On Sunday Sir Charles Egerton encountered a large force of

the Mullah's followers, estimated at about five thousand, at Jidballi, in the Nogal Valley, and completely routed them. He reports that this was probably the Mullah's chief force, though the Mullah himself was not present. The Dervishes killed amounted to about a thousand, and a large number of prisoners were taken. The losses on our side were small in the ranks, but heavy among the officers, three of whom— Captain Lister, Lieutenant Bowden-Smith, and Lieutenant Welland—were killed, and nine wounded, a result which, as we point out elsewhere, is inevitable when native troops have to be led against a formidable enemy. General Egerton's success, considering the transport difficulties of the campaign, does great credit to himself and his men, and we trust that it will soon be followed up by the final dispersion of the Mullah's forces and the capture of their leader.

Sir F. D. Lngard's Report on Northern Nigeria for the year 1902, which is published this week as a Blue-book, is full of valuable information. It contains a complete account of the Kano Campaign, which brought about the end of the "worst and most extensive slave-raiding system in Africa." The High Commissioner's narrative may be recommended to lovers of the gruesome, for anything more horrible than the account of the Kano dungeons we have rarely read. He has much that is interesting to say about the future develop- ment of Northern Nigeria, and the openings which it gives to British trade. One of the most serious questions is that of transport. He considers British Colonies much behind those of France and Germany in the matter of road construction, and expresses the hope that much may be done shortly in North Nigeria to remedy this defect. We may note, too, a very interesting defence of the appointment of military officers to most administrative posts. " It is indeed," he says, "a characteristic of the British officer that, when in civil employ, his rule is often marked by less `militarism than that of the civilian," and in the absence of men with African administrative experience he considers the soldier an admirable man for the work.

We have analysed the correspondence between the Duke of Devonshire and Mr. Chamberlain elsewhere, but must add here that the victory which many presage for Mr. Chamber- lain will, we think, prove unreal. He may obtain a majority vote of the Liberal Unionist Association and control of its " war chest," but neither will add to his strength in the country. The Association is dissolved as the representative of a party whether the Duke dissolves it or not, and war Mr. Balfour discussed nothing during his speech but fiscal reform, but he apologised for not entering upon foreign affairs. His reason was that "while Great Britain will to the full carry out all her Treaty engagements and obliga- tions in regard to any of our allies," he felt that discussion on the differences between Russia and Japan would do but little service to the cause of peace. That significant sentence has been, of course, by this time widely read in Tokio, where it will act as an encouragement to the Japanese, who rely upon themselves, but hope none the less strongly that the Treaty which protects them from a coalition will neither be forgotten nor ignored.

Mr. Balfour was entertained by the Manchester Conser- vative Club to luncheon on Tuesday, and made an interesting speech. He would not, he said, speak on the fiscal problem, but asked leave to compress his speech of the previous night into two pieces of advice : "Don't fall into the ordinary Radical fault of being fifty years behind the age in which you live"; secondly, in regard to their own internal affairs: "Let us all have regard to the feelings, so far as we can, consistently with public policy, of the weaker brethren,"— who the weaker brethren were, added Mr. Balfour, he left to each one of them to determine. Turning to the question of a closer union with the Colonies, Mr. Balfour said he had modified his view, expressed in 1902, that it must be looked for in the direction of fiscal union. He was now prepared to admit that this was not the only way, in view of the recent development of the new Committee on Imperial Defence, to which the Canadian Minister of War had only the other day been summoned, "not as a witness or suppliant, but as a member." Mr. Balfour did not see why that which was applicable to Canada and Australia should not be extended to India. As an instructive commentary on Mr. Balfour's amiable plea for mutual toleration, we note that the /Duke of Sutherland, president of the Tariff Reform League, in reply to a conespondent, has stated that the League has by reso-

Mr. Chamberlain was the principal guest of the Birmingham Jewellers' and Silversmiths' Association on Monday, and spoke for an hour on Imperial policy. Dealing with the charge of unpreparedness in connection with the war, Mr. Chamberlain said it was not wholly accurate. He preferred to say that the Government were insufficiently prepared, and that, like all their advisers, they had underestimated the greatness of the task. The check now felt in the revived prosperity of the two new Colonies Mr. Chamberlain believed to be only tem- porary, but he refrained from mentioning Chinese labour. As regarded the Colonies, he repeated the advice he gave his hearers on a former occasion,—viz., to take them into our counsels. Sir Oliver Lodge had charged him with being a visionary, and he pleaded guilty. "I dream dreams of Empire. My waking thoughts are taken up with it." He saw two alternatives before him,—the decline of Britain from a first to a fifth rate Power, from a planet to an asteroid ; or its renewed and reinvigorated youth as the most important part of the Empire. The policy which he proposed was, in his view, not only calcu- lated to promote the unity of the Empire, but was also most likely to conduce to internal prosperity. Mr. Chamberlain then dealt with the condition of our export trade with pro- tected countries, asserting that "nothing now goes to those foreign countries except items, odds and ends of articles which have some special ground of preference."

