NOTES OF THE WEEK l . WOODROW WILSON AND THE WORLD’S PEACE. By George D. Herron l THOUGHTSFOR A CONVENTION.By A. E. . THE WONDERS OF DESOLATION. By Ramiro de Maeztu . . . . AN INDUSTRIALSYMPOSIUM. Conducted by Huntly Carter . . . . (68) Mr. John F. Armour. EDUCATION FOR LIBERTY.-VI. By Kenneth Richmond . . . . DRAMA: “PENNY WISE.’’ By John Francis . WEEK. Hope READERS ANDWRITERS. By R. H. C. NOTES OF THE RECENTVERSE. By V. B. N. . . A PICNIC, By Katherine Mansfield WE MODERNS. By Edward Moore l . . . . . INTERVIEWS---X THE BISHOP OF LONDON. By C. E. Bechhofer , 0 0 VIEWS AND REVIEWS: ROUSING THE RUSSIANS. By A. E. R. . . REVIEWS . l l PASTICHE. By V. A. Purcell, Will Y. Darling LETTERS TO THE EDITOR from E. Wasserman, D. V., Ramiro de Maeztu . . . MEMORANDA (from last week’s NEW AGE) PRESS CUTTINGS . but a few demand an answer. The Allies can do is to treat ‘them all with indulgence, and to be willing to be to a new-born nation. *** The sympathy with the Revolution which was undoubtedly lacking in this country during its early phases, has begun, we are glad to say, to increase. Even the “Times” now finds it wise to forget its Petrograd correspondent and to declare that “it has always insisted upon the need for patient confidence in the loyalty of the Russian people to the Allied cause.” But sympathy, we must point out, is not enough., What is needed. above all is frankness. The new Government in Russia, whether we regard it as the Provisional Government or the Council of Delegates, is in the position of a man who has just succeeded to a business the contracts and assets and liabilities of which he desires to know and to realise before he can assume full control of it. To this end many questions, as we say, are necessary, not all of which will appear relevant to the official receivers of the old business, but which, nevertheless they would do well to answer on pain of falling under the suspicion of the new proprietors.We cannot therefore, we repeat, be too open with the new Government of Russia, or welcome too cordially its inspection of the obligations contracted by its predecessor. Is it the case that the Russian Revolutionaries desire to see all the existing treaties entered into between the ex-Tsar and the present Allies? They should be disclosed. Is it that they desire to exercise the right of revision of their terms or even of the terms upon which the war is being carried on? Either, we say, these terms are reasonable, in which case-discolosure would re-cement the alliance of Russia with the Allies; or they are unreasonable and ought to be revised. But in any event it is clearly the right of the new Government in Russia to know what they are and to act with what wisdom it can upon them on their own responsibility. The consequences, moreover, of our refusal to make the demanded disclosure are likely to be worse than the consequences of disclosure. We run the risk, it is true, of subjecting the treaties to revision if we disclose them; but we incur the certainty of their repudiation if we withhold them. be answered; best thing the deference and explanatory as IT is clear that the Russian Revolution has not yet ceased revolving; and that we must therefore be prepared to see many changes in the kaleidoscope before the final picture settles down. The conflicting and contradictory reports telegraphed over to this country are a proof of this and evidence, moreover, that Russia is still in a state of what may be called conference. As this or that piece of information is published in the liberated Press of Russia, this or that resolution is taken upon it without regard to their consistency with one another. It is probable that for the present nobody even in Russia has a clear idea of the drift of things, and still less of the policy necessary to bring any particularend about. What, on the other hand, is and must be obscure to the actors themselves may be more or less clear to the sympathetic observer; and we venture at any rate a guess or two at the direction of events. In the first place, we do not think and we have never thought that the present Coalition Provisional Government is stable. Real power, it has been obvious from the outset, resides with the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates alone; and it is therefore to this body that in the end nominal power is likely to be entrusted. In the second place, we do not think that even under these circumstances Russia will conclude a separate peace with Germany. The fear, in fact, that the Russian Left is disposed to substitute the control of the Kaiser for the control of the Tsar is rooted rather in a general prejudice against Revolution than in any fair estimate of the actual situation. Russian Revolutionaries know quite as well as we can tell them that a pastoral and agrarian nation, such as Russia is likely to become, cannot exist safely by the side of a military empire without army; and we may therefore look to see an before verylong the restoration of the army in Russia by the very body now apparently responsible for its disorganisation Lastly, we anticipate a. continuance for some time of the present disposition of the Russian Government to ask questions of the Allies. Some of these, undoubtedly are naive and would raise a smile if the circumstances were not so tragic. Others cannot Let us take the case of the demand of Russia far the definition by the Allies of their war-aims. We know in our own minds what the general aim of the Allies isit is, in the words of President Wilson, to make the world safe for democracy ; in other words, to make the world too hot to contain a military autocracy. And we are pretty well agreed (certain honest minorities aside) that the only means to this end is the military defeat of Prussia. But thereafter the question of ends undoubtedly becomes obscure and something of a Babel. All the Allies, it may be assumed, agree that a victory must precede peace; but by no means all the Allies are agreed in respect of the kind of peace that should ensue upon victory; and it is precisely upon this point that the idealism of Russia needs to be reassured. Assuming, we may imagine Russia to say, that the Revolution joins with the Allies in winning a victory over Prussia, what is to follow it; for until we know what settlements the Allies propose to make, we are doubtful whether we ought to assist them in the condition of making them. It is this question however, that for the moment not only remains unanswered by the Allies, as a whole, but, worse still, is being answered contradictorily, or with evasions. M. Ribot and Lord Robert Cecil have both, it is truw assented to the Russian formula of No annexations and im indemnities, but in such terms and with such reservations as may admit of almost any interpretation. America, on the other hand, is proposing to issue a statement of her own, the terms of which, we arc told, differ not only from the Russian terms but from those of the rest of the Allies as well. Finally, to make confusion confounded, the “Times” is allowed without any protest, to declare that “there is nothing in the war-aims of the Allies that cannot bear the fullest publicity,” and, on the same day, to undo the effect of this candour by remarking that we shall “brook no attempt to palaver away the fruit of our sacrifices. ” Once again, it is therefore certain, the Russian Revolutionaries will regard themselves as being played with. They demand a plain answer to the plain question : what sort of peace do you mean to establish as the consequence of victory? And the reply, they find, is disagreement between some of the Allies and reservations, without official disclaimer, by the “Times.” To end all this there is only one way : it is for the Allies, including both America and Russia, to reconsider the Pact of London, and to draw up, if need be, another. Circumstances, it is obvious have changed since the Pact was made; and it is no reflection upon its signatories that they foresaw neither the intervention of America nor the metempsychosis a new of Russia. With the new circumstances Pact is necessary; and the former Allies would do welt to make it without delay. **+ There is something in M. Ribot’s argument that an official Government cannot, without abdicating its authority consent to the meeting of the Socialist International for the purpose of discussing terms of .peace, the responsibility and duty of which lie with the official Government itself; and he has, moreover, sweetened the pill of his refusal by the offer to publish the famous Franco-Russian agreement, text and annotations and all. At the same time, his argument is anything but conclusive and, in the circumstances, his decision is In the first place, it assumes a plenimost unwise. potentiary character in the International Conference which the Conference, we fancy, would scarcely claim for itself. In the next place, it assumes the possibility of agreement among the delegates upon matters which contain all the elements of certain disagreement. Again, it assumes the surrender by the Allied Socialists to the German Socialists not only of the particular case of their owb nationalities, but of the general case for democratic Socialism which is indistinguishable in its elementary form from the case of the Allies for democracy in general. Once more, it fails to take into account the influence for democracy likely to be exercised by the Allied delegates (particularly by the Russian delegates, fresh, as they are, from a democratic triumph upon the German and other belligerent delegates. Finally, it underestimates the reaction of suspicion certain to be engendered by the refusal, not only in Germanybut in all the Allied countries and in Russia most of all, We hope, therefore, that, since it is not yet too late, the French Government will fall into line with the English, Italian and American Governments and issue its passports to the French Socialists to attend the, Socialist International. No harm, we are convinced, can come to the Allies from such a Conference; no harm but only good. But harm will certainly come from the refusal of any of the Allied Governments, especially when it is contrasted with the apparent willingness of the German Government to send Minority as wekk as Majority Socialists to the meeting. Neglect still continues to be poured but for what reason we cannot guess, upon the suggestion that the only evidence of the real defeat of Prussian militarism must be the establishment of a German democracy. Nothing, it appears, will draw from the lips of the older Allies the admission that this is their aim. It may be that in the light of the German conduct of the war this end appears to be unattainable. A revolution in Germany, we are told, is unthinkable; and we should only make ourselves ridiculous by defining an object which the German people themselves regard as absurd. Or, again, we are told, it is a matter for the German people themselves; and we have no share in it. The facts, however, are these : that if a German democracy is unattainable, so is the defeat of Prussian militarism that if the German people do not want a democracy they are unlike any people in the world ; and that it is as much the diplomatic business of the Allies to foster a democratic revolution in Germany as it is their military business to defeat the German military autocracy. Because, however, of our bashfulness in defining this as our object, we continue without any object, and consequently without any criterion, in the use of our diplomatic arm, which hangs helplessly by our side; and the Army is left without any or very -much civil support to carry on as best it can, to the, tune of more victories in the field and none in the council chamber. Is this state of affairs to go on? Are we to kick brains out of the door when the sword comes in at the window? Must diplomacy (and all it means) close its doors when the War Office is open? , We repeat that there is nothing more unattainable, improper, or unworthy to be openly pursued in the object of bringing about a revolution in Germany than in the object of defeating Prussian militarism. At bottom, indeed, they are one. For the encouragement of the doubting we may draw attention to the report of the South African Governor upon the conduct of the ten thousand or so German settlers in German South-West Africa. This colony. it will be remembered was conquered by the South African troops in an early stage of the war; and it has been occupied by the Allies from that date to this moment. Here is the latest report : “In no case has any German officer broken parole nor have the inhabitants as a body been otherwise than entirely peaceable and amenable to law and order.” This does not look as if the Germans were likely to nourish military ambitions when the Prussian occasion has passed away. It is on the foundation of such a native character of peaceableness and amenability to law and order that a democracy, once established in Germany, may safely rest if the Allies are wise enough to let it. The resignation of Food Controller by Lord Devonport of the office has not come a moment too soon. It would have been better, indeed, if such a man had never been appointed. Here was a person, notoriously out of sympathy with the working classes, and involved at the same time (however nominally) with the very system whose normal operations he was to control-yet who was made the sole arbiter of the food prices of the nation. We naturally do not accuse Lord Devonport of dishonesty or even of considering his personal interests, for nothing could really pay a man for the work involved in the officw of Food Controller. But he stands convicted of ignorance of the principles of national as distinct from profiteering economics ; and of incompetence as a genuine statesman in consequence. The fact, however, is that most of our educated classes are thoroughly ignorant and incompetent in the same respects. They know nothing and care less whether the principles of private industry are the same or different from the principles of public service. All they know is that the methods of private industry suit them too well to be thrown overboard for what they regard as a merely temporary failure. And that they are not in the least ashamed of confessing’ ignorance of what it is their first business to know the confession of the “Times” is proof. “The extraordinary thing about the high meat prices,” says the “Times,” “is that there is no real scarcity of supplies. Consumption has gone down, the stock of cattle and sheep in the country was never higher, but prices have reached an unparalleled figure. ” The explanation, though extraordinary and occult to the “Times,” is nevertheless simple. Whoever, we have often said, controls Supply controls Price. The amount of the supply is a matter of indifference to the people who have a monopoly of it; by virtue of their monopoly they can determine its price. And from this it follows that the first thing to be done by a Government seeking to control prices is to control Supply. The practical difficulty, however, begins when the theoretical difficulty ceases. To controlthe Supply of Food-stuff s is virtually to nationalise all the existing sources of production; in other words, it is to abolish profiteering and to substitute for it a universal system of national service. And what hope is there in a governing class that lives by profiteering of accomplishing this transformation ? We understand very well the reasons that led “one of the best-known Labour leaders” to decline to follow Lord Devonport ; and there is ground for the sneer of the “Times” that “it seems doubtful whether those who profess themselves most anxious about profiteering are willing to shoulder the responsibility of tackling it.” ‘It is not that we do not know how the task could be carried out; it is that none of us, in the present state of governing opinion, would be allowed to take the first necessary step towards it. Something like panic must be felt by the governing classes before they would consent to the application of real remedies. Lord Devonport has gone, Lord Cowdray has resigned, Mr. Neville Chamberlain has been forgotten, and with the impending retirement under discredit of the remaining business men in the Government, the bubble blown by Mr. Bottomley will have been finally pricked. It now remains to be seen what the next set of men to be nominated by the Government, and tolerated by the public, is likely to be. On the one hand, we have not the smallest doubt that there are still plenty of men in the country fit for any office the nation can entrust to them-men of character, intelligence, ability, and patriotic good-will-men who could be counted upon to see the country through the present and the greater difficulties that are to come. But whether the Government will discover them, or the public would recognise them, we have our doubts. Every error must be made by democracy before the right solution is accepted. On the other hand, despite the assurance offered us on the evidence of his “associates that Mr. Lloyd George is “constantly on the look-out for fresh talent, or for the better employment of proved talent,” it is obvious that his area of search is limited to the parliamentary club. Mr. Montagu, far example, is spoken of as the “Minister for Reconstruction -a man, that is, who knows less of the problem of Reconstruction than the newest of our readers. And for an office not yet named, “it is an open secret that Mr. Lloyd George has always been anxious to find a safe sphere for the use of Mr. Churchill’s energy.” It has come to something, has it not, when the nation is apparently driven in its search for men to Mr. Churchill again ? If we have written nothing for some weeks on the subject of the Conscription of Capital, it is not because we have seen reason either to withdraw what we have said or to entertain doubts that the Conscription of Capital is indispensable to a victorious conclusion to the war. Victory without it is still, in our opinion, that other journals impossible. It was time, however should take up the idea; and we are glad to find at last that the “Nation” has begun to advocate it. In the current issue of the “Nation” will be found an article under the title of “A War Levy on Capital,” in which a capital tax of ten per cent. is recommended as a means of paying off in a single sum half the war-debt already incurred. The reasons given are familiar to our readers. They are that the prospective indebted ness of the nation, in the absence of extraordinary taxation, is such as to appal the generation that will survive the war, and to constitute such a drag upon its uphill progress as to make recovery of our national leeway impossible. Next, the “Nation” argues, exactly as we did, that a capital tax is not only fair in principle, unexceptional in economics and practicable in fact, but it would amount to restoration rather than expropriation to disannexation rather to fresh annexation by the State. “When the war is over,” the “Nation” calculates “the propertied men in this country will be several thousand million pounds the wealthier, and most of their money will represent profits directly or indirectly derived from the needs and distresses of their country during the war.’’ If this blood-money is not a proper object of a levy upon capital, we do not know of one. +++ We quote the “Times.” “There are disquieting tales from the Dominions . . . about the discontent of soldiers who have been discharged medically unfit from the Army, but able and anxious to settle on the land. These men have returned to their own countries to find no efficient machinery working to provide them with the new ’start in life to which they looked forward. They were promised, when they, enlisted, that everything would be done for them, when they returned. They have returned . . . and there is no organisation ready to put them on their feet again.” The complaint, it will be observed, is confined by the ‘‘Times” to the Dominions but everybody is aware-that it is applicable to conditions at home Save for a few private or semiprivate persons and institutions, a promise or two by the Government and an ocean of sentimentality, there is nothing better in England than in the Dominions for our discharged soldiers to count upon. We are fully aware that on a canvass of the real opinions of the nation, not more than one in a hundred of the popula-tion would forgo any sacrifice necessary to atone to our soldiers for the terrible task the nation has thrust upon them. But, unfortunately, the hundredth is a profiteer, a capitalist, a landowner.: in short, the possessor of economic power; and not all! the tears and entreaties and good-will of the ninety-and-nine just persons will prevail against him. As surely as we are writing and you are reading this, our soldiers will return from the unimaginable horrors of the trenches to find themselves for the most part a drug upon the labour-market, Woodrow Wilson and World’s Peace, the I. So occupied have we been, these many months, with the question of America’s participation or non-participation in the war, that we have not yet considered the preceding proposal of President Wilson for an organised and universal peace. The proposal was addressed to the American Senate; but that body was merely the necessary medium of words intended for the ears of the world. His message remains yet to be rightly read, and it will be pertinent so long as the perennial predicament of the world continues. Thecondition of international anarchy is so ancient, and man has had so little experience in international faith and fidelity, so little experience in fraternity and freedom within national frontiers, that a world that shall everywhere be accordant and kindly seems possible only in the dreams of the dreamers. So long as this be so-so long as prevail those conceptions of national interest and duty which place man below the social level of the jungle; so long as diplomacy flounders amidst follies and futilities; so long as the world officially pursues its benighted belief in armed material might and remains sceptic and cynic toward the justice of love and its liberating correlatives -just so long will the summons of the American President astonishing the unprepared nations, be as a cry in an unheeding wilderness. Not that I wish to overstate Mr. Wilson’s seership and statesmanship. I admit, I deplore his earlier errors of judgment in dealing with Germany, though I trust these errors may yet-prove more apparent than real. But whether his delays and his patience were justified or not, he has no less insisted upon a method, upon a new world-justice, that will make forever impossible such assaults as Germany has made upon humanity. II By his declaration of the rights of nations-even more immortal than‘ the doctrine of individual rights which motived the French Revolutionary--Mr. Wilson has laid beneath the international idea its first substantial and truthful foundation. For a true internationalism can exist only as the shepherd of virile anddetermined nationalism. Until now, the internationalism of propagandas which have claimed such distinction has been but a Marxian fiction, a pretentious and sterile abstraction It has always been an internationalism based upon a fatuous and fatal denial of nationality. One of the several: causes of the Socialist debacle at the beginning of the war, was this inhuman and unimagitive confusion of internationalism with anti-nationalism this mistaking the latter for the former. The Socialist movement has never been international : it has only been anti-national.. The notion that national entties are unreal, that the nation is an arbitrary economic creation, is not internationalism : it is the exact negation of all that gives internationalism its name or reason for being. For the nation does exist; and it is probably as permanent as the world itself. None of the nations of old is wholly dead; the most ancient and forgotten peoples have their living national remnants upon the earth. And it is upon the recognition of each particular ethnical variety that an intelligent internationalism will manifest itself. It will rise, this true internationalism, not from the obliteration of national lines, but from their vivid and fraternal definition. Its mission will be, first, to procure for each people, however small, an adequate opportunity for self-discovery and self-affirmation, and then to co-ordinate all peoples in one resolute progress, one satisfied universal family. It is this the American President has proposed; and I believe that the future-perhaps ransomed from the terrible present by his initiative-will hold Woodrow Wilson to have been the world’s first international statesman. There is already forming, as a result of his insistence, and for the first time in history, a body of international public opinion. There is already building, out of the spiritual materials his hands have furnished, the foundation whereupon a world-citizenship may rise and inform itself end take its decisions. If the plan he proposed before the American Senate is followed, it will result in the end of both war and imperialism, and ‘finally issue in a world-republic. III Turning now to his momentous address, a closer study of the document will show that, even as regards the European problem, Mr. Wilson is by no means the political innocent he seems. And here, again, curiously enough, it is the German critics who have been the first to discover what he means, and will have none of his programme For the substance of his appeal for the support of the Senate is this that the States of Europe are asked to recognise themselves on the basis of government by the consent of the goverened No longer must it be that the right of the smallest people to its own free and unhindered being shall be subordinated, in thought or in fact, to mere might and size-to any imperial purpose or interest. The brutish and commercial state, the materialistic fetish of dominion, must give place to the knowledge of the nation as an inviolable spiritual being. Other propositions are laid down, it is true; but they are based upon the fundamental principle I have stated; and it is this principle only which I shall here discuss. Let us see-what this principle, so quietly stated, would mean if accepted by the belligerents. Its first result would be the relegation of the present map of the greater part of Europe to the wastebasket ; and with it would go most of existing. European Governments. There would be both a complete geographical redistribution and a profound political revolution in all the countries East of the Rhine and the Adriatic. IV. Let us begin at the Rhine, there applying the selfgoverning principle to Germany. First of all, of course, Alsace-Lorraine must be given back to France -for such is the ardent desire of that subject and unhappy province-and much of Prussia must become part of re-united Poland. But the geographical and ethnical problem is only preliminary and objective. It is after the Alsatians and the Poles-have been joined to their own, it is after the Germans have been confined within their rightful frontiers, that the real problem of Germany begins-that is, if the principle which Mr. Wilson proposed is adopted as the basis of peace. The German Empire itself must go back into the melting-pot, and the German peoples be invited to decide upon the forms and methods by which they- shall govern themselves. For, be it remembered, Germany y is not a self? governing country; nor are the Germans, in any real sense, a political people. They did not have a political origin ; they ,have had no essential political experience; and their Empire is not a political but a military State. The German Empire is the creation of the Prussian sword, imposed upon the German peoples by lords and princes, and now maintained as an organisation for universal Germanic industrial and cultural dominion. The only part the German peoples have had in the construction of their Empire is that of docile acceptance. They had, intellectually and politically, nothing to do with the making of it, and they have nothing to do with the actual governing of it. Unlike France and England which have a thousand years of political evolution behind them, the course of German history has been run under pressure from the top-has been guided by princes, often grotesque as well as tyrannical, whom the peoples have obeyed with little or no resentment Or self-affirmation. Political Germany, non-existent as it is until now, must come into being and receive its pimary lessons : the German peoples must teach themselves the alphabet of self-government. They will have to begin, if they are to be a political nation, with the rudiments which the English makers of the Magna Charta wrested from King John, or with the impulse by which the Revolution prevailed in France. Some of the German leaders have been quick to discernthis : they have seen that a first result of Mr. Wilson's address, if applied in principle, would be the dethronement of Prussia and the fundamental reconstruction of German nationality. They confess, too, that a psychological revolution must also follow ; for the national ideology of the German is as tribal now, and his collective morality is as certainly barbaric, as in the day of Tacitus. V. Passing Southward with the self-governing principle, we find the Austrian and Turkish Empires coming to their overdue end. Bohemia becomes a delivered and independent nation. The dismembered Serbs are united in one national family, according to their centuried yearnings and struggles. Three million Roumanians are released from the maleric Magyar oppression and gathered into the fold of their own people. 'The Austrian Poles, as well as the rest of the Slavs, are joined unto their kindred. Of the Austrian Empire, some seven million Austrians are left, with six million Hungarians, to go-on together or separately, according as they mutually decide. Likewise must Russia renounce her traditional governmental modes. Nationality must be restored to the Finns; Russian Poland must be surrendered; the Letts, the Lithuanians the Ukrainians, and all the diverse peoples under Russian rule even unto far Bokhara must each be bidden to the festal board of the Great Freedom-must each be released to pursue its own indigenous cultural system, And for her own immediate people for those who are primarily Muscovite or Russian, must Russia provide the forms of a just and democratic political procedure. Nor must the Turk be only expelled from Europe, and securely sequestered in some corner of Asia Minor. The dispersed Armenians must be summoned to their ancient habitation, and there be enabled to re-integrate their once vigorous nationality And from Persia must England, as well as Russia, take predatory hands; for the Persia of to-day is replete with political and spiritual potencies that ask for naught but opportunity. Egypt must be trained to self-government also, even if remaining a member of the British Empire 'Then the Arab-he who built resplendent Bagdad and the divine Alhambra, who gave mathematics and medicine and philosophy to Europe, and whose marvellous cities the Turk and the Tartar and the Mongol destroyed-he, too, must be invited to make his peculiar and bounteous contribution to the more beneficent world. Nor let us forget, even along the coasts of Asia Minor, to call the Greeks together under a Government of their choice, with no German prince imposed upon them by the The Syrians also must have the desire of dynasts. their hearts-the re-establishment of the kingdom of the French Crusaders. Nor these wonders only: if there should be a common and sincere acceptance of the program of President Wilson, other and many redemptions would ensue, making the world at last the delectable home of an adequate race. VI. It might well be that the extension and adaptation of the Swiss governmental system to the ethnic groups of Eastern Europe would be the wisest solution of the racial interests that now seem so conflicting These conflicts of interest are superficial and unreal; it is the unity and mutuality of interests that is real. Nothing can be disadvantageous to one people without being harmful to all peoples ; nothing can be truly good for one without that good accruing to all. It is in the unity of interests that the well-being of the peoples lies ; for, at bottom, there is only one all-embracing good, one inclusive and pervasive common health. The Swiss Confederation is the convincing demonstration that divergent races and religions may find a common and beloved national home I am prone to think of Switzerland as the microcosm of the Europe of the future-the microcosm perhaps, of the worldrepublic. , Switzerland is, indeed, not to me only, but to wiser dreamers than myself, the fore-type of the federate humanity. Of course, democracy has yet further to go: Switzerland has by no means reached the democratic goal. But she is in the path that leads thereto; and if the eyes of the peace-makers be fixed upon the peace that is permanent and pure, in some such path as the Swiss 'Cantons have taken will they start the smaller States and national remnants of Eastern Europe. Three federal groups might thus be formed : the first consisting of Poland united with Lithuania, the Letts and other suppressed and unhappy Slavic peoples Then the contending members of the present Austrian Empire, ransomed and cleansed from centuries of Hapsburg dominion, might co-operate in a greater Switzerland, nor thence desire separate political existence. The Balkan Confederation-betrayed to 'pan-Germany by the charlatanic Colburg Judas-might again be reconstituted. And once the process were begun, once the peoples were permitted to discover themselves in each other, it would be a marvellous Europe which would thence fulfil the pattern received from the Alps. VII. The Allies have been fighting for nothing else than this-for nothing else than a peace that shall, in faith and in fact, completely accord with the President's fundamental proposition. It is no secret that England is struggling, even during the war, to give a true and final Home Rule to Ireland : she only waits for the Irish to agree among themselves. Nor is it any secret that England is planning for India what the Hindoos have never been able to achieve for themselves-a unified and coherent national being. Again and again, and sincerely, I believe, have Italy and France and England stated their purpose to re-organise Europe on the basis of self-governing nationalities, and thence to enact one public law, one increasing common justice, throughout the world. VIII, Nor is the German adoption of the democratic programme impossible. It is indeed the most probable final result of a German defeat. No one proposes or desires that the German peoples should be crushed; it is only desired that they be redeemed from their own Prussian methods and masters. I am not among those who despair, I am rather among those who hope, that the victory of the Allies will result, not onIy in the dispersion of the Prussian night from the German mind, but in a new and spiritualised Germany-a Germany in which all the sheer might, the occult material discernment, which has gone into Prussian dominion shall be transmuted into the forces of spiritual and demo-cratic development. A repentant Germany, divinely restored and commissioned by a great common impulse from within, is precisely what they who stand most steadily against her foresee. It is for the fulfilment of this vision that they desire her military overthrow. Her own nobler ,being, her own mission to humanity, depends upon her retributive defeat. Already, even while their voices are yet unheard amidst the tumult, are Germany's truest teachers calling her to come forth from her Prussian to-day into the promise of a ministrant to-morrow. Already is the heart of the German people appealing to the world for patient opportunity and encouragement when the war is done. Thus again will revive that devout and romantic life, that wedded domesticity and adventure, so common to the Germany of old. IX, It is to provide for the nobler possibilities of the nations that President Wilson supports the programme of the League to Enforce Peace. His address to the Senate looks not only to repentant Germany, but to a repentant world. He calls not only Europe, but America and Asia and the ultimate islands, to a matchless experiment in the efficiency of faith. According to its faith will it be with the world, at last. We shall nationally and internationally be what we believe we can be. If we believe in the best, we shall become and achieve the best. If we believe only a fragmentary good is attainable, we shall have but the fragments our little belief apprehends. If we believe in the sole efficiency of the worst, even worse than the worst we shall have. The world as a whole is always the expression of its common belief or unbelief about itselfjust as each individual, in the end, becomes the living record of his innermost and perhaps unrecognised thought of life. X. It is easy to babble of Utopia in reply. It is the custom of cowards and cynics, of spiritual indolence and social selfishness, to deride as Utopian whatever requires high risk and bold sacrifice. But what else than the effort ,for our life’s perfectability has yet‘ proved practicable? Do we call the present way of carrying on our planet a success? Could the mind of an insane god conceive of a madder world than the one the practical man is now furnishing us? Is this universal tragic fiasco the kind of compliment the world’s wise and prudent desire? It is time to ask and to answer-time to take knowledge of the unfailing imbecility, of the ebbless confusion and woe, that forever course what we purblindly regard as the practical administration of our mortal affairs. Thus we shall one day conclude, I perceive, that only Utopia is practicable. We shall see that no peace is procurable either by a world, or by nations, or by individuals save in the realisation of the ideal; we shall never get on with less than the best. It is Utopia or perdition that awaits the human race in the end; it is the kingdom of Heaven or yet deeper hells than the one through which the world is now wading., XI. President Wilson’s programme is also the repudiation of the permanence of hate- He is not deterred by the fact that the literature of hatred holds the day. Do you doubt that it does? Upon my table are recent numbers of representative reviews of different countries. I go through them at random, to behold writer after writer, teacher after teacher bowing down in the House of Hate. Let me take a typical instance. I find Professor Kuno Francke, in the “Atlantic Monthly” of February, reporting the social and religious virtues of the changed Germany he foresees. He informs us that this spiritualised Germany is the ardent and absorbing concern of the Emperor, whom he considers as “the man who in this war has been to all his subjects a shining example of real greatness of character.” Even so, he declares that the war, regardless of its outcome, “will leave for many years to come such a vast accumulation of hatred, jealousy, and mutual fear among all European nations that any grouping of Powers for the maintenance of peace will have to depend upon the full military strength of each of its members.” Thus speaks the trained observer, thus speak the outward facts. And if we count the miles and millions of the dead, if we consider what unremitting blunder and how little brains go into the present government of the world, we must concede that ’the conclusion is logically correct. But now, as always, is mere logic a liar; now, as always, the trained observer fails to observe-fails to penetrate the facts before his eyes. This is the case with even a teacher so completely equipped, so. sincere as Professor Francke. This gifted German knows not the heart of his Germany; nor does he apprehend the purpose that is forming in the midst of Europe-yea, and that shall soon become creative in the resolute soul of the world. Despite the world’s red testimony to the contrary, the days of the institutions and the mobilisations of hatred are numbered and numbered also are the laws and customs that belong to economic and social revenge. Hate does not reside in the hearts of the people; it is not there except as it is kindled by the political and journalistic mercenaries of the owners and the rulers. The hate which now seems to be filling and consuming the peoples is not real; it is artificial and shallow and transient. They are blind who think this war will leave generations and organisations of hatred behind it. It will do nothing of the kind. The result will rather be this-that the war will burn up the hatreds of both the present and the past. There will be a purification of the world from hatred before long. The foolishness of hate is already apparent to the soldiers in the trenches, and to their fathers and mothers and wives at home. I have seen it--and I dare to declare it-that there was never so little of hate in the world as now. Hate was never so near ‘to extinction as it is at this most embattled moment of man’s planetary career. And it is because of its repudiation of hate that President Wilson's immortal appeal becomes perceptive and propheticbeyond anything coming from the lips of d leader for many generations. XII. Who knows if, after all, the war be not a preparation of the peoples for a general society which shall at last comprehend and harmonise all the facts and forces of the world’s indivisible life? It may be that the cannons are God’s voices, that the armies are harrowing the fields for God’s planting. Indeed, there has been an abundant divine sowing since the challenge to civilisation resounded from the imperial palace at Berlin. And the first harvest is already ripe for such as are wise for the reaping. Even whilst the armies march on, the soldiers are asking questions that have never been asked before in this world; and the same questions are on the lips of the women and the fathers at home and even awed children are whispering them. And all these are charged with a wiser wonderment than has hitherto drawn the human family together. They perceive--the majority of men and women to-day perceive-that war must he made anachronistic and senseless and cowardly. There is forming a great resolution, linking up the nations and the legions into an invisible freemasonry, that this shall be the last such catastrophe which man inflicts upon himself There are many signs that the peoples may soon open their eyes, beholding each other as members of one eternal family, never divided in reality but only in appearance, nor made enemies by else than the perennial exploitage of, parasitic systems and sovereignties. This self-discovery of the human race I believe to It is be the most probable ultimation of the war. probable