CURRENT LITERATURE.
THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.
The new number of the Quarterly Review contains two South African articles, " The War in South Africa "—an admirably clear statement of events since Lord Roberta landed—and " The Afrikander Bond "—written to prove the strength, solidarity, and complete anti-British feeling of the Bond. Beginning nine- teen years ago as a small association, its influence now stretches over Cape Colony, Natal, the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State. " Its strength consists not in its numbers, which barely reach 10 per cent. of the total electorate of the Colony. It is to be found rather in its deftly articulated organisation, its stern discipline, its close alliance with a Church which contains within its fold the entire Dutch population, but, above all, in the abso- lute sway exercised by Mr. Hofmeyr over his Vigilance Com- mittee The instrument of discipline is a system of boy- cott. It would be impossible for the untravelled reader to understand the baffled, helpless state of a resident of one of the little remote ' veldt' townships of the interior when placed under the ban of the Bond. There is nothing for him but to starve, or fly, or yield." "Foreign Opinion" consists of two
papers endeavouring to explain the present hostility to England in France and Germany. The first, by Herr Rodenberg,• the editor of the Rundschau, gives a history of the gradual decline of good feeling between Germany and England during the past century, born of our want of sympathy with Germany in all her struggles, both with France and Denmark. The second—in French—by M. Brunetiere, is a mere expres- sion of ill-feeling largely based on our conduct in the Dreyfus case. Every Frenchman is hostile to England in the present war, he tells us, except certain " specialists in con- tradiction." "The University of London" contains a history of the examining body hitherto called by that name, and of the various abortive schemes to found a residential University of London. Finally, the writer gives an exhaustive account of the statutes and regulations of the scheme which is now to become law, together with a statement of the financial position of the University in the immediate future. Among the purely literary articles contained in this number we think "The Playa of Gerhart Hauptmann " and the paper on Ruskin will be read with most interest.
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