While this branch of our trade had diminished, our trade with our Colonies had increased. But this trade was already seriously threatened by foreign tariffs, and would (unless we reformed our fiscal policy) go the way of our export trade. Finally, the condition of the home market, though it indicated a constant tale of progress and increasing wealth, was equally unsatisfactory. To the objection, " We are so prosperous," Mr. Chamberlain somewhat impatiently replied : " I am not talking of absolute prosperity. I am talking of tendencies." The "scientific tariff" he proposed would, in the first place, enable us to protect. our home market against unfair competition; secondly, it would enable us to deal on equal terms with protected nations; and thirdly, it would bring the British States throughout the world into more intimate union. His opponents, Mr. Chamberlain con- tinued, were still as confident as ever that he was a madman ; but they were coming nearer to him all the time. They found the doctrine of unexampled prosperity would not hold, began to whisper "Retaliation," and to admit, as Sir William Harcourt did, that " dumping " required serious consideration. Mr. Chamberlain was in his best fighting mood, and laid about him with impartial vigour. The patriotism of those who opposed him was "equal to wrecking a Government, but it could not rise to the height of making an Empire."

Mr. Chamberlain has completed his Tariff Commission, an additional list of fourteen names, bringing the total up to fifty-eight, having been published on Wednesday. The new members include Sir Charles Elliott, the distinguished Indian civilian, formerly Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal ; Mr. Colmer, Secretary to the Canadian High Commissioner ; Mr. Leven- stein, the late president of the Manchester Chamber of Com- merce ; Sir Westby Perceval, formerly Agent-General for New Zealand and Tasmania ; and representatives of a variety of in- dustries, trades, and interests,—electrical engineering, chemical manufactures, brewing, baking, bacon-curing, market-garden- ing,&c. Mr. Chamberlain, it should be noted, has at last found two bankers—Mr. Vicary Gibbs, M.P., and Mr. Robert Littlejohn— to join his Commission, which met for the first time yesterday. We may note here that the efforts to claim the late Lord Salis- bury as a supporter of Mr. Chamberlain have elicited a very clear statement from Lord Robert Cecil. "It is right," he says in a letter to the Times of Wednesday, " to state that Lord Salisbury was opposed to Mr. Chamberlain's policy so far as it had been developed last summer. In particular, he disapproved of his proposal to put a preferential duty on corn and meat. In saying this, I do not mean it to be understood that Lord Salisbury was hostile to any imposition of duties on the imports from a foreign country for the purpose of compelling it to admit our exports on fair terms."

The Board of Trade Returns for 1903, briefly alluded to in our last issue, will require very adroit handling to prove of any assistance to Mr. Chamberlain. The total volume of trade is valued at £903,000,000, or £25,000,000 above the highest previously recorded, and nearly equal to that of Germany and the United States put together. Perhaps the most significant figures of all, however, are those relating to exports. In the year 1903 we exported manufactured goods to the amount of £235,000,000, an increase of £11,000,000 on 1901, of more than £7,000,000 on 1902, and nearly £1,500,000 on Mr. Chamberlain's picked year 1872. Furthermore, while miscellaneous items show little increase, it is the great industries—iron, machinery, wool—that bring up the total. Lastly, it may be noted that while we exported £39,000,000 of bullion and specie, we imported within £300,000 of the same amount. But Mr. Chamberlain is not concerned with figures, but tendencies. As he tells us, he is " ringing the tocsin," and the tocsin was quite as often a bell to cause alarm as to give warning.

