrison case. Can he, then, be said to be “more homicidal than just ” ? (3) Judges of the High Court do not receive £10,000 a year for life. They are paid £5,000 a year, with a retaining pension (after 15 years’ service) of £3,500 BARRISTER. *** T H E SEDDON TRIAL. Sir,-Since ‘‘ M. B. Oxon ” concedes the proposition that the question of vivisection is outside logic, he cannot very well continue his logical objection to the “emotional method of attack.” On the contrary, failing the logical method of attack, there is no other form save the emotional to be employed; and of this form, the method of abuse is under certain circumstances as powerful as it is legitimate; and none the less so for being possibly disagreeable. ‘‘ M. B. Oxon’s’’ further admission that prejudice, and prejudice only, lays a n embargo on human vivisection leads naturally to my conclusion, that the same prejudice, when we have created enough of it, will lay an embargo on animal vivisection, In this respect, the prevailing taboo that forbids the vivisection of human beings will one day operate to forbid the vivisection of animals. But “M. B. Oxon” objects to the singling out of vivisection for condemnation from among the various forms of taking animal life. Human vivisection, he argues, is forbidden by prejudice, but so is human murder. Antivivisectors, on the other hand, object to the vivisection o f animals, but they do not object (in an equal degree, at any rate) to the slaughter of animals for food, pleasure, or convenience. This he considers pure selfishness on their VIVISECTION AND ITS ABUSE. 599 part. They desire to fill their own bellies with beef while denying vivisectors the means of filling their minds with knowledge. If the question were inside, instead of outside, logic, I should have little to reply against “ M. B. Oxon’s ” objection. The taboo on human vivisection is balanced by the taboo on human murder in general; and it would seem therefore only fair that a taboo on animal vivisection should be accompaniedby a taboo on animal murder. But the question, as we both agree, is not a purely logical one; it is a question largely, if not entirely, of feeling, or taste, or conscience. From this point of view, I can only urge the general consensus of human .feeling in the direction of regarding vivisection as more repugnant than meat-eating. Why, logically, it is more repugnant it may be difficult to say; but we are under no obligation to give logical reasons for our taste. The fact is that we do find vivisection repulsive at the same time that we find meat-eating tolerable; and we desire the recognition of this fact in law. THEWRITER OF “NOTESOF THE WEEK.” the way they look at things, and by no difference in their language. What a mean, dirty little mind your reviewer shows, to set a living author, of only six years’ standing, against Shakespeare; and to do it in such a mean, lying spirit! He knows very well that Shakespeare’s work proves what I say. His characters are bold, vital, and real. But why do they nearly all use blank verse-a thing that was never heard in real life ? Because Shakespeare knew that language was of no consequence; but that the thoughts and actions of his characters proved their difference. Fancy having to explain these simple matters to a reviewer, who is supposed to be qualified to lead the public taste! If your reviewer had only given my “simplicity and purity of style” a fairer study, he would never have used that clownish expression about “ stories that would not raise a wrinkle on the face of a cab-horse.” If I answered that in my usual style, he would not understand me. However, I must say that although I did not know of any stories, whether good or bad, that would have any effect on a cabhorse, yet, for all that, I am now forced to believe that certain stories that are well told can raise quite a number of wrinkles on the face of an ass. This letter is too long, for I am already sorry to have wasted so much of my ‘‘ simplicity and purity of style ” on no one in particular. The man’s article was not signed, but that does not matter, for I do not suppose his name would be known to any other than his relations and a few friends. But before I close I must certainly thank him for saying that my ‘‘ simplicity and purity of style is far-famed.” Being a careless and simple man, I did not know this. Of course, I know that it ought to be, seeing that some of the greatest men living have helped to make it so, and have signed their proud names. Please give your reviewer something to keep him quiet, Mr. Editor; he is making himself look silly, and is trying to spoil your paper. But please do not give him the “sack,” for I have seen a better man wearing three sacks, one around each foot, and the other wrapped as a shawl around his neck. I would not like your reviewer to come to that. WILLIAM DAVIES. H. T H E WINGS OF DESIRE.” Sir,-I beg to call your attention to the review of my new book, “Wings of Desire,” which appeared in your last issue. I am entirely at a loss to understand what I have done to be attacked by a reviewer who has confined himself to the ”reading of the first sentence and a few fanciful chapterheadings. THE NEW AGE should be the last paper in the world to ridicule an honest attempt, such as mine is, to criticise the latter-day conditions of English life. I am the more amazed at the injustice of this notice, since my previous books have always been fairly criticised by your paper. ‘‘ Wings of Desire ” may be many things, but one thing is assuredly is not-and that is a travesty of the “ Odyssey”! It would be well, therefore, in future to make a point of employing reviewers who have the honesty to acquaint themselves with the subject-matter of the books they handle. I shall be obliged if you will have the justice