that this deepening human night will end in the break of an amazing and ineffable day; in the wonder of men finding each other out for the first time. It is probable that despairing of help in teachers and governors, discovering that society has built upon the worst, the nations will together resolve to make trial of the best, and to take up their procession toward the communal world. GEORGE D, HERRON. Thoughts A MEMORANDUM Reprinted for ON THE a Convention. STATE OF IRELAND By A. E. by kind permission from the “Irish Times.” I. I THERE are moments in history when by the urgency of circumstance everyone in a country is drawn from normal pursuits to consider the affairs of the nation. The merchant is turned from his warehouse, the bookman from his books, the farmer from his fields, because they realise that the very foundations of the society, under whose shelter they were able to carry on their vocation, are being shaken, and they can no longer be voiceless, or leave it to deputies, unadvised by them, to arrange national destinies. We are all accustomed to endure the annoyances and irritations caused by legislation which is not agreeable to us, and solace ourselves by remembering that the things which really matter are not affected. But when the destiny of a nation, the principles by which life is to be guided are at stake, all are on a level, are equally affected and are bound to give expression to their opinions. Ireland is in one of these moments of history. Circumstances with which we are all familiar and the fever in which the world exists have infected it, and it is like molten metal the skilled political artificer might pour into a desirable mould. But if it is not handled rightly, if any factor is ignored, there may be an explosion which will bring on us a fate as tragic as anything in our past history. Irishmen can no longer afford to remain aloof from each other, or to address each other distantly and defiantly from Press or Platform, but must strive to understand each other truly, and to give due weight to each other’s opinions, and if possible to arrive at a compromise a balancing of their diversities, which may save our country from anarchy and chaos for generations to .come. 2. An agreement about ‘Irish Government must be an agreement, not between two, but three, Irish parties first of all,, and afterwards with Great Britain. The Premier of a Coalition Cabinet has declared that there is no measure of self-government which Great Britain would not assent to being set up in Ireland if Irishmen themselves could but come to an agreement. Before such a compromise between Irish parties is possible there must be a clear understanding of the ideals of these parties, as they are understood by themselves and not as they are presented in party controversy by special pleaders whose object too often is to pervert or discredit the principles and actions of opponents, athing which is easy to do because all parties even the noblest, have followers who do them disservice by ignorant advocacy or excited action. If we are to unite Ireland we can only do so by recognising what truly are the principles each party stand for, and will not forsake, and for which, if necessary, they will risk life. True understanding is to see ideals as they are held by men between themselves and heaven; and in this mood I will try, first of all, to understand the position of Unionists, Sinn Feiners, and Constitutional Nationalists as they have been explained to me by the best minds among them, those who have induced others of their countrymen to accept those ideals. When this is done we will see if compromise, a balancing of diversities- be not possible in an Irish State, where all that is essential in these varied ideals may be harmonised and retained. 3. I will take first of all the position of Unionists. They are, many of them, the descendants of settlers, who,’ by their entrance into Ireland, broke up the Gaelic uniformity and introduced the speech, the thoughts, characteristic of another race. While they have grown to love their country as much as any of Gaelic origin, and their peculiarities have been modified by centuries of life in Ireland and by inter-marriage so that they are much more akin to their fellowcountrymen in mind and manner than they are to any other people, they still retain habits, beliefs, and traditions from which they will not part. They form a class economically powerful. They have openness and energy of character, great organising power, and a mastery over materials-all qualities invaluable in an Irish State. In North-East Ulster, where they are most homogeneous, they conduct the affairs of their cities with great efficiency, carrying on an international trade not only with Great Britain, but with the rest of the world. They have made these industries famous. They believe that their prosperity is in large manner due to their acceptance of the Union, that it would be lessened if they threw in their lot with the other Ireland and accepted its ideals, that business which now goes to their shipyards and factories would cease if they were absorbed in a self-governing Ireland, whose spokesmen had an unfortunate habit of nagging their neighbours, and of conveying the impression that they are inspired by race hatred. They believe that an Irish Legislature would be controlled by a majority, representatives mainly of small farmers, men who had no knowledge of affairs, or of the peculiar needs of Ulster industry or the intricacy of the problems involved in carrying on an international trade; that the religious ideas of the majority would be so favoured in education and government that the favouritism would amount to religious opposition. They are also convinced that no small country in the present state of the world can really be independent, that such only exists by sufferance of their mighty neighbours, and must be subservient in trade policy and military policy to retain even a nominal freedom; and that an independentIreland would by its position be a focus for the intrigues of Powers hostile to Great Britain, and, if it achieved independence, Great Britain, in selfprotection, would be forced to conquer it again. They consider that security for industry and freedom for the individual can best be preserved in Ireland by the maintenance of the Union, and that the world spirit is with the great Empires. 4. The second political group may be described as the spiritual inheritors of the more ancient race in Ireland. They regard the preservation of their nationality as a sacred charge, themselves as a conquered people owning no allegiance to the dominent race. They cannot be called traitors to it, because neither they nor their predecessors have ever admitted the right of another people to govern them against their will. They are inspired by an ancient history, a literature stretching beyond the Christian Era, a national culture, and distinct national ideals, which they desire to manifest in a civilisation which shall not be an echo or imitation of any other. While they do not depreciate the worth of English culture ’or its political system, they are as angry at its being imposed on them as a young man with a passion for art would be if his guardian insisted on his adopting another profession, and denied him any chance of manifesting his own genius. Few hatreds equal those caused by the denial or obstruction of national aptitudes. Many of those who fought in the last Irish insurrection were fighters not merely for a political change, but were rather desperate and dispairing champions of a culture which they held was being stifled from infancy in Irish children in the schools of the nation. They believe that the national genius cannot manifest itself in a civilisation, and is not allowed to manifest itself, while the Union persists. They wish Ireland to be as much itself as Japan, and as free to make its own choice of political principles, its culture and social order, and to develop its industries unfettered by the trade policy of their neighbours Their mood is unconquerable, and, while often overcome, it has emerged again and again in Irish history, and it has, perhaps, more adherents to-day than at any period since the Act of Union. This has been helped on by the incarnation of the Gaelic spirit in modern Anglo-Irish literature and by a host of brilliant poets, dramatists and prose-writers who have won international recognition, and have increased the dignity of spirit and the self-respect of the followers of this tradition. They assert that the Union kills the soul of the people; that empires do not permit the intensive cultivation of human life ; that they destroy the richness and variety of existence by the extinction of peculiar and unique gifts and the substitution therefor of a culture which has its value mainly for the people who created it, but is as alien to our race as the mood of the scientist is to the artist or poet. 5. The third group occupies a middle position between those who desire the perfecting of the Union and those whose claim is for complete independence ; and because* they occupy a middle position and have taken colouring from the extremes between which they exist, they have been exposed to the charge of insincerity, which is unjust so far as the best minds among them are concerned. They have aimed at a middle course, not going far enough on one side or another to secure the confidence of the extremists. They have sought to maintain the connection with the Empire, and at the same time to acquire an Irish control over administration and legislation. They have been more practical than ideal, and to their credit must be placed the organising of the movements which secured most of the reforms in Ireland since the Unionsuch as religious equality, the Acts securing to farmersfair rents and fixity of tenure, the wise and salutary measures making possible the transfer of land from landlord to tenant, facilities for education at popular Universities, the Labourers Acts, and many others. They are a practical party, taking what they could get, and, because they could show ostensible results, they have had a greater following in Ireland than any other party. This is natural, because the average man in all countries is a realist. But this‘ reliance on material results to secure support meant that they must always show results or the minds of their countrymen veered to those ultimates and fundamentals which await settlement here, as they do in all civilisations. As in the race with Atalanta, the golden apples had to be thrown in order to win the race. The intellect of Ireland is now fixed on fundamentals, and the compromise this middle party is able to offer does not make provision for the ideals of either of the extremists, and, indeed, meets little favour anywhere in a country excited by recent events in world history, where revolutionarychanges are expected and a settlement far more in accord with fundamental principles, (To be continued.) The Wonders of Desolation, By Ramiro de Maeztu. IN Peronne I have seen the ruins of the house on which, after they had blasted it with dynamite, the Germans affixed as a visiting card, or, perhaps, as a Parthian shaft, a placard bearing in letters a yard high this inscription : “Nicht argern nur wundern !” (Don’t be angry, but wonder). These four words, I suppose, refer not only to the destruction of that particular house, but to the whole work of devastation carried out by the Germans in the French territory evacuated by them during the months of February and March. Wonder has two meanings : to consider and to admire. And in view of the first meaning it is obvious that what the Germans intended us to learn was this : that in the same way In which we have destroyed this little piece of France we can destroy the whole districts we now occupy in France, Belgium, Poland, Russia, Serbia and Roumania ; either, therefore you conclude a peace that recognises our victory, or, if we, are compelled to evacuate them, we shall destroy alI the territories now in our possession. I believe, however that this contingency has already been foreseen by all the thoughtful minds of the world, and that the reply to the German menace is to be found in the fact that there are now joined in the war against Germany : Great Britain, France, Russia, the United States, Italy, Belgium, Japan, Portugal, Serbia, Roumania, Montenegro, Cuba, Panama and Venezelist Greece-a total of thirteen States and a half, not counting Arabia; in the fact that diplomatic relations with Germany have been broken off by China, Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala, Nicaragua’, Honduras, and Liberia-a total of seven States; in the fact that all the Governments of the remaining Latin-American Republics have officially expressed agreement with the principles of the Washington Government, and, therefore, with the Allies ; and in the fact that there is not one single neutral State that has not already reflected on the necessity, probability or possibility og following their example. Wonder has also the meaning of to admire. The Germans are not so blind that they have never thought of the possibility that frightfulness might turn upon them. ’The German War Book admits that “fear of reprisals moderates the cruelty of war. ’’ Thus, the men, who, after devastating Peronne and the district round about, bade us admire their handiwork, must have contemplated with human eyes the destruction they had just completed. I do not believe that their feelings were different from my own. There is the well-known story of the German soldier who had been billeted in one of the villages of the evacuated zone. During the whole period of the occupation he was extremely kind to his hostess and to her Iittle children, and when he wished them farewell he did so with tears in his eyes. But immediately afterwards, in obedience to his orders, he set the house on fire and sawed down all the trees in the garden. In the light of this incident, a plausible explanation mag perhaps be discovered of the inscription upon the placard: “Nicht argern nur wundern!” It is this. “We Germans are men just as you are ; we love the place and the people among whom we have been living ; and, like yours, our hearts bid us weep when our duty obliges us to destroy what we love. But we are different from you in that you allow yourselves to be carried away by your feelings, while we believe that beautiful sentiments have been given to men to enjoy but not to act upon. In action we are guided by duty; and duty springs from reason and not from sentiment. And it is this that you must admire in us.” The Germans are not the only men who deliberately refuse to take counsel of their better feelings. In every country the type of the usurer is to be found who weeps over a sentimental novel while continuing to suck the blood of his victims. Music, I fancy, is the ideal art far this kind of creature. But Germany is the only country in the world which has raised to the category of an absolute dogma this sort of perversity: Goethe advised young poets to turn their love-troubles into verse and thus to free themselves from them; and every German student, by the time he is twenty, has discovered that fine sentiments are indispensable as materials for the arts but encumbrances upon life. In the rigorous and rigorist sense the doctrine* that good feelings are beautiful, but that they were not given us to act upon, was invented by Kant when he based ethics exclusively on practical reason and defined practical reason as a universal legislation which above all kinds of feeling prescribes for man respect for law for the sake of law itself. It was in vain that Schiller wished to save the fine feelings in the polemical essay on “Grace and Dignity,” in which he defended the Hellenic ideal of the unity of the Good and the Beautiful Kant replied to him severely that in trying to harmonise Grace and Dignity, the Sensible and the Rational, he was sacrificing the majesty of Duty to the charm of Aesthetics. And in order to show the superiority of the rationalistic conception of Duty he employed this simile : “Only after vanquishing the monster was Hercules introduced to the Muses who, for their part, shrank from that terrible task. ” Schiller accepted the lesson and in his poem, “Life and the Ideal,” acknowledged that Grace and Dignity can be reconciled only in Olympus, “where the rosy-cheeked Goddess smilingly offers the goblet to the glorified man.’’ In this world, on the other hand, Zwischen Sinnengluck und Seclenfrieden Bleibt dem Menschen nur die bange Wahl. (Between the pleasure of the senses and the peace of the Soul Man must make his anxious choice.) But it was not in polemics with Schiller or with the Hellenic ideal that the Kantian ethics came to relegate feelings to the second place; but in the disputations with the English moralists, Shaftesbury, Hutchinson, and Ferguson, who believed they had found the mainspring of morals in what they called “the moral sense” or “the moral sentiment. ” These are vague words, but they were employed in a sense sufficiently precise. They signified the intuitive perception or the intuitive emotion of morality, its spontaneous evidence in the mind of man, and the impossibility of demonstrating good or evil by means of reason. ”Moral distinctions not deriv’d from reason,” David Hume used to write. Moral distinctions deriv’d from a moral sense.” “Morality, therefore, is more properly felt than judg’d of; tho’ this feeling or sentiment is commonly so soft and gentle that we are apt to confound it with an idea. ” Sons of the twentieth century, we are, thank God, no longer moderns; and it is not for us historically fatal to share the subjectivist error in the proposition that moral distinctions are derived from a moral sense. They are not derived from a moral sense, but a moral sense perceives them. ’Thank God it is possible for us to think of ideas as of real things, as they were thought of by the mediaeval masters. We can define “universals as “objects of thought which have an ideal existence independent of thought.” Man for us has ceased to be an arbitrary creator of the spiritual world. What alone he can do is to realise that there are spiritual things, immaterial substances, such as Time, Space, the Laws of Numbers and their application to space and matter, and that the existence of Good and Evil imposes upon him obligations which he ought to accept but which he may for a while shirk. Rut the question is not this. Even if we reject the humanist error which tried to find in man the ultimate source of moral distinctions, there always remains the problem which Kant debated with the English discoverers of moral philosophy : How shall we distinguish Good from Evil-by the sentiments or by reason? The English declared for the sentiments, but Kant replied by Reason. “Feeling,” he used to say, “is always esthetic and pathological. ” Although the fulfilment of the moral law is accompanied in the actual man by a feeling of respect, this feeling is derivative and secondary. It is the feeling of distance between the empirical will and the pure will. It is the homage which in every man our Sancho Panza pays to our Don Quixote. What characterises the moral man is independence of inclinations. ’’ “Even the feeling of pity, when it precedes the conviction of duty, only serves to confuse the moral judgment.” Moral action must have its birth entirely in reason. Practical reason is the moral law. And the formulation of the Kantian law is this : Act in such a way that the maxim of your will may serve at the same time as a principle of universal legislation. This fact of moral law, adds Kant, is “the only fact of pure Reason which in it declares itself to be a spontaneous legislature in contradistinction to the laws of Nature which are not spontaneous. But what is commanded by this spontaneous legislature ? Please read again the formula ; read it twice, read it twenty times. What Kant demands is that in every act we ought to legislate for the universe. Let us imagine the Jews after they had lost their way in the desert upon crossing the Red Sea. Moses ‘descends from Sinai bearing a table containing a single commandment : ‘‘Legislate whenever you act.” Yes, but what shall we do, and what says the Law, ask the perplexed Jews. And Moses replies: the Law only commands you to legislate Kant many times drew a distinction between legality and morality. A legal action, he used to say, contents itself with conformity to law; but a moral action must be at the same time legislation itself. There is in this ethic something very grand ; in so far as it drives every man in meditating an act to place himself before the whole perspective of history. And this is perhaps the secret of the fascination it still exercises over ethical thinkers. The humblest man, when he determines to act according to the Kantian imperative, convokes in his imagination the whole of humanity to behold him. But this subtle flattery of individual vanity does not really succeed in relegating to a second place that other and more modest moral sense spoken of by the English moralists. For how shall I know that the maxim on which I base myself for the realisation of a projected act deserves to be made a principle of universal legislation It wilt appear to deserve to be so made only if the projected act already appears to me to be good. What comes first is the goodness of the action as it appears to me; and what comes second