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman addressed a Liberal meeting at Maidstone on Wednesday, and made some good points. The Prime Minister, he pointed out, had recently delivered a homily on the dangers of baste, but meanwhile the author of the proposed changes was pressing forward. But the most important passage in Sir Henry Campbell- Bannerman's speech, in view of his official position, was that in which he dealt with the question of co-operation with the Free-trade Unionists. Liberals, he declared, would gladly accept such co-operation, and would facilitate by every means in their power the efforts of Free-trade Unionists in combating the false doctrines which threatened the best interests of our country. Such co-operation, however, must not interfere with the right of Liberals to amend the Education Act, or to preserve unimpaired the full discretion of Magistrates to deal with the licensing question. " On these and other questions the action of Liberals brooked no compromise, but this was perfectly consistent with loyal assistance given to, and accepted from, all who shared their strong views of the disaster which a departure from the policy of freedom would bring on the prosperity of British trade." Home-rule may, of course, be one of the "other questions" on which, in Sir Henry's view, no compromise was possible ; but it is at least significant that he abstained from specific mention of it.

Major Seely, the Conservative Member for the Isle of Wight who served with distinction in the war, has a strong letter on the Chinese labour question in the Times of Tuesday. The importation of these "yellow slaves," Major Seely insists, will shatter the ideals of every soldier who fought in South Africa. If the most tangible result of all our efforts is the im- portation of labourers forced to work with every circumstance of ignominy in strict seclusion and under conditions and re- strictions reducing them to the level of slaves, the war will seem to have been waged in vain. For Britain to sanction the arbi- trary introduction of this system for the sake of immediate gain—the gold will not disappear even if it takes more years to extract it—before representative government had been given to the people of the Transvaal to express their opinion, would, Major Seely holds, be nothing less than a national crime, and he urges that no sanction or support should be given to the proposal by the Colonial Office before it has been fully discussed in Parliament. With the spirit of Major Seely's letter we entirely agree. What we want to see in South Africa is not rapid prosperity achieved by cheap slave labour, but progressive development in a progressive community.

Those who weary of interminable discussions on the fiscal question should read the article on " Free Trade and the Unionist Party " in the new number of the Edinburgh Review. It is a masterly summary of the whole situation, and the writer's conclusion is that Mr. Chamberlain is building up a new and powerful party—not necessarily a victorious party— upon the basis of Protection alone. It is that party we have to defeat, or go back sixty years.

Bank Rate, 4 per oent.

Consols (21 per cent.) were on Friday 88. you have for either event, for the event of your being right or the event of your being mistaken, is that you should propose with moderation, that you should proceed reform."

Where was all this caution when Mr. Balfour suffered THE END OF LIBERAL UNIONISM. impossible, with any advantage, to maintain under the pre- sent circumstances the existence of the Liberal Unionist organisation." If it continues, the central office will have to subsidise local associations which have "taken up a decided position on the question of tariff reform," and this is plainly inconsistent with the neutral position in reference to that question which it had been agreed that the Liberal Unionist Association should take up in the controversy. The Association being no longer homogeneous, but sharply divided on the one question now before the country, its work is done. To the Duke as President it naturally falls to take the necessary steps to dissolve the Association, but before taking any steps in the matter he wishes to know Mr. Chamberlain's views.

