THE MAGAZINES.

OF the two articles on the coal strike in the Nineteenth Century the more enlightening is that of Mr. George Blake • The House of Harpor. By J. Henry Harper. London : Harper and Brothers [12a. ed. not.]

Walker. That the minimum wage must make for unemploy- ment is clearly brought out in the following argument.

If the minimum is more than the value of the work of the inferior workman, he must cease to be employed, and from bis point of view he undoubtedly suffers a very grievous hardship ; for while at present he earns what he can, and is thankful to earn it, under a hard-and-fast minimum wage ho would be precluded from earning less than the minimum." The results of the experiment of the Prussian Government in nationalizing the mines are shown to be costly to the Government and disastrous to the German consumer; but such an experiment would be even more disastrous to us, as Great Britain is gradually losing ground in markets where a few years ago we had a practical monopoly. The situation is thus summed up :- " The ultimate person who must pay for higher wages or loss work for the collier is the consuming public, and the prosperity of Britain has been built up on cheap coal. Can the public pay much more than it is paying P Possibly by adopting more economical ways of utilizing the heat-values of coal it may be able to get more work out of a given quantity of coal than it does at present, and in this way save itself. But by making less coal do more work, it will be pro tango diminishing the demand for the collier's product, and more particularly for the higher-priced coals, since the cheaper and smaller varieties are just those which are most suitable for gasification. Thus the average price of coal from the seller's point of view may be affected ins downward direction, and the ability to pay higher wages correspondingly decreased. We have, on the one hand, a demand for increased pay, negatived in the opposite direction by a shrinking market. These can only be reconciled, if they can be reconciled, by a reduced number of men earning a higher wage, and a correspondingly larger number of men out of employment and forced to earn their living in callings where the pay is not so good."

Mr. Walker concludes with some weighty remarks on the un- fortunate inability of the British working man to recognize the simple economic facts which govern the situation, including the prejudicial effect which the competition of cheap Japanese and Chinese coal, of water power, electricity, and mineral oil, must have on the coal trade of the future. "Ifs their leaders do not know these facts they ought to know them, and if the blind lead the blind they must inevitably fall into the ditch, and trot the colliers only, but the whole country with them."------ Sir Henry Seton-Karr, seizing on the statement of one of the Miners' Federation leaders, " We are the Government now," which he uses as the heading of his article, contrasts the energy and foresight of the extremists with the apathy and shortsightedness of the Government. The strike, ho contends, is not a genuine miners' but a leaders' strike, the men, out of clan feeling, lending themselves to the purposes of the Socialist or Syndicalist leaders of the Federation. The article is marred by some exaggeration—for example, the statement that sonic 3,000,000 men or more have been thrown out of work—and, though we bold no brief for the Govern- ment, Sir H. Seton-Karr's account of their intervention as mere vote-catching is neither generous nor just, and line been to a considerable extent falsified by the events of the last fortnight.—Mr. Noel Buxton's views on the Parlia- mentary control of international relations are temperately expressed in his paper on "Diplomacy and Parliament." We may note that ho urges the complete amalgamation of the Foreign Office and the diplomatic service, and a revision of the system which bars promotion from the consular to the diplomatic service, and reserves diplomacy to men of con- siderable private means.—Mr. Erskine Childers in " The Real Issue in Ireland" impugns the accuracy of Mr. Cram- mond'sstatistics, charges the Union with reducing Ireland to pauperism, and supports Ireland's claim to complete respon- sibility for all her own expenditure and taxation. Finally ho appeals to Ulstermen to consider what their .loyalty.to the Unioni is costing Great Britain in hard cash, and is going to cost in the future. " They have honestly believed that the

i

Union is best for Ireland as a whole. Is it too much to ask them to sound the foundations of that belief in the light of the modern finance and the revelations it suggests P" Ulstermen, we are sure, are quite ready to accept that challenge without any misgivings as to the conclusions of such an inquiry.

Major-General J. K. Trotter discusses the question of

F ubalterns' pay in a valuable paper, showing that they cannot live at home on their pay, and that oven, on the basis of an allowance of £100 per annum, they can only avoid financial embarrassment by Spartan self-control. The suggestions that he makes to remedy the evil are judicious, but, as he

observes, without the active and sympathetic support of the commanding officer no scheme can be successful—We may also notice Lady Blake's interesting historical account of the Chinese Societies formed for the restoration of the native Ming Dynasty, and hi particular the Hung League or Triad.