is my proposing of it as an example to the world. I cannot arrive at the conviction of the goodness of an action on account of the approval of the universe, for I cannot know if the universe approves of it. What I can know is that the universe ought to approve of it, because I have previously thought it good myself. The Pharisee believed also that an action derived its goodness from its legality but the Pharisee was wrong. First the good thing is found to be Good, then is prescribed by the Law. If I think that the maxim of my action deserves to become law, it is because I have previously thought it good. Here comes the function of “the moral sense.” For Reason can only serve to present us with the probable consequences of the contemplated action, to enable us to compare it with others, to analyse it, to classify it and also to remind us that our moral sense is never wholly transparent but is always coloured by passions and prejudices . But the quality of the projected action, its goodness or its badness, either presents itself intuitively to our minds, or it is not presented at all. It is impossible for us to deduce the goodness or badness of an action from its universality, because we have not at our disposal the judgment of the universe. We err often in our moral judgments, sometimes because we do not sufficiently know the character of the action in question, at other times because our moral sense is never. pure. But pure or impure, we have no other “organ” with which to distinguish the good from the bad. Thus it was that in the great polemic of Kant with the English moralists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was the English moralists who uttered the deeper truth. German thinkers, however, did not criticise Kant for having forgotten that the evaluation of actions must precede the consideration of their suitability for legislation On the contrary, starting from de fact that the Kantian ethic requires that our actions should be inspired, by maxims suitable €or universal laws, without telling us what this law must prescribe, they felt a vacuum. The vacuum was there, because Kant’s ethic do not lead us to compare the quality of a projected action with the quality of other possible alternative actions, but they inferred that the positive contents of moral life must be only the content of positive laws, because morality consists only in accomplishing with good will what the laws prescribe. This legislature of positive laws is, however, the State; and the State has for its organ the Government. May, then, the Government order what it pleases, even if it be the unnecessary destruction of a whole country, morality consists in obedience with good will. Do not be angry, but wonder ! An Industrial Symposium. Conducted by Huntly Carter, WITH a view to pooling the practical wisdom of the nation upon the main problems of the after-war period, THIS New AGE is submitting the two following questions to representative public men and women :(I) What in your opinion will be the industrial situation after the war as regards (a) Labour, (b) Capital, (c) the Nation as asingle commercial entity? (2) ‘What in your view is the best policy to be pursued by; (a) Labour (bl Capital, (c) the State? (68) Ma. JOHN F. ARMOUR Secretary, The United Operative Masons’ Association of Scotland). (I) (a) I do not anticipate a period of unemployment immediately after the War, other than comparatively slight dislocations during the process of readjusting industry. Apart from other considerations, the temper of the working class at home and the probable temper of the returning soldiers will not tolerate a condition of affairs such as has been accepted, in the past, as unavoidable. I am persuaded that the politicians and the employing class generally realise this, and fear that such conditions as have obtained during periods of unemployment in the past would result in a dangerous state of affairs for Capital and all its institutions. I am not writing this with the Russian Revolution particularly in mind, although, no doubt, fear of the revolutionary fervour now happily passing through Europe may serve to speed up the preparations and perfection of plans for the demobilisation of munition workers and of the troops after peace is declared. As far as I can judge of the probabilities, there will be a period of good trade after the War, but I do not (Organising expect a startling reduction of prices; hence the period immediately after the declaration of peace will be one of struggle to maintain wage rates. Much of the increase in wages obtained, during the war has been in the form of a war bonus, and Capital will expect to be relieved of its payment. The trade unions will resist all efforts to reduce the incomes of the workers, and, I believe, will be successful in that resistance. In the war industries there has been a great accession of strength to the trade unions, and a period of good trade will still further increase the numbers in the ranks of organised Labour. The discipline and sense of organisation acquired by four millions of working men in the Army will make the organisation of hitherto unorganised masses less difficult, and there will be this further advantage that the men who have endured the struggle on the battlefields of Europe will be inspired by a higher conception of‘ what is due to them than they have been in the past. Thus, notwithstanding the Munitions of War Acts and the many other stupidities of the Government, seemingly so meekly borne by working men, and despite the doleful prophecies of many, whose point of view is distorted by their attitude to the War, I am optimistic on the situation after the War as regards Labour. (b) In regard to Capital there will be a speeding up of the tendency towards greater combinations of Capital and a consequent elimination of the small business. This will occur, not only in the engineering, shipbuilding, and other industries favourably affected by the War, and the immense assistance received from the State, but will also occur in those industries adversely affected by the War. There will be a tremendous rush for markets, and the competition thus engendered will render imperative, improved organisation, a greater use of automatic machinery, and, generally, a greater intensification of production. In short, we shall be faced by: an era of production on the grand scale. The War has only anticipated many years ,of development on the concentration of Capital. (c) From my point of view the Nation cannot be a single commercial entity owing to the fundamental economic antagonisms existing within the Nation. It is likely, however, that, as the case has been in other matters, the State will, in future, imitate its Prussian counterpart and take a more direct interest in the development of commerce than hitherto. There will be greater co-ordination in the commercial world, of all efforts in the direction of development, in so far as they further common interests. In these matters, however, the working class will have no interest as citizens, but only as dependents of the capitalists. Capital recognises this position clearly, inasmuch as in all discussions upon the subject the working class is expressly excluded from any consideration in the development of commerce and industry save the role of being goodnatured and obedient. (2) (a) The best policy to be pursued by Labour is to set about the work of improving its organisation. Simultaneously, dual organisations must be amalgamated and a well-planned effort created to reach the as yet unorganised workpeople. The, direction and coordination of this work could be undertaken by the British Trade Union Congress working through industrial councils, the Scottish Congress and the trades councils. The craft unions must face the facts and adapt themselves to modern industrial development. There ought not to exist separate organisations for skilled and unskilled, male and female. Where craft distinctions have a basis in the actual facts of industrial life, then organisation can take account of this on departmental differentiation. A simple system of easy transfer of membership from one industrial union to another should be arranged, on an actuarial basis. There should be more intensive organisation and the education of the members by the issue of suitable literature, and trade journals fit to compete with capitalist journals in interest should become an important function of the union. In proportion as the work of consolidation and organisation grows there must be a greater and more determined invasion of the field regarded by Capital as peculiarly its own, that of the control of industry, In this direction I surmise that the struggle for union control will be as bitter and as keenly fought as was the struggle for recognition of the union and collective bargaining. Trade unionism has vitality in proportion as it struggles for principles, and its vitality in the future will depend on the idea with which it is animated and for which it is prepared to fight. In the direction of control Capital is likely to make concessions if we are to take seriously the expressions of a newly found regard for Labour, since it has become more generally known that there may be money in humaner methods of exploitation. Trade union control in industry, however must necessarily involve the more or less gradual destruction of autocracy in the workshop and in the end the expropriation of the capitalist as such. Acceptance of the inferior status of wages-labour is impossible. In that direction trade unionism has no future. Amongst the older school of trade unionists, having won recognition, there is a tendency to regard with favour conciliation, State intervention, compulsory arbitration and a leaning generally towards resigning the right to strike. It is my experience that Labour has never looked with favour on arbitration courts, conciliation boards, and such like. In proportion as too much reliance is placed on these means of settling disputes we have had breaches of discipline in the ranks. Labour has always been suspicious of these methods, and the instinct of Labour in this matter is right. I do not advise the refusal under all circumstances of conciliation or even of arbitration, but efforts in this direction must be voluntarily entered upon, and made with the full consent of rank and file, but the right to resort to the strike must be presumed at all hazards. Finally, as the co-operation and the directive ability that produces and increases wealth is an attribute of Labour ‘and not of Capital, trade unions must regard themselves as a state within the State, the framework of that society which will supplant capitalism and establish an industrial democracy. (b) The best policy for Capital is to recognise that its role as the leech and autocrat of industry will, in the long run, become as intolerable as autocracy in the political world. It should therefore pave the way for a peaceful abdication. It is more likely, however, that Capital will seek to delay the inevitable. Peace in the industrial ,world being a necessary condition for the, development of Capital it will endeavour to proceed by way of concessions to Labour. An educated and well-trained working class will also be necessary to future developments, and in due course our educational system or want of system will be overhauled, and in many directions improved conditions will be created in so far as they can be shown to assist in increased productivity. But Capital must beware lest the concessions which it needs must make for the purposes of peaceful development are turned against itself’. Labour’s demands may grow with every concession. If Capital is wise, it will take less regard of the attitude on industrial matters adopted by Mr. Arthur Henderson and Mr. John Hodge. These men and their kind have no doubt played a worthy part in the Labour movements of the past, but the insurgent movements typified in the Clyde Workers’ Committee and the Welsh miners are a truer reflection of the future policy and ideals of Labour. No good can come to capital by deceiving itself in this matter. (c) The distinguishing characteristic of the modern State is its function as the political expression of Capital. As Labour gradually advances to the conquest of the Capitalist State, through its own political party, the policy imposed upon the State will be that of preparing the political superstructure of society to meet the growing industrial power of Labour, and the translation of its demands into political formulae. In short, its best policy will be to ease the path to industrial democracy. Labour will submit less and less to the trammels of bureaucratic State regulation and suppression Politicians who propose to represent Labour mould do well to take note. The scarcely suppressed dislike and suspicion of much of recent so-called social legislation, and the frequent rebellion against present State restrictions and bureaucratic control which we have seen from time to time during the War, are sips and portents. Education for Liberty VI. “R. H. C.”” final question, about the possibility of developing “faculties at present scarcely worth the name” by learning how to educate the super-self, lures me into a conjectural region. If we are going to speculate about the future, it is always as well to reach forward with one hand only, while feeling back with the other as far as possible into the past; to try to attain, for a moment, the sense that past, present and future are one, This sense, really an emergence of the super-self, can be intensified by practice in meditation, as most of the mystics knew; and in greater or less degree it seems to be implicit in all constructive thinking whether or not the thinker is aware of the fact. Our sovereign citizen must be somethig of a visionary, if he is to be anything of a sovereign. Perhaps he will begin to develop some power of historical vision when we begin to teach history not by “periods,” but by vistas. (At present we rarely make an attempt even to keep the foolish “periods” in sequence, but teach history as though with the deliberate aim of making historical vision impossible-I will refrain from a long and angry digression upon the present state of school history.) There is a common term to be found in the three main types of the emerging super-self : artistic genius, intellectual genius, as found either in the engineer or in the philosopher, and moral genius. Each is a kind of mediumship. I am not going to enter here upon a discussion of mediumship as it is understood or misunderstood as the case may be, by spiritualists ; but the genius of every type is familiar with an impression that he is being used, in moments of semi-conscious exaltation as the vehicle for something not himself, and very much greater than himself. According to the psychology that we have been tracing, this something is his super-self; and it is not surprising that the superself, which enters SO little into the ordinary phases of consciousness, should give the impression of a personality distinct from, and greater than, one’s own. But there is probably more in it than this. Our hypothesis of a super-self carries with it certain necessary implications If we have an upper personality as much superior to our ordinary, conscious self as that conscious self is to the bundle of reflex tendencies which make up the subconscious self, it is to be expected that the former superiority should be similar in its nature to the latter superiority. If we cast about for a single term in which to express. the superiority of Jones-who-knows what-he-is-doing over the sub-Jones-the Jones who scowls when somebody else comes into his railway carriage--I think we shall find that the difference is best summed up as a matter of fellowship. The conscious Jones is the more social. He has become the conscious Jones, the semi-civilised Jones of the present day, in virtue of the fact that his ancestors have painfully It evolved a rudimentary social unsciousness. may be noted here that, historically, the conscious Jones of to-day was the super-Jones of savage life; and that the sub-Jones of to-day scowling, in the corner of his railway carriage, at the newcomer (with whom, we will hope, the conscious Jones will soon start a friendly conversatison about the weather and the crops) was the conscious personality of the cave-man. We can infer, then, that our super-self is as much more social than our conscious self as our conscious self is more social than our sub-self. We can do more than infer it; it is a fact of experience. Any great and memorable talk between friends is characterised by two main features : a sense of the emergence of the super-self, and a sense that fellowship is raised to an unusual pitch of intensity. Each of the talkers has the rare and delightful feeling that he understands everything; but it is a condition of this feeling that he should have the sense of understanding the souls of his interlocutors. The implication which is involved in the whole idea of a super-self is that it is, literally and quantitatively, more than the conscious self, in virtue of its essential union with other super-selves. What the psychological mechanism of this union may be we have not yet the data to determine; it may be a kind of super-telepathy. That would account for the “spiritof-the-age’ ’ phenomenon : the extraordinary concordance of work done in similar fields by thinkers who are not in communication with one another But it would It would not account for not account for everything. the sense that there is a reservoir of pure truth upon which the super-self can draw (subject, however, to the sophistications and glosses of the Interpreter, and to the fixed ideas and prejudices of the conscious mind). I should not like to shut the door upon any hypothesis. Possibly psychical research, in its extreme infancy at present, may eventually lead to scientific re-interpretation of the communion of saints. If any impatient Christian wants to know why I am leaving divine inspiration out of account, I will explain that I am doing nothing of the kind. I am trying to find out how it works. The ancient Jews must have made some study of the means for inducing inspiration, in their “schools of the prophets. ” The results were certainly remarkable, when we consider the heights to which a Jewish prophet could rise above the prevailing views and ethics of his time. Shall we ever have a School of Experimental Prophecy established at each of the universities? The idea ought not to seem as ludicrous as it undoubtedly does seem. But the worst of highly diiferentiated seers is that they leave the common run of people behind. We need to start at the bottom: every school ought to be a school of the prophets. Then, perhaps, we should have not only inspired thinkers, but a public that would attend to them, just as in the days of mediaeval craftsmanship there was not only great art but a people who could appreciate it. In fact, it is the one hope for a new age that we may be able to democratise inspiration. Otherwise there are only two alternatives: the occasional prophet will speak to the void, and be gathered to his fathers, while humanity continues to muddle through (more muddle than through); or the prophet will try to talk down to the multitude, and lose himself in the labyrinth of the popular sub-self, and become a false prophet. That must have been the fate of the enormous majority of seers, artists and thinkers all through the ages. We must experiment, systematically and patiently, if we are to find out how the faculty of inspiration can be developed-or, rather, how the conscious self can be induced to give adequate interpretation to the super-self. The faculty of inspiration, I am convinced, is there already; we dream greater things than we know; but we forget our dreams, or suppress them, or sentimentalise them. The vision of a new order, coherent and complete, which we sometimes carry through from sleep, if only it would not fade, if only we were trained to seize it and translate it into the language of daylight, would transform civilisation. But it must be everybody’s vision, or it may just as well be nobody’s vision. We need a clairvoyant democracy. Is that a reductio ad absurdum of my thesis, or a suggestion that there is a cure for the disease of the world? I have an idea, sometimes, that young children know perfectly well what is the matter with the world, and could grow up to tell us what the trouble is, if only we could let them develop the right power But we must train ourselves, too, to of expression. co-operate with them, and to remember our dreams. KENNETH RICHMOND. Drama, By John Francis Hope. THE sudden death of the Savoy Hamlet killed by a spell of sultry weather, has made the end of the season seem dull indeed. I wish that I could emulate the brevity of the Headquarter Staff and report that there is nothing to report ; but Lancashire has sent us a new farcical comedy which threatens to be as successful as “Hobson’s Choice” or “The Rotters,” and I must notice the production of “Penny Wise” at the Prince of Wales’ Theatre. I suppose that it is the mechanical perfection of Lancashire’s chief industry that is reflected in the similarity of its comedies; all that the dramatist like the weaver, has to do is to tie the broken is threads, the machine does the rest: The pattern always the same ; the idiocy, whether intractable or tractable, of the men is always .crossed