Mr. Chamberlain, writing three days later, says that he too regards the question raised by the Duke as to the future of the Liberal Unionist Association as one of great importance. In the first instance, however, he is chiefly anxious to express his " extreme astonishment " that the Duke should have arrived at a different conclusion from that which he has himself reached. That the President of an Association which " is still one of the great barriers to the adoption of a policy of disruption " should be the first person to suggest that it should be broken up fills Mr. Chamberlain's simple Unionist soul with amaze- ment. What has happened to change the situation in this way ? The main object of the Association is not changed. It was founded to prevent the return of a Home-rule Government. That calamity needs to be prevented to-day just as much as it did eighteen years ago. Why, then, should the members of the Association trouble themselves about tariff reform ? It is "not at present a party question," and no one but the Duke wants to make it so. Mr. Chamberlain's modesty is so great as to be almost misleading. Tariff reform has ceased to be the academic subject which on this occasion he is anxious to make it appear. No amount of agreement on matters not at present at issue can disguise disagreement on a matter of immediate political importance. When he speaks of tariff reform as " not at present a party question " he really means that the division between Protectionists and Free- traders does not coincide with the party divisions which it found in existence at the time of its first appearance. You cannot say that all Unionists or all Conservatives are Protectionists, or that all Liberals are Free-traders. But it does not for this reason cease to be a party question,—it only becomes a new party question instead of an old one. The difference between Protectionists and Free-traders is not identical with the difference between Conservatives and Liberals, or between Unionists and Home-rulers. But it is equally important, and comes far closer home. No injury that the setting up of an inde- pendent Parliament in Ireland could inflict on the Empire would be so great as the injury that the adoption of Mr. Chamberlain's scheme of tariff reform would bring on it. Consequently, those members of the Liberal Unionist Association who happen to be Free-traders are bound to consider what the effect of their remaining members of it may be. They have only to study the election intelligence to satisfy themselves on this head. In many constituencies the Liberal Unionist Association is carrying on an active propaganda in favour of what the President of the Association and some of the members hold to be a calamitous revolution. Are they to go on acquiescing in this use of the organisation because eighteen years ago they were united in opposing another revolution which for the present is crowded out of notice by the greater urgency, of the fiscal question ? The circumstances in which the Liberal Unionist Association had its origin are of themselves an answer to this question. Why did Liberals leave their party in 1886 ? Not because they had not at that time far more points of agreement with their old friends than with their new allies. The reason was that the one point on which they differed from their old friends was immeasur- ably graver and more urgent than the aggregate of the points on which they agreed with them. It will be time enough, they said, to go back to these other questions when we have defeated Home-rule. In politics we have to do one thing at a time, and the thing to be done at this time is to keep the machinery of the -United Kingdom unchanged. This is precisely the reasoning of Free-traders to-day. They find themselves at issue with their old friends on a new question.—a question exceeding in importance all those, Home-rule included, on which they have worked so well together since 1886. Their duty, therefore, is precisely the same as it was in the earlier year. The natural and obvious way out of the situation thus unexpectedly created is to dissolve the Liberal Unionist Association. That is not Mr. Chamber- lain's view. Organisations are justly dear to a politician who has found them useful, and he has no in- tention of letting any one of them die so long as he can keep it alive. Instead of breaking up the Liberal Unionist Association, he proposes that measures should be taken to test its feeling on fiscal reform. If the majority went with the Duke of Devonshire, Mr. Chamberlain and his friends would retire. If it went against the Duke, it would be for him to " review " his " position,"—in other words, to get out as quickly as possible.

The Duke of Devonshire does not like being hurried, and his answer to Mr. Chamberlain is merely an intima- tion that he will take time and counsel with Mr. Powell Williams to consider the points raised in his letter. After this there is silence, so far as this correspondence is con- cerned, for nearly two months, when it is broken by one of the most astonishing utterances that even Mr. Cham- berlain has provided us with. " In the absence," he says, " of your promised reply to my letter of October 26th, I had ventured to hope that you had accepted my sugges- tion that the Association should continue to carry on its original objects without interfering with the opinions of its members on subjects outside the official pro- gramme of the party." Would not any one reading this sen- tence suppose that no communication had passed between the Duke and Mr. Chamberlain in the interval, and that Mr. Chamberlain had naturally taken the Duke's silence as implying assent to his proposal ? That Mr. Chamberlain should wish the public to understand this is intelligible. What is not intelligible is that he should have written this knowing what had been going on since the Duke's letter of October 31st. He must be supposed, however, to have deliberately brought on himself the Duke's reply. " Your promised reply," says Mr. Chamberlain, has not come. You know perfectly well, says the Duke, why it has not conic. "You are aware from the private com- munications which have passed between us that the delay in replying to your letter of October 26th has been due to an attempt on my part to find some solution of the diffi- culties" to which the whole correspondence relates. This attempt was not made merely in the Duke's own mind. It led to interviews with Mr. Powell Williams, with Lord James, and later with Lord Selborne. " I made," says the Duke, " certain suggestions to Lord Selbome, which he undertook to communicate to you and it was not till December 21st that I heard from Lord Selborne that you were not preared to concur in the course pro- posed by me to him." So that Mr. Chamberlain is in communication with the Duke on the subject of his " promised reply " down to December 21st, and yet so entirely forgets all that has taken place that he is able on December 22nd to explain that the absence of this reply had led. him to hope that the Duke was coming round to his view. A. conversation with Lord Selborne must have a strangely Lethe-like influence for all recollec- tion of it to have passed from Mr. Chamberlain's mind within a day or two of its taking place. During the whole period between October 31st and December 22nd his mind has been a blank to everything except the looked-for letter. All the communications through third persons have made no impression upon him. He writes on December 22nd as though the Duke had maintained unbroken and discourteous silence for the whole period.