Society.

"The Triple Entente and its Enemies " in the National Review should be read in connexim with that on "Our Foreign Policy and its Reform" in the Contemporary. The writer in the Contempovary regrets our abandonment of the policy of " splendid isolation" for that of ententes, which are virtually alliances ; " Ignotus " in the National Review takes his stand on the dictum of Admiral Mahan that" the balance of power no longer exists." It is because of this prodigious disturbance in Continental conditions, " Ignotus" maintains, that Britain has been forced out of her so-called "splendid isolation." He also notes the inconsistency between the pacific

declarations of the critics of the Foreign Office and their advo- cacy of a menacing policy towards Russia.—Mr. F. E. Smith, M.P., supports the proposals of the National Service League as the best way of rendering the Territorial system really efficient. He lays stress on the importance of four months' consecutive and initial training, but admits, in conclusion, that the crux of the problem is the attitude of the new urban democracy. " Their whole-hearted assent to any scheme of universal

service must be secured if that scheme is over to be created, and certainly if ever it is to endure. It would be futile to deny that a vast amount of work of a purely propagandist character remains to be done in the great towns before the problem will be ripe for its material solution."— Colonel Callwell's paper on "Some Current Misconceptions on Invasion" is chiefly aimed at exploding the analogy main- tained to exist between the invasion of Tripoli and an attempt to invade the United Kingdom. We have only space to note two interesting points in his able argument, viz., the fact that, "in spite of electrical communications and newspapers and the advanced social conditions to-day, a great country like Italy can make preparations for an expedition on a compara- tively largo scale in time of peace without the fact leaking out"; and, secondly, that "if our Navy renders any form of military attack upon the country other than a raid by a small force impossible, then the Government is incurring a serious responsibility in wasting national resources upon a home-defence army far in excess of requirements."— Mr. J. 0. P. Bland describes the genesis of the present financial combination at Peking of "the six Powers whose interests are predominant in China," distinguishing between "those Powers whose foreign policies guide and control the operations of their financiers abroad and those which are more or less controlled by their financiers." In the latter category, so far as China is concerned, be places England conspicuously first, and in general expresses his sorrowful amazement that the British Government "continues to place large dis- cretionary powers in the bands of financiers avowedly in close partnership with Berlin, permitting British rights to be bar- tered away and British prestige to be lowered for the possible benefit of irresponsible corporations and their cosmopolitan supporters." He applauds the policy of those Powers which

marry diplomacy and finance instead of divorcing them as we do out of fidelity to our "fetiches of Free Trade and non- interference." We must content ourselves with briefly out-

lining Mr. Bland's argument. His intimate knowledge of China entitles him to a respectful hearing, but he has not converted us to a belief in the bagman-diplomat.--- "Pollio's" article on "Strikes and the Australian Remedy"

starts with the frank statement that " the whole history of the Australian coal strike makes it impossible to draw any rational comparison between it and the British strike." Com- pulsory arbitration was feasible in Australia bemuse it had public opinion behind it, including the Labour leaders, and it has proved efficacious, according to " Pollio," because it has been backed by Protection. He sums up the situation

as follows :-

"Australians have devised a substitute for strikes which is proving effective under Australian conditions. Those conditions are essential to its efficiency. They may be all wrong, undesirable, `un-English,' a violation of every sound economic law. Or they may be right for us and wrong for you. However that may be, they carry the substitute with them, and it is useless without them. As long as England insists on free imports she must accept strikes also, if she wants effective compulsory arbitration—if, for that matter, she wants to be again a reel nation, and not a collec- tion of self-conscious classes—she will find it worth her while to try Tariff Reform." —Mr. Austin Dobson contributes one of his fascinating eighteenth-century studies on William Mason, Gray's bio- grapher, reminding us of Boswell's acknowledgment of his indebtedness to Mason's excellent method and Horace Wal- pole's equally significant tribute ; Miss Frances Pitt writes pleasantly on "Rooks," and Mr. Joynson Hicks, M:P., dis- cusses " The Command of the Air," criticising the inadequacy of the War Office pregrarnme and condemning the unsym- pathetic attitude of Colonel Seely towards British aeroplane manufacturers.