with the extraordinary ability of the women whose business methods -resemble those against which the advertisements of private detective agencies offer to protect us. The hand that rocks the cradle not only slaps the baby, but itches to handle the money that may be in other people’s pockets; and the comedies of Lancashire life are driving me to the conclusion that home without a mother would mean a marked diminution in crime. I hope that I have no unworthy prejudice against crime; it may be the result of an adventurous temperament or of an original mind; and like most Englishmen I would allow any person on the stage to break all the commandments in the Decalogue, and as many more as can be discovered by patient research, provided that he does it “natively, and with spirit.” But a fraud perpetrated for the sake of insurance money, crime committed to enable the criminal to buy a share in a chandler’s shop, these are the conceptions of area sneaks; and whatever may be the technical definition of the crime its quality is not above petty larceny. Petty larceny may indicate many things, but it indicates neither an adventurous temperament nor an original mind, it cannot be done “natively and with spirit.” It cannot rise to the extravagance of farce, nor refine into the subtlety of comedy it can only grovel among the poor humours of the economic woman, and show us that Lancashire believes in Free Trade in blackmail. The doctor is the first to be blackmailed. Once it has been. decided that John Willie Dobbin must die because he is worth more dead than alive,” the doctor is blackmailed into signing the death certificate without seeing the body by threats of exposure of some careless practice. The doctor is incompetent even to suggest the cause of death, but Mrs. Dobbin comes to the rescue with “heart failure But her woman’s wit can more easily devise a form of words ,than it can secure an efficiency of action; for the “corpse” is walking about in the bed-room in full view of the neighbours, one of whom promptly blackmails Mrs. Dobbin to the extent of ten pounds As the funeral cannot be committed to the care of an outsider, a relative, who is an undertaker, is called in to perform this service to the family. He demands compensation for his risk, and charges twenty pounds for the funeral; the “corpse” has to be furnished with five pounds for the expenses of his trip to Manchester, and as the total sum of the insurance is only fifty pounds, what will remain will not pay the twenty-five pounds for the share in the shop. To add to the difficulty, Aunt Emily makes a fraudulent claim of seven pounds which, she alleges, she has lent to the “corpse:’; she seems to have forged her documentary proofs, and is apparently brought into the play to show that one touch of blackmail makes all Lancashire kin. All that is needed to complete the ruin of Mrs. Dobbin’s scheme is the discovery that the neighbour who blackmailed her of the ten pounds is by this means enabled tu buy the share in the chandler’s shop to secure which Mrs. Dobbin had devised her scheme; and that discoverycloses the second act. But the “corpse” gives them all another run for their money Disguised as an imitation of Harry Tate suffering from ague, he is sent to Manchester, and reaches the “Hare and Hounds” in his own town. There he liquidates his capital of five pounds, and returns home after closing time. Remembering that he is a “corpse,” he tries to enter the house in an unaccustomed fashion; and is followed over the window-sill by a policeman He is rescued from the policeman by his family, and, of course, some means must now be found to resurrect him from his certificated death. The doctor is called in again, and once again the woman’s wit finds the form of words; John Willie Dobbin had been in a “trance,” and has as miraculously awakened from it as he had opportunely fallen into it. The insurance claim is withdrawn ; Uncle Percival loses the ten pounds he had advanced ,on account, five pounds of it being represented by the hiccoughs of John Willie, and the other five by the strident threats of Mrs. Axham: and the family is where it was with the addition of a little more knowledge of human nature as shown in its struggle for economic power. The woman’s wit fails to produce another scheme ; but that special Providence which watches over drunken men and fools (and John Willie is both) awards him a prize of a hundred pounds in a football competition. He has picked the winner, and, as he triumphantly declares, he is worth twice as much alive as dead. The deduction is not beyond challenge ; but as it brings the play to an end, it may pass without too close a scrutiny. The acting is worthy of the play; these people seem almost human. They certainly have the failings of common humanity ; Alfred Dobbin with his incessant cry, “Ah am hoongry,” expresses a universal sensation in what is nearly the English language. Nor are the gentler feelings unrepresented ; John Willie Dobbin has a wife, who nlot only works for him, and is proud of it, but who raises the standard of life from that of a tribal savage to the level of modern civilisation by loving him. He not a vague predilection for communal marriage, but the eternal feminine is always leading him upwards and on to the more refined conception of monogamy. She does this usually not by argument, but by main force; but in this case, she does not seem to have realised the possibilities of mechanical aids to detention, but relies upon the prehensile powers of her own arms. It is possible to descry (I admit, with some difficulty) the beginning of a new social system in her behaviour; and the economically independent female wage-slave may yet evolve the idea that a husband’s place is in the home. But the most human manifestation in the play is that afforded by the mother ; for her acquisitiveness is not useless to the prime purpose of survival, as is that of a monkey or ajackdaw, but is actually devised disinterestedly for the perpetuation of her little community . The predatory instinct is, in this case, stimulated by the protective; and although both instincts are common to the animal creation, their persistence beyond the age of the maturity of Mrs. Dobbin’s progenyelevates them beyond their evolutionary prototypes . The scheme itself, both in its inception and result, shows us that she is capable of thought, and-is thereby raised above the category of brutes who are guided only by reflex action; her adaptation to circumstances , although not successful, was none the less intelligent, and a few more attempts may raise her to the rank of a successful swindler, who will then be entitled to some human rights, such as trial by jury. Readers and Writers, MR. J. M. ROBERTSON’Slatest work on Shakespeare (“Shakespeare and Chapman.” T. Fisher Unwin. 10s. 6d. net) has put me in mind of the theory of the authorship of the plays which I began to set forth some years ago with such discouraging results. It has not only put me in mind of my theory, it goes a long way towards confirming it. My theory, you will not remember, was that the works said to be by Shakespeare were a collection of plays written by different hands, sometimes by one and sometimes by more than one, but edited by a single hand, which, in all probability, was not that of the “busy actor-manager,” Shakespeare himself. And for support of, at any rate, a plea for fair examination of my hypothesis I quoted the various analyses of the plays published by Sir Sidney Lee and others, all of which tended to show, first, themultiplicity of the authorship of the plays; and, second the improbability, in any reasonable view, of the actormanager’s lion’s share in them. Mr. Robertson does not, it is true, entertain any doubt that Shakespeare, the “busy actor-manager” (as he calls him), the Shakespeare who “was not a leisured artist,” was actually the major author of the plays; be remains for the present in no doubt that this impossible person was indeed the greatest artist that ever lived. Nevertheless, he gives such a blow to the accepted view of Shakespearean authorship that, as I said some time ago, the problem has been opened again, and cannot now be closed until my hypothesis, among others, is considered upon its merits. From an examination, as thorough as can be desired of this method of research-the method named stylistics or stylometry, and consisting of comparative analyses of vocabulary, syntax, style, etc.-from an examination of the poem, “A Lover’s Complaint,” which is included in the usual text of Shakespeare’s works, Mr. Robertson comes to the conclusion that its author was not Shakespeare (a negative conclusion which has often before been arrived at), but Chapman And armed with this conclusion Mr. Robertson then proceeds to show that the same author, Chapman, had a considerablehand in not one or two merely, but in half-adozen or half a score of the Shakespearean plays proper. For As much as this kind of criticism is worth, Mr. Robertson’s thesis, moreover, is established to my complete satisfaction. Bating one or two rather forced applications (as to Chapman’s authorship of the play within the play of ‘*Hamlet,” for example, or of the character of Holofernes), the rest of Mr. Robertson’s attributions to Chapman are fairly well established ; and the fact may now be regarded as historic that Chapman (with others) had a considerable hand in the plays, “Timon of Athens,” “Pericles,” “Taming of the Shrew,” “All’s Well that Ends Well,” “Julius Caesar and several others. The question now to be asked, however, is this. Granted that it is certain that Chapman collaborated in “Shakespeare’s” plays, how many other dramatists besides Chapman were at one time or another involved in them? If Chapman was one of the collaborators, how many more were there? It is not, of course, in Mr. Robertson’s immediate provinceto examine any other claims than those of Chapman but, incidentally, in his present work, and elsewhere in the tremendous corpus of Shakespearean criticism, we gather that something like a host of writers contributed little or much to the plays nominally written by Shakespeare. Beaumont, for example, was probably the author of the Masque in the ‘‘Tempest.” Marlowe, it is generally thought, was responsible for most of the Henry VI plays. “All’s Well that Ends Well” is “really a play by two hands on a basis laid by a third-Greene, in all probability. “Troilus and Cressida was probably drafted by Chapman, Delcher and Chettle. Middleton perhaps mangled “ Macbeth. ” The plot of “Two Gentlemen” was probably the work of Greene, aided perhaps by Kyd. Ben Jonson may have had a considerable share with Chapman in Julius Caesar”-and so on. The conclusions, in fact, at which we arrive are that every Shakespearean play, in the first instance, was produced from an original draft which was not by Shakespeare; and in the second instance, that in everyone of the completed plays another hand (sometimes as many as four other hands) than Shakespeare’s is to be found , The problem my readers will see, cannot be left in this state. It is certainly a great advance upon former criticism to have now established the composite authorship of the plays; but what we need now to discover is just what part was contributed by Shakespeare whoever Shakespeare was-and by him alone But for this examination, I think (and I am happy to find the “Times Literary Supplement” agreeing with me), something more is necessary than the method adopted by Mr. Robertson and the textual school.“Future investigation ” says the “Times” critic, “may take into deeper consideration (must do so if it is to be adequate) the character of Chapman’s mind”-and not only the character of Chapman’s mind, I add, but the character of the mind of all the known and unknown collaborators in Shakespeare’s plays, including, first and foremost, the mind of “Shakespeare” himself. But who was Shakespeare? That he was not Bacon I agree with as much disgust at the suggestion as Mr. Robertson himself . On the other hand, that he was not the “busy actor-manager” without the leisure necessary to a great artist, I equally cannot believe. My conviction, therefore, is that the modern Shakespeareans (including Mr. Robertson) are on as false a scent in seeking to attribute to the actor Shakespeare the plays of “Shakespeare” as the Baconians whom they criticise with commendable harshness. Setting aside any preconception of the identity of “Shakespeare,” and regarding his identity as one yet to be discovered, the method of research is obvious, even if difficult. It consists in isolating such passages in the plays as are indubitably, “Shakespeare’s,” and in then examining them as a manifestation of a single personality, on the principle that the style is the man. ‘Let us take an instance from a play in which it is certain that “Shakespeare” had only a small part-“Timon of Athens.” Of this play Mr. Robertson says that the draft may have been bought by Shakespeare’s company for Shakespeare to adapt ; but that in revising it Shakespeare “grew tired,” so that, in fact, he worked only over the second, fourth and fifth acts, and over these somewhat cursorily. Very well Now can we discover in “Timon“ the very lines which only Shakespeare could have written-lines, that is to say, that could not have been written by any of the known collaborators and that yet harmonise in character with passages in other plays no less unmistakably Shakespeare’s-that is, nobody else’s ? Mr. Robertson cites these lines among others, and I agree with him Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Upon the beached verge of the salt flood, Whom once a day with his embossed froth The turbulent surge shall cover. These lines, I agree are Shakespeare’s. None of the known collaborators in the plays was capable of them. They are Shakespeare his mark; and when they had been properly read, marked, learned, ant! inwardly digested, they constitute, I think, a key with which to unlock the mystery of the personality of Shakespeare. I could, if I were so minded, now go over the whoie of the plays with this tuning-fork in my hand and indicate with reasonable certainty the passages written by Shakespeare. How few or how many they are, I am not yet aware; but I believe that in some of the plays there are scarcely any, while others are full of them’. Only however, when they are all thus collected and brought together in a body would the full stature of their author be revealed; and I repeat that his identification with the “busy actor-manager” would then appear to be ridiculous. R. R. C. Recent Verse. ‘‘ A Scallopshell of Quiet.” Introduced by Margaret I,. Woods. 2s,! net. “The Witches’ Sabbath.” By E. H. W. Meyerstein. 2s. net. ‘‘ A Vision of Immortality.” By Stephen Reid-Heyman. 2s. 6d. net. “Saga Plays.” By Frank Betts. 3s. 6d. net. ‘‘ Songs on Service.” By Eliot Crawshay-Williams. 2s. 6d. net. “Windows.” By Christopher Johnson and E. B. C. Jones. IS. net. (Blackwell, Oxford.) Poetry is a passion, and when it is degraded to a pastime by amateurs who play at poetry as they play at everything else, the result is simply bad verse. It is nothing short of cruelty ,to flood a suffering world with matter that is no matter, and stuff that is only stuff and nonsense A recent offender is Mr. Blackwell of Oxford, to whom we present this page of protestas a gift. If he has not heard of the impending paper-famine (how his poets make us sigh for it !) it is time that Lord Devonport or whoever it is that controls the shortage, stretched a paint, and sent him an Official Intimation. Here are no fewer than ’six volumes, only one of which was worth the writing, much less the printing : and Mr, Blackwell shall have our opinion of them seriatim, since he “asks for it.” Place aux Dames. “A Scallopshell of Quiet” would be better-named an Oyster-shell of Dullness; for it is bound to be ostracised from the slopes of Helicon, and the “quiet” is the dreariness of an uplifting tea-meeting Mrs. Margaret L. Woods is the “introducer,’’ and she tells us what to look for; but, unfortunately we don’t find it. There are four eggs in this nestnot golden ones-and the book is dedicatd collectively To Our Mothers.” But it is a shame to try to shift the responsibility on to one’s heredity like that. We hold Mrs. Woods personally responsible. Our Impresario of the moment tells us all about poetry and her protegees; that “Before the war . . . the making of poetry was already ceasing to be regarded as it was in the later Nineteenth Century, as a slightly absurd hobby”; that Poetry is once more felt to be not an artificial, but a natural way of expressing emotions and ideas which escape the mesh of bare words” ; that “the four women to whom this form of expression comes happily and naturally have each her individual manner of using it.” Mrs. woods means that of the four women, each has, etc., but what is grammar? Thus do we “escape the mesh of bare words.” Miss Enid Dinnis “breathes the spirit of devotion which . . .” But enough of Mrs. Woods’ turgid sentimentality. Here are the “poet’s’’ own words :- , Cuckoo always says “ Cuckoo ’’ ’Cause the good God told him to-. One same tale the whole day through. 0 God ! 0 Montreal ! Miss Helen Douglas-Irvine is “essentially a lyrist, ” who “has seen poetry flashing past in the London taxi ,l but without catching it. Here she is :- Slow, slimy sea, Sleek, oleaginous, l And flats of sludge, Adhesive, glutinous, Curl, sly waves, on that slippery shore, Mingle its stench with your murky store. Miss Gertrude Vaughan is “also of those” who “perceive the squl of poetry in everyday circumstances .” Here she is :Could there be tragedy Greater than this? When I wanted kisses~ Long, passionate kisses, Sweet, dangerous kissesWhen I wanted kisses You gave me-a kiss? Miss Ruth Young, who rounds off this choir, is, among other things,, a “natural beauty” specialist. This is what she makes of it :The salt sea , Of Memory: The salt sea of Tears : Keepeth thee Ever, through the years. Well, it won’t do. Neither we, nor anyone else who may care for poetry, will stand it : and if these womensingers-as, we suppose, they are called-abandon Plato and the Higher Mathematics again for verse before they have learned how to write it, we shall tell them what we really think of them. But wait, there is worse to come. Enter the men. Mr. Meyerstein has been unpatriotic enough to read “Faust” by the late Herr “Wolfgang von Goethe; but his courage in flouting the Defence of the Realm Act has not been rewarded by his Muse, who, being a lady, is usually supposed to favour the brave. Maybe our poet read his “Faust” before the war, but, in that case, he is now old enough bo write better. We seem to win either way. Even the poor reviewer has his compensations What our ancestors of the Swinburnian Epoch used to call (with bated breath) The Fleshly School Of Poetry has, in these meatless days, so run to seed that we are always heping to see the Spirit shine through; but, somehow we very seldom do. Though well-up in the masterpieces of the Masefield-Munro school of song, Mr. Meyerstein-such is the occult force of alliteration--outdoes all his masters in bathos, pure bathos. Has he ever read the “Art of Sinking in Poetry,” by Martinus Scriblerus ? But-“Pierides, to Song !” And here it is-a whole page of it-by Mr. Meyerstein :-YOUNGWITCH. Nothing to tell. I am a whore and that is well, OLDWITCH. Prithee then sing us the life of a whore, And we will clap on this grassy floor, And when thou hast ended will curse thee for more. YOUNG WITCH sings . A delicate thing is a doxy To him who thinks her so, Be she withered or poxy, High-necked or low. An amiable thing is a doxy To him who thinks her so, Be she callous or foxy, Or sour as a crow. A fortunate thing is a doxy To him who thinks her so, For her motto, my masters, is fiocci Non facio. If the Young Witch is as foxy as Mr. Meyerstein’s Muse, we’ll gladly be damned with our poet at his Witches’ Sabbath. Mr. Meyerstein’s lyrics are as arresting as his play. We will not quote, fur the merciful reviewer is kind to his readers; but mercy to such writers as our poet is mercy misplaced. Assez de Meyerstein. Non facit: non placet. Addios. But not, oh not, auf wiedersehen. Mr. Reid-Heyman is at least clean : and he is widely read in English poetry. Evidently over-young, he is so impressed by other men’s work that his own soul is as yet undiscernible. Milton, Keats, Shelley (chiefly), throng his lines, and we read on vainly seeking the original line; and we are always disappointed. Truly an eternity of vision and nothing yet seen. More weariness ! Plays this time “Saga Plays,” by Mr. Frank Betts. The characters talk in a kind of low Elizabethan, all exactly alike; and in the short, silly, asthmatic sentences that Maeterlinck has made us love, though we didn’t want to do it. Why, by the way, are all Maeterlinck’s people spiritually shortwinded? Mr. Betts writes the dullest plays we’ve ever succeeded in reading, Please heaven we shall never see them acted. Mr. Eliot Crawshay-Williams, if not great himself, associates with the great. Mr. David Lloyd George is his dedicatee :To you I Vish to dedicate this boob (Mostly of worthless doggerel, if you look). Well; we Iooked, even if Mr. George did not. Mr. Crawshay-Williams is right. A pity that a man who can criticise his own work So well should write it so! badly. Our poet at his best recalls Kipling at his. worst : and he is vulgar enough to suit “Punch,” to