THE NEW MAGAZINES.
The Nineteenth Century.
The August number, to which several light articles give a holiday air, is on its political side concerned mainly with Socialism, which Sir Sydney Olivier defends with some of his old Fabian zeal, and with Tariff Reform, which Mr. J. R. Remer, M.P., advocates from the manufacturer's stand- point, desiring nothing less than a fifty per cent. tariff on all foreign manufactured goods. Mr. R. E. Freeman puts some of the arguments for and against a Capital Levy, but he seems to misunderstand the careful reasoning and well-considered estimates of Sir Josiah Stamp's recent lectures on the subject. Lord Long, writing on " The Navy and its Pay," pleads earnestly for the naval officers, petty officers and seamen, who were grossly underpaid until the end of the War and who even now find it hard to support their families ashore when they are serving on distant stations. Sir George Aston states the case for improving the naval base at Singapore ; a modern fleet, he points out, is helpless without a secure harbour con- taining docks, repair shops and oil tanks, and in the Far East the British Navy has no such base at present. The title of Mr. F. J. P. Veale's article, " The Rhine Difficulty : A Way Out of It," inspires hopes ; but all that he has to suggest is the fulfilment of the promise to guarantee France military support in the event of an unprovoked attack on her by Germany, and it is far from clear that France would now be satisfied with such a guarantee, in the only form in which it would be given. Mr. Kenneth R. Swan's account of " Some Lesser-Known Birds of London " is interesting ; Mr. Bassett Rigby, discussing " The Mystery of the Mammoth," argues very plausibly that the mighty beast was exterminated by primitive man and not by some hypothetical change in the climate of Northern Europe and Asia.
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