Mr. William Brace, the Labour Member, writes on "The Mining Industry of Britain" in the Contemporary. The miners' case for a minimum wage, he observes, is based on two main principles, the danger of the industry and the disabilities of the coal-getter. To illustrate the first or " moral " principle, as he calls it, he states that "each day the collieries in Britain work four men and boys are killed upon an average and five hundred are injured." Mr. Brace attri- butes the unrest to " a lack of confidence among the workmen in the existing systems for regulating wages, and the convic- tion that, compared with the service they render, their reward is inadequate to give them that standard of living they have a right to expect." While regarding the Minimum Wage Bill as a tentative measure he acknowledges the services of the Government to be of incalculable value to the miners. For the rest he is no believer in com- pulsory arbitration, he denounces Syndicalism and the " irritation " strike, and regards the general strike as " the most deadly weapon in the armoury of the workmen, to be used only as a last resurt to secure justice, and after every effort has been exhausted to win a fair settlement by negotia- tion and conciliation." The nation, he considers, "may for its own protection ultimately find that as a business proposi- tion it must acquire the mines and railways as its own property." But it must be " by purchase, not confiscation." Again, " it is not the wish of the miners or their leaders to injure or reduce the earning power of the industry." We have searched Mr. Brace's article in vain for any indica- tion of the faintest conception on his part of the possibility that coal may not always be in the same demand as at present. He does not begin to realize the tre- mendous incentive that the coal strike has given to devices for its more economical use, as well as to the substitution of other fuels.—" Our Foreign Policy and its Reform " is an unsigned paper prepared on behalf of the Foreign Policy Committee, of which Lord Courtney of Penwith is President and Mr. L. T. Hobhouse Chairman of Committee. The burden of the writer's complaint is that Sir Edward Grey, obsessed by fear of Germany, is actuated in his policy not so much by a desire to defend British interests as to maintain what he considers the balance of power of Europe. To that end he has lot the entente with France virtually develop into an alliance directed to the maintenance of the balance of power. Per contra, the Foreign Policy Committee want to disentangle England from European alliances, place our entente on its original footing, and endeavour to supplement it by a similar understanding with Germany. The specific terms of such an entente are borrowed from a German publicist, Dr. Nathan, and include "an agreement as to the extent of the armaments of either party." The writer sagely adds, " We cannot of course say with certainty that an agreement with Germany is possible until we clearly know the mind of Germany." It is a strange thing that the indispensable antecedent condition to the reform of our foreign policy as desired by the Foreign Policy Committee is not so much as mentioned from be- ginning to end of the article, though it is implicit in every line of it—the immediate appointment of a new Foreign Minister. If our foreign policy for the past six years, as the writer contends, has been not only ungenerous and mis- guided, but highly dangerous, no improvement can be expected under Sir Edward Grey, whom the writer charges with yielding to Russia simply in order to accumulate "a certain amount of good-will which might later be of use to us in a quarrel with Germany."—Mr. Horwill sends an informing paper on "Anglo-American Arbitration," showing how the mortmain of the clause in the 1787 Constitution, which secured to the Senate its control of the treaty-making power, has been the chief obstacle to the conclusion of a compact between the two great English-speaking nations. Professor E. H. Parker gives us an interesting con- densed history of the Manchus, contrasting their early efficiency with their recent decadence. "The extraordinary conquest of China by a handful of Tartars is only paralleled by the conquest of Europe by a handful of Romans or the conquest of India by a handful of Englishmen."

—We may also notice Mrs. J. A. Hobson's paper on "A Mission to Mothers," in which she outlines her scheme for model Home Schools to raise the standard of home life in villages, Lady Ritchie's genial sketch of the life and work of Alfred Stevens, and Mrs. Campbell Dauncey's graphic account of Easter in a Philippine town.