The two proposals which finally emerge from this corre-' spondence are highly characteristic of their respective authors. We can no longer work together, says the Duke of Devonshire, because your agitation has made it certain that the issue before the country at the next Election will be that of Protection against Free-trade. The result of the introduction of this new controversy is that " the differences between us are certainly not less vital or urgent, as questions of practical politics, than those which separated us from Mr. Gladstone in 1886." We can no longer work together, because we are no longer of one mind on the single issue which now interests Englishmen. But there is no reason why the Association should not be dissolved " with as little recrimination or bitterness as may be possible." This is not at all Mr. Chamberlain's view. He believes the exist- ence of the Association to be " still necessary to the success of the Unionist cause,"—including, possibly, the success of a certain Unionist statesman in the conversion of the country to his fiscal policy. All it wants to make it an admirable instrument for this purpose is the application of a Chamberlain purge, to be applied through a meeting called by himself. Under the beneficent action of this admirable remedy the Duke of Devonshire and the other malcontents will be expelled from the Association, and all will go well—for Mr. Chamberlain.

RUSSIA AND JAPAN.

WE are still unable to believe that peace will be kept between Russia and Japan. The difference between the interests, as well as between the aspirations, of the two Powers is too nearly incurable to be settled by diplomacy. Russia has advanced too successfully and too near towards one of the grand objects of her secular policy, the extension of her unbroken sovereignty to one of the great oceans, to recede before the bidding of a Power whose fighting strength she doubts. And Japan has risen too high in the world to be fillipped back to the third rank, being com- pelled to accept assurances which she does not believe, and which her statesmen think fatal to all hope of future ex- pansion. We say this in opposition to many Continental observers possibly more competent than ourselves, although we perceive, or think we perceive, the reasons which in- fluence their judgment and excite their hopes. At bottom, perhaps, those hopes are founded upon fears of the great commercial and financial panic which would undoubtedly follow any considerable defeat of Russia, where the savings of a generation of Frenchmen and Italians, and of no in- considerable section of Germans, have been deposited in the full expectation of a profitable peace. Still, the optimists have their reasons to plead. They do not see why Russia should not recede, and think that a transaction in the Far East can hardly involve that feeling of national honour for which the great nations always fight. Kuldja was retroceded. to China, under a threat of war, and the world has forgotten the name of Kuldja. They hear that the Czar still calls himself a devotee of peace. They know that the war, unless rapid beyond all pre- cedent, will pulverise the financial edifice which M. de Witte and his colleagues built up with so much pains, and amidst such bitter resistance from the classes who at last expelled him. They see that some hidden conflict is going on among the great group of whom the Czar is at present only the pivot, and that the advocates of peace in the bureaucracy have at least this much influence : that contrary to all Russian precedent, newspapers strongly condemning both war and the retention of Manchuria are allowed to express their opinion without suppression. They see also that Russia will lose heavily in Europe by any protracted war in the Far East. They understand that Bulgaria will take advantage of her opportunity for a final effort to attain legal independence of the Sultan, and the possession in one form or another of her half of Mace- donia ; and they recognise—what is, of course, quite obvious—that when Russia is preoccupied in Asia, Austria becomes the overshadowing Power in the Balkan Peninsula. Things might, they say, settle themselves most inconveniently for Russia in the Balkans. Even the extinction of Japan would be no consolation if the road to Constantinople were permanently barred. These argu- ments, they are persuaded, are as familiar in St. Peters- burg as in Berlin, Paris, or London; and therefore they doubt the certainty of war, expecting, with a belief which is not a faith but is operative, that at the twelfth hour Russia will give way, perhaps covering retreat by a proclamation.

But the Japanese may declare war ? No, say the hopeful on the Continent, the Japanese, though brave, are not quite so audacious as they wish for the moment to be considered. The statesmen of Tokio, they think, know that the war, even if successful, would place a tremendous strain upon the resources of Japan, would exhaust an organisation which, however powerful, is a, little new, and would render a cordial peace between herself and her colossal enemy impossible for a generation. No doubt Korea would be obtained, and might be fortified almost beyond reach of attack ; but Korea is a bad swarming-ground for the Japanese millions, for it has already thirteen millions of its own. Again, Korea can never be safe without a strict alliance with China, which the Japanese are sedu- lously engaged in cementing, and which the war might interrupt. China lies open to Russian attack at many points if war is once declared, and her ruling class shiver with the fear of irreparable losses, a fear made evident by their con- stant professions of their intention to be neutral. Neutral, in a war actually waged upon their own soil ! Japan, moreover, though assured of the benevolence of Great Britain and America, is not sure of their active assistance; and remembering the result of her last war, has an uneasy lingering doubt whether Europe at heart intends that she, a strictly Asiatic State, should become a Great Power. Therefore, say the sanguine thinkers of the Continent, the cool statesmen of Tokio, who still appear able to hold their common people in leash, hesitate to strike any blow which would make hostilities inevitable, and are leaving Russia one more chance of which she may still avail herself.