whom we commend him. When a man is inspired by the war to write doggerel, he should bury his Muse: comfortablty in the “comic” Press and smoke woodbines on the grave. Dear reader, if you have been so patient as to read this record of wasted paper, know that we have two real poets for you at last, who modestly share a volume between them. Messrs. Christopher Johnson and E. B. C. Jones, stand forth! Your book, although the cheapest of the half-dozen, is the only one with any poetry in it. Go on and prosper. But, ere you go, may we: quote you? Ah, how we see thee though thou are not seen! Ah, how we know thee, knowing not thy mine : Ah, how thou wieldest two-edged sword more keen Than knight in armour, compassed with fame. Yea, and thy breath blows down from snowy mountains, Shivering with transcendental purity, Blasting red fruits and silencing hot fountains, Cutting off all things in maturity. , ’Tis thou that quenchest fires of sinful redness,‘ Piercing through bars that strive to hide their shame, Swift come thy blasts and do to death our deadness, Life-giving breath. But who can tell thy name? CHRISTOPHERJOHNSON. Above the urn wherein that body of his Fallen to dust will one day lie, Still as a statue is Narcissus broods in taciturnity. At his desire the funeral vase was wrought And graven with a poet’s wreath ; And now he cannot rid him of the thoughtHow strange-of his own death; Like a philosopher in love with truth, Absorbed, not sad but taciturn, Even so, in love with his own end, the youth Broods on above his urn. E. B. C. JONES.. That’s the kind of thing we can do with more of; for it begins to be poetry. It makes us almost forgive Mr. Blackwell. V. B. N. A Pic-nic. By Katherine Mansfield. (THE EVENING BEFORE). (MIRANDA Richmond laden with parcels, is fighting her way out of the tram). MIRANDA: Oh, dear, it’s simply impossible. People won’t move. They seem to be hypnotised. Let me pass, please. Excuse me. I want to get out. Now, I dropped one; I knew I should. (A young man picks it up. It is ANDREW GOLD, the artist) . MIRANDA herself) : What a surprise ! I never noticed {to him. (Smiles sweetly.) Thank you so much. GOLD : I’m getting (out, too. Don’t worry. I’ll give it to you when we’re safe ashore. (In the streets. ’The lamps are just lighted. A fine evening). MIRANDA: Now give me that wretched parcel. What a relief to be out of that car I didn’t notice you until you came to my rescue. I got in when you did. I knew you GOLD: No? didn’t see me. You were awfully deep in thought. MIRANDA (who had been wondering whether it was safe to fry that fish, or if it had better be boiled) : Was I? Heaven knows what I was thinking about. My horror of crowds, I expect . . . I’ve just two fingers for the parcel. GOLD : Please let me carry it. I am going your way. Give me some more. Give me this, and this and this. MIRANDA Yes, I will, then. 1 hate parcels. I am always on the poinr of simply throwing them away. (Sees herself, a charming; naughty child, throwing them away, and stamping an adorable little foot.) GOLD : Ha ! I know what this one is. It’s a pineapple. MIRANDA Yes, I love pineapples-don’t you? Not only the taste, but the colour and shape of themtheir solidity. They are so really barbaric-don’t you think? (A pause.) The first painting I ever saw of yours was a dish of nectarines and black grapes. (Smiles.) I never forgot it. GOLD: Oh, yes. I think I know the one you mean. (Doesn’t he, just !) Awfully glad you liked it. It was one of my favourites. I had rather a feeling that I had brought it off. MIRANDA: Well, this is my gate. (They stop.) Isn’t it a divine evening ! (Little Dickie in the garden gathering snails in a tin pail). DICKIE : Mummy ! Mummy ! MIRANDA (charmingly tender) : Well,, my little sweet. DICKIE : Jennie is awfully cross. She been waitin’ an’ waitin’ for that fish. MIRANDA (hands him a wettish paper bag) : Run with it into the kitchen, my precious. (’Io Gold) : I’m not going to ask you to come in. Houses are so absurd on a night like this-aren’t they. Stifling ! One only wants to walk about and breathe the lovely air. GOLD (ardently) I only wish you would. MIRANDA (shakes her head smiling into his eyes) : Alas ! (Has a happy thought : We’re all going for a pic-nic to Days Bay, to-morrow. Won’t you came GOLD : But I’d love to. MIRANDA: Do, then. Good-bye (shyly) until to-morrow. GOLD (fervently) Until to-morrow. (Stands bareheaded until she disappears.) My God! She’s a gorgeous woman. She’s wonderful. And to think she’s wasted on that ass of a Richmond. She’s such an amazing type to find in a place like this. Awfully primitive. Extraordinarily barbaric. (He sees himself in a strange country, dressed as a hunter, striding back to the camp fire at evening. A woman crouches over the fireglow.) WOMAN : Andrew ! HUNTER : Miranda ! (On the wharf by the ferry boat. The women look quite charming in their summer dresses, with wide hats and coloured parasols ; the men, very disreputable in old flannel trousers and sweaters. Dear little Dickie rushes up and down the gangway, tumbles over coils of rope, balances himself on one leg on the edge of the wharf, piping :-“Look at me. Look ! Look what I’m doing now !”), MRS. HILL : Who are we waiting for? Aren’t we all Oh, your husband’s not come yet, has he? ’here? Miranda No he had to gp to the office first. Bat he promised to be here in good time. MRS. HILL : Oh, he does have to work hard-doesn’t he ! What a shame it is ! My dear, why on earth has Mrs. Barker brought her mother? She’s such an old bore; she always wants to do what everybody else does. She actually bathed last year, my dear, in an immense chemise. And do you see what she’s carrying over her arm? An air-cushion. Isn’t she too disgusting MIRANDA : Dreadful. I wish Frank would come. MRS. HILL : Good gracious! Look who’s coming Andrew Gold. My dear, who ever can have ininvited him? I’m sure I didn’t. MIRANDA I haven’t the least idea. : MRS. HILI. : But how mysterious He’s evidently come for the pic-nic. I wonder who invited him. I must ask. (She rushes away and asks each separate lady.) It really is too mysterious for words. GOLD (Comes up to Miranda Raises his hat, and is just about to speak, when the siren blows a terrific blast). MR. HILL (taking command) : Now then-all aboard ! We can’t wait any longer. Come on, everybody. Stow the lunch-baskets on the upper deck. MRS. HILL: But poor Mr. Richmond, Harry! (Cries of : “Here he is ! Here he comes ! Don’t pull up the gangway !” FRANK RICHMOND dashes down the wharf, and leaps on board, panting and perspiring.) RICHMOND: By Jove, that was a narrow shave. I couldn’t manage to get away a moment before Morning, everybody ! . Grand day ! (Shouts to Captain Let her go, Captain ! (He feels triumphant; he feels like a King’s Messenger arriving ) Had to answer an important letter by this morning’s mail. Just managed to get it off in time. OLD MRS. BARKER(with great relish) He’ll catch his death of cold out on the water in that state of perspiration. RICHMOND (very hearty) : Oh, don’t you mind me, Mrs. Barker. I can afford to take a risk or two at my am HILL (to Richmond) : Just a word, ole man. (Leads him away mysteriously) : Have a nip of whiskey. I’ve got a drop of the very best. How’s thateh ? RICHMOND: O.K., ole man I say, who invited that chap, Gold? HILL : Deuce knows. Bit of a wet blanket-isn’t he? RICHMOND: I can’t stick the fellow. He’s one of those lop-eared artist chaps. Slippery as an eel. Never know when you’ve got him. GOLD: How lovely she looks under that yellow umbrella. The Yellow Umbrella-portrait by Andrew Gold. One thousand guineas. And sold- the day the exhibition opened. . . What on earth have I been doing ever since I came to this rotten little town? I never seemed to see her until last night when she made that remark about- the pineapple She’s utterly unlike all the women here. I must get her to myself for a bit. I must talk to her. Why can’t we give these people the slip when we get off the boat. . . . Would she? MIRANDA: Isn’t it a divine morning? GOLD (looks a trifle dashed) : Er-yes. MIRANDA (perceiving it) : I don’t know if you are like me. I really feel that climate is almost the only thing that matters. If the sun comes out one expands and becomes a human being, and-anything seems possible. And when the sun goes in I want to creep into a hollow tree and die. . . . GOLD (enthusiastically) :. I understand absolutely what you mean. Yes, I am just like that myself. I feel .. more and more strongly. DICKIE : Mummy, kin I have a be-nana? MIRANDA: Not now, darling ; run away. (To Gold) : Yes, so do I. Everything else seems to be such a false complexity. People seem to take a huge delight in denying the simple richness of life-don’t you feel? that GOLD : But of course I do. It’s so extraordinary you should say that. It’s my creed, absolutely. Dickie : Mummy, why can’t I have a be-nana now? MIRANDA (hands him one as if it were a lily) : Run and play with Bobbie Hill, sweetheart. (To Gold : And, after all, one’s life is lived in such strange places, that one is simply forced. to cling to what is really ultimate. . . The sun, the sea-the earth (laughs) they’re the only Gods I pray to. (They lean over the side). GOLD : You must be very lonely here. MIRANDA(looks at ‘him, smiling bravely) : Yes, I am. Very lonely. GOLD : Couldn’t we escape from these people after we arrive, and have a real talk-(very low)-you and I? MIRANDA (simply) : I should like to. (They arrive.) MR. HILL (still in command) : Come along, now, everybody. Bathing is the first item on the programme. You ladies can undress behind the rocks, and we’ll go among the sand hills. MIRANDA : I don’t think I’ll bathe, Frank. RICHMOND:Why, of course, you will, my dear girl. What the hell’s the good of a pic-nic if you’re afraid of getting your feet wet. MRS. HILL : Oh, Mrs. Richmond ! We won’t bathe if you don’t. Young MRS. BARKER: No, ’indeed, we won’t. MR. HILL : Now, then, Mrs. Richmond don’t spoil the party. Miranda (to Gold) : Later, then. . . . . GOLD (bows and makes far the sand hills). (In the water). Miranda (swims away from the others : Gold follows) Isn’t it divine ! (To herself) : Why on earth do I keep on saying “divine”? That’s the third time since I met him last night. GOLD: Try and escape from the others when this is over. Will you ? MIRANDA herself) : I feel as light as a feather. How (to lovely it is to be lifted, lifted by these lovely waves. (She cries to him : like a mermaid, she thinks) : Yes, I will escape. I will ! (To herself) : What a good thing it is that I can swim so well. For I do swim very well. So smoothly and gracefully. We are like creatures of another world, he and I. For surely, I am in my way an artist, too. He makes me feel one. It is strange how when I am with him, everything I see seems to turn into a picture. What is going to happen? What does it matter. . . . I willescape-I will ! (A cold hand clasps her ankle and drags her under). RICHMOND: Ha! Ha! Ha: That gave you-a good surprise, didn’t it. Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! Did you see that, Hill? (After the bathe). HILL: Now, then, ladies, look sharp. Don’t mind your back hair. We’re all married men, except Gold, and-he’s an artist, and don’t count Get a move on with those sandwiches. MIRANDA: Oh, what am I doing among these vulgar people? I never realised until to-day how far, far away I was from them. Why can’t we simply disappear? I, too, feel that we’ve something to say to each other. He makes me feel so myself , in the truest sense. . . . MRS, HILL : Will you butter Mrs. Richmond, while I mustard, or will you mustard, while I butter ? MIRANDA : Certainly, Mrs. Hill. (They have lunch). MR. HILL (opening bottles) : Now, then, ladies. We’ll soon have you twinkling. RICHMOND: Pass your glass along, Gold. I suppose you’re accustomed to this kind of thing. Pic-nic every day of the year, if you want one-what. By Jove, you can’t think what it means to a chap like me, who spends his life sweating in an office-eh, Hill ? OLD MRS. BARKER(tartly) : I’ll have an-other glass of wine. YOUNGMRS. B. (warningly) : Mother ! GOLD: Will you have an almond-biscuit, Mrs. Richmond Try and escape after this--will you? MIRANDA(meaningly) : Yes, I will ! (After lunch). MIRANDA : What a wonderful view there must be from the top of that hill. (Very skittish.) I’m going up there. GOLD (very gay) : May I come, too, Mrs. Richmond? MIRANDA: Yes, if you promise not to faint by the way. (They go Mrs. HILT, (to young Mrs. B.) : Now I know who asked young Mr. Gold. (They climb). MIRANDA [standing on the top of the hill, facing the‘ wind) : Oh, it’s perfectly div-wonderful ! GOLD : I should like to paint YOU, just like that. MIRANDA(archly) : Well, why don’t you? GOLD : Seriously? MIRANDA (gravely) : I’d be only too proud. GOLD: Let us sit down here. Thank God we’ve escaped. Mrs. Richmond-Miranda ! Old Mrs. Barker crashes through the bushes). OLD MRS. B. (trumpeting) : Well, I wasn’t so far behind you, after all. I always was one for pre-cipi-tous hills ! (At tea). DICKIE : Daddie, there’s a sailor coming at us. RICHMOND: Great Scott ! So there is. What the dickens can he want! SAILOR: Captain says we’ll have to start at once. There’s a big storm blowing up. GOLD : Let us escape from the others on the boat. We must talk. , MIRANDA: Yes, I will. I will. MR. HILL : NOW, then, ladies and gentlemen (etc , etc.) On the boat). GOLD : They won’t follow us here. My God if they do, I’ll kill the first person who comes along. Miranda ! MIRANDA (turning pale) : I can’t stay here; one feels the motion so. (The boat rocks, quivers, dives. It gets very cold GOLD : Let us stand behind a funnel. Miranda ! MIRANDA (paler) : I can’t stay here. There is such a smell of oil. (The boat gives a tremendous roll. Miranda is hurled across the deck against the railing. Gold disapprs). MIRANDA(sobbing) : Why doesn’t somebody look after me. Why am I always utterly alone ! {Two minutes later). MIRANDA: Oh, Frank, why didn’t you come before? I’m all alone: I feel horribly ill. I’m so cold. RICHMOND Great Scott ! I thought Gold was looking : after you. My poor little pole cat, you are a sight! Here, take my coat. I don’t want the damned thing. Come over here. Sit down. You won’t feel the motion so much. Lean on me. That’s right. Your poor little hat’s all crooked. That’s the ticket. MIRANDA (feeling death is near) : Where is our Dickie? RICHMOND: Old mother Barker’s got him. He’s all right. I MIRANDA(a trifle warmer) : Isn’t it dreadful ! RICHMOND: Oh, nothing much. Bit of a swell on. MIRANDA(to herself). He really is brave. And he holds me so beautifully. I don’t feel the motion half so much. I like leaning against him. And he gave me his coat-without a thought-so simply beautifully even. Yes beautifully. (A trifle warmer : Frank. RICHMOND Yes? MIRANDA: Do you remember I used to call you Big Bear ? RICHMOND : No. Clean forgotten. MIRANDA: I love him even for that-for forgetting. (To Richmond) : Is there any danger? RICHMOND: Good Lord, .no, little woman. Can I get you anything? A nip of whiskey? MIRANDA: No, no don’t move. Stay there. Hold me. Don’t let me go. Don’t leave me. (Feels his shoulder shake) : Are you-laughing? RICHMOND: I’m wondering what you’ll feel like. when this is all over, old girl., MIRANDA (fervently: the past a dream): Just as I do now ! RICHMOND (sees Hill appear. Tips him a wink and leans over Miranda) :There-there-little woman. Nearly there, now ! Moderns. By Edward Moore. THE SIN OF INTELLECTUALISM.-The first sin, the original sin was that of the intellectuals. The knowledge of Good and Evil was not an instantaneous “illumination”; it was the result of long experiment and analysis : the apple took perhaps hundreds of years to eat! Before that, in the happy days of innocence, Good and Evil were not, for instinct and morality were, one and not twain. As time passed, however,, the physically lazy, who had been from the beginning, became weaker and wiser. Enforced contemplation, the contemplation of those who were not strong enough to hunt or to labour, made them more subtle than their simple brethren ; they formed themselves into a priesthood and created a theology. In these priests instinct was not strong: they were invalids with powerful reason. But they had the lust for power; they wished to conquer by means of their reason; therefore, they said to themselves, belittle instinct, tyrannise over instinct, discover an absolute “good” and an absolute “evil,” become moral. Morality, which had in the days of innocence been unconscious, the harmony of the instincts, was now given a separate existence. The cry was morality against the instincts. Thus triumphed the priests, the intellectuals, by means of their reason. Original Sin was their sin-the result of the analysis by which they had separated morality and the instincts. If we are to speak of Original Sin at all, let it be in this manner. PRIDE AND THE FALL.-It was not humility that was the parent of the fable of the Fall. Or is it humility to boast of one’s high ancestry, and if the ancestry does We not exist, to invent it? The naive poet who created that old allegory did not foresee the number of interpretations which would be read into it. He did not foresee that it would be used to humiliate Man instead of to exalt him; he did not at all foresee Original Sin, As less than justice, then, has been meted to him, let us now accord him more than justice. Let us say that he was a divine philosopher who perceived that in unconditional morality lay the grand misfortune ‘of mankind. Man is innocent, thus he said, it is an absolute ethic that defiles him-the knowledge of Good and Evil. Sweep that away, and he is innocent and back in the Garden of Eden again. Let us say this of the first poet, for certainly he did not mean it ! Perhaps he knew nothing at all about morality ! All that he wished for was to provide a dignified family tree for his generation. THE GOODCONSCIENCE.-what a revolution for mankind it would be to get back “the good conscience”? Life made innocent, washed free from how much filth of remorse, guilt, contempt, “sin”-that vision arouses a longing more intense than that of the religious for any heaven. And it seems at least equally possible of realisation ! Bad conscience arises when religion and the instincts are in opposition; the more comprehensive and deep this conflict, the more guilty the conBut there have been religions not antagonistic science. to the instincts, which, instead of condemning them, have thought so well of them as to become their rule, their discipline. The religion of the Greeks was an example of this; and in Greece, accordingly, there was no “bad conscience’’ in our sense. Well, how is it possible, if it is possible, to regain “the good conscience”? Not by any miracle ! Not by an instaneous“change of heart,” for even the heart changes slowly. But suppose that a new instinctive religion and morality were to be set up, and painfully complied with, until they became a second nature as ours have become, should we not then gradually lose our bad conscience, born as it is out of the antagonism between instinct and morality? Nay, if we were to persevere still further until instinct and religion and moralitybecame intermingled and indistinguishable, might we not enter the Garden of Eden again, might not innocence itself become ours? But to attain that end, an unremitting discipline, extending over hundreds of years, might be necessary; and who, in the absence of gods, is to impose that discipline? THE OTHER SIDE.-The life-defaming creeds are not to be condemned unconditionally: even they are not asceticism, contempt for the worldevil. “Guilt,” these are the physiologically bad things which have sharpened, deepened, and made subtle the soul of man. The Greeks were simple compared with modern man; a thousand times more healthy, it is true-perhaps because they are incapable of contracting our maladies. Well, let us judge Christianity, which in Europe was mainly responsible for this deepening of Man, by an artistic criterion : let us judge it by the effects it achieved, not by what it said. If there are gods who take an interest in Man, and experiment upon him, what better means could they have devised for getting out of him certain “effects,” not Christian at all, than Christianity? Far more significant for manhood than the virtues of Christianity, are its contradictions, excesses and “states of mind. *’ The “way of life,” Christian morality, is of little account compared with the permanent physiological and psychological transformations effected upon Man by the discipline of centuries of religion. Not that Man has been forced into the mould of Christian morality, but that in the process he has undergone the most unique ConvuIsions, adaptations and permutations, that an entire new world of conflict, pain, fear, horror, exaltation faith and scepticism has been, born within him, that Life, driven within itself, has deepened, enriched and invested him-that is from the standpoint of human culture the most important thing, beside which what is usually understood by the Christianising of Europe is relatively insignificant. Not Christian morality, but the effects of Christian morality it is that now concern us And these effects are not themselves Christian; rather the contrary. Christianity has made Man more complex, contradictory, sceptical, tragic and sublime ; it has given--him more capacity for good and for evil, and has added to these two qualities subtlety and spirituality. HISTORY OF THE DIONYSIAN.