Mr. Sidney Low writes in the Fortnightly of " Anti•Strike Legislation in Australia." He seems hopeful of the future and believes that the day of large strikes is past. The account be gives of numerous disputes since the passing of these laws is, however, not very promising, nor do the records in the newspapers of recent labour troubles in Australia inspire us with great hope in this direction.—" Auditor Tantum" oriticises Mr. Bonar Law and recalls his various mistakes during his brief leadership. These are charges not supported by definite evidence, such as the allegations of the institution of the spoils system by the Govern- ment, the general disparagement of our war material when only the rifle was capable of serious attack, and lastly the valiant declaration of his intention of repealing the Insurance Bill, with the hasty rush to the news- papers to recall the threat. None of these, we are told, were mistakes which would have been made by Mr. Balfour. People who criticise leaders after this fashion forget what a difficult business it is to lead a weak Opposition. We must remember also that if Mr. Bonar Law has made mistakes any other leader would also have blundered. That leader's mis- takes would have been different, no doubt, but very likely they would have been worse instead of better. In the name of fairness wo protest against Mr. Bonar Law being pitted against a " Bogey " who is presumed to be faultless— an immaculate and omniscient demi-god.--M. Paul Seippel writes an interesting and appreciative account of M. Remain Rolland and his work, Jean-Christophe. This romance in many parts is nearing completion, and we are given some words from an unpublished portion of it in which the author addresses the younger generation of idealists in France. The interest of M. Rolland's work is so great because of its definite appeal to these idealists and the popularity which it is gaining in France. We are told that M. Rolland began life as a Roman Catholic, later he became a disciple of Spinoza and the pm-Socratic philosophers, and now "he appears to be coming, spontaneously and quite inde- pendently, into closer sympathy with some of the more recent religious tendencies of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism."—Mt.

Lewis Melville gives a picture of Cobbett, and rightly says he was the personification of John Bull—sensible, practical, and of untiring energy; he held his course with absolute persist- ence and complete belief in himself ; and though he had a strong feeling for natural beauty he had none for art.—Miss Constance Maud writes an account of the Persian philosopher and teacher who has lately been in England. He represents the sect which was founded by his father and which endured terri- ble persecutions. Abdul Baha was himself exiled and im- prisoned for forty years in the fortress of Akka, and was awaiting sentence of death when the deposition of Abdul Hernia sot him at liberty. Miss Maud gives a striking account of the wise words the teacher gave to all sorts of people •who came and asked him questions : Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Vegetarians, and Hindoos. A representative of the last came with cotton-wool in his nose and ears lest he should cause the death of some tiny insect. After the Hindoo had drunk some water Abdul Baba sent for a micro- scope and showed the organisms the water contained, and the cotton-wool was discarded. An inquirer asked, "Does the Master consider all religions equally efficacious P " and got the following reply :— "There is but one God, and all the Teachers and Prophets are sent forth into the world by Him, but all have not an equal amount of truth. They are like the various branches growing on one tree. Some are great branches bearing much fruit and many leaves, others aro far smaller and loss important, yet all, even the

smallest and weakest branch, draws its life from the same great atom and root. That stem is God. But no man can say, for instance, that the branch of Mahomet can be compared to that of Jesus Christ, that most vital of the branches of the tree of Life when we clear away the dogma with which the Churches and sects have encrusted it and go back to the Divine Teacher Himself."

—Mr. W. S. Lilly has made a study of the " Substitutes for Christianity" which revolutionary France attempted to set up after the disciples of Voltaire had carried out the injunc- tion to dcraser l'infame by means of the guillotine, noyades and other methods of conversion. The Goddess of Reason, in spite of her personification by ladies of the Opera, did not last long, nor was the Etre Supreme less ephemeral. A new cult was invented under the Directory called Theophilanthropy, a general toleration of all things from Confucius to Rousseau, but with the exclusion of Christianity. Napoleon was under no illusions on the subject of these invented religions, and Mr. Lilly concludes by quoting his saying: "I1 me Taut des enves qui sauront etre des homilies. On n'cst pas homme sans Dieu. L'homme sans Dieu, je l'ai vu it l'eeuvre en 1793. Oct hommo- IA, on no le gouverne pas ; on le fusille." In Blackwood Mr. Arthur Page traces the history of the surrender of the Liberal Government in the case of the Trade Disputes Act. Mr. Keir Hardie threatened, and Mr. Asquith and Lord Haldane protested, that never would they give in ; thus did the latter in the best legal style nail his colours to the mast. " If Mr. Keir Hardie thought ho was going to coerce him or anybody else he had better come to East Lothian and try it." All the same after these brave words the speaker within a few months had submitted to the ignominy of capitulation to Mr. Keir Hardie and his friends. Mr. Page goes into the question of the new morality of trade unions which now encourage the breaking of agree- ments as a virtue, and quotes the following very significant admissions of Mr. J. H. Thomas, M.P., Assistant Secretary of the A.S.R.S., made to the Railway Commission last September :— " Q. Does your Union interfere in matters of discipline ? A. No. Q. Is it a part of discipline that men should carry out their contracts of service ? A. Yes. Q. Did you not call out your men in direct violation of their contracts P A. Yes. Q. Is that a now departure P A. 11 is new in the sense that I have never known ii done before."