We have tried to state the case for those who still believe that the result will be a patched-up peace with the utmost fairness, but we must confess that the arguments weigh but little with our own mind. They leave out of the account the broad fact that Russia has rarely had such an opportunity of fighting for a great stake within the secluded area of her own North Asiatic world, and without any direct chance of European interference. She thinks, and has signified to France, that if Britain is restrained she obtains the full benefit of her French alliance ; and she does not, in truth, apprehend interference from America. She can avert that by temporarily conceding the "open door " to trade in Manchuria, and so postponing for a time the full profit for her traders from their new acquisi- tion. It is easier to postpone the profits of monopoly for a few years than to postpone such a chance of territorial expansion as her party of action are now convinced that they enjoy. Nor can we believe that in a period of universal social discontent throughout the broad provinces of Russia retreat will be as easy to her Government as it would have been while the people were less fully awakened, and while the Czars had in their hands the tremendous instrument of emancipation. Nor, though it is most difficult to ascer- tain the precise facts, is it quite possible to believe that the Mikado's Government, absolute as it is in a sense, can afford to disregard the popular unanimity expressed in the last great vote of the Diet without some danger to an authority which even liberal statesmen in Japan are most unwilling to impair. Even they still prefer the Mikado to the multitude, and will run great risks rather than suffer the Japanese " man in the street " to think Japan dishonoured. For the rest, all the signs by which politicians usually estimate the chances are still strongly in favour of war, and war at so short a date that the Russian Admiralty thinks it worth while to shadow new cruisers belonging to Japan, and the Russian War Office to send an entire corps d'aringe over the already overweighted Trans-Siberian Railway to increase a force which it has been proclaiming for weeks to be already more than sufficient. The Japanese, on their side, obviously did something to prevent a seizure of Masampho, though the details are not yet accurately known ; and though their pecuniary resources are far inferior to those of Russia, they are spending money like water, to be ready, as the French Minister said, to the buttons of their gaiters. Their self-confidence will certainly not have been diminished by the renewed pledge with which Mr. Balfour on Monday reaffirmed, as it were, the limited Alliance with Japan. They will not expect from him immediate action; but they will think that he deals with them as with one of the Great Powers,—a pretension for which every Japanese who understands it is willing to lay down his life. We can- not but think that they mean war unless Russia recedes ; and if Russia recedes before what is now a clear and open challenge from an Asiatic enemy who is visible to her masses, we have misread. her history and that of the limited but able group of courtiers, soldiers, and states- men who have, since the days of Peter the Great, remained, under the headship of the Romanoffs, the directing caste of Russia. THINGS begin to go better in Somaliland This week brings us the news of the first real success which has attended the British arms. It is not yet clear whether the force of five thousand men which Sir Charles Egerton scattered on Sunday at Jidballi represents the main fighting force of the Mullah, but in any case the victory is of a nature to give new hope and energy to our troops. The position was apparently held by the Dervishes for its value for pasturage and water in that arid country ; and if we can repeat the same tactics at other such centres we may shortly break up the resistance. The enemy seem to have charged once with that fierce religious enthusiasm which we have already met in the Soudan ; but the en- durance of human nature, however fanatical, is limited, and they could not support the fire of our infantry. It is rare for us to find even among Moslem fanatics that complete disregard of death which inspires a Ghazi rush, or which has more than once enabled the Der- vishes to break a British square,—rare, at least, in the mass, though we may find many isolated examples in our recent military history. The victory has been achieved, we regret to learn, at a heavy expense to our commis- sioned officers, among whom twelve casualties are reported, including three deaths. This fact stands out in relief against the very light losses of the ranks ; but it must always be so when Englishmen have to lead auxiliary troops, who have not the support of a long service record. The moral effect is of such immense consequence that the officer has to hazard his life in a way which in a normal campaign would be thought Quixotic. If it is indeed the main force of the Mullah which has been routed, it is im- probable that the leader will be able to gather a new army, and we shall in all likelihood see the kind of desultory chase with which the Soudan has familiarised us, till the Mullah is at last killed or captured. No war of this sort is ended till the leader, whose religious sanctity is the chief inspiration of his followers, is made incapable of further mischief. The Somaliland Campaign is therefore, as we have already pointed out, primarily a transport problem. In actual fighting power our men, armed with modern resources, are more than a match for the enemy, however brave and reckless of life. But the vast waterless country has also to be fought with. One way is, of course, that adopted. with such success in the Soudan,—to push forward the base by means of a railway till the resources of civilisation are brought to the very lines of the enemy. But in a country which we do not desire to hold or develop, this method, which involves great expense and delay, would be scarcely justified. The other way is to secure such a perfection of transport arrangements, combined with a capable Intelligence Department, that we can make the best possible use of water-holes and pasture, and keep all the parts of our force in touch with each other. The superior mobility and local knowledge of the Mullah's force will be neutralised by our greater command of the materiel of war. It is not an easy problem, but we have every hope that Sir Charles Egerton will solve it.