-In the beginning he possessed innocence; the world appeared to him as beautiful, Man as good, and the future as immeasurable. The great illusion of Rousseau was his-a “natural man” himself, believing in the “natural man,” a romanticist, a credulous, not too sincere, “beautiful” soul-a youth with the qualities of youth. But a day came when unwillingly and painfully his soul forced his eyes open and compelled them to look and he saw without illusion : the cruelty beneath smiling Appearance the red claw, and conscienceless, inappeasable appetite. Looking at Man he found him a powerless little creature, condemned to a few years in this world, cut off by Death, and even during hip life circumscribed by invincible limitation. Nevertheless, his man disdained to hide his head in the sands of illusion; and immediately he became altogether more worthy of respect, more real, almost sublime A nobIe resignation to Life now characterised him ; the classical writers, especially the Greeks with their naturalistic pessimism, seemed to him the highest thing; and he accepted the theory of. Original Sin. All honour to him when he reached, after a painful journey, this spare but real conclusion!All honour to this pessimist who would not deceive himself ! One day, however, the thought came to him, “Even if pain and necessity be the truths of Life: there is something within me which can turn these, also, to account? 1 can transfigure them. Pain, Struggle, Change--these will no longer enslave me; for these shall be my slaves !” At that moment he became a Dionysian ; he had turned the corner of pessimism, and had gained freedom. Original Sin was no longer true for him; for a new truth had dawned in whose light the old was quenched From an illusive freedom in the beginning, through‘ bondage to necessity, to a new freedom-the history of the Dionysian. The pessimist is more profound than the “natural man,” but the Dionysian is the most profound of all. He burrows deeper than pessimism itself; he grows the most happy of men, out of the very soul of ‘pessimism. TRAGIC AFFIRMATION.-TO feel happy at this moment -is not that toapprove of your whole life, of its suffering conflict, ennui and scepticism no less than its victories and festivals? This moment is what it is by virtue of these experiences; justify it and you justify them. The physical agony which left its mark upon you; the anguish of bereavement and of disillusionthe cynicism with which you consoled yourself ; the years when you lived altogether bereft of hope; your most profound and most petty thoughts and actions ; your meanest, bitterest and noblest experiences all these are unconsciously affirmed in your affirmation of this moment. Let them be affirmed consciously! Or is your soul afraid to go as far as your will? . Looking back now with new eyes over your life, you find that precisely what you cannot do is to repent-least of all of your sins and griefs ! For to repent is to will Life to be other than Life, and essentially not to affirm. He who contemplates his life thus, perhaps understands for the first time what is the meaning of Tragedy. Interviews. By C. E. Bechhofer. X.-THE BISHOP OF LONDON. THE Bishop of London said that for the last three or four years he has been trying to put certain reconstructive ideas before congregations and audiences in England and Scotland. “I quite agree,” he said, “that sex is only! one part of the problem, but at the same time one element of the new conditions will be that men and women shall learn self-control. We should not have these terrible moral difficulties in the City of London, nor be told, as you know we have been, by commissions, that ten per cent. of our population are afflicted with diseases which come directly or indirectly from lack of self-control. “The first thing we need is a new country-a new country in which brotherhood shall reign. It is not a law of the Medes and Persians that Capital and Labour should always be at war. My new country is a country in which class and class will live at peace with one another, and where Capital and Labour will agree to divide fairly between them the fruits of industry. It will be quite sufficient to effect this if an adequate return is given to Capital and a fair living wage to the worker. We must bring over the real brotherhood of the trenches, and make it a part of our normal working life. “Secondly, I want to see a new Empire. After the war. the British Empire is going to be on the whole ten times as powerful as ever before, and it will be looked on, as the Prime Minister says, as a great tower peeping out of the deep to save the freedom of the world. We must see that it is made a blessing to the world. This only can be done if the Empire is held together not only by brotherhood and mutual self-interest, but also by the bonds of religious purpose. must never send out our boys to the colonies We again, as hitherto we have done, without ministers, without sacraments, and without churches. “We come then to a new Church. I believe that the weakness of the Church arises from its divisions. If it had remained a united and devoted Church, as it once was two thousand years ago, this war, I think, would never have come to pass at all. The Church would have been so strong that even Germany with her pagan gospel of ‘Might is Right,’ would never have risked an attack upon it. We must get back to an undivided Church again. This is, I firmly believe, not so impossible as it seems. The Greek Church is looking with friendly eyes towards the Church of England. The nonconformist bodies in this country are now united into one body, with which it will be far easier for the Church to meet and negotiate than with scattered societies. In Scotland thePresbyteriansare being united. And in fact-it is better to be honest-the only obstacle to the union of the Churches is the claim of Rome to Romanise the world, which is just like the Germans’ claim to Germanise the world. Once that is laid aside, the only bar to the unity of Christendom is removed. “Fourthly, I am looking for a new world. How is the eternal menace of war to be removed Not by President Wilson’s Peace League, which has as its object to make war on the nations that will not have peace. We have tried the Holy Alliance before. But only when Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled shall we have a real ,and lasting peace: ‘They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain : for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.’ In other words, the securing of the peace of the world is in the hands of a successful Church. “This is my vision, and this is what I continually am preaching to show, that I consider the Church is bound to have- its message in these times to every man and woman. I need not say that I look on all this vision as only possible in the blessing of Him of Whom it is said, ‘He that sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.’ ” I asked the Bishop of London what his practical suggestions are. He replied, “First, there must be a number of men and women who really believe. Then there must be a divine discontent with things as they are-this will suit THE NEW AGE !-in ourselves, in the nation, and in the Church. Thirdly, we need sacrifice. “It is easy to talk of making sacrifices; but let us see what we mean. For instance, the capitalist may have to give up a third of what goes to Capital to the wages of his men. One capitalist himself told me that he thought this ought to be so. In return, the workmen must give up some of their cherished ideas, such as restriction of output, behind which, as it were, they have entrenched themselves against the capitalist, whom they distrust. Fourthly, there is prayer, by which, we are told, we can work with supreme power and which we should never have thought of, or thought of any good, unless we had been told so. And lastly, we need witness. We must have attractive, unselfish witnesses in all classes to religion.” To a question of mine, the Bishop of London said, “I do not say that the wage-system is perfect. Personally, I am all in favour ofprofit-sharing; but, what seems to me very curious, the workmen do not like it. However, in all these matters, what is important is to get the right spirit. If you get the right spirit, the method must work itself out. “Christianity abolished slavery by malting master and man kneel together before the same Christian altar. The Church, working from slavery towards equality, produced the spirit of mercy, as you have it in hospitals. You can trace Christianity through Europe like a molehill by the hospitals it has thrown up. For a thousand years a bishop held the highest authority in every hospital in Europe. A few unknown missionaries in the early ages and a little band of poor Italian monks converted barbarous Britain into Christian England. Why should we not expect similar miracles to-day? We must concern ourselves with the spirit. If the spirit is right, the method will adjust itself.” Views ROUSING and THE Reviews. RUSSIANS. THE Russian Revolution seems to be fulfilling the hopes not of those who are witnessing it but of those who foresaw it. More than thirty years ago, M. Leroy Beaulieu prophesied that “a Russian revolution might be the greatest of historical events since the French revolution, to which, at an interval of one century, it would be the natural supplement.” It is unfortunate, in some ways, that it should have occurred in a time of universal war ; for, by disturbing the -extraordinary unity of purpose of the Allies, it is liable to misinterpretationby them, and cannot command the entire sympathy of the world. There is a general agreement that the only menace to Liberty is the German Empire and its Allies, and that the only way to make Liberty secure is to defeat in the field the forces arrayed against us. The Russians, by refusing to manure the fields of foreign countries with their bodies, are liable to be charged, and are actually charged, with defection from the cause of Liberty; and even General Smuts, who phrased his lecture to Russia in more sympathetic terms than are usual, could not avoid the suggestion, although he stated it only to repudiate it: It was the Russian Stepniak who said, thirty years ago, that “peasants are never influenced by the abstract idea of liberty’’ ; and General Smuts’ assumption that democratic Russia would fulfil the purposes of autocratic Russia really implies the belief that the Revolution was a mere revolt against the persons and not the purposes of the Romanoffs. But if the Allies maintain the purposes of the Romanoffs, if, as General Smuts said, “it is our wish, and our hope, and our trust that Russia will continue to bear her share in smashing the power of the Turk,” can they hope for more success than the Romanoffs had? Of what avail is it to tell the Russians that Germany “will swallow every formula, and everything besides, and swallow you in the end if you are not careful,” when the alternative is that they must take their marching orders from the Allies? They may have their own opinion of the German menace to Liberty, and of the Allies’ promise of it; and if the declaration of their accredited representatives may be believed, they are by no means disposed to accept our professions at their face value. We may talk about our own genius for democratic government, our own generosity in bestowing liberal institutions upon subjectpeoples; but the Russians remind us of Ireland, India, and Egypt, and seem unable to understand that our good intentions. redeem us from the charge of oppression. The defect of all this lecturing is that it is first. addressed to the English people; it is impossible, in such circumstances, to avoid supposing that the Russians are really English people who speak a different language. But, said Stepniak, “the abstract sciences are the only things which are cosmopolitan. All that deals with, or refers to, masses of living men may be great on condition of its being national.” And in revolutions Russia has always had a national bias; M. Leroy Beaulieu observed : “The presumptuous hope of creating a new type of society, which the reactionary Slavophiles claim for their country, is repeated in a different form, but with the same assurance, by many Russian revolutionists. They dream that the Russian revolution will completely outdo our revolutions, which were all individualistic, profitable to the bourgeoisie rather than to the masses of the people, whilst the Russian revolution will bring into the world a new really popular gospel, having more of a socialistic. stamp than a political one, adapted to the wants of the Slavonic people, and presenting at the same time to the West an example worthy of imitation. And really a Russian revolution, which must almost certainly help arrive ’ at a kind of agrarian socialism, cannot being different from what we have seen elsewhere. It is precisely in a revolution that Russia will have the greatest facility of showing herself original, and of producing something new and purely Slavonic. ” It is clear, then, that previous experience of revolutions in other countries is not likely to qualify anybody to advise the Russians correctly; and it is possible that words which to us have an obvious meaning may convey to them a totally different meaning. Take, for example, General Smuts’ description of their need of organisation and discipline. “Democracy is in our blood,” he said, “and organisation and discipline are part of our national culture.” We know exactly what the words mean; they mean the suspension of the constitutional guarantees, compulsory military service, suspension of trade union rights, the introduction into industry of agents provocateurs, and all the other methods of a strongly centralised Government. To us, all these things are agreeable because German tyranny would be abominable; Liberty, to us, is not something to enjoy and exercise at. home, but something to fight the Germans for, and, by defeating , them, to secure for all the world for all time. But the system that we have adopted to enable us to fight the. Germans for Liberty is precisely the system against which the Russians have revolted; and General Smuts’ recommendation of “organisation and discipline in the armies at the front, in their transport service, in their factories, in all the activities of life far beyond the lines,” will either be understood as advocacy of the very system they have overthrown, or be interpreted in such a way as to be meaningless to us. I turn back to Stepniak. “Russia,” he prophesied, will cease to be a centralised empire as soon as she obtains the faculty of adjusting herself according to her own disposition. And we may add that the greater the liberty enjoyed at this reconstruction, the fewer will be the centralised elements which will remain in it.” And the German menace which General Smuts, with others, regards as the great danger to Russian liberty, was discounted years ago by this Russian revolutionist. “These twin brothers-Prussian despotism, mitigated by representative forms and the high culture of the whole of the German nation; and Russian despotism, cynically brutal and not mitigated by anything-are mutually supporting and protecting each other. It is too evident that they cannot exist without each other, and a severe disaster likely to involve the downfall of the one would be the ruin of both. On the day when the great German nation recovers its real and not its fictitious freedom there will be exultation through all Russia, because the despotism destroyed in Berlin would be impossible to maintain for long in Petersburg. On the other hand, the transformation of the Northern Colussus from a gloomy centralised despotism into a vast union of self-governing States and provinces-the only form into which a free Russia can mould itselfwill drive into a liberal evolution the whole of Central Europe. In Austria first, which will be unable to withstand for a year the great attractions of a free Russian federation on the masses of her Slavonic population ; in Germany next, Prussian dictatorship will be unable to keep its hold, surrounded, as it will be, on all sides, by free States. With it will fall the reign of brutality, and, perhaps, the unendurable military terror now crushing and ruining all continental Europe.” “In Austria first” ; and even as I write, the Reichsrath has been opened, and the Emperor has declared that “the happy development of constitutional life . . . is not possible without expanding the Constitution and the administrative foundations of the whole of our public life, both in the State and in the separate kingdoms and countries, especially Bohemia. ’’ It is possible, too, that the Russians do not share our fear of the Germans because they do not care so much for Liberty as we do; indeed, it is doubtful whether they care very much about anything except the land. A people that could say to their masters : “We are yours, but the land is ours’’ : accepting personal slavery with far less difficulty than economic insolvency, a people that, even at the Emancipation, talked less of freedom than they did of the re-distribution of the land, is not a people to be roused to enthusiasm by an abstract Liberty “It is quite certain,” said Stepniak, “that the inauguration of political freedom in Russia-whatever be the door by which it enters-will be the startingpoint of a series of agrarian and social reforms, much more radical than those which accompanied the French revolution.” It is to be regretted that General Smuts did not demonstrate to the Russians how “smashing the power of the Turk” would enable them to get possession of their own land; indeed, there are Englishmen to whom the connection is not obvious. Possibly, the difference between us is a difference of conception of liberty; we think of it in terms of international politics, as a reason for war, they think of it in terms of agrarian economics, as a reason for peace, and perhaps General Smuts has not yet appreciated the distinction, A. E. R. Reviews. Thoughts on ReIigion at the Front. By Rev. Neville S. Talbot. (Macmillan. 2s. net.) This little book is proffered with many apologies; the author recognises the difficulties of forming a sound judgment on such an intimate subject. He admits that the chaplain is in “an unchristian position, ” that Christ Himself would probably have been one of the “boys” and not an officer. That initial difficulty of rank cannot be overcome, there is the “pathos of distance” between the chaplain and the men. Add to that the fact that the men themselves have been obliged to put on the armour of insensibility, that “they are remarkably void of apprehension in every sense of the word,” and it is obvious that if a chaplain is to speak truly about the state of the men’s souls he must be diffldent, must make continual qualifications. Not even the shrapnel of salvation can pierce the “tin-hat. ’,’ Allowing for all these difficulties of observation, the author states that “on the whole, I venture to say, there is not a great revival of the Christion religion at the front. Yet I am eager to acclaim the wonderful quality of spirit which men of our race display in this war, and, to claim .it as Christian and God-inspired. Deep in their hearts is a great trust and faith in God.” But this reminds us too much of the wholesale baptising of savage tribes by early Christian missionaries to be convincing. We admit “their cheerfulness, stubbornness, patience generosity, humility, and willingness to suffer and die ; but these are not distinctively Christian virtues. They are the characteristically stoical qualities of our race, and may be discovered throughout history in peoples who had no tincture of Christianity. But the author admits later that the religion of the men is really pagan religion; they call upon their God in the hour of their need, and judge the truth of religion by the response. “Bill did pray, but yet he had his head blowed off”; and the fatalism of their other saying : “If it ’its yer, it ’its yer,” cannot by any stretching of meaning be called Christian. Admitting these facts, Mr. Talbot none the less argues that the men are unconsciously Christian, and that a simple presentation of Christian teaching would win their assent, enlarge their consciousness of the Divine Presence, and enrich them spiritually with a more abiding certainty of the love of God. At present they believe only in a special Providence, but it is possible to make them understand that even in the details of their lives they can do the everlasting will of God. Confessions of a Little Man During Great Days. By Leonid Andreyeff. Translated by R. S. Townsend. (Duckworth. 6s.) We have had our own version of “The Man Who Stayed at Home”; and with less subtlety than Andreyeff employs, very much the same accusations were made against him. The English conscience was salved by the melodramatic refutation of those accusations ; but apparently the Russian conscience is relieved by the surreptitious confession of their truth. This diary of a civilian is one long confession of the accuracy of the popular prejudice against non-combatants ; this “little man” admits in the privacy of his diary to having a tender regard for his own skin. True, he was over age, and therefore not liable to military service; but privately he exulted in the fact, rejoiced that the war would never reach him. He had his flurry of fear at the beginning,- and rushed his family into Petrograd from Shuvalov, carefully leaving the cook behind to look after his property. But he recovered in five days, and went back again to Shuvalov “not the least bit ashamed.” He is perfectly frank about his “happiness,” and about his opinion of the war; at first, it seems to him “ridiculous, like some silly practical joke,’’ for men to begin killing each other at the word of command. But when he thinks of his brother-in-law, Pavel, in the army, when he realises that “sooner or- later he is bound to be killed in this horrible war that is more like some wholesale butchery than the triumph of justice,” the absurdity of being dead is forgotten, and he is preoccupied with the difficulty of breaking .the news, whenever it comes, to the weaker sex, mother and daughter. When the wife becomes a nurse, and neglects the home and children and him with his weak digestion, he complain‘s; he even begrudges her the cigarettes that she takes from his stock for her soldiers. But he speedily repents and makes amends by presenting the cigarettes, by enduring the bad cooking of the mother, and the slatternly housekeeping. Apparently he accepts the dangerous doctrine that in a war for civilisation civilians must suffer, that the only way to save the home from the Germans is to allow it to be destroyed by its own members His admiration for his wife is frankly confessed : it is the admiration of a private spirited man for a public spirited woman; she drops the burden of the home and takes up the burden of the hospital. The little girl dies of appendicitis; the doctors were all too busy attending to soldiers to treat her in time; and being private minded, he grieves for her. But he soon discovers that public feeling is opposed to private grief unless for “someone at the front”; and his admirable wife has no time to sympathise with him. So the confession proceeds until he loses his work, and at last determines to commit suicide; but a moment of self-revelation on the bridge saves him, he sees that he is a coward, and rushes back to his wife. She is a “saint”; she forgives him, even obtains a week’s leave from her hospital to look after him, and finally secures him a job in an ambulance. Curiously enough, considering the satirical intention the reader comes to like the little fellow. He has a pathetic appeal similar to that of Wells’ ineffective people; his capacity. for suffering is so great, his power of performance is so little, that the war really means more to him than to those who wage it. His ineffectiveness is really occupational ; a man cannot specialise for a lifetime and develop new aptitudes in an emergency; and in this case he is rendered still more ineffective by an excess of humility and sympathetic emotion. He suffers, and suffering is unproductive it will pay neither rent, rates, nor taxes, nor will it heal one wound. The poor little fellow needs to be taught another trade than that of a bank-clerk Mean Monopolists. By Frederick (Author, Fern Cottage, New Park Park.) Moir Bussy. Road, Clapham Pastiche. THE CARMELITE. (“ Lord Northcliffe supports Mr. Asquith’s policy.”“ Daily Chronicle,” May 4, 1917.) The wisdom of the Carmelite Is offered to you, Land of Freedom, By him who is Great Britain’s might; He has the brains, and feels you need ’em. His praise is worth all rubies rare; In value it’s beyond computing; ’Tis spreading, spreading everywhere Like Jack’s bean-stalk, ’tis convoluting. In time with force ’twill’ grip your soul, As now it grips the soul of Britain; You may think now we’re “up the pole,” But ‘wait, dear people, till you’re bitten. You think you know a ,thing or two, And do not need this great adviser, But listen, he addresses you, And you’ll ’ be humbler, vastly wiser. You do not know of “ Comic Cuts,” The ‘‘ Union Jack,” the ‘‘Jester ’’ (screaming!), The “ Times,” the “ Daily Mail ”-the Nuts, The Lit’ry Cuthberts-you’re but dreaming. These guide the taste of British folks, These shape our Acts, provide our blinkers ; The “ Times” provides us with our jokes, . The others furnish our best thinkers. We tax the rich, let off the poor, Whilst cap’lists serve us-oh, so justly! The poor get blessings in galore, So freedom’s thriving so robustly. We let the patriotic take But part of their just surplus profit; These good men-never on the makePut on the price, we make ’em doff it. So, Uncle Sam, be humble please, The one who knows is now unbending; In gratitude get on your knees, And praises render, tense, ascending. You may not see his like again, A genius visits us but rarely, His every word is wisdom plain,. Your brains they’ll tickle fairly, squarely. V. A. PURCELL. FLIES. More flies than I have ever seen, Flies black and red and bottle-green. Grey flies that hum-blue flies that hop, Foul flies that in the food come flop. Flies that feed upon our faces, * Flies that live in stagnant places, Flies that line the sides of trenches, Flies that live and move in stenches. . The flies that live through all the rainAnd come-before the sun-again. The flies that buzz; the flies that crawl; Ugh! These I hate the worst of all. . . . I’ve seen them thick on dead men’s eyes; I hate these tamethese loathsame-flies. Somewhere. WILL Y. Darling LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. The late editor of “Hansard’s Debates” devotes this pamphlet to a description and advocacy of Osteopathy-a system of scientific manipulative surgery discovered in America by Dr. Still, and now taught in eight fully accredited colleges in America and practisedby nearly ten thousand qualified practitioners in that country. Its particular value in cases of shellshock gives point to Mr. BUSSY’S attack on the War Office, the Board of Trade, and the British MedicalCouncil; it seems that they will neither adopt the system themselves nor allow the fully qualified and certified Osteopaths to register under clause 20 of the Companies Consolidation Act. To anyone familiar with the history of the medical profession the attitude of the British Medical Council will cause no surprise ; the same thing happened to Homeopathy and to hypnotism, and the traditional absurdity of refusing any means of curing disease is not to be overcome without a struggle in this country. Whatever may be the value of Osteopathy (and we do not pretend to express an opinion), it is at least worthy of trial in cases that cannot otherwise be cured.; and Mr. BUSSY’S propaganda on its behalf deserves to be successful. Any inquiries concerning the subject-matter of the pamphlet should be sent to the author. ANGLO-JEWRY. Sir,-It is strange that Mr. Arnold should choose the present time for declaring the Jewish problem solved and reporting the death of Zionism, for it is just now that Zionists in Russia, America, and here in England are showing greater political activity than they have before shown during the war. Indeed, there seems to be such a danger of their efforts being successful that two “ Englishmen of the Jewish persuasion ” (ahem !) have already, on behalf of Anglo-Jewry, declined the offer of Palestine. They, like Mr. Arnold, say that Jews are merely members of a religious sect, not a nation. I offer Mr. Arnold the following comments. The Jews are not members of a religious sect; many are members of religious sects, the number of sects being almost equal to the number of Jews. If the Jews of France, of England,and of Russia have nothing in common but their religion, then they have nothing at all in common. Let me name a few men : Dr. Oscar Levy, Israel Zangwill, Claude G. Montefiore, Dr. Hertz (the Chief Rabbi), Sir Alfred Mond, Lord Burnham, Jacob Epstein. What religion have they in common? Those of them who are Theists have nothing in common but Unitarianism. But they are all Jews. Those who wish to forget they are Jews (this also to Mr. Schwartz)-those who wish to forgetcannot do so; those who do forget they are Jews are reminded of the fact by Gentiles. Jews are bound together by their memory of the past. Some remember more than others, some have more to remember than others and not a day goes by without adding to the past to be remembered by some Jew or other. Such a binding force is merely passive in its effect. There are Jews, however, who have become most offending souls. Having observed Mr. Arnold’s “ fact worthy of note, that whereas the Jews have produced countless philosophers, artists, and musicians, they have never produced a distinctly national philosophy or art,” they envy the nations whom these Jews have enriched by their gifts, and covet the honour which could be bestowed on their own people. The revival of Jewish culture is then the object of the “ Spiritual Zionists.” They desire the foundation of a great school of learning in Palestine, the establishment of a Hebrew University which shall attract Jews of learning and ability to pursue their studies on Jewish lines, in a Jewish spirit; the New Levites, giving their service to the people in the Holy Land. The “ spiritual ” Zionists will not be hindered by the emancipation of the Jews in Russia; indeed, they will be helped by it. Many Jewish nationalists in Russia have regarded spiritual Zionism as too Utopian. They attacked the more immediate and more pressing problem of freedom for Jews within Russia. But now they will have their energy available for the greater task, the establishment of a centre of Hebrew culture in Palestine. E. WASSERMAN. *+* SAFETY IN THE ROW. &,-The death, last week of Second Lieutenant Hallowes as the result of being thrown from a runaway horse in Hyde Park should not, I think, be allowed to pass without some inquiry being made into the conditions of riding in the Row. For, though fatal accidents are rare, it seems to me that their rarity is due rather to chance than to the safety of the conditions in the Park. One of the greatest dangers are the paths by which pedestrians stroll across the Row, usually chatting and looking neither to the right nor the left, and as often as not halting between their opinions in a manner disturbing to the most experienced rider. To shout to these people is probably to excite your horse just when you want to steady him, while, not understanding why he should be pulled up at short notice, he is as likely as not to take fright, or, at any rate, thereafter to take offence at the slightest fresh provocation. I suppose the only alternative to closing these paths is notice boards and a more strict supervision and warning (especially to nursemaids) by the police on duty. Another precautionary suggestion for the safety of riders I offer with diffidence, but with the hope that it may be rejected only for a better one. Might not a circle of bushes be planted at the Hyde Park Corner end of the Row, and again, say, at the Marble Arch end of the Ladies’ Mile? In the first case the excitement of crossing the last path, most inopportunely arranged at the bottom of the decline, the crowd of onlookers being denser here than at any other point, makes these last yards the fastest going and most dangerous in the Row. In the case of the Ladies’ Mile, horses seem to know that it usually means home, and they take steps accordingly. To have both these exits furnished with some obstacle into which you might head your horse, if necessity arose, would possibly be a useful remedy against runaways. Thirdly, I suggest dogs should not be allowed within barking distance of the Row, unless on leads. D. v. THE VALUE OF “FUNCTION.” Sir,-I have followed “ Cruz’s ” brilliant arguments on “the value of liberty” with growing interest but was disappointed to find that he closed his speculation just at the point where I started my own. “The principleof function,” “ Cruz ’’ says, “ disregards the fact that society is of a two-fold character.” The two-fold character of society consists, it seems, in the fact that it is founded on a combination of social authority and personal liberty. Granted. But the point is this : in , case of a conflict between authority and liberty, where to find a norm for the solution? We want a juridical solution. We cannot rest ratisfied with the physical triumph either of authority or of liberty. As we lack in this matter an infallible Pope, we want a norm that may guide our thoughts into the path of peace and law. If ‘( Cruz ” starts again from this point onwards, he may perhaps discover that in case of a conflict between liberty and authority a principle is needed superior to a RAMIRO DE MAEZTU. both. Memoranda, (From last week’s NEW AGE.) If not during the war, and while it is really easy, though apparently difficult , the industrial revolution must be made after the war, when it will be apparently easy, but, in truth, most difficult.-“Notes of the Week.” The Iron Law of Wages is not of iron; it is as brittle as glass.-A. E. WATTS. We are witnessing the twilight of Judaism as far as Anglo- Jewry is concerned. Palestine is not a land flowing with milk and honey. To treat the Jew with kindness and toleration, despite his marked resemblance to his caricature, is the most effective way to make him different from it.-J. BULVAR SCHWARTZ. Children not only take an interest in ‘‘ abstract ” ideas, but it is impossible to get them to take an interest in anything else. The right inhibitions control the sub-self; the wrong inhibitions limit the super-self. It is always a pleasure, in the search for a truth, to pass the friendly landmark of a truism. Self-consciousness comes from ignorance, not from knowledge, of self. Moral science ought not to be only a subject for a Tripos examination; it ought to begin as a nursery game.-KENNETH RICHMOND. The New Age is not born.-R. H. C. so much made as recurrently The Right to Work is the Right to Live modestly affirmed. The consumer alone thinks of values; the profiteer thinks wholly of prices and profits. Capital is to Industry what a spring is to a watchwheel : it is what makes it go. Industry is Capital energised by Labour. -I We cannot be masters of arts if others are masters of our lives. The dictatorship of bad taste and the moral instability of artists are equal evils.-TRIBOULET. Europeans individually are more honourable than their Governments and corporations.-MARMADUKE PICKTHALL. If the musician cannot make music express his “ message,” then his message is not a musical one. Labour he leaves to the Labour leaders, which is equivalent to a sentence of death. The younger generation should be taught to stress the word “music.” Hot everything that is Russian is musical.-Reviews. PRESS CUTTINGS. A main source of the growing discontents of Labour in all our great industrial centres is resentment against war-profiteering. This feeling is quite distinct from the secular envy of the rich. It is anger that the war which brings death and unspeakable misery into countless homes should actually be made an instrument of extortion and prosperity by the business and propertied classes. Though those who launch the charge are often generalising from some single instance, the indictment is a true one. While young men have given their lives in countless thousands for their country, old men have not given thek property. Though money is as necessary in fighting a war as lives, the moneyed men of this and every belligerent country have in fact taken from their country the utmost farthing which the economic situation enabled them to take. Their gains have come from two sources, from- profitable business operations and from war-finance. In business they have profited from a combination of three factorsshortage of supplies, natural or contrived, the extravagance of Government expenditure, and the inflation of the currency. Shipowners, mining and engineering companies, bankers, farmers, and innumerable contractors and manufacturers of military and naval requisites have been making piles of money. So have many sections of the business community engaged in supplying comforts and luxuries to the profiteers and the better-to-do workers. The increases of income tax and the excess profits tax have only diverted a small proportion of this abnormal profiteering into the public treasury.-(( The Nation.” Sir Frederick Smith said the defendants had not taken up that attitude simply to get grievances righted. He could tell them that their connections and ramifications and their avowed objects were well known to the authorities. But he warned the defendants and others of one thing, this Government could not and dared not, if this question were raised again, as trusteesfor all that this war stood for, avoid the issue however dark and perilous it might be, if ever again they were in the same way challenged during the period of the war. If there should be any, further deliberate attempt to interfere with the production of munitions of war, .there would be no further withdrawal. “Let this be distinctly stated,” said the Attorney-General in conclusion, “I most solemnly warn them that the next offenders brought here on a similar charge will be dealt with at the Old Bailey Sessions before a jury, and they need ask for no mercy if the verdict of their countrymen should go against them.” The statements made by Mr. Kennedy Jones, Director-General of Food Economy, with regard to profiteering by those who deal in food, were welcomed in many quarters as an indicatopn that the Ministry of Food are awake to one of the most aggravating features of the food situation. Ever since the prices of food began to rise there has been a strong suspicion among those on whom the increases pressed most hardly that they were not wholly due to economic causes. Among working men and women particularly this belief has been widespread, and as time has passed and prices have continued to rise the suspicion has hardened into a conviction. Those who have moved among the workers, and especially among point of this pantomime trick we can only guess but for the present there is a sort of truce. The curious will note that Sir F. E. Smith, with his accents of awful warning and all the rest of it seemed almost to suppose that what he says carries some sort of moral weight, and might catch the ear and even the conscience of the modem instructed artisan. How this singular idea can have arisen we need not inquire; anyhow, it is certain the men in the dock heard a man mouthing in a wig, and hardly troubled to listen. Of course, he said that the Government had always been ready to study the men’s grievances most sympathetically arid, of course, he might just as well. have said that the Government had always been ready to be boiled alive for the truth of the Book of Mormon. Everyone knew that the Government never did anything at all, except notify the men that the Trade Union safeguards, solemnly guaranteed to them, were going to be immediately taken may from them. All this is fustian; the only interesting question is, “Why were the strikers arrested at all?” The answer, we are inclined to think, lies simply in the fact that the Government is sufficiently weak to be obliged to represent itself as strong. The New Witness,” f We are hearing a good deal nowadays of the controversy between the advocates of absolute executive control of Trade Unions and the control of the rank and file. Mr. J. R. Clynes the other day, at the Dockers’ Conference, said that the members always had it in their power to remove their Executive Councils. This seems to be the last word of those who would defend the existing order, however bad that order might be. Socialist speakers and writers have made the same kind of blunder when they say the workers should tamely accept the worst ‘crimes of any Government because they (the workers) are responsible for the Government, however bad it may be. The one encouraging sign before the war, and even during the war, has been the revolt of the workers against this fatalism. Executives are like Governments: they respond only to sufficient pressure from beneath. Executives are elected too frequently by log-rolling and jerrymandering. It is notorious that the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress is appointed by most undemocratic methods. When we hear of the Government, and such a. Government, supporting the authority of Executive Councils, we become instantly suspicious, Time was, in the days when Trade Unionism was weak and had few friends, the employers refused to deal with officials or ‘Executive members, but expressed every wilingness to meet the men or a deputation from the men. To-day; when the men have got in advance of the officials, the employers and the politicians refuse to deal with the men and the shop stewards, and their representative committees, and say that they will only carry out agreements made through the responsible Executives. When we find the employers, the Government, and the kept Press all joining in a chorus of praise of the moderation,” the “patriotism ” and (( common sense” of the Executives, then we are instinctively convinced that there is Something wrong.-“ The Herald.” the men who have lately been on strike, cannot have failed to realise how serious is. the irritation engendered by the thought that somebody-producer, wholesaler, or retailer, or possibly each of them-is enriching himself by forcing up the price of food. The knowledge that prices which are prohibitive to the wage-earner are still within the reach of other classes adds class-feeling to anger against the profiteer.(( Times.” .In the affair of the strikers, an insane arrest was What. was the followed by an illogical liberation.