Mr. Page considers that it is not too late to make a stand against the ruinous doctrine that deliberate breach of contract is a virtue in a workman.—Mrs. Harper introduces us to the original of Charlotte Bronte's Paul Emanuel, and gives a charming account of M. Heger and his family in their school at Brussels. The writer says she was warned not to allude to the Brenta, as the Heger family were furious at the portrayal of Mme. Heger as Mine. Beck ; indeed, there seems to have been little likeness in the picture, and Mrs. Harper describes her as an old lady entirely taken up with her devotions, the management of the school devolving entirely on her daughters. But M. Heger did some- times talk of the Brontds, and with admiration of their powers, and ho had kept quantities of Charlotte's and Emily's French exercises, giving as a reason, " parceque j'y ai vu le genie." We are shown a picture of M. Heger "as he called out of a window on an upper story of his house down to some child in the garden, ' Viens done, vite; tiens ton tablier,' and then dropped some chocolate or a brioche into the outspread apron of some happy little girl." Here truly we catch a glimpse of M. Paul.—Mr. W. H. Buchan's account of his journey into the mountains of Sikhim will rejoice all those who love " the hills and the snows upon the hills," and as we read we feel the stimu- lation of rising out of the hot valleys into the regions first of gentians and then of eternal snow.—Mr. Arthur IVeigall tells the story of Napoleon's wild adventure in Egypt. The plan was vast—no less than to be Sultan of the East was the aim—but the execution was absurd, the know- ledge of the Eastern mind small, the bombastic appeals ridiculous, and the end mere plunder on the part of the army and treacherous escape on that of the general. Nowhere else did Napoleon so well earn his name of Corsican bandit. The whole disreputable episode is on one level of degradation, the abjuring and insulting of Christianity, the adoption of Mohammedanism, the cutting-off of hie new subjects' heads and sending them about in sacks, his butchery of between 4,000 and 5,000 prisoners on the beach at Jaffa, in cold blood, and finally his vision of himself, as he told Mme. de Remusat, " on the road to Asia, mounted on an elephant, with a turban on my head and in my hand a new Koran, which I should com- pose according to my own ideas." What a pity Napoleon did not live long enough to read Disraeli's novels I How he would have enjoyed them I The United Service Magazine for April contains an article on "Horses for War Purposes : Their Supply and Manage- ment," by Major A. H. Lane, which is worth attention. He very truly says that no horse comes up to the Arab. " His endurance is extraordinary—especially is it extraordinary when the ration of food is small" :- "I have seen them in the Soudan travel for weeks at a time, through heavy sand, on a ration of about five pounds of barley each day, with sometimes a few handfuls of dried grass or straw. On an experimental march in 1897, from Cairo to Suez, carried out by the 21st Lancers, almost every Arab horso marched there and back, but very few of the Australians managed to do the whole journey, and none of the Hungarians got very far. This was in cool weather and with regular feeding. Had the conditions been otherwise the difference would have boon undoubtedly much more marked."

We note that he puts in a plea for the encouragement or the breeding of mules, on the ground that mules are hardier for rough campaigning than horses, and will travel further when water is scarce. Greatly daring he suggests : "Why not have mounted infantry on mules P" Certainly the training of a. mule battalion would be an amazing spectacle.