The only justification for the campaign is the safety of Egypt. Somaliland has few strategic and no intrinsic advantages to make it worth having. But we dare not permit an insurgent Moslem army to run riot within sight of Egypt's frontiers in view of her recent history. It is true that no parts of the Egyptian dominions are directly threatened, the apparent objective of the Mullah being Abyssinia; but we cannot allow any ebullitions of fanaticism to go unheeded when we remember that in a religious war what to-day is an insignificant force may be to-morrow a devastating army. In Egypt we have a race of the same faith, and to allow a Mandi or a Khalifs to preach his gospel unchecked on our borders is not only to make peaceful development in the remoter parts impossible, but to permit a direct menace to the quiet of the Lower Nile. We have before this stated our opinion that the Somaliland business was mismanaged at the first and undertaken with insufficient knowledge ; but having assumed the offensive, the sooner we do the work, and do it thoroughly, the better. The enterprise may possibly produce some results of lasting value. We are fighting with what is perhaps the most dangerous, not even excepting the Zulus, of the black races of Africa. The strong Ethiopian race which forms the aristocracy in all the native kingdoms of Central Africa is not an enemy to despise, especially when it is mixed with the formidable Arab blood. We are using against it, under British officers, a number of native African Regulars and a certain number of friendly native Irregulars, stiffened by some British and Indian troops. It is a chance to form out of our African subjects fighting regiments of the class of the Sikhs, for after the Mullah the ordinary native insurgent will be a simple matter, and it is well to begin by training our men in a difficult task. It means, we fear, a high mortality among British officers ; but many gallant soldiers are ready to run the risk and do the work. We shall also, if we mistake not, so consolidate the Abyssinian Alliance that our dealings with the Emperor will be easier for the future. Abyssinia, as the source of one of her chief water supplies, must play a large part in the development of Egypt ; and the Somaliland Campaign is at any rate teaching us some- thing of Abyssinia and her people, and bringing us into closer relations with the Ethiopian King of Kings. Africa is so much of a piece, that it is impossible to neglect one part in the development of another, and it may be that after this campaign many questions of the Eastern Soudan and of Northern Uganda will be nearer settlement.

As a background to all European dominion in North Africa there looms the great Moslem population, which is capable of being roused at any moment from its attitude of placid indifference to politics by the advent of a prophet. In a little while the lethargic people are transformed into a crusading army, controlled and organised by a religious brotherhood. Whenever such a crusade arises the civilised world must combine to crush it, or allow that hardly won land to relapse into primeval savagery. We have killed the slave trade ; it remains now to stamp out the last embers of fanaticism. A Dervish invasion, while full of horrors, is less formidable than is generally imagined. The carelessness of death which fanaticism gives is checkmated by the limits which Nature has placed upon human endurance, and also by the quality of their faith. Such an army is necessarily ill-disciplined and primitive in its equipment ; and we have long since proved that discipline and the weapons of a scientific civilisation can always turn it back. Again, if the Dervish can charge, he can also run away. The God who will take his soul to Paradise if he perishes will also arrange that the Faith- ful shall triumph some other day. Fatalism, it cannot be too often pointed out, is a two-edged weapon, and can induce both amazing valour and complete inertia. If we can resist the onset, we may profit by the recoil, and the lethargy which follows recoil. And meanwhile our slow civilisation is creeping on, and daily making the Moslem tribes less malleable under the oratory of a bloodthirsty dreamer of dreams.

AN IMPORTANT SOCIAL REFORM.