to publish this protest as some reparation for the injury that has been done me. M. P. WILLCOCKS. “ * * * PRESENT-DAY CRITICISM. Sir,-The editor of “ Rhythm’s,” inability to discover any basis in “ Present-Day Criticism does not surprise me, but suggests that the flogging of “Rhythm” in your issue of March 28 by the writer of P. D. C. was deserved. The editor’s letter, however, rouses me from my deep trance of satisfaction with “ Present-Day Criticism,” to wonder how many readers are, like me, in keen appreciation of those admirably virile, instructive, and enjoyable articles. Has anything so excellent been done in that line during the last ten years? If there has, I should like to hear of it. I hope the articles will long continue; that the books deserving of inclusion in the “Everyman” will be named; and that eventually “ Present-Day Criticism ” will be published in a volume stretching to a thousand pages, with which I may retire to some quiet nook for a few days, to emerge cleansed, invigorated, and inspired by close contact JAS. ARDSLEY. with such noble company. *** “ THE TRUE TRAVELLER.” Sir,-Will you please allow me, in farness to the author, to publish an answer to your reviewer of my last book, “The True Traveller”? I do not believe in advertising myself in this way, but the notice appears to be full of prejudice and spite. Either that is the case, or your man has been reading too many silly novels, and has little knowledge of real life. He complains, and appears to be outraged, that a barman, a prostitute and a child should use the same language as ordinary folk. For instance, he says that although I write of “the bearded man who is wearing three dirty sacks, one wrapped around each foot, and the other used as a shawl around his neck,” I never write as such a man would talk ’It is certainly the complaint of a man that has been reading too many silly novels; who thinks that the stage Mary Ann represents servant girls. Of course, we all know that when such girls are on a holiday in strange places, people that keep refreshment rooms cannot be sure whether their customers are real ladies or not. Let me give your reviewer an example from real life, of the man with three dirty sacks. I had assisted one of these men, in Stamford Street, and then asked him how he got into such a wretched state. No doubt your reviewer will think that the poor fellow answered in language as strange as His apparel. Heaven only knows what that would be, but perhaps your reviewer can give us some idea. As near as I can remember, his answer came in these simple words.: “ I don’t know how I got into such a low state as this; it came on me gradually, as my clothes wore out, and I had no money to buy others. I am a journalist by trade, and have worked on the ‘Western --,’ the ‘ Liverpool --,’ and other papers. But when I lost my work, and applied to other papers, they told me I was too old. So, you see, I had to give way to younger blood.” What does your reviewer think of this? The poor fellow appeared to be quite gentle and modest, and I hope your reviewer, who is in the same line, and has more conceit, will not come to such a fall. If he does, let him tell his story in simple words. Again, does language make any difference after all? It is thought, and not language, that denotes character. A mistress speaks to her servant girl about Sir George W--, saying, “Sir George is very kind, and so good to the church.” Now it happens that the girl’s father works for Sir George, and she has heard things at home. “ Yes,” she answers, “he is a very good man; my father says that he not only allows his men to swear, but he swears, too.” You see by this that the mistress and her girl show their different character in * * * *** DAUGHTERS OF ISHMAEL. Sir,-Will you please permit me a word upon your review of my novel, “ Daughters of Ishmael ” ? In that review you say that ‘‘ prostitution will never vanish from the world ” because “there are born prostitutes, women who would sooner ply that trade than any other.” I have never held that prostitution would vanish. What I have held is that enforced prostitution would vanish. Nevertheless, I think that your reviewer’s statement requires qualification. I freely admit that there are prostitutes who are prostitutes because they like prostitution But in how far are they the result of degenerate parents, whose degeneracy was due to bad economic conditions? In how far are they the result of bad economic conditions directly affecting themselves in their formation period? How long would they, how long could they, continue in their present numbers if men and women were economically and morally free? Even in the present economic conditions, I have found, so far as my investigations have gone, that the “born prostitute ” is a practically negligible factor. It seems, therefore, to me that Mr. W. L. George has put the case perfectly on the lips of his “Victoria” in that wonderful study, “ A Bed of Roses”: “ S o long,” says Victoria, “ a s your economic system is such that there is not work for the asking, work, mark you, fitted to strength and ability, so long, on the other hand, as there is a leisured class which draws luxury from the labour of other men, so long will my class endure, as it endured in Athens, in Rome, in Alexandria, as it does now from St. John’s Wood to Pekin. ” REGINALDWRIGHT KAUFFMAN. 600 FREETHOUGHT LECTURES ON SUNDAY EVENINGS (Under the auspices of the Secular Society, Ltd.), Q U E E N ' S (MINOR) HALL, L A N G H A M PLACE, W. April 21, Mr. G. W. FOOTE, “ Christianity and the Coal Strike." Music 7 to 7.30. Chair taken 7.30. A few Free Seats. Discussion cordially invited. Seats Ir. and 6d. DELlClOUS COFFEE RED WHITE THE & BLUE For Breakfast & after Dinner. 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