SLR ROBERT ANDERSON, formerly head of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard, has had a remarkable measure of success in educating opinion, both official and public, towards agree- ment with the conclusions he himself adopted as the result of his administrative experience. He began. his campaign in the Nineteenth. Century early in 1901, very shortly after his retirement, and at the end of the Parliamentary Session of 1903 a Bill was introduced by the Home Secretary which was based upon a recognition of the necessity of altering our existing practice in regard to the treatment of "professional criminals." That phrase had been on the lips of very many people for a long time, but its true import was not realised, except by a very limited number of the more thoughtful students of social questions, until Sir Robert Anderson gave his authority for the belief that it represented an actual and very definite state of facts. There is, he has very positively assured the public, a profession of criminals as clearly recognised by those who have the best means of knowing—e.g., the " fence " on the one hand, and the detective on the other—as is the profession of doctors, or of lawyers, or of engineers by actual or possible patients or clients. It is a profession which—once the negation of morality is assumed—is by no means without its attractions. It frequently leads to con- siderable, sometimes to large, gains, attained without any exhausting physical or mental exertion; and it offers elements of constant risk and excitement which in this country, and at this stage of civilisation, are attainable in connection with very few other forms of " bread-work," and not many forms of sport. It gives scope in some of its branches for a very high degree of skill, coolness, courage, and resource, and any considerable measure of success, to say nothing of real eminence, in it, can hardly be reached without the possession of some or all of those qualities. The draw- backs to the occupation are no doubt serious; but in the case of persons of coarse fibre they are by no means intolerable. The practical certainty of being caught from time to time, and of being sent to penal servitude for terms of increasing length, does not weigh against the sporting interest and comparative luxury of those portions of life which are lived out of gaol. And even the trials of gaol life may be much overrated. As Si Robert Anderson has pointed out in one of his articles, the professional criminal learns to adjust himself to the conditions of penal servitude very much as an officer in the Army adjusts himself to the conditions of disagreeable foreign stations. And in any case the unpleasantnesses of imprisonment are not serious enough.to induce the professional criminal to accept the, to him, inexpressible ennui of a life of honest labour. In some cases he condescends to wage-work for four or five days a week ; but the week-ends or the nights are still spent in the pursuit of his old occupation. To the man who has graduated in crime and tasted its wild joys the question of settling down to a career of dull respectability does not present itself as one deserving of consideration. To such men penal servitude is a disagree- able interruption of a series of enjoyable adventures—an interruption regarded by some of them as so annoying as to be avoided, if necessary, even at the risk of the gallows —but to call it deterrent or reformatory would in such cases be pure and open cant. It is to be regretted that the Bill which the Home Secretary introduced at the end of last Session, though it is based upon apractical acknowledgment of the soundness of Sir Robert Anderson's case, involves no more than a halting compromise in the direction of the reform which he advocates. It would prescribe that, when a man who has been more than twice convicted on indictment is again convicted of an offence punishable with penal servitude, if it should appear to the Court that he has been " leading a persistently dishonest or criminal life," and that the public security requires his prolonged detention, that detention may take two forms. The first part must be under the ordinary rules of penal servitude, but the second may be in the Habitual Offender division. That prison department is governed by regulations drawn up by the Home Secretary under an Act passed in 1898, and it is clear that the conditions prevailing in it are less severe than those to be found in ordinary penal servi- tude. So far the Bill of last Session is all to the good ; but its phraseology appears to show that " life " or " indeterminate " sentences are not contemplated ; for it prescribes that in all cases a quarter, and in some a half, of the whole sentence, which is not to be less than seven years, shall be passed in penal servitude. This is a very lame and impotent—if for an English Government Depart- ment a characteristic—method of dealing with a question in which the existing practice is recognised as futile. No doubt, if a particular hardened criminal would only be shut up for three or five years in view of the particular crime of which he may be convicted, but is shut up, under a new law, for seven or fourteen years, because he is recognised as incorrigible, society gains in protection during the added years. But if such protective additions may rightly be made at all to a sentence passed for an individual offence, then surely the one reasonable course is to make the sentence a " life " one, subject always to the discretion of the responsible administrative authori- ties, who alone can judge as to the wisdom of remission. Sir Robert Anderson is perfectly right in pleading, as he does in the current number of the Nineteenth. Century, for such amendments of the Home Office draft Bill as will make it a really logical and effective treatment of the grave problem which it touches. The idea of any limitation, either by suggestion or inference, or by definite prescription, of sentences designed for the protection of society, and not for the vindictive punishment of crime, should be abandoned. If any qualifications are needed to satisfy the public conscience, they must be found in the reasonable mitigation of the conditions under which pro- tracted sentences are to be endured, and the provision of security for full and open inquiry into prisoners' careers before they are passed. So guarded, Parliament, in authorising the " life " or indeterminate detention of pro- fessional criminals, will be enacting an important social reform.

A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS.