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NOTES OF THE WEEK. WE will not waste our readers’ time by detailing the inferences which might be drawn from the results of the first day’s poll. Despite the fact that there is a net loss of three seats, the increase in the sum of Liberal votes (cast is considerable. This is the more surprising i f we remember that an old register i s generally a Tory. Manchester has refused t o entertain the Paul of the ‘Tariff Reformers, Mr. Bonar Law; and one section of London proves t o be more rather than less Radical than i n January. On the whole, we may safely assume that t h e result of the whole election, if the first day resembles ;the rest, will he to ensure the passage of the Parliament Bill through the Commons for certain and through the Lords in all probability; for we d o not expect that , after t h e third time of asking, the Lords will refuse consent a n d face the prospect of the wholesale creation of peers. .On the other hand, t o make their consent easier, it will plainly be necessary, unless a very decided wave of democracy rises during the week, for the Cabinet, so soon as it reassembles, ‘to set about defining the new com- position of the Second Chamber, and even, if necessary, o n calling a large conference for the purpose of discuss- i n g it. I t will not d o simply to abolish the absolute veto of the Lords, then to introduce Home Rule, and after- wards to sit and wait until the prescribed two years have fled, Great and striking plans must almost instantly be outlined for constituting and employing the new instru- ment of constitutional government.

* * *

Rumours a re being circulated that the old Tories will not consent on any terms whatever to the proposed change: in

PAGE THE MAIDS’ COMEDP.--VI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I33 BOOKS AND PERSONS. By Jacob Tonson . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 REVIEWS : English Woodlands-Podmore’s Newer Spiritual-

ism-An XVIII. Century Marquise--The Emancipation of English Women -- Climbing in Wales - Ancient Etruria--The Soul Traders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

THE POST-SAVAGES. By Huntly Carter . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR FROM R. B. Kerr, Frederick H.

Evans, William McFee, Edmund B. d’Auvergne, Albert E. Löwy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

the powers of the Lords. Like Sir Edward Carson and his braggart, obstinate Ulstermen, these Lords a re pre- pared to die in the last ditch in defence of their time-worn privileges. If they had taken this attitude from the first, loftily declined to discuss their own reformation and appealed ‘to the love of Englishmen for a lord, we honestly believe they would be safe at this moment. But having at that demagogue Mr. Garvin’s invitation appealed t o Caesar at two elections (not counting the Campbell-Bannerman Government), and unmistakeably lost, it is unmanly, if not unlordly, to refuse the judg- ment. Unfortunately they have at the last moment dis- covered a brand-new alternative to their supersession in the shape of the Referendum, a device which we a re quite ready to admit is as plausible as it is dangerous to democracy, and by which, if the coalition forces a re not extremely careful, the victory over the Lords, which is now in sight, will be converted into a democratic rout.

* * a

How clearly the Unionists realise the anti-democratic nature of the Referendum it is impossible t o say. Certainly they have, so far, concealed any trace of a suspicion that i t is not really a democratic instrument. On the contrary, if their protestations g o for anything, we a re t o suppose that the Referendum. is suddenly become dear to them exactly because they realise for the first time that government is not nearly popular (enough, and that the Referendum would make it so. W h a t excellent deception or , shall we say, self- deception ! W e would have it plainly understood that the Referendum is in actual fact the most deadly weapon against democratic and representative government that can possibly be forged. There is literally no other danger now ahead of the machinery o f democratic government which is half so grave as the danger from the Referendum. We measure our words when we declare that if the choice were between the retention of the Lords without .the Referendum and their complete abolition with it, we would prefer the former infinitely before the latter. For this very reason we can well understand the Unionist Party leaders executing a war- dance and dance of victory on their inspired discovery of this simple and taking device for disestablishing Repre- sentative Government while it is still in its infancy. On the other hand, we are amazed that professed friends, and not only friends, but would-be tutors in Represen- tative Government, such, for example, as the “ Nation” leader-writers and Mr. J. A. Hobson, should be so blind as not to see that what the Unionists instinctively

hail as an instrument of continued oligarchy can scarcely at the same time be a n instrument of crescent demo- cracy.

* * * There are a t least nine and ninety ways of demon-

strating to anybody with the mind to follow the utter fallacy of the Referendum. Neither in theory, nor in practice, nor even in the form of a compromise, can it be maintained or tolerated for a single moment. O n the very lowest grounds of commonsense it can. be con- clusively proved to be actually ridiculious. For example. I t is proposed that the Referendum shall be applied, over the heads of the representatives, in what, in the accepted phrase, are called “ grave issues.” Very well. What is the very gravest issue that can conceivably come before Parliament for decision, and on which there may be sufficient difference to warrant a Referendum, if such a proceeding were a rule? Obviously the gravest of all issues is whether in any particular conjunction of circumstances the nation shall or shall not go to war. In comparison with that issue every other issue, con- stitutional or legislative, is minor, a s everybody will agree. But for reasons plain enough even to the “Nation,” it is precisely on that gravest of all issues that a Referendum would not and could not be taken. The very idea of it is ridiculous. Mr. Balfour would submit Home Rule and Tariff Reform to a plébiscite, but he would not undertake to submit the decision of war to a plébiscite. He would be a raving pedant if he did. Not even on an electioneering platform would he pledge himself to do it. Yet it is implied in all this talk of a Referendum that the statesmen who may and must be trusted to risk involving the nation in a war, and to do so without consultation directly with the people, are quite unfit to be trusted out of the leading strings of a fussy and suspicious electorate in matters of infinitely less concern to the nation than war. The question to ask of Referendum maniacs is therefore this, and the more publicly it is asked the better: Would you be in favour of submitting the decision of war to the Refer- endum; and if not, why not? That, we imagine, would end the matter for people of mere commonsense.

* * * But there are other plausible aspects of this wretched

invention which need apparently to be examined. W e say that it is indefensible in theory, but the question is, what theory? Publicists are such incorrigible wire- pullers nowadays that we sometimes doubt whether any of them have a theory of government a t all. Neither the “Spectator” nor the “Observer,” we are certain, has the smallest articulate notion of the bases of its faith. That is intelligible to us since we perceive clair- voyantly that neither of these organs has any political faith at all. The “Spectator” has sentiments, the “Observer” wears the ribbons of dead passions; but of faith in the sense of a clear political creed, resting on consistent and valid assumptions, and supported by facts and proving itself in practice, they are both barren and agnostic. On the other hand, it might certainly be expected that the heirs of Mill and the pioneers of democracy would know what they were talking about, and could Yell a democratic device from a device so preposterously and palpably undemocratic as the Refer- endum. For in plain truth the Referendum is inde- fensible only o n one ground and by one theory, the theory, namely, that we are attempting in England to establish democratic government. If that is assented to, we have only to prove that the Referendum is fatal to democracy to dismiss it in theory as well as by commonsense.

What is the essence of democratic government? Cer- tainly it is not “government by the people.” Govern- ment by the people is an unthinkable proposition to apply to modern states, I t is applicable, no doubt, to village communities where communal decisions can actually be arrived at in the sight and hearing and with the consent and under the direction of all the people. Doubtless, also, it is a condition of affairs to which the world will ultimately revert under Communism. But here and now in states such as exist under our noses it is absurd to speak of “Government by the people” as if it had any sense in that form at all. What, plainly, it means, and what alone it can possibly mean for u s is “Government by the people through their chosen representatives.” The phrase, in fact, is mere shorthand for a definition of Representative govern- ment. With that addition implied it is intelligible. Without it, the phrase is meaningless.

* * * Having got so’ far, we may confidently define the two

conditions of Representative Government as these : the free election by the people of their representatives, and, no less important, the free but responsible status of those representatives when elected. If on the one hand, elections are not free, if the choice of candidates is artificially limited, if various electoral dodges are invented to whittle away the perfect freedom of the public to choose its representatives, then democracy is still undeveloped-as, indeed, it its. But, also, on the other hand, if the representatives when elected prove to be merely the paid delegates of sectional interests, rich or poor; if they obey party whips instead of their own best judgment; if they fail by’ any reason really to be the word and act and thought of their consti- tuents in sum (though not in part; if, finally, and on the issue of the Referendum vitally, the elected represen- tatives are prevented by their own constituents from exercising freely and responsibly the faculties and judg- ment they were elected to employ-then, again, and by damage done to a principle of democracy, democracy is destroyed. You cannot have Representative Govern- ment and government by delegated gramaphone at one and the same time. Either we frankly accept the pos- tulates of Representative Government and give our representatives complete powers to act as if for the time being they were actually the people; or we abandon the experiment and revert, as assuredly we should, to oligarchy tempered by mob-rule. For ourselves, there is no doubt in our minds not only which of these pro- spects is the better, but that England is resolved on democracy . * * *

It will, of course, be said that the people make such idiotic choices of representatives that one day we may have a supreme House of Lunatics a t Westminster. That, at least, is one of the assumptions both of the advocates of the retention of an absolute veto by the Second Chamber and of the advocates of the Refer- endum. The people, it is urged, must be defended against the consequences of their own deliberate judg- ment. ?“he very representatives whom they empower to act on their behalf are to be lamed and pinioned lest they should turn on their hosts. Even if this argument had more validity than it has (and it must be admitted there are grounds for it) we should not hesitate to prefer the education of the people by the continued abuse of its confidence, to the abolition of all confidence itself. Referendummies claim for their precious scheme that the people will thereby be taught political wisdom. Nothing of the sort; they will acquire, perhaps, a little

122

DECEMBER 8, 1910. THE NEW A G E 123

more political information and enlarge their vocabulary of technical phrases, but of political wisdom there is not an ounce to be gained by merely dabbling as amateurs in direct legislation. Political wisdom in a people consists in detecting the identity of Tweedle- dum with Tweedledee, and in knowing a man from a monkey. I t is exemplified in the rare moments of popular insight when a Cincinnatus is taken from the plough, a Lincoln from wood-chopping, and a Cromwell from’ brewing, to be set a t the head of a people to be the nation’s representative. If a t other times those are chosen by the people who prove afterwards to be charlatans, incompetents, and rascals, let the fault be laid a t the door of the people, and the whole conse- quences with it . For we a re not such pessimists as to believe that good representatives are not to be had if the people are in earnest in looking for them, or could recognise them when they see them. And until this is the case, until there are not 670 men in all England who can and ought t o be entrusted with representative powers, it would be downright cowardice and a shame- ful shirking of their public duty for the people to abolish representation altogether and to substitute a degrading form of delegacy. * * *

For let there be no mistake about it : not only will Representation fly out of the window when Referendum comes in at the door of a Referenduma parliament ; but with the degradation of status from representative to delegate the personnel of Parliament will be unques- tionably lowered. Mr. Austen Chamberlain has already had the courage to avow that he would resign office if , while he held it, a Referendum went against him. Not only would honourable men with a spark of self-respect resign office if a Referendum went against them, but ten to one they would never seek any public office again. Why should they? There are only three inducements to govern a people : money, honour, and power; and of these money attracts only the lowest class of politicians. If you subtract from the rewards of office honour and power by robbing it of responsibility, YoU put your government up to cash auction, and it will assuredly be knocked down to the lowest bidder. That is all that need be said of the Referendum on its theoretical side.

’There remains to be considered the Referendum as a lock upon Mr. Asquith’s Parliament Bill when it is passed. This suggestion takes form, naturally, in the mind of the main author of the Referendum scheme for England. Writing to the “ Westminster Gazette,” Mr. J. A. Hobson says : “ I would plead that Liberals should not, without closer thought and invesltigation, repudiate the whole policy of the Referendum. For they may need it later on. When this Government is returned ‘to office with the power to place their Bill upon the Statute-book, the leaders of the Opposition, if I mistake not, will, though bowing to superior force, glace. on record their deliberate intention, when they next get office again, to restore a veto to a reformed Second Chamber. And this intention they will carry out, unless they are disabled from doing so. The only effective method of disabling them is for the Liberal Government, after passing the Parliament Bill and a Home Rule or Devolution Bill, t o frame and pass a Bill submitting future Constitutional changes to a Referendum. This limited Referendurn Act the Conser- vatives, when again in office, dare not reverse, and a measure to restore the veto to the Lords, submitted to ;1 Referendum, would certainly be defeated.”

* * *

* * * We are glad <to note that Mr. Hobson is now content

t o confine his proposed Referendum to Constitutional issues. This is very different from the holus-bolus scheme of only a few months ago ; but In our opinion it is no whit better. The passage from his letter which we have just quoted contains such a large number of hypotheses that the application to them of a projected Referendum reminds us of the imaginary mongoose that was to cure imaginary snakes. We are to suppose that in the event of the Liberals passing the Parliament

Bill the Conservatives on their next return to power will reverse it unless such reversal is now made contingent on a Referendum-which latter Mr. Hobson is certain would maintain the Bill. But in the first place, what ground is there for concluding that if the Conservatives are prepared to reverse the Act itself they would not be equally prepared t o reverse the Act which sealed the Act? Would they venture t o steal the cash-box, only to lose heart when it came to stealing the key? Again, is it not self-contradictory to assume that if a Conser- vative Government is returned, and presumably by a majority of the electorate, the same electorate, when asked a few weeks after the election to confirm their votes by their Referendum, will not do so,? Besides, it is not improbable that the election itself would be fought upon the issue of No Veto or Restored Veto; in which case, if the Conservatives won, the Referendum would be unnecessary. Finally, it is in our opinion not merely bad counsel but misleading counsel to direct the minds of Liberals to attempting to safeguard their Parliament Bill by any such means, let alone by means which we have shown to be on other grounds most perilous. If and when the Parliament Bill is passed, there a re two ways of ensuring that it shall never be reversed: they are, first, to proceed immediately to reform the Second Chamber so that when the Conservatives return they no longer find their discontented friends in the Lords, but new Gallios who, care for none of the old things; and, secondly, the Liberals must stay in office suffi- ciently long to give the new arrangement time to became habitual. The Land-taxes, it may be remem- bered, took only twelve months to grow into our fiscal system. The wildest of wild Conservative chancellors would not venture now t o uproot them. The Parlia- ment Bill, should it ever become law, will be accommo- dated in at most double that period. After two years the issue that is now alive will be dead, and only revo- lutionists to whom nobody pays any attention would be found to advocate its resurrection. Thus even on tactical grounds the Referendum proves to he unneces- sary io democracy.

THE QUEST. We sailed in haste from the narrow town-

Wha t did it know of the dreams we dreamed?- By the caked, mud flats where the sun went down

In the dull, blood haze, and the sea-fowl screamed. “Folly,” it jeered, for folly it seemed

To hearts too old and wise to respond ’To the vision we knew that beckoned and gleamed

In the unknown seas and the worlds beyond.

Wind and sun and the open sky, Strange, hushed seas where the dawn lamp hung

Like a carven pearl, and the noons went by, And the sunsets burned, a s ever we swung

Onward still, and the great stars clung Low in the gloom of the lustrous nights,

And the velvet stain on the waters flung Held drifting colours and magic lights.

S o we sailed as our hearts impelled, Dared and desired the gold years through,

Followed and thrilled while the charm still held Of the dreams to be and the things to do;

Peril was ours and sorrow we knew, Sorrow of seeking the fates deny,

For never nearer the vision drew, And the years went by, and the years went by.

W e have come back from the quest we made, Back to the streets and the narrow town

And the narrow life of the men who stayed- Poorer of pocket, and lean and brown.

And we watch the flats where the sun goes down In a dull, blood haze, and the sea-fowl scream,

And wait for the death that perhaps will crown The cravings of men who have dreamed a dream.

E. G. BUCKERIDGE.

A Manifesto and an Appeal. By the Central Committee of Albanian Students.

(Special ly translated for THE NEW AGE.)

THE Central Committee of Albanian Students, impelled by the extreme gravity of the state in which the rights of the Albanian people ,in general, and their educational institutions in particular, have been placed by the systematic persecution of the Government of the Young Turks, vehemently appeal, in the name of right and humanity, to the civilised world for protection from t h e tyrannical policy of the Young ‘Turks, who are endeavouring to crush all hope of progress and enlight- enment in Albania.

For five centuries the Albanians have freely shed their blood to preserve and consolidate the Ottoman Empire. Two years ago, after the meeting of the Czar and Edward V I I at Reval, perceiving that the existence of the Empire was at stake, the Albanians Bought side by side with the Young Turks to overthrow Abdul Hamid, thus saving the Ottoman Empire from certain extinction.

But no sooner did the Young Turks become masters of the situation than they forgot the promises made to t h e various peoples of the Empire, among others those by which the Albanians were to be free to manage their own affairs, and particularly to educated in their

from the beginning of their triumph have sought to realise ‘has been the complete denationalisation of the nations that compose the Empire, and their conversion to Islamism by every possible means. In Albanlia, to obtain their end they began by terrorising and perse- cuting the inhabitants with greater fury than was ever displayed by Abdul Hamid himself.

No longer hoping for any amelioration of such a s ta te of things, the Albanians now passionately appeal for aid to the public opinion of the civilised world, which has always been animated with the noblest senti- ments of pity for persecuted peoples, with the object of unmasking at ‘once the tyranny of the present regime of the Young Turks, who pose t o the world a s a n element of order and civilisation.

The Central Committee of Albanian Students protest : (I). Against the arbitrary measures directed against

t h e Albanian journalists, who without infringing the laws in the slightest a r e being crushed by the sup- pression of their newspapers, and by condemnation to varying terms of imprisonment and exile. T o be more precise, we cite the following abuses which would not b e tolerated in civilised countries to-day.

Feim Bey Zavalani, a n old supporter of the cause won by the Constitutilonal régime ,and the victim of shameful persecution under Abdul Hamid, has been sentenced as editor of the paper “ Bashkimi K o t b i t ” of Monastir by a court martial held at Djakova to six months’ imprisonment and a fine of ,Sixty Turkish pounds, with the suppression of his paper and the closing of his printing business.

Michel Grameno, one of the most distinguished sup- porters of the Constitutional cause, editor of the paper “ Lidja Orthodokse,” has been sentenced on several occasions to imprisonment and heavy fines, the last time merely for having reproduced certain passages from articles that had appeared in foreign journals relating to a meeting of Albanians in America, held for t h e purpose of sympathising with their oppressed com- patriots in Albania.

Lev Nozii, another old Constitutionalist, whose devo- tion t o the cause cost him banishment under Abdul Hamid, and editor of the political and literary review ‘‘Tomori,” is again banished for no other reason than having printed a n article from the London “Times” on the Albanian question.

Let us also cite the sentences passed quite recently (September, 1910) agaist Albanians for unjustifiable rea sons.

Hassan and Quamil Bey were arrested and con- demned by court-martial, after a most summary

own langûage. The ideal which be the Young Turks

enquiry, to ten years’ exile, merely because their eldest brother, Dervish Bey Elbassani, was president of the administrative committee of the normal school. Dervish Bey as well as Essat Pasha Tirana managed to escape by flight from falling into the hands of the tyrants.

Hogia Alez Hibrahim was arrested and condemned to ten years’ exile by court-martial for the simple reason that he was professor of the Mussulman religion at the normal school at Elbassan.

Demir Pasha Pekini and Fuat Bey Toptani were arrested and condemned without being informed of the reason of their condemnation.

(2.) Against the suppression of the Albanian news- papers :-“ Bashkimi Kombit” of Monastir ; “ Lidja Orthodokse” and “ Kortcha” of Kortcha; “ Shkiptar” of Constantinople and “ Tomori” of Elbassan.

(3.) Against the prohibition of Albanian journals pub- lished in foreign countries from entering Albania.

(4.). Against the closing of the Albanian printing establishments at Monastir, Salonica, and Kortcha.

(5.) Against the closing of the few primary schools and the normal school a t Elbassan, which a re supported by the subscriptions of Albanians residing in the country and abroad.

(6.) Against the exclusion of the Albanian language in the Government schools throughout Albania.

(7.) Against the closing of the educational clubs formed in accordance with the law.

(8.) Against the violence of which peaceable citizens are daily the victims, namely, the assassination of old men, women, and children, the rape of young girls, and the outrages to which mothers of families a re subjected by the satyrs delegated by the Government of the Young Turks.

(9.) Against intrigues of all sorts on the part of the Government to discredit the Albanian alphabet, which was solemnly adopted by the people at the congress at Monastir two years ago.

Rabid Chauvinists imbued with the ideals of the Pan-Islamists, the Young Turks cannot view with a friendly eye the desire of the Albanians to write their language in Latin characters. To accomplish their purpose, that is to stifle every attempt of the Albanians to cultivate their !own language, they recoil from no pecuniary sacrifice, and whilst making attractive promises ‘have recourse to the most formidable threats. In spite of all their rigorous measures, however, the Albanians refuse to substitute the Arab for the Latin letters in the teaching of their language, this language being of Indo-European origin and not Semitic as the Young Turks pretend.

Perceiving the failure of their tyrannical methods, and confronted with the progressive elan of the Albanians for the preservation of their national tongue, the Young Turks have officially resorted to a brutal system i n order to impose the Arab characters upon the Albanian language. But this system, far from frightening Albanian patriotism, has provoked a re- crudescence of indignation in every part of the country. Hereupon the Government of the Young Turks a t once prohibits our clubs, and declares a state of siege throughout the country, which is immediately invaded by more than 50,000 men commanded by Torgout Pasha, who has been invested with absolute power in order to stamp out even the germs of revenge.

Let the civilised world mark this monstrous state of things under the weight of which the whole population of Albania, Christian and Mahomedan alike, is groan ing .

I t is, in fine, a n insane persecution, in contempt of the most sacred rights of man, of everything Albanian. And this is occurring in the 20th century under the hypocritical rule of the Young Turks, who thus cheat the hopes of a new era in which we were promised a government that would at least be democratic.

So we call the attention of the civilised world to our wrongs, and implore it not to suffer the annihilation of the Albanian people, who a t this moment a re at the mercy of a savage régime whose unbridled fanaticism and cruelty are to-day more than ever the scandal of Europe.

124

DECEMBER 8, 1910. THE NEW AGE 125

Foreign Affairs. By S. Verdad.

HERR LEDEBOUR is a n important personage in the ranks of the German Social Democrats, and it is unfor- tunate that he should be so well noted for his tactless- ness. His latest and probably most tactless action is that which is reported as having taken place when the Reichstag proceeded to interpellate the Government on the subject of the Kaiser’s divine right. When the Chamber had recovered from the shock of hearing the present Chancellor, Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, speci- fically repudiate the explanation given ’by ’his prede- cessor, Prince von Buelow, together with the alleged guarantees given by the Kaiser to restrain himself in future, it received an even greater shock when Herr Ledebour admitted that what his party really wanted \vas a Republic.

The, scene that followed was just what might have been expected. The Berlin papers, Conservative and otherwise, mention the rapidity with which Herr Lede- bour ’ s colleagues lowered their eyebrows and assumed an air of indifference a s they heard their colleague pro- nounce the fatal words. They endeavoured to make it appear that they had no further interest whatever in Herr Ledebour. And, of course, the Centre and the Liberals, in fact, every non-Socialist group in the Reichstag, made haste to avow their loyalty to the Emperor William. Those very members who, not half-an-hour previously had been calling for the Kaiser’s head, were ready to go to any lengths to de- fend him from the wicked Socialists. The entire debate, which promised so well, and which, properly handled by experienced parliamentarians, would have led to momentous consequences, fizzled out and ended in a complete fiasco.

The fact is, of course, the the monarchical instinct is more strongly developed among the Germans than any other nation in the world; and the mere sound of the word Republic is sufficient ta turn indifference for the Kaiser into sympathy for him. To let the cat out of the bag at such a juncture was a bad piece of elec- tioneering tactics; for in the campaign preceding the pollings of next spring the anti-Socialists are not likely to omit the use of this useful political ammunition. The “ Berliner Tageblatt,” indeed, has already practi- cally admitted defeat, and even “ Vorwarts” is discreetly silent.

Let no one overlook what was decided at this meeting of the Reichstag a few days ago. The Kaiser, it was said beforehand, had given great off ence throughout the country because in several of his later speeches he had laid special emphasis on his government of Prussia by divine right. This utterance was felt to be entirely out of harmony with modern democratic thought, and it was maintained for several days previous to the as- sembling of the Reichstag that not only the Socialists, but also those members who might be described as Liberals and Radicals, were determined to put a stop to this sort of thing by insisting that the Emperor should keep the “promise” he made two years ago. Now, the Chancellor not only threw over this promise and denied that it had ever been made, but he also made it clear in addition, that the Hohenzollerns had built up Prussia, and that, while the representatives of the family had every claim on the Prussians, the Prus- sians themselves had none on the Hohenzollerns.

Now, this doctrine, far from being derided, was accepted. Then came the Socialist leader’s demand for a Republic, followed by an outbreak of hostility against them in the Chamber and, later o n in the country.

Readers of the Editorial Notes in this journal have been warned against accepting the decisions of a scratch parliamentary majority lest the measures passed by it fail to meet with the final and considered approval of the electorate. A somewhat similar warning might well be addressed to the German Social Democrats; for, as I pointed out in these pages some weeks ago- there is no occasion to shut our eyes to the fact- Socialism, as such, is making no progress in Germany.

The Social Democratic vote has increased; but that is quite a different matter. The heavy cost of living and the agitation against the high tariffs on imported meat are factors, inter alia, that add to this vote; but they by no means indicate that the country is making ready far a Republic, far less for Socialism. Indeed, many of the Social Democratic members in the Reichstag want nothing more than what we in England have enjoyed for years, that the Ministers shall be responsible to the Reichstag and not to the Kaiser; that a Minister who has lost the confidence of the Reichstag shall not retain his post merely because he still possesses the con- fidence of the Kaiser. If this and a few minor reforms were granted-and a ‘long-sighted Government would grant them-there would be an enormous slump in German Socialism. In other words, Herr Ledebour and many others have looked upon certain votes as having been cast for Socialism, when in reality they were given to the Social Democrats for the purpose of hastening a few political reforms that have about as much to do with Socialism as with the Buddha’s tooth at Kândy.

There is no need to emphasise this point; but there is need to lay some stress upon the Kaiser’s undoubted popularity throughout the country, even-what is most important-among the intellectuals. The Emperor William’s mind may not be profound; he may be nearly as tactless as Herr Ledebour himself; his taste in pic- tures may be bad, and his taste in sculpture execrable. Nevertheless, he has tried to do something for the intellectuals. He has spared no pains to encourage German painters, philosophers, and literary men; and, although he has not always succeeded in choosing the best, the genuine desire to give the intellectuals a leg- up is, there, and it incites the wealthy aristocracy to do the same. I wish I could make the same statement regarding the Court circles of this country. Two cen- turies ago, roughly speaking, our own aristocracy ceased to support the intellectuals, so that from the time of Pope the aristocracy has looked in vain to the intel- lectuals\ for support.

Here, on the other hand, is a single instance of the Kaiser’s encouragement to authors. He picked up a book written in German by an Englishman, Stewart Chamberlain, “ Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jafirhunderts,” and found it interesting. I t was, and is, in my judgment, a work based on fallacious prin- ciples, and without what might be called guts; but it did contain something original, no doubt. What the book is like, however, is not the point; the point is that the Kaiser, being struck with it, ordered five hun- dred copies of it and distributed them. The Imperial and Royal support of new ideas, however ill-chosen the ideas may be, helps culture along, and makes for freedom of thought among the people who are entitled to think freely.

As I write another instance occurs to me, and I will give it. The study of sex, the most important study of our age, was ably treated by Bloch in a volume of almost stupendous erudition entitled “ Unser Sexual- leben.” The Kaiser took a warm intererest in this volume when it was published in Germany, and its merits were generally recognised. But when an English translation made ‘its appearance-issued at a high price, and even sold subject to certain restrictions -an interfering purity league of some sort or another brought about its seizure by the police, on the ground that it might debase the mind of somebody, I forget whom. But our aristocracy, our supporters and en- couragers of philosophy and new thought, where were they when this was going on?

Apart from literature, however, the Kaiser is respon- sible for much of the progress of modern Germany. I t cannot be denied that he is the founder of the navy, a navy which has added immensely to the strength and prestige of his Empire. In the face of a partly hostile and partly indifferent public opinion he urged his theme of a big navy on the people; and he got his way. He advertised his country ceaselessly-a thing, of course, which we Britishers have no longer any need to do. Germany has poked her nose into other people’s busi-

126 THE NEW AGE DECEMBER 8, 1910.

ness many a time, and has often had it punched, for her pains; but she has now begun to make herself felt in international affairs. This is largely the result of the Kaiser’s pushful policy, and his people, on the whole, admire him for it.

Another word about Germany, and I shall hava finished. I t may be recollected that several German bankers offered to lend Turkey five or six millions sterling a few weeks ago at the direct instigation of the Kaiser. Owing to the Hungarian loan, however, which I referred to at the time, they have had some little difficulty in finding the money. They are nlow trying to borrow it from a group of Paris bankers. S o France will probably do the financing after all, though with different security.

The Forces Before and Behind the Throne.

By To H. S. Escott. “THE political struggle of the coming century will be in its essence not the multitude against the monarch and the caste privileges he represents, but Parliamen- tary government in its popular aspects against a more or less patrician bureaucracy. Between these upper and lower grindstones, the House of Commons may find itself inconveniently squeezed. If, therefore, you intend to write a book about it, you had better lose no time, or you may have to compose, not a biography*, but an epitaph, and that in spite of the good work which in one way or another it has contrived to; do.” So, a short time before his death in 1894, was advised the present writer by the historian, J. A. Froude. The prediction now recalled seems strikingly apposite to, even if not literally fulfilled in, the long, drawn-out series of Parliamentary or national incidents, of whose true inwardness the newspapers can do little more than confess, if they do not parade, their partial or complete ignorance.

In all this business the position taken by the Sovereign is, as from the first it has been, consistent, logical, and clear. More than a year ago, the late King, approached by the Pr‘ime Minister on the sub- ject of the so-called “guarantees,” met the request with what was practically a point-blank refusal, but added : “Convince me by concrete, definite evidence of a real desire on the part of my subjects for what I consider a change in the Constitution, I will consent to it. Without ,such testimony, I am without the power of doing so.’’ These words supply the key to King George’s real meaning and purpose when, shortly after his accession, he said that, in all constitu- tional matters, he should follow his father’s example. The same application a s was made to King Edward by Mr. Asquith in due course proceeded from him to King George, and in each case with exactly the same result. According to the sense in which the platitudes of the Ministerial Press are popularly taken, no specific undertaking of the kind insisted on, as is said, by the Prime Minister will issue from Buckingham Palace, Windsor, or Sandringham. Does it therefore follow that, as the Tory and Radical stalwarts both find a pleasure in putting it, there has already begun the “straight fight to the finish,” in which no quarter will be given or asked ,for, and truce or accommodation is equally out of the question? Let us start from the plain, indisputable truth, written in every chapter or on every page of our social, political, and -ecclesiastical history, that the British Monarchy, and the Chamber considered its chief traditional bulwark, are as much the embodiments of compromise as the National Church. Whenever our kings or nobles have been confronted with something in the nature of a popular ultimatum, they may have ended by coming out of the ordeal un- mutilated and sound. But why and bow? Because to retain something they have surrendered much. The * The advice was taken, the history was written, and the

book appeared under the title, “Gentlemen of the House of Commons.” (Hurst and Blackett. 1902.)

best and most characteristic type of the hereditary House, placed in one of its constantly recurring pre- dicaments, was the late Duke of Devonshire, still perhaps better remembered as Lord Hartington, equally suc- cessful in different phases of his career as Leader of the Commons and of the Lords. He existed in a chronic condition of grumbling discontent. At no time, how- ever, did he put his back to the wall and hit out, or to vary the metaphor, talk of dying in the last ditch. The victim of the malady besetting the British peerage,, known to foreigners as the spleen, he gave in exactly a t the most paying time, not perhaps with a ,good grace, but with the supercilious resignation which caused a former Belgian Minister to say : “ W h a t I chiefly admire about your Lord Hartington is his you- b e d - - d n e s s . ” Of all the peers who were the King’s personal friends, none had more influence at the palace than the Duke of Devonshire. This for the simpIe reason that king and noble looked at things from the same standpoint.

There is a very special reason for saying that the blunt wisdom and shrewd insight into consequences of the Victorian peer just mentioned are something more than dim memories or mere traditions at the Court to-day. Alone among the public men of King George’s youth and earlier manhood was the Duke of Devon- shire on terms of personal intimacy with King Edward’s successor. What, therefore, such a coun- sellor might have submitted to his Sovereign is not unlikely to be the course which that Sovereign may now adopt. Then there are those palace monitors who now actually have the myal ear. Born and trained within the St. James’ precinct, Lord Knollys, as private secretary, cannot help being a courtier by pro- fession. Not less than the Hatfield Cecils is he descended from a wise line of Tudor statesmen, with their sagacity for his inheritance. Pacific arrange- ment-not might or even right .so much as policy- is the watchword ever repeated to his successive masters by this possessor of a common sense almost amounting to genius. Formerly Lord Knollys had to combat counsels of a very different kind forthcoming from the Ellises and Kingscotes, always for militant methods. Those influences are now withdrawn. The royal deliberations a re still animated by the temporising spirit of the Duke of Cambridge, who, in season and out of season, impressed on his younger relatives that the first lesson for princes to learn must be how to give in.

On the other hand, look at the forces threatening, as their enemies say, not only the scarlet benches at Westminster, but the town and country abodes of royalty itself. Fresh from his laurels won at the Parnell inquiry of the last century, Mr. Asquith was sug- gested to Mr. Gladstone as a coming Premier. “ Forensic ” was the word constituting the old states- man’s opinion. To-day Mr. Asquith receives warmer praise even from his opponents than his followers for the great qualities he has shown. He is, however, a man of first-rate ‘intellectual powers rather than of great political or moral force. Those qualities belong pre-eminently to those two colleagues of his whom the Opposition loathes even more than it dreads. Mr. Winston Churchill at his first start began where his father left off, and with a much greater equipment of knowledge and pushfulness, of the attribute popularly known as “devil,” than Lord Randolph Churchill ever possessed. The powers which Mr. Lloyd George has shown are such a s probably to ensure, a t some future great shuffle of the cards, his reversionary claim to the Premiership. This pair of allies, when they first com- menced working together, agreed they could do nothing till they had hit upon a good cry. Rightly or wrongly, they are now convinced they have that in the abolition of the Lords’ veto, which formed so effective a refrain of Mr. Churchill’s Ritchie letter. The Lloyd George ,and Winston Churchill faction has its own little taper and tadpole chorus, just as Mr. Asquith can boast his. The tapers and tadpoles, however, of the two twin brethren‘ are a good deal more clamorously confident as regards their own particular cry than’ any

THE NEW AGE 127 DECEMBER 8, 1910.

rival tapers or tadpoles an either side. Here then is the real difficulty in this direction of anything like a climb down. Against this must be set the overwhelm- ing interest on the opposite side of striking, even a t half-past the eleventh hour, something like a bargain with their enemies. At this very moment a whole company of self-reforming peers are professedly vying with each other as to who shall be the first to eat most of the leek, and how t o cook that excellent vegetable so as to render it most wholesome, if not palatable. When the event must so soon decide itself, prediction would be equally foolish and futile. Everyone must decide for himself what the day after to-morrow must bring. All that can be attempted as regards that anticipation is to supply materials for the estimate which all may now form for themselves of the agencies between which the collision has come, and the noise of whose clash will soon deafen every ear.

A Business Man’s Excursion into the Region of Political

Economy. By John Zorn.

[NOTE.--In the supposititious case given in the following article, the figures given are, of course, also supposititious. My object is to indicate the lines upon which calculations should be made in analagous cases occurring in real life. It is in such calculations that the student of political economy who has never been behind the scenes, and has no personal knowledge obtained from life; study of the phenomena of trade and finance, is apt to go astray by overlooking the existence of important factors (and consequently ignoring their power) in the problems of political economy presented for solution.] OTHER things being equal, the. geographical employ- ment of mobile capital is determined by the return upon his investment yielded t o the capitalist. In other words, mobile capital will be transferred’ from\ country to country in accordance with the return obtained by the capitalist. But the gain of an individual capitalist does not necessarily mean a gain to the community of which he is a member.

Plugson, of Undershot, has ~ r o o , ~ ~ ~ invested in a business in England which returns him ten per cent., or £10,000 a year. His annual turnover of capital is large, and his ratio of working expenses high, so that bis annual wages bill is £90,000 This represents the employment of 1,000 households at an average of £90 a year, or approaching £2 a week.

Plugson discovers that he can work cheaper in Pannonia than at home. His agent over there, Swindi- lini having obtained a Government protectionist con- cession through a piece of jobbery, Plugson finds that a transference of his works to Pannonia will cost him a capital loss of ;G20,000, but that his annual profit will be £20,000 instead of £10,000. He accordingly closes his factory a t Undershot and manufactures his goods in Pannonia. His loss is £20,000, which two years’ extra profit will recoup, and thenceforward his annual gain will be £IO,OOO.

So far as England is concerned with Plugson, England’s loss and gain is identical with Plugson’s. The country loses £20,000 and gains £IO,OOO a year. Excellent business surely ! An admirable foreign in- vestment. But Undershot loses--Plugson. House property there depreciates to the extent of £100,000 on the closing of the mills. I t takes over six months for the thousand families earning £90 a year to get settled at other trades. The loss of wages is £50,000 to say nothing of morale. England, then, has bought her £IO,OOO a year not for Plugson’s loss of £20,000 of his capital, but a t a loss of that £20,000 plus £1OO,OOO depreciation of b u s e property, plus £50,000 loss of wages ; that is, England pays £170,000 for a gain of ;f;ro,ooo a year. Plugson buys his £IO,OOO a year for, two years’ purchase. England buys hers for 17 years’ purchase. But this is not all. Undershot kept Plugson in England ; Pannonia does not. Part of his time is

For example :-

spent in Pannonia, part in England, and part in Paris and Monte Carlo. The £IO,OOO a year extra that Plugson receives on his capital, is, so far as England is concerned, long circuited. England only benefits indirectly as the world’s trade expands.

Now, while possibly it might be foolish to hamper the transference of private capital and industries from England to foreign countries, as instanced, we must not lose sight of the fact that England has a vested interest in her Plugsons and her Undershots, which represents real national wealth, as much as does Plugson’s £1OO,OOO; and it is cases like that I cite which under- lie much of the cry for Protection.

Before, however, England embarks on the policy of protecting Plugson,, i t is for the advocates of Protection to make out either that Protection is the only remedy, o r that failing, that it is the best remedy. Let us bear in mind that protecting Plugson involves that, for keeping his capital and works in England, Plugson is to receive the equivalent for his possible gain in Pan- nonia, o r £10,000 a year, out of the pockets of his fellow tax-payers through the enhanced prices he charges them for his goods, and that his fellow tax-payers must pay in addition the cost of the collection of this £10,000

Now England’s loss caused through the transference of Plugson’s mills to Pannonia would be, as we have seen, £170,000. To save this loss of £170,000 Eng- land is asked to pay Plugson £10,000 a year plus cost of collection, say £1,000 a year more, or £11,000 a year all told. The capitalised value of £11,OOO a year a t 17 years’ purchase (the same figure that we took in our estimate when we considered what England paid for her gain of Plugson’s additional £10,000 a year) is £187,000. “ Protecting” Plugson is therefore a better business for Plugson than it is for England.

In our estimate of loss we have made a liberal allow- ance for England’s indirect loss through depreciation of house property, and Ioss of wages consequent on Plugson’s transference of his mills to Pannonia. W e have, however, made no allowance for indirect injury to England’s other industries and other citizens which may be caused through a protectionist policy, so that the business of protecting Plugson is even more costly in reality than it appears on the figures we have here set forth..

If Plugson must be “squared” in one way or another, then a direct bounty payment to him of £10,000 will evidently cost less than a policy of Protection. There- fore Protection is not the only remedy, nor is it evidently the cheapest. The proposition that Plugson must be protected involves, moreover, the supposition that any other capitalist taking his place will demand the same terms that Plugson does.

We have seen that in the Undershot mills there are three vested interests :- (I). The vested interest of Plugson the capitalist. (2 . ) The vested interest of the work-people who get

a livelihood from their employment in the mills. (3.) The vested interest of England, embracing the

two preceding vested interests along with that of all other English citizens.

Now the closing or maintaining of the mills is depen- dent on the first of these vested interests, that of the capitalist. If Plugson can reduce wages, so that his profit in England will be equal to his profit in Pannonia, he will maintain his mills open in England. If England can get capital for the maintenance of the mills at a cheaper rate than from Plugson, England can afford to keep the mills running.

Let us now take a wild flight of fancy. The Undershot operatives a re a shrewd and saving

sort, and when they hear that Plugson’s mills a re to be closed, the heads of the thousand households each put up £50 They then approach the Government, who lend them £50,000 a t 5 per cent. per annum, and the Undershot Co-operative Mills, Limited, is formed with a share capital of £50,000 and a loan of £50. 000 from Government. Each workman is now a shareholder, and each shareholder a workman. These men are quite content to keep the mills going for a profit of the £10,000 per annum that Plugson was abandoning for a greater. I t pays them better t o get a low dividend and

128 1 He NEW AGE DECEMBER 8, 1910.

£90 wages a year than to get Plugson’s rate of dividend and no wages. That is the difference between them and Plugson ; they can afford to continue running the mills, because they and the Government are content with a smaller return on their capital.

Let us now summarise the discoveries that we have made :-

( I . ) A Protectionist policy in foreign countries may cause a transfer of capital thither from England.

(2 . ) This transfer of capital may cause a greater loss to England than that measured by the capitalist’s initial loss.

(3.) There are more ways of combating such a transfer of capital than by erecting a tariff in favour of the home manufacturer.

(4.) Bounties are cheaper than tariffs. (5.) The factory whose workers are also its owners

can afford to work a t the lowest return on capital, and consequently, other things being equal, can pay the highest wages.

If it be necessary for a reduction to be effected in the expenses of a busi- ness so as to face competition, then, whether such reduction be effected a t the expense of the capitalist or at the expense of his employees, will be immaterial to the nation from a n economic standpoint, so long a s the productiveness of the business be maintained un- impaired.

Whether this position be Socialistic or no I will not venture to say. I am not a n avowed Socialist, but a business man, studying the phenomena of trade from life, and it is the position to which my reasoning has led me. Meantime, I come back naturally to the p i n t from which I started. Other things being equal, the geo- graphical employment of mobile capital is determined by the return, upon his investment yielded to the capitalist. In other words, mobile capital will be transferred from country to country in accordance with the return obtained by the capitalist. But the gain of an individual capitalist does not necessarily mean a gain to the community of which he is a member.

Summarising all our conclusions :

The Eurasian of Genius. “We don’t want to fight, but by jingo if we do, We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money,

We’ve fought the Bear before now, and while we’re Britons

The Rooshians shall not have Constantinople.”

too ;

true

-Barrack-room Ballads. The Swedish Academy not long ago awarded a prize

to Mr. Rudyard Kipling for his literary services to Idealism. There is another Nobel prize, that for ser- vices to the cause of Peace, to which he seems at least equally entitled, and it would be well for his friends to submit to the judges a copy of his latest contribution to Eurasian literature, a story in “ Pearson’s Magazine. ”

I t would ap- pear that the W a r Office, out of a base regard for that most abject and loathsome of all human beings, the British taxpayer (who must not be confounded for one moment with that archangel in trousers, the British citizen), has committed the crime of devising a dummy horse on which to teach riding to cavalry recruits. The villain of Mr. Kipling’s piece is naturally Mr. Haldane, who suffers, like 99.5 per cent. of Mr. Kipling’s white fellow-subjects, from the debasing stigma of being a civilian. However, as Mr. Haldane is always careful to inform us, in the true vein of a constitutional monarch, that he is responsible for nothing done in his name, he being the mouthpiece of “ my advisers,” the shafts of the satirist may chance to wound some sacred speci- men of that superman in khaki, the British officer.

Be that as it may, the injured army appears to be too meek to avenge its wrongs, and the cause of Ideal- ism in horseflesh is championed by-of all persons in the world-a naval lieutenant. This Nelson in embryo buys a rocking-horse, affixes a firework to its tail, and sets it up by night on a heap of turnips placed

‘Ï‘he plot of the story is not elaborate.

between two opposing camps of soldiers engaged in manœuvres on the South Downs.

The result does not appear quite so creditable to the discipline, temper and good sense of the British Army as its Eurasian laureate would have us believe. N o sooner is the firework ignited and the rocking-horse perceived afar off than both the sleeping forces mutiny, and, deserting their lines, swarm up the hill to pelt each other with the turnips, the turnips presumably being the property of some low-minded clod who had been vile enough to contribute to the maintenance of the excited heroes by paying-it is painful to have to soil one’s page with the word-taxes.

The mutiny may be excused as an outburst of manly spirit against oppression-it is more than excused, it is praised, by the author as a proof of the splendid pluck of the British race (when in uniform). The stupidity with which each side attributes the outrage to the other is more characteristic of certain episodes in a recent war than of the conduct of that cringing civilian, Clive, on the field of Plassey. But the supreme glory. of the British Army is manifested in the fact that no one gets hurt, the sole weapons used being the tax- payer’s turnips. Not a gun goes off even by accident; not a sword is drawn; not a belt is unbuckled. The mutineers emerge mutually unscathed from their grand display of military spirit. I t is like heaven-like a Eurasian heaven. A thousand demigods battle with each other for hours in a combat that must strike awe into the civilian heart, and bring the blush of shame to the taxpayer’s cheek, and at the end not one is a penny the worse. I t is like a meeting of the Peace Society. I t is more bloodless than football.

If the Norwegian Storthing cannot be moved by such a picture it must be a very different body to the Swedish Academy. An army that cannot hurt its enemies even when it tries is almost too good for this world. I t is far too good for England-for the tax-paying part of Eng- land. I t ought to be sent to Germany.

There is a darker element in this literary masterpiece. Like a true artist, Mr. Kipling has supplied the brightly humorous naval officer and the stupid but splendid mutineers with a foil in the person of one of those libels on human nature in which philanthropy refuses to believe.

For there is a deeper depth than civilianism, even than taxpaying. I t is-this time the shrinking pen refuses to do its office and asterisks must be employed- j*rn*lism. Mr. Kipling is an authority on j**rn*lism. He has himself passed through that hell, and emerged, happily, without the smell of fire upon his Eurasian robes. There is no corner of its dark re- cesses that his genius has not explored. What he has to tell us about j**rn*lism is worth hearing.

A j**rn*list, one gathers, is a being, shambling upon two legs and bearing a superficial resemblance to a man, and even to a SOLDIER in mufti, who consents to sell his soul to the taxpayer, as represented by the pro- prietors of the “ Daily Mail,” “Daily Telegraph,” “ Morning Post,’’ “ Times,” and other grovelling and unpatriotic sheets, in return for a beggarly wage. The more beggarly the wage, of course, the baser the j**rn*list; fat royalties and Nobel Prizes are for a different brand of human kind. In return for a miser- able pittance, barely sufficient to support his wife and children-the taxpayers of the future !-this debatable creature is found willing to furnish the taxpayer with information as to how his money is spent-aye, even should such a task involve the mention in less deferen- tial language than that of lickspittle, of SOLDIERS, nay, of OFFICERS!

In this story the Judas--Mr. Kipling does not flatter him with that name : doubtless there are still viler traitors in the Eurasian religion-the Iscariot appears upon the scene, not in a motor like a Prize Idealist, but on a bicycle, and clad in knickerbockers-things un- known to military tailors except by the name of breeches. I t is not stated that he is a taxpayer, and we may give. him the benefit of the doubt. Fleet Street salaries generally come within the exemption, and a

paper that would stoop to report a maudlin row, .pro- voked by a senseless hooligan joke, like that chronicled by Mr. Kipling, must be on its last legs.

Fortunately for the honour of the Army, and of Eng- land-the part of England that does not pay taxes, but only spends them-there is a champion to meet the traitor. And what a champion ! A soldier? Of course. An officer? Guess again. The hero is, if our dazzled eyes have read the magazine aright, a Brigadier- General only very slightly the worse for dining at the mess ! The old warrior’s heart is full-the mess cham- pagne was good. He has watched his old regiment throwing turnips till the happy tears have started to his eyes. In a burst of pardonable, or rather laudable, emotion, he seizes the Fleet Street abortion and, less pacific than a mere private, ducks him in a horse-trough, having less confidence than Mr. Kipling in the light in which the incident would strike the British reader.

And what is it that, aided by the mess champagne, has so promptly stirred that aged, valiant heart? Is it the spectacle of a successful meeting? Is it the absence of all sense of humour on the part of his old corps; or their childlike unintelligence? I t is nothing of these. It is the harmless character of the combat that moves him to ecstasy--at least that is what appears from his not quite sober ejaculations. W e say again, if the Peace prize be not won by a tale like this, then the Swedish Academy must come to the rescue, and reward the author with a second tribute in the name of I deal ism.

In calling this stupendous literary performance a work of Eurasian genius, it is not suggested, of course, that Mr. Kipling is a Eurasian in any other sense than that in which every Anglo-Indian is more or less a Eurasian, and particularly such as come of Anglo-Indian families, are born in India, pass a few years of boy- hood in England, and then return to India for their career. The caste is becoming distinct to every ob- server, and no one has done more to make it so than Mr. Kipling.

The well-bred man does not feel called upon to assure every one he meets that he is a gentleman; and in the same way the thoroughly white man does not feel obliged to emphasise a t every turn the natural and obvious difference between himself and the black. I t is when East and West meet most nearly that the feel- ing of racial aversion is most strongly developed. Of all writers on India Mr. Kipling enjoys the honour of being most cordially disliked by the people of India, who, so far from regarding him as a great Idealist, appear to see in his work the glorification of everything that is snobbish, brutal and soul-destroying.

In Anglo-Indian society, whether it be located at Simla or a t Cheltenham, everyone not in the service- accursed word !-everyone not in receipt of the wages of the taxpayer is assumed to be a “ bounder,” unless he has a title. In outlying districts, where white men are few and the club is hard up for subscriptions, out- siders are admitted in the persons of journalists and similar white trash; but it is an understood condition that they shall respect the tone of the set which tolerates them, and shall feign, if they do not feel, abasement in the company of Mrs. Potiphar and Captain Gadsby. Those w h o accept toleration on the terms of unstinted homage form a social caste ’with characteristics very strongly resembling those of the Eurasian by blood. They are more military than the military man-because, after all, there are plenty of gentlemen in the army. They try to get rid of the unofficial taint by the violence of their loyalty to the official world. They exaggerate a sentiment which is rather in need of correction. Their patriotism is of the brand of the member of Parliament-probably a taxpayer-who waves a Union Jack in the faces of Mr. Kipling’s Eurasian schoolboys. Mr. Kipling has satirised himself. He is for ever bring- ing out that flag and waving it in the faces of those who have stitched every seam, before Eurasia was con- quered by a commercial company’s clerk.

He is the natural superior of all the subalterns and commis- sioners who were ever invented. I t is Mr. Kipling’s

A man of genius is a king in his own right.

misfortune that he has not been able to see this. He is more proud of the patronage of his military friends than of the honour done him so strangely by the Swedish Academy. His latest story shows this. I t is written in the Eurasian dialect. I t is an ugly scream, the scream of t h e banderlog protesting its humanity, and the burden of the Scream is :-

I feel half like a Parsee, A Sikh or a Bengalee,

Or perhaps a rude Afghan ; But in spite of all temptations T o belong to other nations

I remain an Englishman. ANTHROPOLOGIST.

Modern Dramatists, By Ashley Dukes.

XI .-Maeterlinck. THE guileless have said that Maeterlinck belongs to no period. This is because they have lost themselves so completely in his mystical forests that they can no longer see the wood of modernity for the trees of illu- sion. To them his magic is witchcraft. In seeking the source of the rainbow, they have found nothing but mist. Nevertheless, the period claims him. The opportunity of realism comes with the age of false romance. And, in the same sequence, there is a time for magic. It is the hour when all the world is matter-of-fact.

The early eighteen-nineties saw the advanced theatre besieged by social dramatists. They formed a European ring ; Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy, Haupt- mann, Henri Becque and the authors of the comedie rosse. Their social gospel varied, but they all prac- tised in common the outward technique of realism, with its perfection of modern dialogue and setting, T h e subject varied, too. Here it was the life of the bourgeoisie, there that of the peasantry or the slums, Social politics were touched upon, as in T h e Weavers ” or “An Enemy of the People.” An atmo sphere of moral indignation pervaded the stage. Society was “ unmasked ” ; convention was exposed ; new moralities were preached. Each author, mounting the realistic steed, set off at a gallop in pursuit of “Truth.’: And truth was the actual, the existing fact.

This was the destined hour of the magician, and Maeterlinck appeared. The apparition was startling, and some critics, seeking a pompous imbecility to cover their Gonfusion, named him “the Belgian Shakespeare.’‘ In this fashion Tchekhov might be named “the Russian Ibsen,” or Hugo von Hofmannsthal “ the Austrian Dante.” Such is the disintegrating force of the new idea upon the mind of the expert labeller.

The originality of the earlier Maeterlinck was marked in three respects ; in setting, subject and tech- nique. I take them consecutively.

The setting was at first sight unfamiliar and (to the social politician) reactionary. The peasant cottages and middle-class parlours of the realist drama gave place to dim halls of feudal castles, gloomy mediaeval forests and battlefields remote from space and time. The atmosphere was that of a dream-world with the surface ethics of a barbaric age. So far, however, Maeterlinck might be said only to have rediscovered the vessel of the old romance which had lain unused so Iong.

Dramatists of all ages had been concerned to lay bare the motive of human action. Even the playwright-manipulator of the market place, endeavouring to conceal the strings he pulled, alleged a motive for his puppets ; and the modern realists, challenging the order of society, sought the true motive of actual men and women. Shaw, hurling the thunderbolts of his prefaces a t an astonished Anglo-Saxon world, denounced the attempt “ t o found our institutions upon the ideals suggested to our imaginations by our half-satisfied passions, instead of upon a genuinely scientific natural history.” Motive,

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The subject was more unfamiliar still.

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THE NEW AGE DECEMBER 8, 1910. 130

then, was regarded as a fixed scientific fact, accessible to investigation and exact analysis. I t was a de- finitely adjusted part of the human mechanism. Thus the logical evolutionist, supported by nineteenth cen- tury thought. Maeterlinck modified this conception without attempting a frontal assault upon it. H e went deeper than the logicians, and sought the source of all motive, the underlying self. Here he was supported by modern psychology, which draws a distinction be- tween the conscious and the sub-conscious ego. He was concerned, however, not with a new scientific form of drama to replace the old, but only with the expres- sion of a temperament. He dramatised the sub-con- scious, the subterranean and tremulous in man, called it forth and gave it life. I t took the form of the child- spirit, and its dominant trait was ever-present fear. It was awakened a t night after the sleep of centuries, and found the darkness peopled with the unknown. Fate, a malignant horror with lean, clutching hands, hovered in the gloom of the castle hall and crouched behind every tree in the forest, purposing a rape of the soul. Even the! blind were conscious of its presence. The children fled before it, seeking to return t o their sleep; but every way was barred, and they beat their hands vainly upon heavy iron doors. Such children as Pelléas and Mélisande, Aglavaine and Sélysette.

The technique was newest of all. The sub-conscious mood, hitherto expressed only in music, found words. It became articulate through symbolic speech, repeti- tion, archaism and subtle delicacy of suggestion. Above all, through a perfection of the artless.

This was the service of the earlier Maeterlinck; a notable discoverer.

“ Monna Vanna w a s the turning-point. In setting, the transition was from the mystical to the historical, from the dimly imagined to the known. The place, Pisa; the period, the close of the fifteenth century. The roaming symbolist, then, was tethered by his own choice; and, feeling the unfamiliar pull of the imprison- ing rope, at each browsing sweep he narrowed his range of liberty still further, ending at last with many plaintive bleats in a tangle of impotence. But of tha t later.

‘In subject there was a vaster change. T h e children had grown up. They were no longer afraid of the dark. They passed from moods to problems, from the midnight dream-world ‘to the high noon of passion, from an atmosphere to a morality. A dictated morality of unheroism, in accord with the “ movements” of the age ; such a gospel as sparkled in lighter form through the pages of “Arms and the Man.” Some of their former characteristics they retained-the half- blindness of Marco, for example-but for the most part they were older and less ingenuous. Yet in growing up they ‘had grown no stronger. Their problems were too great for them. Spoiled children from the first, they became querulous and unmanageable. The reason for this is not far to seek. The perfect simplicity of the earlier Maeterlinck portrayed each individual as a clearly defined, homogeneous figure, troubled by fate, but yet limpid and serene within. The child-spirit was a complete whole, the grown man a conflicting cosmos. Instinct guided the poet in his native drama of the sub- conscious; it deserted him almost wholly in the drama of action.

In technique, too, there was a lapse. The artless gave place to the artificial, and the old simplicity of speech and form to a covenant with the theatre. The effective thrill of Vanna, naked beneath her cloak in the tent of Prinzivalle, her great s tage lie at the close, her all- important “aslde” (“Tais-toi . . . je te délivrerai.

. . . nous fuirons”) at the critical moment, the explanatory speeches of Marco as raisonneur, these were all commonplaces of the theatrical specialist, but they were foreign to Maeterlinck’s genius. Moving in the depths of the child-spirit he had been profound; returning to the surface of life he was-superficial.

Let us took more closely at the figures of this drama. Pisa is beleaguered by the Florentines and reduced to famine. Guido, husband of Monna Vanna, commands the garrison. The old philosopher Marco, his father, returns from the besieging camp with terms of peace.

Marco has been the guest of the Florentine mercenary, Prinzivalle, and has found him no barbarian, as was rumoured, but a man of parts, wise, reasonable and humane. “Bu t where,” he asks, “ i s the wise man without his madness, o r the good man who has never harboured a monstrous thought ? ” Prinzivalle’s terms a r e that Vanna shall go to him at night, naked beneath her cloak, and shall pass the night in his tent; earning thereby the safe entry into Pisa of a convoy with pro- visions and the raising of the siege. Marco urges his son to accept them : “DO what this madman asks, and the deed which seems t o you hideous will seem heroic t o those who survive. . . . I t is an error to believe tha t the pinnacle of heroism is to be found only in death. The most heroic act is the most painful, and death is often easier than life.” Here is the new morality of reason, linking Maeterlinck with the tendencies of a period. Guido refuses; b u t Vanna consents and goes to Prinzivalle.

Prinzivalle, unknown to Vanna, had loved her in his youth. H e talks with her now; they speak frankly as friends. She binds up his wounds, and treats him at moments almost like a mother. The purpose of her coming is barely touched upon. Her speech is half- naive, half yielding. Very simply she expresses her astonishment at being able to speak with him at all, for “ J e suis très silencieuse.” (Wha t sinuous magic in this word !) Still Prinzivalle forbears to take her; and their conversation is broken by an alarm in the camp. A new detachment of the Florentines has arrived, and Prinzi- valle is proclaimed a traitor. Vanna implores him to return with her to Pisa, where he will be received honourably as a guest. She kisses him upon, the fore- head, and he carries her away in his arms.

Here the conventions of the theatre gain the upper hand, and, to borrow a phrase of Prinzivalle, “ce dernier acte est le seul qui ne prouve rien.” Vanna declares tha t she is unharmed; Guido refuses to believe her. Protes- tations and incredulity-these a re familiar scenes, but they a re at least convincing. The unreal triumphs with the recognition of Prinzivalle. Note the gradual lapse into the theatrical rut. Guido believes at first that Vanna has brought him as a victim, to revenge her wrong. She still protests : “ H e did not touch me.” “ W h y not? ” “ Because he loves me.” Guido is tortured by ignorance, craves for certainty. At all costs he must know the whole truth. Prinzivalle is seized and bound for torture. Vanna rushes into the midst of the guards, crying, “ No ! I lied ! He took me ! He is mine !” (Aside to Prinzivalle, “ Be silent ! I will free you ! W e will fly together !”) Stage psychology ready-made; a wild, ‘clap-trap scene. For the sake of form Guido asks “ W h y is he here? W h y did you lie?” and for the sake of form she answers, “ I lied to spare you. . . . I brought him to revenge myself.” The play sinks fast, but Vanna’s proof touches the depths. She approaches Prinzivalle and embraces him with a show of hatred. “Thus and thus I kissed him !. . . H e is mine! . . I will have him! . . H e is the trophy of this night of mine!” Prinzivalle is led away. “Adieu . . . we shall meet againl!” Then, taking the key of his prison, s h e goes out alone to set him free. “ C e dernier acte. . . ne prouve rien.”

(For “Monna Vanna” has been called an ethical drama.) Accept for the sake of argument the wildly preposterous fact of Prinzivalle’s demand. Marco urges a morality of unheroism a n d sacrifice ; but he claims in the same breath tha t it is based upon the experience of age. H e foreshadows a time when sole possession will not be the highest aim of love; but his immediate instance is the prostitution of the beloved to the caprice of a mercenary. Guido com- mands the garrison; but he allows Vanna to go against his will. Having allowed her to go , he stands upon his honour and refuses to forgive her. Prinzivalle is a philosopher, but yet “ a madman.’’ He loves Vanna, but he does not take her. As for Vanna herself, she remains a mystery. (Perhaps a mystery even to her author.) She loves Guido and treats him almost with contempt; loves Prinzivalle in an instant, and saves him in the next. The last impression of her is the strongest;

Within the city Marco and Guido await them.

And the ethics?

as the steam o f the theatrical machinery in the final act. The motive of a n ethical drama of weaklings.

Let us be uncritical for a moment, even toward these spoiled children. I t is ill work to be forever breaking butterflies upon a wheel. And in this “Monna Vanna” there is so much music of speech, so much brave show of colour, so much pure joy of life. There a re triumphant moments; as when Prinzivalle draws aside the curtain of his tent, and the fiery towers of Pisa are seen against the sky. These are in part a legacy of past achievement; in part the flame of a fate at its zenith. ‘‘Monna Vanna” is a landmark, a monument at the parting of the ways. Wi th the earlier dramas, it traces the history of Maeterlinck the poet. He had himself emerged from the gloom of the forest for the first time; and if he blinked overmuch in the glare of noon, and his mystical second sight deserted him, that may have been little for him by comparison with the new sense of life and passion. One should not darken the eyes of the poet, as finches a re blinded to make them sling more sweetly. H e must choose his own surround- ings. Only, it is the song that matters .to the world, not the singer; and there is one of the riddles of a r t and life. After ‘‘Monna Vanna,” Maeterlinck was no longer a discoverer. H e became a purveyor of water after wine. But the wine must first be tasted, before the water is thrown away.

An Englishman in America. By Juvenal.

THE Bowery is not far from Broadway, but t he two names represent two worlds. Broadway stands for the liberty of a cosmopolitan Republic; the Bowery stands for the licence of a cosmopolitan proletariat. There is a razzle-dazzle glare here, as in Broadway, but the quality of the glare is on a lower level ; it is the difference between gooseberries and grapes, the Seven Dials and Piccadilly. No description of this quarter could do the people justice. I have heard here Ger- man-American, Irish-American, Cockney-American, New York-American, Yiddish-American, Dago- American, Pidgin-English, and I don’t know what besides. If I were trying to describe the psychological spirit of the place to a medical man I should liken it to a seidlitz powder taken with a dash of rum, rhu- barb, and red pepper, after a supper of Wiener sausages and sauer-kraut.

* * * A Bowery beer-hall defies description. There are

faces that stare with a brutal defiance, faces that glare with the pent-up ferocity of- the half-tamed tiger, faces tha t leer in stupid apathy, faces on the qui-vive for rows, sudden alarums, faces bloated with poisonous alcohol, anaemic faces contemplating oblivion on the brink of the abyss. * * *

The Bowery must not be confused with the Tender- loin District, which is to Broadway what a bolt of lightning is to a midsummer night’s dream. Broad- way is the Milky Way of the American constellation. But t he Tenderloin is Venusberg minus the Tannhäuser music. People promenade on Broadway, stagger through the Bowery, and drop into the Tenderloin. But the drop is towards the bottomless pit.

* * *

Murder is committed in the Tenderloin with a s much s a n g froid as a gambler would feel in losing a fortune in Wall Street. I am not certain yet what combina- tion of elements has produced so many desperadoes in a city so European’ as New York. I t is probably a combination of the electric atmosphere, the deadly drinks, the hurry t o live, and the impatience to die. New York was settled by the Dutch, the most stolid a n d phlegmatic people of Europe, and here we are in t h e midst of a neurasthenic orgy which keeps on by night as well as by day, and when summer comes the excitement moves from the heated city to Coney

Island, on the sea coast. There are days, and some- times whole weeks, when the nervous tension is main- tained like the hum of an electric battery attached to the body.

* U *

New York inspires mixed sensations? The first feel- ing is one of intense strangeness; and no doubt it is this feeling that carries so many visitors off their feet. When the fly enters the parlour of the spider, the fly IS surprised, then fascinated, then obfuscated. The fly is surprised at the “pretty parlour ” ; it finds the drawing-room a dream, but it is carved in the dining- room and eaten in the boudoir. Speaking of edibles, New; York offers everything the earth produces ; but as for drinks I prefer the kind that come from Burton and the country north of t h e Tweed, which is saying I know the difference between tweedledum and tweedledee. No, New York will never catch me napping on the “d r ink” question. But this wonder- ful climate gives me a ravenous appetite, and I can eat almost anything, and have already eaten almost everything : clam chowder, clam fritters, hot corn- h e a d , stuffed peppers, succotash, buckwheat pan- cakes, Wiener wurst, porter-house steak, Scotch haggis, roast turkey with cranberry sauce, stewed oysters as big as saucers, hare soup, and twenty-one kinds of pie.

* * U

Standing outside a saloon in the Tenderloin, I dis- covered a huge negro discoursing to a small group. He was alluding to Johnson, the winner of the grea t prize- fight : “Dem white fellahs dey layin’ low and sayin’ nuffin dese days; we cullud folks ain’t a-takin’ nuffin from de pure white trash. Bet yo bottom dollah de cullud people gwine ge t dere rights, an don yo fogit it.” The two heroes in America have been, during recent months, Roosevelt and Johnson. I have a very pronounced feeling that the majority of the people of New York regard the big negro as the better man. New York worships bullion and big biceps. There are many millionaires, but only one black cham- pion, the black pearl of great price.

* * * Genius, of course, has no innings in a circus like

this. W h a t the New Yorkers demand is Roman chariots, Coliseum gladiators with hips-on-the-dromes, Spanish corridas and bronco-busters. Something must soon fill t he place of the Teddy-bear now fallen on grizzly times. T h e bear has danced through the Cuban war, danced before the crowned heads of Europe, and is now dancing o n the hot gridiron of American politics . * * *

But gridiron politics make a poor show compared with the deadly gridiron football. An, American foot- ball match is ten times as dangerous as a Spanish bull-fight. “ H o w comes it,” I asked of a university professor the other day, “how comes i t that you sur- pass Spain in brutality?” The answer was : “Our young athletes must have some deadly excitement. A football match is a miniature war. W e cannot have a big war, and we ge t the next best thing. A match where one man. is killed and several carried off to the hospital is to us what the bull-fight is to the Spaniard. I t gives society a psychological reaction,. Nothing is so soothing to neurasthenic nerves. The politician who is afraid to take his political opponents by the horns becomes excited to the verge of delirium at a ball-match. The Spanish priests delight in the horrors of the bull-ring ; and in America ministers of all denominations may be seen a t a football match getting what comfort they can out of other men’s broken ribs and pulpy heads. Nothing thrills like the sight of a young man killed in the prime of life as you sit in a safe seat, surrounded by all the luxuries Yankee ingenuity can devise. But I must leave a description of a gridiron match for my next sheaf! of notes, when I shall compare a typical American game with a Spanish bull-fight.

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132 THE NEW A G E DECEMBER 8, 1910.

Unedited Opinions. III .-A New Aristocracy.

FROM your remarks of the other day I gather that you do not believe either in Nietzsche’s new aristocracy.

Not in Nietzsche’s, but in a new aristocracy I do. What do you find wrong in Nietzsche’s conception? I t is vulgar, reactionary, and puerile. A Galatian condemnation. Rut in what respects

are Nietzsche’s views so bad? First, he has the vulgar conception that noble

natures desire to rule, after the manner of historic potentates. Secondly, he would turn men’s minds back to the brutal days when the government of sheep by dogs or of men by their masters was considered natural and tolerable. Thirdly, he is puerile enough to believe this reaction possible.

What was his fundamental error, then? He was led into his fundamental error by a pre-

judice against Christianity which he never attempted to overcome, but which, o n the contrary, he allowed to overcome him. Failing to perceive that the essence of the Christian doctrine of nobility is respect for the will in man (a far nobler conception than his own doctrine) he put himself into antagonism not only with the dogmatic husks of Christ’s doctrine, but with its living kernel as well. In erecting his noble caste he was therefore driven to devising a nobility which Christianity had already made for noble natures ignoble.

How would you distinguish between Nietzsche’s pseudo-nobility and *the Chrilstian nobility ?

Not as Nietzscheans would have it, by attributing sentimentality to the Christian view. The Christian view of what is noble is no more marked by senti- mentality than Nietzsche’s view of what is noble is marked, as he supposed, by realism,. In fact, it is demonstrable that Nietzsche’s view of nobility is in essence the vulgar view, since it requires to be recog- nised, acclaimed and submitted to by the many in order to become conscious of itself. Christian nobility, on the other hand, is nobility that stands in no need of public testimony. I t i s nobility, to use Nietzsche’s own phrase, without witnesses.

Y o u still leave my mind unable to grasp the dif- ference.

Well, to put it grossly, Nietzsche’s view of nobility is of that which commands to service by the use of force; Christ’s view of nobility is of something that attracts to service by the manifestation of beauty. The former is the view of the ordinary man of action ; the latter is the view of the artist, and as such to my mind infinitely higher.

But in practice do you not admit Nietzsche’s view to be more applicable to men as we know them?

If you say more usually applied or more super- ficially effective, I agree ; but I deny entirely that when government by: persuasion and attraction is on rare occasions actually seen in practice it is less efficient even in appearance than government by force; or, further, that government by force ever accomplishes more than the appearance of effect. Force is only effective while it lasts, but persuasion retains its effect when the cause has been withdrawn.

Everything you say turns, of course, upon your contention ,that will is the sole motive of men.

I do not say the sole motive, but the only spon- taneous, self-initiating and self-sustaining motive. Whoever, therefore, desires to move men , effectively must appeal to their will. In impelling that they pro- duce the maximum effect with the minimum of effort to themselves-surely a noble desire ! Nietzsche’s nobles, on the other hand, must needs be always on the alert, like busy foremen, lest their subjects desert, betray, or defraud them.

But, surely, effective overseeing is the only means by which anything requiring the services of underlings can possibly be got done?

Not a t all, and even if it were the reply would be that the Christian nobleman would decline to regard.. as great anything requiring the services of underlings. That is another distinction between Nietzsche and Christ. Christ could not tolerate slaves and inferiors ; H e would have them equal with himself. Nietzsche’s: nobles, on the other hand, loved slaves and would re- duce everybody to that state.

A s far as I can see, then, the Christian noblemen- would get nothing done.

Nonsense; you appear to suppose, first, that men want to do nothing ; secondly, that they do not naturally’ recognise their superiors in accomplishments, if not in soul (for all souls are equal), and, thirdly, that in pursuit of a task commonly desired men would not naturally group themselves in order of rank about the fittest among them to direct the rest. Take my word for it, if a band of men desirous of saving their lives

‘ o n board a crazy ship did not when they knew each other configurate themselves around the best seaman among them, all the stories of natural ascendancy are untrue; as they are not. No, what is eternally true is this, and here’s the end and beginning of the whole matter : without forgoing equality of soul with all men, a man discovers that there are things he can do and things he, cannot do ; there are more things, he finds,, that he cannot do than he can ; he is happy in doing the things he can do and grateful to those who set him doing them ; he is miserable when attempting to do the things he cannot do and full of hatred towards those who sert him trying to do them. On these facts I would rest a new order of society.

Only to find i t upset by the first conceited fool who imagined himself able to do something that he could not do.

Shall I tell you why there is so much unhappy con- ceit of this kind now in existence? For, remember, such conceited persons are also wretched. I t is be- cause while real equality has been denied, superficial, equality has been taught as a duty.

In what sense do, you mean? In this, that if you persist in regarding men as in-

ferior in kind you must compensate them by another lie, namely, that of teaching them that they can be equal in accomplishment. Have you not observed that with every step in the descent of man’s hold on the doctrine of real equality, he has had to promulgate the idea that all men have potentially the same powers? Tell a man that he i s your inferior, and he instantly. sets about disproving it. Convince him that you accept him as your equal, and ha subordinates himself in respect of his inferiorities.

A paradox. And a truth. However, we were discussing a new

order of nobility. To resume, then. Tell me how your doctrine of

reverence for the will of man would work in practice. What would your new aristocracy do that Nietzsche’s would not do?

Excellent question. Well, the new aristocracy would refuse to accept anything but willing service. There would be tolerated no forced labour on their farms ; no slaves, no malcontents, no fear-driven wage- seekers ; it should be love or nothing.

Oh, Utopia ! On the contrary, my friend, only work that is done

for love is ever good. But not all that? No, I admit, not all that.

W e appear to have wandered.

And would not the work be bad?

Hence my second quali- fication of the new aristocracy : not only will they not tolerate unwilling service, but they will not tolerate in- efficient service. That is where their absence of senti- mentality becomes so precious. Ordinary men, you know, take the will for the deed, the voluntary ser- vice being permitted to excuse the inefficient service. But our new lords will neither take the deed without the will, nor the will without the deed.

They appear t o me to be going to be as brutal as Nietzsche’s bantams.

Well, after all, contraries do resemble one another in description.

DECEMBER 8, 1910. THE NEW AGE I33

The Maids’ Comedy. CHAPTER VI.

Exhibiting a standing example of feminine folly but concluding with a rally of heroes.

\VESTWARD, where the mountains were highest, some great caravan was moving under a cloud of dust. Filjee, who had first seen it, said, “Let us hide the steeds behind these rocks, mistress, and creep along by the stream to spy what’s advancing.” So they came near the cloud ,of: dust. I t thinned away and disclosed a number of ox-wagons rumbling along the road. These were filled with women and children, mostly wearing pink sun-cappies, and sunburnt men rode beside the wagons. On the first wagon a parrot, chained, sat imitating the report of the whips and the howls of the native drivers. Noting all these things, Dota observed, “This is certainly a Nachtmaal trek, mistress. The people have come from the farms in the mountains, down the Groot Pass, da-a-ar hours away! And they are going to the town to buy stores, and to hear the gospel on Sunday, and to dance on Monday. And there will be marriages and christenings, and all the Ooms and the Tantes will shake hands and say : ‘ How do you do? Wha t an age since we met my gracious !’ And all the nieces and nephews will get engaged to be married in three months’ time at the next Nachtmaal. Suppose we join them, mistress, then I can hand up t o the Predikant the twopence I promised.” But Dorothea replied, “ Surely you a re mistaken, Dota, for there lurks a frightful wizard in the first wagon, beside that parrot.” “Why, mistress, where a re your eyes? Can you not see that he whom you call a frightful wizard is the very handsomest knight in the world ?” “ Dota, thou poor child, come away at once,” whispered Lady; “he is enchanting thee !” But Dota Filjee could not be drawn from the spot, where the object of her admiration was now passing. His person displayed no enviable heri- tage of feature. The ape-skull, high cheek-bones, flap ears, hook nose, blackened teeth and white, gigantic hands indicated the scion of a degenerate stock. He was, in fact, a “remittance man,” one of those exported wastrels whose merit is their average infecundity. They often gain the tolerance of back-veld farmers on account of some smattering of school-learning ; and their astounding foppery and faculty for lying amuse the Boers, “sliem” a s these are, and rarely more de- ceived than diverted.

Inch by inch, Dota Filjee moved along the bank after her hero. H e yawned monstrously, for he had been very drunk the night before. “ H e must be English !” Dota exclaimed, so loudly that Lady nudged her; ‘‘he has grown weary of his country where only turnips grow, and no doubt his father only sends him a pound a month, though, be sure, the family has millions! I saw one once who had only a pound a month though his mother knew the Queen of England and he could play the concertina, and his name was Mynheer Lord Putt. Toch ! these English, how they hate their poor children ! Whatever and whatever, I will be his slave, for he makes my heart to sing!” To this Dorothea replied nothing, but waited anxiously for the caravan to turn off towards the town. At the cross-roads below the Klein Pass where the inn was, the bearded Boers drew the oxen round, shouting or coaxing, and labelling any lazy ox with the epithet Engelsman! So they travelled away down the white road and disappeared a s they had come, in a cloud of dust.

Dota Filjee seated herself in a heap upon the ground beside Witvoet. “Oh , mistress,” she said; “do be sorry for me, for I must tell you I feel my heart like water. Foy, toch ! he had the nose of noses !” ‘‘He had,” returned Dorothea. “ Well, Dota, what ‘is thy mistress compared with a nose? For my part, I must tell thee I like him as little as that fat woman thou didst dream of with the snake’s head on.” Now that was a dream of dreadful memory, and Dorothea could have hit u p n n o more potent unspell. “Ni, ni,” exclaimed Dota, rising in confusion; (‘when I am away from you there is always trouble, or at most, twopence of good and

Dota

that not t o be called one’s own for five minutes. I will follow you and think no more of a nose ,or many noses. Lead on, mistress.” But she climbed right heavily upon Witvoet. Suddenly they heard the sound of numerous horses’ feet, and the voices of people calling to one. another, who were evidently very gay and contented, The sounds came from the Klein Pass, and there down rode a company. “ Mercy me !” Dorothea murmured, “how on earth did they pass the barricade?” “ W h a t barricade ?” asked Dota Filjee. “ Ah, Dota, that’s all an affair which happened while you were away from me. Stand by now and say nothing, whatever thy astonish- ment.” By this time the troop was wending out upon the flats. There were ten or twelve gentlemen and two ladies, well dressed and mounted a s suited people of con- dition. They seemed to be instantly attracted by our Lady, who was engaged as usual in weighing her impressions, and they rode as near as civility permitted. “God s p e d you, fair friends !” said Dorothea; and- without hesitation the first horseman, a jolly silver- haired man, returned the chivalric answer : “ Heaven guide thee, Lady!” He reined in his horse; and the company came up, one by one, bowing to Dorothea as each caught her eye. The two ladies did not conceal either admiration or surprise but rode close up, smiling and evidently delighted at sight of the gallant damsel. The elder one, who was a dark-eyed, handsome person- age and wore a fawn habit, exclaimed, “I hope you a r e not lost, little Lady. Pardon me for enquiring but I know these parts very well, and I think you must be a stranger.” Then an idea struck her, and she continued, (‘My dear, are you not the daughter of Mynheer De Villiers?” “ Yes, madame,” replied Dorothea. (‘Then I am indeed fortunate,” cried the lady; “I have desired to see you since I can’t say how long ! In fact, I am only one of many who have heard the most enchanting descriptions of your grace and beauty, yet you have eluded us all. The people here, gentlemen,” she addled, turning to the company, (‘believe this young lady t o be a myth, so we are happy indeed to have her before our eyes. We were just this instant speaking of you,” she concluded to Dorothea. “ Doubt- less, madame, you have come past my father’s house and have seen there something to astonish you.” “Enough to make us doubt our senses!” cried the lady, “The inn is barricaded, and your father served us clad in armour. “Alas, madame, I can tell you no more than that I a m a home- less maid, now and from henceforth, until I can find someone disinterested enough to do battle with my cruel father and force him to restore me to my rightful place. But tell me, I pray you, did you see a captive at the inn? ” Thereupon, the lady turned, addressed her- self with much eagerness to one of her Companions: ‘(Professor, you were right. There was a captive. Do. relate again what happened to you! ” The Professor, that jolly, silver-haired gentleman, then replied in a round tone, “ Er-I admit my unpardonable curiosity, mademoiselle, I took the liberty of examining the forma- tion behind your-erestimable parent’s abode. I t is, I find, aqueous, yes, certainly aqueous. Rogers, you do agree now, don’t you? The specimen, however, will testify. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Myburgh! Er- while I was detaching the fragment--absolutely thievish of me, I confess-er-the Knight in armour suddenly came out of the back door with a book in his hand. H e unlocked another door, flung in the book and locked the door again. Then I heard-you all heard this- a shout of laughter. Then I heard these words : ‘By Jove, the history of Don Quixote! So that’s the Oracle !’ You all alleged my narrative t o be merely a pleasantry in artistic keeping with the environment. Now, perhaps, you will apologise.” “ By no means !” retorted the man named Rogers, a sandy-haired veteran. “You have proved nothing, sir. You are relying upon circumstantial evidence. Circumstantial evidence is the least trustworthy. I t is always capable of two or more constructions, and is invariably pro- nounced strong by persons who wish less to prove the truth than the plausibility of a given theory. What proof have you brought of any captive? A few words -which, for all you know, may have been uttered by

W h a t is the meaning of it all? ”

I34 THE NEW A G E DECEMBER 8, 1910.

a cockatoo. Besides, Professor, have we not all been ’ victims a t one time or another of your practical joking? For my part, I am prepared to consider as a reasonable proposition, whether the whole of the adventure is not your own amiable device t o deceive us into accepting your notion that the world is mad. As for the speci- men-” “ Ah !” interrupted Mrs. Myburgh, “ but now we know that there was a captive because the little Lady is enquiring after one. Pray, my dear, tell us about him.” “There is indeed a captive ! I found him soon after my father drove me away, He immediately set off to remedy my misfortunes. My father met him in combat, wounded him and took him prisoner. Me he thrust forth again, and here am I, an outcast, a very distressed damsel.” And s o saying our Lady began to weep. The company grew! embarrassed and then in- dignant. ‘‘ Incredible ! Shameful ! I never heard of such a thing!” (they murmured; and one young man stam- mered : “ Something must be done, s-s-something.” The Professor alone appeared serene. “Ah !” he said with evident malice, “you will admit now, Rogers, that the affair is serious?” At that, Rogers butted his horse close to the Professor’s. “ I admit this,” he muttered in French, “that the apparition of this young lady is the chef d’oeuvre of your entertainment, but, though I will not spoil your fun, Professor, do not imagine to keep me much longer dancing about in this steaming heat. And as for the specimen-’’ “Rogers is pro- posing that we all ride back at once and release the captive !” cried the Professor. “ Agreed,” everybody shouted; and Mrs. Myburgh, at a wink from the Professor, turned her horse towards the ascent saying, “ I would not waste another instant for a fortune! Come, my dear! Come, everybody!” For the con- venience of the reader who has, ere this, certainly guessed very near the exact truth, it may be stated that most of this company, obviously not Land folk, were members of a British Society, guests for the time of Mrs. Myburgh, the lady who knew these parts so well. They had ridden from her house in the railway town above the Stormberg, and were bound for a country place belonging to Mynheer Theophilus Myburgh, cousin to the lady, and a rich and eminent Dutchman. From thence they intended t o witness the Nachtmaal festival in the town on the flats. Rogers could scarcely refuse to follow his hostess. H e shut his prim lips, settled his toupee firmly and turned his ambling steed.

Throughout the whole affair she remained listless, staring dolefully to- wards the town. She had heard, if it may be believed, hardly a word of the matter. She sat dreaming of the Englishman. Rich and handsome and wise the com- pany variously might be, but, if Dota Filjee had noted these qualities, they must have appeared just nothing beside the nose of the Englishman. She heard her Lady calling: “ Dota, Dota Filjee ! ” With a vast effort she tightened her rein, and so doing jerked the bit against Witvoet’s teeth. And ,in a twinkling that wild, incalculable animal had galloped away, straight for the town. Half of the company set their horses to follow, dreading every instant to see the maid thrown; but she kept her seat with much ease, and at last everyone drew off, since plainly no horse there could come near the white-footed runaway. Dorothea gazed mournfully until the thunder of Witvoet’s hoofs resounded no more. ‘‘ My poor maid was enchanted this morning,” she then said, to the joy of the Professor, who cast an eye a t Rogers, who merely shut his : “ A dreadful wizard put a spell upon her. I shall have to find some means of disenchantment, but the captive must first be released. ” Now, Mrs. Myburgh, although aware by hearsay of the eccentricity of De Villiers, was secretly quite convinced, with Rogers, that the adventure must be someone’s plan of diversion. Her husband, or Mynheer Theophilus, or the Professor (who, in his turn, suspected Mrs. Myburgh), or all three, she concluded, had arranged the entertainment : so her utterances and queries were directed to carry forward the play! (‘ Do you think your knight-errant was badly wounded, my dear? W a s h e struck down?” “ I saw him felled to the earth, madame. My father, raging like Belianis, was yet

Dota Filjee was the last to move.

subtle in his thrusts as Don Quixote when he slew the two armies.” “ What a position for you, my poor child ! You hear that, Mr. Rogers? The captive is sorely wounded.” ‘‘ Ah ? ” returned Rogers, and hav- ing thus acknowledged the lady’s address he called to the Professor who was ahead among the younger men and discussing plans of attack. “ Sir Impresario ! you have omitted a serious detail-we are none of us armed !” “ W e have decided to collect pieces of the rock, Rogers. Having first demolished the cruel parent with these invaluable specimens, I shall claim them as additional support for my theory of the formation.” The laugh against Rogers left him perspiring in the rear and gradually he fell further and further behind, so that he was considerably distant from the rest when the party turned the bend towards the inn and beheld De Villiers, his tin armour blazing in the sun, mounted and keeping the Pass.

Dorothea rode forward. “ Behold my knights ! ” she cried. “ Seven I promised thee, and more than seven are here. Choose thee, Sir Roderigo! Each is more willing than the other to take up thy glove ! ” The inn- keeper replied : “ Ladies off the field ! Retire, gracious dames, and prepare to busy yourselves with the dying. ” . As everyone hesitated he seemed to grow furious, and hurling his horse at Aster, drove Dorothea some way down the hill, apparently buffeting fier across the shoulder with his mailed hand. “Heavens ? he must be hurting her,” cried the Professor, now completely be- wildered, and the ladies screamed.

The men then charged the innkeeper, who struck several of them, and dealt the Professor a blow which laid him flat along his horse’s back, whence he tumbled off upon the road and lay motionless. “Fly, fly !” the gentlemen cried to the ladies, but both lingered, trying to persuade Dorothea to leave. She, however, had dis- mounted and was lamenting the fallen Professor. “The men will see to him. Come,.you’ll be killed ! ” screamed Mrs. Myburgh; and her friend, a strong young Dutch- woman, jumped off her horse and tried to lift our Lady away from the body. But force seemed to be wasted upon Dorothea. She remained as if fettered to the ground and sang sorrow for the vanquished ! Mean- while the fight was proceeding amid yells and clamour and the ceaseless rattle of De Villiers’ armour. Four of the men had suffered from that prodigious lance, and were dizzily trying to regain their mounts. Blood was flowing and the exasperation of everyone manifested it- self in desperateIy repeated attacks against the invulner- able Roderigo. While two men carried the Professor, Dorothea following, away from the edge of the preci- pice, the rest battered at the innkeeper. He broke away, set his feet hard in the stirrups and prepared as if to charge everybody over the edge. Then, and then alone, they turned and fled, and Rogers came round the bend. He was forced close to the wall by the galloping horses. He could not turn. He was therefore left, as before, last of the party. De Villiers flanked him, pricked the trembling steed to a run and ran him right into the courtyard. Dorothea, with Aster’s rein over her arm, kneeled beside the Professor. “ A truce ! ” she cried to De Villiers. “ A truce to attend the wounded ! ” ‘‘ Off! ” he shouted, riding down. “Off, or I run him through.’’ “ O h dear, my father!” ex- claimed Lady. “ Have I not brought enough knights yet? ” “ Dost thou dally? ” asked De Villiers. “ No,” replied Dorothea, rising, “ but thou art very hard on me, father.” And she burst into tears. “ Go, damsel !” returned De Villiers in a strange thin voice. So she mounted and rode away. She saw the flying company careering down the Pass. One or two were pulling wildly, a t risk of their horses rearing over the cliff, but the better riders had given the animals their head. Aster went steadily along the familiar road and neighed now and again as he was wont to do when Witvoet took the bit. The other horses began to slow down, and presently everybody reined in safe, though breathless, at the bottom of the Pass. When Dorothea appeared weeping, the young man who had said that something must be done, stood binding up one wounded arm with

the other, almost as badly slashed. Mrs. Myburgh lay in a faint upon the ground while her companion fumbled at her laces ; and such of the others as were not injured were attending those whose wounds testified to the earnestness of the outrageous Roderigo. They greeted Dorothea with joy and a torrent of questions, and Mrs. Myburgh, suddenly reviving, insisted upon feeling the pretty child all over to make sure she was not hurt. *‘ And whatever shall we do?” she enquired, adding, “ I really doubt my senses now. At first I believed it all a jest, but that poor man is quite mad.” The young man with the wounded arms came forward. H e trembled, and his eyes, which were grey and wide apart, kept on blinking as though he had lost control of the lids. “ I’m g-going back,” he stammered. “ Our P-p-professor is too v-valuable to be left to be assassinated. I b-beg your pardon! ” “Ah ! go not, noble friend ! ” said Dorothea. “Time would be lost. I am afraid you would do more harm than good by returning.” “ I agree,” rejoined Mrs. Myburgh; “ let us lose no time but ride to my cousin’s house and send armed men t o the inn. But where is Mr. Rogers?” “ Taken prisoner,” Dorothea replied. Then everybody hastened to mount and conceal the smile which would have been shameful. Instantly they set off, and, riding fast, arrived at the house of Mynheer Myburgh. Mynheer, amazed at their story, could not doubt the witness of the wounds and despatched messengers to the town for men and guns. It was near nightfall before the revenge party assembled at the foot of the pass. Every man in the district seemed to be present; but Mynheer Myburgh selected six and begged the rest not to follow, as so great a number would be fatal on that dangerous road.

(To be continued.) The seven picked men departed amid cheers.

Books and Persons. (AN OCCASIONAL CAUSERIE.)

By Jacob Tonson. THE exhibition of the so-called “ Neo-Impressionists ” over which the culture of London is now laughing, has a n interest which is perhaps not confined to the art of painting. For me, personally, it has a slight, vague repercussion upon literature. The attitude of the cul- ture of London towards it is of course merely humili- ating to any Englishman who has made an effort to cure himself of insularity. It is one more proof that the negligent disdain of Continental artists for English artistic opinion is fairly well founded. The mild tragedy-of the thing is that London is infinitely too self- complacent even to suspect that it is London and not the exhibition which is making itself ridiculous. The laughter of London in this connection is just as silly, jus t a s provincial, just as obtuse, as would be the laughter of a small provincial town were Strauss’s “ Salome,” or Debussy’s “ Pelléas et Mélisande ’’ offered for its judgment. One can imagine the shocked, contemptuous resentment of a London musical amateur (one of those that arrived at Covent Garden box-office a t 6 a.m. the other day to secure a seat for “ Salome ”) at the guffaw of a provincial town confronted by the spectacle and the noise of the famous “ Salome ” oscu- lation. But the amusement of that same amateur con- fronted by an uncompromising ‘‘ Neo-Impressionist ” picture amounts to exactly the same guffaw. The guffaw is legal. You may guffaw before Rembrandt (people do !), but in so doing you only add to the sum of human stupidity. London may be unaware that the value of the best work of this new school is permanently and definitely settled-outside London. So much the worse for London. For the movement has not only got past the guffaw stage; it has got past the arguing stage. I t s authenticity is admitted by all those who have kept themselves fully awake. And in twenty years London will be signing an apology for its guffaw. I t will be writing itself down an ass. The writing will consist of large cheques payable for Neo-Impressionist

pictures to Messrs. Christie, Mansom and Woads. Lon- don is already familiar with this experience, and doesn’t mind.

* * * Who am I that I should take exception to the guffaw?

Ten years ago I too guffawed, though I hope with not quite the Kensingtonian twang. The first Cézannes I ever saw seemed to me to be very funny. They did not disturb my dreams, because I was not in the business. But my notion about Cézanne was that he was a fond old man who distracted himself by daubing. I could not say how my conversion to Cézanne began. When one is not a practising expert in an art, a single word, a single intonation, uttered by an expert whom one esteems, may commence a process of change which afterwards seems to go on by itself. But I remember being very much impressed by a still-life-some fruit in a bowl-and on approaching it I saw Cézanne’s clumsy signature in the corner. From that moment the revela- tion was swift. And before I had seen any Gauguins at all, I was prepared to consider him with sympathy. The others followed naturally. I now surround myself with large photographs of these pictures of which a dozen years ago I was certainly quite incapable of perceiving the beauty. The best still-life studies of Cézanne seem to me to have the grandiose quality of epics. And that picture by Gauguin, showing the back of a Tahitian young man with a Tahitian girl on either side of him, is an affair which I regard with acute pleasure every morn- ing. There are compositions by Roussel which equally enchant me. Naturally I cannot accept the whole school -no more than the whole of any school. I have de- rived very little pleasure from Matisse, and the later developments of Fèlix Vallotton leave me in the main unmoved. But one of the very latest phenomena of the school-the water-colours of Pierre Laprade-I have found ravishing.

* * * It is in talking to several of these painters, in watch-

ing their familiar deportment, and particularly in listening to their conversations with others on subjects other than painting, that I have come to connect their ideas with literature. They are not good theorisers about art; and I am not myself a good theoriser about art ; a creative artist rarely is. But they do ultimately put their ideas into words. You may receive one word one day and the next next week, but in the end an idea gets itself somehow stated. Whenever I have listened to Laprade criticising pictures, especially students’ work, I have thought about literature; I have been forced to wonder whether I should not have to recon- sider my ideals. The fact is that some of these men are persuasive in themselves. They disengage, in their talk, in their profound seriousness, in their sense of humour, in the sound organisation of their industry, and in their calm assurance-they disengage a convinc- ingness that is powerful beyond debate. An artist who is truly original cannot comment on bootlaces without illustrating his philosophy and consolidating his posi- tion. Noting in myself that a regular contemplation of these pictures inspires a weariness of all other pictures that are not absolutely first-rate, giving them a discon- certing affinity to the tops of chocolate-boxes or “art” photographs, I have permitted myself to suspect that supposing some writer were to come along and do in words what these men have done in paint, I might con- ceivably be disgusted with nearly the whole of modern fiction, and I might have to begin again. This awk- ward experience will in all probability not happen, to me, but it might happen t o a writer younger than me. At any rate it is a fine thought. The average critic always calls me, both in praise and dispraise, “photo- graphic”; and I always rebut the epithet with disdain, because in the sense meant by the average critic I am not photographic. But supposing that in a deeper sense I were? Supposing a young writer turned up and forced me, and some of my contemporaries--us who fancy ourselves a bit-to admit that we had been concerning ourselves unduly with essentials, that we

135

136 THE NEW A G E DECEMBER 8, 1910.

had been worrying ourselves to achieve infantile real- isms? Well that day, would be a great and a dis- turbing day-for us. And we should see what we should see.

REVIEWS. By A. P. Grenfell.

English Woodlands and Their Story. By

Forest is strictly a legal or historical term, and need not, as our author states, imply so much as a single tree. In practice most of one may be, and actually often is, unwooded, as we see in the New Forest. Used in a looser sense it denotes any large tract of woodland together with the waste and water within its boundaries. Woodland describes all land covered with woody growth, or more widely any prospect where trees are the leading feature in the landscape. For the author to confine himself to a few well-known public and private forests, and, apart from Burnham Beeches, to omit all reference to such typical English woodlands, to name only a few, as Highclere, Longleat, Cirencester, Woburn and High Meadow Woods is misleading. “ Story,” again, either implies a fairly accurate account of their history, or the, lessons we can learn from our forests in their present condi tioa.

The forester in search of a convenient history, or the antiquarian who would visualise the subject matter of his records, has little to learn from this book. Few artists other than Scene painters and caricaturists would gather knowledge or inspiration from its plates. In his title, as throughout the work, our author has been misled by his constant leaning towards the cheaply picturesque. Had he been less ambitious and called his book “Rambles with a Camera Through Some English Forests-, by a Dweller in the Suburbs,” he would have hit the mark, and one could have ac- corded his pretty photographs a fair meed of praise. From this point of view the section on Burnham Beeches is well done, although it is quite untrue to say that “ it comprises within the small area of a single wood nearly everything to be seen in all the forests of England,” not even if he uses “forest” in its narrowest legal sense. What Burnham Beeches does show is nearly everything that can be seen in a neg- lected beech forest, which has had a long course of bad treatment, followed by artistic (?) management.

The frontispiece is typical of Burnham Beeches, and would be better but for the figures. The plate opposite page 12 is good, and gives a fair idea of a decent English beech wood. The intrusion of an obviously posed figure is less out of place here than elsewhere. Plates opposite pages 24, 28, 40, and 76 are good. Plate 40 gives an excellent idea of birches ; 60 would be good, too, but for a n unnecessarily large female figure. The author is most successful when those he introduces are small and strictly subordinated to the landscapes, like those in “Near Mark Ash, New Forest,’) page 148, with their backs to the spectator. This is a very good bit of woodland scenery, though t he camera has not treated it too well. The best effects are those of wood and water, page 5 2 , Hardi- canute’s pool, and plates page Go and 72, also page 168, a New Forest stream. This is so largely be- cause ‘trees: naturally do grow in unruly fashion near water. Where animal life is introduced-the stag, page 108 (if a single and not a double photograph), New Forest ponies, page 132, the herd of deer, Long Walk, Windsor, page 254, the sheep, Ashdown Forest, page 292-not only have clever photographs been secured, but much happier effects than with the human figure. This in nearly every case is self-conscious, unduly prominent and quite of place, though it would not have been quite so bad had the male been sub- stituted for the female. But his practice is better than his precept : “If you secure male models let them be battered, ill-dressed, and as rustic as possible.” This is probably not impertinence but the self-satis- fied stupidity of the town dweller, who is unaware that

Houghton Townley. (Methuen. I 5s.) The title is unfortunate.

the woodman is frequently a man in his prime, not ill- dressed, since rural wages are’ usually higher in wooded districts, and an intelligent man in winter uses suit- able clothes. The note of the forest is far more often virile than feminine, or pathological, as opposed to that arboriculture or the study of . diseased and dis- torted trees, which is what we are mostly shown here by way of woodlands or landscape gardening. Com- pare the ruined temple, Virginia Water, page 258 with the beech wood in Savernake Forest, page 274. Contrast the studied artificiality of the one with the massive vigour of the other, which gives an excellent idea of what goes to make a forest (remember our author is really dealing with forests), and the ex- uberant life in its serried ranks. Adequately to master the artistic side of our forests and woodlands demands more than a sense of the merely pretty and picturesque. A sense of form is wanted, also some sympathy with and understanding of the craftsmen, namely, foresters and woodmen, who work therein. Of this there is no trace or feeling throughout the work, but rather the needless obtrusion of the obviously suburban female. The greater number of plates consist of quaint, ill- treated old beech pollards, with a few old oaks and young birches. These have their uses and value as historical monuments, curiosities, or warnings, and, when’ dealt with by a n artist like Mr. Rackham, for their humour. They do not, however, constitute the whole of the beautiful. As well contend that the denizens of a pauper hospital surpass a guards’ regi- ment in beauty and strength. Mr. Townley, gives himself away badly when he lays down : “ I t is amusing to (talk trees with an expert, or even [mark the even] with men who guard the forests. Enthusiasts as they are all, they cannot for long grasp the notion that the forest monsters can be judged only from the point of view of beauty-, and it pains them to hear a tree described as fine, when it is crooked, hollow, half-dead and growing in a most unhappy situation.” This, if not a contradiction in terms, is the pert ignorance of the townsman; he cannot see the wood for the trees. Until he has some sense of a wood as a whole, as a living, breathing entity, let him cease to prattle about forests and foresters, but stick to his suburbs, his London parks with their mediocre to fair arbori- culture, and to his Burnham Beeches monstrosities. Here again his compositions are better than his letter- press, and a careful study of plates, pages 12, 28, 180, 274, 302, may serve to indicate the right track. Plate: page 303 is spoilt by the figure ; it is too Iarge not to destroy the sense of mystery and too small to suggest its own theme, for which literature-compare Milton’s Allegro-is a safer vehicle. Contrast him with Maeterlinck : -

‘(Plant [ the park] with beautiful trees, not parsi- moniously placed as though each of them were an object of art displayed on a grassy tray, but close to- gether like the ranks of a kindly army in order of battle. Trees never feel themselves really trees, nor perform their duties unless they are there in numbers. Then at once everything is transformed, sky and light recover their first deep meaning, dew and shade return, silence and peace find once more a refuge.” And again, of the common Scotch pine:-

‘(You can picture nothing to compare with the archi- tectural and religious alignment of the innumerable shafts shooting towards the sky, smooth, inflexible, pu re. “

Let him ponder these things-but except the beeches and a few oaks-even the single trees he cannot see. Ash and sycamore are not unimportant ; while the first is abundant in the Forest of Dean, including the neighbouring High Meadow Woods. This is curious, since the ash, for photographic purposes, is the most lovely of trees, and its strikingly feminine grace should accord with his perhaps excessive appreciation of the female figure. Other trees, such as thorns, holly and wild cherry, though common in the “ forests “ he purports to describe, are absent from his pages. Our indigenous conifers, the juniper and the yew, are not so much as mentioned.

The letterpress contains an interesting account of ’ Mrs. Grote’s battles with the lady of the manor. The tales of the Cockney deerstalkers in Epping Forest would be amusing if treated in a more farcical spirit. The best of i t is found in the quotations, which ai-e moistly well known and need not detain us. For the rest, original authorities do not appear to have been consulted, and had his own matter been more succu- lent it would have been a graceful act to indicate the sources of his inspiration more fully (than by a casual seferencc to the Victoria County History.

The book can be confidently recommended to country cottage week-enders, directors of garden cities and suburbs, and most members of Socialist societies. With all its deficiencies it will be to them a stepping- stone to better things. Our author really photographs his beech trees as if he loved them. The last chapter on tree photography is well written and useful.

* * * By Alfred E. Randall.

The Drifters. By W. R. Titterton. (Frank Palmer. IS.

This is a reprint of “Studies in Solitary Life.” Some of the stories have appeared in THE NEW AGE, and a reviewer is somewhat awkwardly placed if he does not approve of them. If I were inclined to be sweep- ing in my judgment, I should say that Mr. Titterton lacks everything but impulse. Certainly, I look in vain for any trace of the control of the creator, of the piti- less logic of beauty, of the articulation of an organism. Mr. Titterton has two or three stories about tramps, and pretends that the people who work the machine o f civilisation have all a repressed longing for the road, Yet he can ask us to be sorry for “Smith of Geary’s,” who at the age of sixty, is thrown, out of work, and is free to enjoy the nomadic life. Mr. Titterton cannot have it both ways. If the life of the tramp is desir- able, then the unemployed are to be envied their free- doni. But Mr. Titterton delights in ugliness. In “ The Builder’s Dream,” for instance, he spins a pretty enough fancy of a man working after his vision has departed?, piling course on course until a horror of ugliness ‘ I S erected. A boy pelts the palace with magical roses, and it changes to the vision which had originally inspired the builder. But the builder is angry, and tries to kill the boy, who touches him with a rose and restores him to beauty. The builder recognises the transformed palace a s the house of his dreams, and with a cry of gratitude passes through the portal as a rose flutters down to the threshold. A pretty enough fancy, as I said, but Mr. Titterton must spoil it. As the rose touched the builder’s head, “ i t turned into a fool’s cap. ” An unwarrantable piece of artistic vandal- ism, It is not clever ; it ‘is not witty ; it is as far from true satire as it is from beauty. Nothing but wil- fui singularity can make a man prefer ugliness to beauty.

The Soul Traders. By Elizabeth Goodrow. Frank

A volume of short stories told to the author by American prostitutes. They are true enough, nu doubt ; but a reviewer may question the aesthetic pro- priety of their telling. If Miss Goodnow had been one of these girls, I should have had no complaint to make ; far personal experience is a basis of art. But she was a member of a Settlement, a police probation officer (if the text is literally true), and she drew these stories out of the girls t o make a book of them. Her preface, with its expressed desire t o help these women, does not convince me. The text is against her, and there is the damnable mark of the connoisseur in such a phrase as this : “ I was very interested in her a t once, as Italians are very rare in the Night Court.” Moreover, as the author admits that she has no remedy, that “ cleverer people than herself must solve the greater problem,’’ one can only attribute to her?- curiosity. The book stirs no other emotion in me but irritation at the sociologist and statistician who can find euphemisms for “syphilis,” and murmur

net.) .

Palmer. 3s. 6d. net.)

“clinical material ” a s she soothes the sorrow of a n hysterical street-walker.

* * * By Huntly Carter.

The Newer Spiritualism. By Frank Podmore.

In this age of insipid fads, manias, eccentricities, patent foods, and invasion scares, to be the founder of a new ism, whether spiritualism, teetotalism, antedilu- vianism or any other ism appealing to the surviving Plesiosaurian mind, is assuredly to be great. The genealogy of the, ism is not difficult to trace. From the newer ism it is but a step to the new ism, and but another t o the plain, unvarnished ism. Likewise the descent of the ism is easy to predict. When we had spiritualism no one doubted we were in for the new spiritualism, or that the newer would come trip- ping lightly on the heels of the new. And here it is according t o the late Mr. Frank Podmore, and to all in- tents and purposes it offers a mortal insult to that which it succeeds, and which is no longer immortal. For, if we a re to believe Mr. Podmore, spiritualism was but a travesty of a travesty, while the newer i s but the apotheosis of up-to-date witchcraft, to which one might justly say, “Break thou in pieces and consume to ashes, thou foul, accursed minister of hell,” during the recital of which the offending brand of spiritualism would of course vanish in a clap of thunder. A sudden icy breath then blows through the vault, and the light goes out. In the darkness the Newer Spiritualism is seen trying to get born with Mr. F. W. Myers calling it to life with “Human Personality,” whilst Mr. Podmore ‘stands by ready to slay the re- animated brazen snake called the soul’s immortality. Ha is supported by physiologists, pathologists, and the latest thing in mechanical psychologists, but nowhere is to be seen either the mystic o r metaphysician. And he shares the limitations of his supporters, pretending that i t is possible to investigate and interpret the whole range of human experience in the laboratory, the hos- pital and the asylum, and one can in fact weigh and measure consciousness and subconsciousness much a s recruiting sergeants weigh and measure a prospective British army. This point of reasoning reminds one of Mr. Benjamin Kidd’s pursuit of happiness which always lies round the corner ready to bolt into the next street directly the human race shows its nose. Mr. Podmore’s pursuit of consciousness is similar. The greater part of it lies not on the roof where Mr. Podmore was always seeking it, but in the cellar where Mr. Myers is mostly Iocated. In short, the examination of Mr. Podmore’s volume is not a profitable undertaking. The best one can say is that Mr. Podmore’s book constitutes a painstaking survey of the history of Spiritualism, and of the phenomena of the Newer Spiritualism. Judged in the light of dispassionate reason, it is not a master- piece of penetrating wisdom.

The Symbolism of the Bible. By Expectans.

If Rationalism and Science have been fairly busy for some years stewing man in the cauldron of their beliefs, intuitionalism is now no less busy attempting to rescue him from his uncomfortable position. So to-day we see a somewhat murky and symbolical figure rising amid the dense steam. Expectans is one of those who seek to rescue man from the seething depths. His theory is that all forms of life are but symbols of a universal intelligence ; that all activi- ties rise and merge in that dim mystery called the AIbsolute, and symbolise it. For proof he’ takes the Bible and other Eastern literature, The result is a masterpiece of ingenuity. I t reveals a thinker out of ‘the ordinary, and one who has discovered in the cos- mical process a s recorded in the Bible-the passings in pillars of flame, the spreadings of darkness and in- fernal gloom over Egypt and other choice spots, the cleavings of rocks by living waters, and other such primordial doings and happenings-an underlying meaning that reveals the physical world as but a

(Unwin. 8s. 6d.)

(” Times of India” Press, Bombay.)

137

THE NEW AGE DECEMBER 8, 1910. 138 I

symbol. Everything in the Bible is, in fact, symbolical of the activities of the Deity. I t is not difficult t o un- derstand that the author’s zeal or industry has car- ried him too far. H e has needlessly and without assigning a reason destroyed the history of the Old Testament, the characters of which might quite easily have -remained both actual and symbolical. He might, for instance, have; allowed the leaders of Israel and their redoubtable armies to continue to pitch their tents by Shunen or elsewhere, and at the same time have discovered the presence of the Omnipresent in their doings.

But this apart, the work is a n extraordinary one, and it is quite impossible to do justice to it in a short notice. To some it will appear an unnecessary exhi- bition of mental gymnastics ; while others may regard it as an amazing exposition of an uncommon realisation of an inner or spiritual interpretation of a n outward, literal, metaphorical or symbolical expression. In any case, no one can deny that the whole work is packed with deep thought. The author starts off with and largely employs ,the sign-language of numbers, as defining indices to spiritual states or processes, and this largely no doubt owing. to the country in which the book was written. Had it bean written in Eng- land, possibly he would have started off with our own language. As, a matter of fact, the why and how and where the book was written is largely, one believes, dependent on the country where it was written. Climbing in the Ogwen District. By J. M. Archer

I once met a man tramping from California to Canada. H e was not a professional tramp, but the victim of a strange mania. H e told me in strict con- fidence that he hated railroads as the devil hated resurrec- tion pie, and though well able to afford to ride had never done so in, his life. Later, by a n odd coincidence, I met the same individual a t Bettws-y-Coed in Wales. Without going into the question whether he had walked from America to Wales, I agreed to make some ascents of Snowdon with him. I t transpired that his love of mountaineering and rock-climbing had brought him to Wales to try conclusions with some of the most difficult Cambrian climbs. Whether he ever accomplished his aim, I am unable to say. But it would seem from Mr. Thomson’s admirable and fully illustrated little book of climbs in the Ogwen district, that the possibility of his still being engaged in wandering up and down the Welsh mountains like a lost spirit, is not a remote one. According to the author, “ As late as 1894 twelve climbs only had been made in all the mountains of Snowdonia, and virgin faces met the eye on every side. Lliwedd was spoken of with bated breath, and the veil of mystery peculiar to the mountains hung impenetrable over three of its four peaks. The major part of Tryfan remained untrodden, and climbers were ignorant of the charms of Dinas Mot and Craig yr Yofa, as were Ordnance Surveyors of their names. ” The prescience of Ordnance Surveyors is not exactly proverbial, and I strongly advise them to study Mr. Thomson’s account of his adventures on the Cambrian heights. It is a record of pioneering in Snowdonia that may never, perhaps, be beaten, since men are beginning to revise their actions of mountain-climbing. Some regard it as a low form of amusement, and prefer a higher. So they fly across mountain ranges. Up Hill and Down Dale in Ancient Etruria. By

A certain medical friend of mine who was apparently unable to throw off the queer associations of the dis- secting room, was in the habit of learning his facts on ancient history on anatomical lines. If he wished to remember how the Medes and Persians, the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and other fellow-pilgrims along the road of life, supported themselves under more or less trying circumstances at an early period in the world’s history, he would draw a parallel between their country and a part of the human body, divide the former up into bones, muscles, organs, and so forth, trace their origin and deevelopment and so syste- matically visualise and commit the whole thing to

Thomson. (Arnold. 5s.)

Frederick Seymour. (Unwin. 10s. 6d.)

memory. Treated in this way a s a leg, Italy at the time of Rome’s founding was very easily dealt with. Rome formed the knee-cap and Etruria the thigh. As to the vexed question of the origin of the Etruscans, he was content to leave that t o the angels, or t o archaologists, who are anything but angels, and others who think it worth their consideration. He believed that Etruria, like many another State, arose spon- taneously, grew under stimulus both from within and without, flourished under the culture of a race which had pretensions t o artistic taste, and came to an end, just a s Rome which was founded by the Latins a s a colony on the Tiber to guard against the Etruscans, arose and fell. Mr. Frederick Seymour is a learned archaeologist who is anxious to let off a few burning and learned words on the whence of the Etruscans. H e carefully examines, but refuses to accept, the theories of a long and illustrious line of historians and antiquarians, apparently having no use for the Lydian Immigration one of Herodotus, while the Autochthous theory of Dionysius leaves him cold. In his view the Etruscan question, like the Eastern question and out own delightful W a r Office muddle, is as far off settlement as ever, and the only thing to be done is t o let the Etruscans settle it themselves. They are to be their own historians and the materials for their history are to be found in their monuments. The operation of watching the Etruscans give an account of their early affairs would be fascinating if only the Etruscans could be relied on. But, unfortunately, they cannot, and this. according to Mr. Seymour’s own showing. H e tells us they kept no record of their religious be- liefs, but have decorated their bits of pot with the religious motives of other races. Then they were con- noisseurs rather than artists, and, accordingly their artistic achievements have to be taken away from them and assigned to the Greeks. Again, they had no literature to speak of. In this way Mr. Seymour tends to contradict his own theory whilst sifting an immense amount of archeological material in order to do so, and for other pundits to browse upon. How did the Etruscans express themselves? still remains the burning question of Etruria, the excuse for volumes and volumes and volumes of the sort that lies before me. Archaeologists will find Mr. Seymour’s book full of useful material and the numerous topographical illustrations very helpful in their researches. But the book is not an urgent public need.

* * * By Stanley Morland.

An Eighteenth-Century Marquise. By Frank

This is more than a biography of Voltaire’s mistress : i t might almost be called a biographical dictionary of everyone acquainted with her. Scarcely a person is mentioned without a summary of his or her history ; and Mr. Hamel almost spoils his narrative by halting to describe a t some length the courts of the Duchesse du Maine and King Stanislas of Poland. The result is that we know more than the simple story of the Marquise du Châtelet and Voltaire: we have a bio- graphical breviary of the company of the salons, the cafes, and the courts, in the first half of the eighteenth century. The age was as corrupt a s it was courtly and cultured, Madame de Teucin, whose salon began with the visits of Fontenelle, Lamotte, and Saurin, and speedily became so famous that Mr. Hamel says tha t “those who did not know the salon in the Rue Saint- Honoré did not know Paris ” : this woman, whose “company was largely composed of her lovers,” who instructed her successor, Madame de Geoffrin, “ never to refuse a man, for, though nine in ten should not care a farthing for you, the tenth may live to be a useful friend,” may be taken a s the extreme type of the age. I t was an age when women were mathematicians, and men were poets : when everybody was literary, and in love with the wives or husbands of everybody else. I t was an age when treatises on geometry were love- letters, and people fought duels over epigrams ; when assignations were made in algebra, and epithalamia could be spun out to a thousand verses at twenty sous

Hamel. (Stanley Paul. 16s. net.)

DECEMBER 8, 1910. THE NEW AGE I39

a verse. Emilie, Marquise du Châtelet, was certainly better, as she was cleverer, than most of her sex ; but Voltaire, when he heard that Madame de Boufflers had removed the portrait of Saint-Lambert from the ring In which Emilie a t one time kept Voltaire’s portrait, ex- claimed, “Ciel ! women are all the same. I supplanted Richelieu, Saint-Lambert ousted me.” She was faith- ful to Voltaire for fifteen years, until she met Saint- Lambert ; and this is to her credit. They were a strange couple, as various in their abilities as in their moods. She wrote of Leibnitz, translated Newton, and wrote an algebraical commentary on this work. She sang in opera, acted in comedy, gloried in fêtes, and lost money a t cards. “Voltaire and Emilie,” says Mr. Hamel, “were in their element when play- acting. She allowed her wild animal spirits to get the better of her ; he was like an amiable child as well as a sage philosopher. . . . They were indefatigable, and tired everybody out. They had been known to go through thirty-three acts of tragedies, operas, and comedies in $twenty-four hours. But tha t was excep- tional.” She competed for the prize offered by the Academy for an essay on Fire, and combated the views that Voltaire expressed in his essay. Neither got the prize, a disappointment which each accepted vicari- ously; but the Academy published the essays at the close of the prize essays, and Emilie received a flatter- ing letter from Frederick of Prussia. Yet she stormed and raved at Voltaire for drinking a glass of wine against her orders ; it is even whispered that she threw plates and forks a t him when angry, to which he retorted with impertinences about her “squinting eyes.” She was jealous of Frederick the Great, as he was of her ; she was jealous of everything and everybody that took Voltaire away from her ; she suffered agonies in his absence and vexed herself with his presence. “ Now it is Voltaire’s coat that does not please hiss lady. She begs him to change it. H e gives many reasons for not wishing to do so-the chief one the fear of catching a worse cold than the *one he has at the moment. She insists. He sends his valet for another coat, and dis- appears. Presently a message reaches him, asking him to return. The response comes that he is not well. A visitor arrives. Emilie goes herself, and finds Voltaire chatting gaily with his gros chat. At last he comes to her command, but resumes his black looks and injured air. Then she begins to cajole. Presently they are both smiling, and peace ‘is re-established. A reading of Mérope takes place ; the quarrel is forgotten.” Yet in a real calamity their nobler qualities were manifested. Travelling from Paris to Cirey in January, the hind- spring of the carriage gave way, and precipitated “the divine Emilie, her maid, and a mountain of band-boxes and parcels on top of the unfortunate poet, who lay almost smothered until extricated from the debris by the servants.” And this is the account written, by Longchamp, a memorable refutation of the proverb about the hero and his valet. “M. de Voltaire and Mme. du Châtelet were seated side by side on the cushions of the carriage, which had been placed on the snow. There, almost transfixed with cold in spite of their furs, they were admiring the beauties of the heavens. The sky was perfectly calm and serene, the stars shone brilliantly, neither house nor tree was within sight to break the line of the horizon. Astronomy had always been a favourite study of the philosophers. Overcome by the magnificent spectacle spread around and above them, they discuss, whilst shivering, the nature and courses of the stars, and the destination of the vast worlds hanging in space. Only telescopes were wanting to their perfect happiness. Their minds, soaring in the profound depths of the sky, they saw nothing of their sad position on earth, amidst snow and icicles.”

They laboured prodigiously. Frequently they were not seen until supper-time, and they wrote reams of letters when they were parted. Mme. du Châtelet is said to have had eight quarto volumes of letters from Voltaire. That Mme. du Châtelet turned to Saint-Lambert at the last is not so reprehensible as might at first appear. Voltaire was turned fifty, and was becoming a chronic invalid ; his

fifteen years’ residence with her had somewhat tired him of her passicmate caprices, and great as was the in- tellectual sympathy between them, he could not be the lover she desired. Tyrant as she was, she wanted a lover who was all love ; and Saint-Lambert was a mere flirt who was rather afraid of the passion that surged about him. Voltaire, after his first explosion, ac- cepted the position with the bitter remark : “DO not flaunt jour infidelity before my very eyes.” He re- sumed his friendship for Saint-Lambert, and did not depart from Cirey. When Emilie discovered that she was about to become a mother, Voltaire jested with the bitterness of disappointment. “Since the child was to claim no father,” he said, “ it should be classed amongst Emilie’s miscellaneous works.” They all conspired t o make the Marquis du Châtelet believe that he was the father, and he was happy, with the news. The child was born; but the woman who attempted suicide after being disappointed by her first lover, Marquis de Guébriant, died within a week of bearing a child to a lover who had been nothing but a vexation to her. Voltaire’s remark that Saint-Lambert had killed her may be taken as true. A portion of Voltaire’s letter to Frederick the Great may serve as her epitaph. “She was a great man whose only fault was in being a woman. A woman who translated and explained Newton, and who made a translation of Virgil, with- out letting it appear in conversation that she had done these wonders ; a woman who never spoke evil of any- one, and who never told a lie ; a friend attentive and courageous in friendship,-in a word, a very great man whom ordinary women knew only by her diamonds and cavagniole-that is the one whom you cannot hinder me from mourning all my life.”

M . Hamel is to be congratulated on his subject, and his treatment of it is admirable. I think, as I said before, that his history of the courts of Mme. de Maine and King Stanislas is a blemish on a good book, for it does obstruct the narrative without really enlightening u s concerning Voltaire and Emilie. I t seems to be an unnecessary parade of historical knowledge. But the whole period is so interesting, and Mr. Hamel’s vig- nattes are so well done, that it would be carping to insist on this objection. The book is well funnished, and has many good illustrations, besides an index that is useful.

Home Fun. By Cecil H. Bullivant. * * *

(T. C. and E. C.

Mr. Bullivant has written a most comprehensive manual of home entertainment. From hand-bell ring- ing to hypnotism, the book ranges. All forms of amateur theatricals, ventriloquism, juggling, are ex- plained in the simplest manner ; even vamping accom- paniments are simplified by Mr. Bullivant. Electrical and chemical experiments, palmistry, fortune-telling, all are treated. In, fact, there ‘is not a form of indoor amusement, from table-turning to tableaux, that Mr. Bullivant does not explain with the utmost simplicity and brevity. In 550 pages he has given enough in- struction to last the amateur entertainer a lifetime. His devices for minimising the cost of these entertain- ments are decidedly clever ; and the average boy whose pocket-money is limited will find it possible to try most of these tricks, if his impecuniosity is equalled by his ingenuity. I t is essentially a practical book ; it is written in the simplest language, and its illustrations instruct as effectively as the *text. I t will make an ad- mirable Christmas present to every boy whose parents do not always live the higher life.

The Emancipation of English Women. By W.

In his researches into the history of women’s emanci- partion as recorded (chiefly in, the works of men) during the last three centuries, Mr. Blease fails either to in- terest us much or to persuade our judgment. What is the use of rapidly summarising centuries in phrases, a decade or so for each, even if quotations abound? The method throws no real light on history, and strikes the reader as perfunctory. And a s for Mr. Blease’s judg- ment, what can we make of a professed feminist who

Jack. 6s. net.)

Lyon Blease. (Constable. 6s. net.)

THE NEW A G E DECEMBER 8, 1910 140

thinks Mill’s book on “The Subjection of Women ” of more value than Mary Wollstonecraft’s magnificent “Vindication of the Rights of Women ” ? Only that he has, he also, the usual bias of men against women, who must needs therefore do twice as well as a man to be regarded as equal. To this must be added, we think, a little prejudice against Mary Wollstonecraft herself, for Mr. Blease remarks that “the great error of her life was her union with Imlay.” Error is a strange word for a feminist to use of a free union; and tragedy, as it turned out, would be nearer the mark. But Mr. Blease does not confine himself to history ; he under- takes to reason the case for woman’s suffrage. In this he succeeds so badly that no one who was not already convinced before would be convinced after reading this book. What, we ask, is the real argument against woman’s suffrage-real, we mean, not in the sense that i t is sufficient but that it powerfully influences the majority of anti-suffragists? I t is, as Mr. Blease quite well understands, the fear that (to use Lord Curzon’s words) “political activity will tend to take away woman from her proper sphere and highest duty, which is maternity.” Mr. Blease’s reply to this is that it simply won’t. On the contrary, “if the feminist move- ment in England has any character more pronounced than the rest, it is the loftiness of its purpose, the purity of its motive, the emphasis which it lays upon the dignity of motherhood and the solemn duty of women to maintain the purity and vigour of the race.” What bathos ! And how ineffective as a reply to Lord Curzon and the racial panicmongers! I t is like Mr. Balfour assuring working men that on his honour their food shall not cost them more when wheat goes up in price. As a matter of plain fact, the objection of ‘Lord Curzon is not only quite valid to those who believe so mightily in the dignity of motherhood and the purity and vigour of the race, but it also indicates, we think, the place in which the opponents of women’s emancipation are weakest. The effective reply of feminists to Lord Curzon and the rest is surely this (we state it a t its baldest) : ‘‘No votes, no race !” But so long as feminist advocates shrink from this they leave un- touched their main enemy. Mr. Blease is, however, in- capable of this line of thought,, for he is solicitous to maintain the maternal character of feminism to the point of misreading history. Of Mrs. Josephine Butler he says : “Like most of the great women of the world, she was full of the domestic virtues, and none ever ex- celled her in the performance] of the duties of a wife and mother.” Shades of Elizabeth and Sappho, how touchingly untrue !

When Mr. Blease comes to deal with the political situation of women’s suffrage he is even more at fault. He claims a value for his views on the ground of an impartiality manifested by his ability to see both the point of view of the present Government and the point .of v’iew of the militant suffragettes. But this is either mere confusion or it is a defect of moral courage. H e cannot be both an ‘‘adherent ” of the Liberal Cabinet and an adherent of militancy. Either he must adhere to the Cabinet, wrong as he thinks Mr. Asquith’s view on suffrage to be, because he regards suffrage as of less importance than the other items of the Cabinet pro- gramme; or, like the militant suffragists, he must put suffrage first and the Liberal programme nowhere. He cannot take both points of view at once. In fact, his treatment ‘of this subject is extremely unsatisfac- tory. He will not even discuss militant methods since, in his view, that would be “unprofitable.” How then can he, without discussion, condemn the Cabinet to which he adheres and fling at its members phrases like these : Incredible folly, perilous ignorance, sixth-form schoolboys, stupid violence, etc.? Nor is his case im- proved by quoting at Mr. Asquith this sentence of Burke’s : “Legislators ought to do what lawyers cannot, for they have no other rules to bind them, but the great principle of reason and equity, and the general sense of mankind.” But it is precisely “ the general sense of mankind” on which Mr. Asquith can claim to be relying in his opposition to woman’s suffrage. And here, too, Mr. Blease is kind enough to point Mr.

Asquith’s contention. Writing of the reception of the news that forcible feeding was being employed on political prisoners, Mr. Blease remarks : “ By the House of Commons and b y the Public it was regarded as a new and splendid jest ; and every attempt at protest was greeted with laughter and contempt.” This ac- count, fortunately, is quite untrue, as Mr. Herbert Gladstone’s supersession by Mr. Churchill and the latter’s abandonment of his predecessor’s methods clearly prove. But suppose that it were true, as Mr. Blease himself supposes, what becomes of Burke’s dictum that legislators must be guided by the general sense of mankind? W e have yet to discover a better book than Mary Wollstonecraft’s “Vindication.” Mezzogiorno. By John Ayscough. (Chatto and Windus.

W e do not know who first set the fashion of writing unctuously about the bourgeoisie, but we confess, as poor Socialists, that we hate them as much in literature as in economics. Not a character in “Mezzogiorno ” has an original or spontaneous idea ; they are all middlemen in morals, manners and opinions ; nor do we find what Mr. Garnett found in Mr. Ayscough’s “Marotz,” “ a complete philosophy of life. ” Gillian is the daughter of a wandering painter. At his death in Tripoli she goes through a form of marriage with Eustachio Zante, for no other reasons, that we can gather, than that he is like Antinous, and she is bored. Eustachio repudiates the marriage, and dies in America, whereupon Gillian marries the Duca di Torre Greca, who also dies. She then comes to. England and marries Philip Andrews (who does not die) and with him she lives in country society with the usual amusements of hunting and getting children. At their country seat, Eustachio’s brother turns up, disguised as Eustachio. As he is leaving the house after a scene, he is murdered by a village labourer named Mark, who has fallen in love with Gillian. Mark, of course, also dies, but before the police can arrest him. There’s the plot, and, given the bourgeois atmosphere, we defy anybody to make a better novel of it.

The R.P.A. Annual, 1911. (Watts and Co. 6d. net.) The main interest of this year’s annual of the

Rationalist Press Association centres round the article- by Sir Hiram Maxim entitled “Wanted, an anti-Mis- sionary Society.” The chief merit of the article lies in the fact that it has stirred the clerical conscience, as witness the correspondence in the “ Daily News,” just terminated. That correspondence was a triumph for Sir Hiram Maxim and the Rationalists. W e under- stand the wisdom, from the Christian point of view, of drawing the veil over the doings of missionaries ; feverish attempts are now being made to fill missionary coffers. To extort the pence of the unenlightened some showmen interested in missionaries are at present touring the provinces with spectacular shows ! Sir Hiram Maxim’s article is most opportune!

6s.)

The Post-Savages. By Huntly Carter.

W E M U S T BE OURSELVES. From all the works that count at the Grafton Galleries just now, comes this insistent, exhilarating cry. W e must, will be ourselves. W e will see with our own eyes, do with our own hands, think and talk in our own language. To be one’s self- completely expressed-that is all that matters in art, all that can ever matter. Complete self-expression is art. * * *

We must be ourselves. How the cry alarms and maddens the Philistines. I t has been uttered from age to age by individual painters, uttered by them and heard and misunderstood by the mob. Blake the mystic, Bell - Scott and Rossetti the poet- painters ; Havill, a founder of the water-colour school, Madox Brown and the Pre - Raffaelites; Whistler; Monticelli, who hawked his unique pictures from pot-

I t is an old cry.

house to pot-house; Chardin and his school; Millet, the peasant painter; Wiertz, the recluse of Brussels who, sworn to art, refused to sell his works-these and scores more of innovators, continuators, and re-innovators, have sought to carry their emotions to their highest

point and to give them full expression, only to be re- viled, derided and spat at. Look how Manet reaped disaster, suffering and neglect for his devotion to his ideal and his courage in expressing himself. For years he was sneered a t and snubbed by the public and the precious French and English Academicians. Yet his only fault was that he wanted to be himself, to look at things with his own eyes, to put them down in his own way. To him the unfolding of his own personality was far more precious than the exploitation of personalities that lay around him.

+ * + Manet’s remarkable strength, energy, and scorn of

convention has met the time honoured reward. After being kicked down the academy steps into the mud he is now exalted to a classic, and universally hailed as an innovator. Mark the effect of his promotion a t the Grafton. Note how quietly and reverently the Philis- tines enter the room where he is enshrined. They are no longer afraid of his power, or irritated by his un- expected attack on their own demoralising gospel of Ne soit pas, mon frères, ou je te tue-the gospel indeed

of the whole British race which savs to other races. ” Be not, my brother, or I crush you.” They seem to understand that the great Frenchman is saying some- thing on art, though what it is few of them can tell. Some may be dimly conscious that he is repeating in his own charming way the message of so many inspired artists, and saying simply, “ Do not judge really great works of art by mathematical rules. I admit that my o w n technique preserves certain rules, yet it defies them. What is it that sets me and my colleagues so much apart from many moderns? Why it is merely three things-aspiration, intuition, and inspiration. I ‘have had a new impulse : have seen that it led to great things; have had the passion of love to follow it out. And see where this impulse has led me. I t has im-

pelled me to moralise and to .make tradition. I con- fess there is a great deal in my work that appears wrong, many of the details seem laughable, but as a whole it is absolutely right, and must be judged as a *whole not by set rules, but as the result of inspira- tion. Yes, everything is right because I had the right clue to work upon,. Lots of painters could do as I did if only they had this clue. I knew instinctively where to begin and where to leave off. There is not a touch too :much or too little in any of my finished pictures. Then again, I paid attention to the claims of emotion. I deeply felt love and so expressed it. Notice how I was in love with the head and face of the woman in *the ‘ Folies Bergère.’ My devotion comes out in the splendid flesh colour and the beautiful painting. I was “in love, too, with other details. I could not resist the ca l l of the rich browns and orange of the bottles and the stand of fruit. Cut them out and they form perfect little pictures in themselves. It was the same with the ‘ Au Café. ’ picture. I t came spontaneously, perhaps -with much less effort than the other. I got my rich colour with less labour. I t is a canvas full of inspired devotion, beautifully painted, the merest touches sug- gesting something. That girl’s eye is wonderfully ex- -pressed. The whole thing Iives and moves. Yes, I am fully expressed in these two works. Do not look at those sketches of subjects that I just drew in and rubbed in a little colour. They ought not to be here, or a t least should not be exhibited as pictures. It does me no .good. The directors ought to know better. I t is dis- graceful. Cézanne there is also an example of complete self-expression and unselfish devotion. His work, too, exhibits ,all the difference between inspired vision and interpretation, and scientific vision and interpreta- t ion. He knew the essential means to his end and employed them and nothing more. Look at his ‘ Les Maisons,’ where the effect of a sullen storm sweeping down is so finely caught and expressed with such

strength and simplicity. How dramatic the whole thing.”

What a big immense design.

* * * “ As to the other painters I spoke of, they have plenty

of definite perception, of conscious and formal observa- tion, but no aspiration worth mention, no intuition, no inspiration. Go and look at their works. Examine the machine-made pictures of the Russians, near by, tricked out with meaningless detail. Examine, too, the works of your three or four representative men who to-day are dominating the London galleries. Orpen, Nicholson, Strang, Steer, John, you will find them and their imita- tors everywhere. The Chenil Gallery, the New Portrait Society, the New English R.A., the Goupil Gallery .Salon, the International, know them and are heavy with their products. There they are, faces made by Tussauds and painted by Messrs. Orpen and Nicholson and Co. ; gowns made by Morris Angel and painted by Messrs. Orpen and Nicholson and Co.; landscape and land- scape and landscape by and after Steer; heads and figures, head and figures, head and figures, by and after John; coloured oleographs to nausea, by and after Strang. I admit that much of the work of these ‘ leaders ’ is immensely clever, their pictures are top- heavy with too much brain-but they are the produc- tions of men who think like scientists. And then all is drawing with them, they are in fact draughtsmen, who, generally speaking, are enamoured of the school methods of fifteen years ago. Bring them here and watch the effect of the post-savages on them. I can hear them say, ‘ W e have reached a stage of perfection beyond which it is impossible to go. These works by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and the rest of the crazy school are absolutely bad. They defy all rules; are not made; reveal no calculation; are not carefully thought out and finished ; they are not even foundations. To us they are simply a phase of idiotic, indictable folly.’ This, of course, proves not that Messrs. Orpen, Nichol- son and their distinguished contemporaries are right, but that if Philistinism there be on earth it has head- quarters in the artist ranks.” * * * “ I t was artists who levelled hostile jokes, insults and

anger a t me. I t is artists who will sneer a t the big effective canvases of the decorators, Denis, Flandrin (the idealist, not the cheap meretricious realist of t h e gee-gee and two figures), Serusier, Vlaminck, Segonzac, men who +obviously have an instinct for appropriate stage decoration. I t is artists who will regard with amused contempt the joyous but cultured shout of the sun-worshippers, Seurat, Signac, Henri-Edmond Cross, with their delicate and sincere application of scientific formula. It is artists no less than the ignorant public who will turn with ungovernable hatred, malice and all uncharitableness at the sound of the wild exuberance of such cannibals a s Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Matisse, who have thrown off all restraint and are careering about a seething cauldron in which the remains of scientific con- ventions are stewing. They will wilfully ignore the true significance of what they see. They will attack and denounce w i thou t d discrimination and judgment t pictures, some of them exquisite in design and cotour, and many others full of the primitive element, displaying un doubted savage attributes in love of simplicity, wonder- ful decoration, and masses of gorgeous crude colour, revealing, too, a childlike interpretation of a clear child- like vision of Nature, as well as the power to feel, enjoy and express the elemental emotions of life, to stand naked and unashamed as it were, in a blazing carnival of colour and light. Works indeed exhibiting in a marked degree the first fine impulse of the artist-soul, which finds its natural outlet in full surrender to self- expression. * * *

“ This is the impulse that lies behind the whole of the great epochs of a r t ; it asserts itself in all the works of the innovators, in those of artists who have sought the principles that underlie all forms of art, and link them together in unity. The manifestation of this impulse is absolutely consistent and defensible if ar t is, as we are assured, to be stimulated by new ideas, and

141

142 THE NEW AGE DECEMBER 8, 1910.

to go on living in new forms. ‘Let us violate the tradi- tions of a r t ! Let us clear away the deadly obstructions that others may see, as we do, the new growths! Let us reveal vital principles that those tha t come after us may build enduringly! Let us see and do this entirely in our own way! ’ This is all that the Post- savages are saying. Their pictures will not be the pictures of the future. Many of them will not live, except as records of a wonderful experiment. But the principles they reveal will live, and upon them the pictures of the future will be constructed. The next stage will be the restraint of the first wild impulse of the post-savages and the elaboration of detail; and then will come the larger beauty of simplicity and freedom.”

So might Manet address the Philistines in the temple of art which is just now situated in Grafton Street, and which is less revivalistic and ritualistic than, i t usually is. Having concluded his address, the march past of the Philistines would commence. At their head would be found Mr. W a k e Cook, furiously flourishing a n ass’s tail troubled with a death rattle. Wi th this weapon, he proposes to slay the Samsonites just as Samson smote the Philistines with the ‘other and more substantial end of the animal’s anatomy. Standing a little apart is the plain man from the country (Mr. Calderon) with a n indulgent smile on his face, and not caring tuppence who gets killed so long as his pipe does not go out. Not far from him is the man who knows (Mr. Hugh Blaker) who is seen wildly gesticulating, dancing with his feet, and throwing his body about what time he invites “any broth UV e r bhoy ter trid on th’ tail UV me iligant coat. Begorrah-h-h ! ”

* * *

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.

Sir,-Several writers in your columns have lately sneered at Freethinkers. Those who sneer at Freethinkers know little of history. If the whole programme of Socialism were completely realised, it is doubtful if even then the Socialists would have done as much to diminish human misery as the Freethinkers have done already.

For practical purposes the Secularist movement began with Epicurus. His aim was to make men happy, and in looking round the world he saw two great causes of misery -the fear of the gods and of death. Being a very practical man, he made it the one aim of his life to abolish these fears. He found able followers, among them the poet Lucretius. These men we- so successful that among the educated classes they almost entirely obliterated the fear of the gods and of death. Everyone who knows anything of classical literature must know what terrible fears these had been. The most noble testimonial to the work of the Epicureans is the tribute which Virgil pays to Lucretius:-

“Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Quique metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari. ,’

However, the Epicurean movement failed to penetrate to the masses, who were in those days desperately ignorant. After a glorious career of six centuries Epicureanism was overthrown by the Christians, who belonged to the multi- tude and shared its fears. In fact, they were worse than the ignorant Pagans, for they believed in such horrible things as foetal and infant damnation, and their hell was more dreadful than the Pagan one. Atrocious pictures of hell fire were painted by savage fanatics like Tertullian, and with the fall of the Roman Empire the world sank under the dominion of ignorant barbarians, who believed all that the priests told them. Anyone who wishes to realise what a cloud of fear hung over the world during the Dark Ages should make a very careful study of Dante’s “Inferno.” It was written just at the close of the Dark Ages, and its author breathes so much of their spirit that he has been called “the voice of ten silent centuries.” I think anyone who reads that book must admit that it is the most horrible book ever written. We descend from circle to circle, and we meet men, a large number of whom have been great patriots and humanitarians, lying in red-hot coffins waiting to have the lids put on after the Day of Judgment, or walk- ing along for ever under showers of fire, o r standing up to the eyes in lakes of boiling blood, or moving slowly along dressed in mantles of lead.

“0 in eterno faticoso manto !” The Dark Ages believed all that. Nay, more, the world

continued on the whole to believe it. These terrors im- pressed Shakespeare so deeply that he could not help allud-

ing to them over and over again. largely for himself when he said:-

“The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death.”

I think he was speaking

Before Voltaire started his great Secularist movement in the eighteenth century, even the bravest men of all nations were oppressed by an ever-present feeling of dread. It was always under the surface, even when wine or love caused it to be forgotten for a moment. Over a large part of the world this feeling still prevails. I was a child in Scotland in the eighteen-seventies, and I have lain awake many a night thinking of hell fire. My father was the best mathe- matician of his year at college, and could quote twenty lines of Virgil on any occasion, yet whenever a thunderstorm came he prayed all the time it lasted to be delivered from bell fire. I have seen children of eight years old weeping bitterly by themselves, for fear they might die and g o to hell. There are still many thousands of such cases in Scotland, and countless thousands more in Ireland, Quebec and many other countries. I am sure there are a great many in England. Protestants have improved a little of late years, but Catholics still preach hell fire as uncompro- misingly as they did in the tenth century.

Such are the terrors from which the Freethinkers are very gradually delivering the world. The task is not an easy one. Socialists and Suffragettes are mere dilettanti corn- pared with the men who first struck a blow at the fear of the gods and of death. From about 1200 to 1800 the burning of infidels and heretics was once of the chief amusements of Europe, and sometimes the amusement was varied by tear- ing out a child’s tongue or breaking an old man on the wheel. During the past century there has been a slight im- provement, for such giants as Voltaire and Paine have managed to produce some effect at last. Protestantism is getting pretty well smashed; so is Roman Catholicism in the Latin countries. But I advise the people of England, Germany, and the United States to keep an eye on Rome. Do not laugh. Horace and Ovid would have laughed heartily if they had been told that in four hundred years every educated man in Europe would believe in infant damnation. Ovid had so little fear of a revival of super- stition that he wrote:-

“Expedit esse deos, et, ut expedit, esse putemus ;

You see, Ovid was quite up to date, and left very little to be said by Messrs. Chesterton and Verdad.

Dentur in antiquos tura merumque focos.”

R. B. KERR. * * + A SYMPOSIUM ON CRIME AND INSANITY.

Sir,-Your fourth query under above is, “DO you agree that juries should be constituted on more scientific lines than at present?” May I, as an ordinary layman, offer a suggestion ?

It has always seemed to me that the haphazard selection of men for juries has more than a touch of the farcical about it. Our counsel and judges are elaborately trained and highly paid; yet all their work is in the end at the disposal, for guilty or not guilty, of twelve average house- holders, chosen haphazard; with no thought or reference whatever to their fitness for the very special work they are thus unexpectedly and suddenly called upon to do. The task of sifting and comparing evidence, of listening with un- flagging attention for hours to counsel and seeing through their “tricks of trade” so that the real truth underneath all their surface juggling may be got at and justice done the prisoner; the task of listening to one counsel, and then comparing his with the topsy-turvey version the opposing counsel will present, is one to make even the most intelli- gent shrink from, let alone the odd lot that get congregated together in our jury-boxes. , Yet, one is loth to leave the final decision in one man’s hands. Our judges, fine body of experts though they are, are as full of human frailties as the rest of us. My sugges- tion would be: that our juries should consist only of brief less barristers. At a nominal fee of a guinea a day they should be more than willing to undergo this most valuable training in an essential part of their professional duty-the learning to sift and compare ,evidence, to get used to wit- nesses’ tricks, to be able to see below the nervousness that so often hides a man’s real meaning and intention, to get behind all the surface falsities apparently inevitable to our legal procedure, and arrive at the essential truth, that our law-courts may come to be also courts of equity.

And what joy for this ideal juror to check an over-zealous or unfair counsel by discreet, pertinent questioning from the jury-box! And how much more potent for good, in leal leading, would be the judge’s summing-up ; not the mere generalisation, bewildering to the poor untrained juror, already befogged by all that has gone before; but a sum-

THE NEW AGE I43 DECEMBER 8, 1910.

ming-up for these trained jurors that would really lead to a fair and impartial decision. Their discussion in retire- ment would be a real discussion, not the empty farce it now usually is. The lack of intelligence of the average juror being too painful to dwell on when one has in mind the profound issues to the parties concerned and the mone- tary cost of all that has preceded it.

FREDERICK H. EVANS. * + *

MAN ,AND T H E MACHINE. Sir,--Mr. Quennell’s letter in your issue of November 24

calls for some remark. In the first place, Mr. Quennell does not elucidate the

reasons for the modem contempt for craftsmanship. When, some years back, I attempted to explain the low status of the artisan, the man who works with his hands, I found very little in modern literature which could satisfactorily account for it. Observing the world for a time led me to fix the trouble upon the idea embodied in the word “gentle- man. ’’

In Renaissance times the craftsman and skilled artisan had a definite position in society which, backed by his own dagger, was held in respect. He was neither a serf nor a gentleman. In the twentieth century the unhappy crafts- man, whether he be smith, sculptor, painter, printer, writer or woodworker, sheds bis apron as though he were ashamed of it, claims the absurd title esquire, and dons the black garments of gentility.

De Musset’s lively imagination saw in the Parisian’s black coat Death walking the streets. It was to him an emblem of the Revolution. To me, with a brain less lively, but clear of alcoholic stimulus, the gentleman’s black coat is the antithesis of the artisan’s white apron. Mr. Quennell will agree that Stamford Hill and Surbiton, East Ham and West Kensington, would have infinitely more respect for a short-sighted unathletic curate in a black coat than €or a man, say, like Stradivarius, wearing his white leather apron as though it were the insignia of an honourable craft, as indeed it was. “Take off your coat!’’ To me sir, that phrase, when I hear it in the workshops, is pregnant with meaning. It is the cry of the artisan to have done with hypocrisy, to stand forth for what you are.

I recall, in this connection, a certain Saturday night “ hop” in Sunderland to which a shipmate had invited me. The company was chiefly of the artisan and clerk class; blue serge suits mingled with hired dress suits, pneumonia blouses criticised décolletages. I was aroused from my intense preoccupation with a feminine product of Wearside by a row between my shipmate and a pale creature in even- ing dress, who was, I believe, a ship-chandler’s clerk. Doubt- less the idea of a fight at a dance will shock Fabian rate- payers, but to my mind it gave to the scene that delightful flavour of mediaeval virility so dear to the heart of G. K. Chesterton and Mr. Belloc. “ Take off your coat !” came the sharp challenge as my shipmate’s blue serge slipped from his lean brown arms and muscular hands. His antagonist wavered, refused. The M.C. fumed in vain. A murmur ran round, anxious friends counselled a removal of the black dress coat. The voice of the lady was added to goad him, a blow on the chin clinched it. He removed his coat amid shrieks of laughter, for his detachable cuffs and front were fixed over a flannellette shirt. The man was a fraud, you say, yet-men will respect him, and women will desire him in marriage, thinking little of my shipmate, master of his trade, certificated by the State, a very skilful and complete man.

Mr. Quennell s letter misses many other interesting points, of which I may not speak. But, as a professional mechanic, I should be glad of clearer instructions regarding the use of machinery in the arts. At what point does a ‘(tool” become a “machine.” How does Mr. Quennell classify the sculptors’ gauge, by which he tests the accuracy of his cutting? I have it on the word of an eminent sculptor that mechanical calibration is not used so much now as in the fifteenth century .

Again, it is nonsense to speak of all things being better done by hand than by machinery. Has Mr. Quennell ever ridden a hand-made bicycle, used a hand-made typewriter, played a hand-made pianoforte with handdrawn wires ? Has he ever deplored the use of machinery in the minting of sovereigns? I look for a clearer manifesto on this subject.

WILLIAM MCFEE. * * *

DEMOCRACY AND WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE. Sir,-Under (‘Notes of the Week” in your issue of the

1st inst., you quote with approval Burke’s definition of representative government as legislation and public conduct determined only by general consent. In the same paragraph you deprecate the efforts of the Suffragists to extort women’s franchise from any Cabinet of the day without any such

general consent. I now ask you how the general consent on this or any other question is to be ascertained so long as more than half of the population has no means of ex- pressing either consent or dissent. Male democracy seems to me to be a self-contradictory phrase. It simply makes one sex an oligarchy a t the expense of the other, Moreover, if all the women but one in England were to decline the offer of the vote, I cannot see why that one should be denied her right to a say in her own government and the spending of her own money. Your utterance on this question appears to me in the nature of a conundrum of which I anxiously await the solution. You want the general consent to the expression of that consent !

EDMUND B. D’AUVERGNE. * * * FRANCHISE AND MILITANT TACTICS.

Sir,-Your general policy, as developed in your leading articles, is so sound that one is surprised at, and looks in vain for an explanation of, the extraordinarily illogical attitude you take up on the question of woman suffrage. I expect that between the many letters you have published on the subject all arguments have been exhausted; but I cannot refrain from pointing out that you yourselves in your last issue supply all the arguments that are necessary to justify the militant action you condemn.

You say, “We not only recognise that general consent to woman suffrage is . . . . lacking, but deplore that the mili- tant Suffragists . . . . appear quite willing to extort from any Cabinet a particular consent to which the general con- sent was not necessarily attached.” You proceed to regret that these tactics are being “ exclusively employed” (which is not true), and that though they will probably be success- ful, they are doomed to a perfectly barren success.

I fail to see what other success could be wished for than that of the removal of the sex disability, and I do not believe (nor do you) that such an achievement would be barren. Quotations from your own leaders prove that the end justi- fies the means. For does not the majority of 1 1 0 for the Conciliation Bill represent in some degree “the best general opinion of the day?” and this is the norm you desire Mr. Churchill to be influenced by rather than the voice-of-the- gutter majority.

Granted, then, that woman suffrage is approved by “the best general opinion of the day,” how do you justify your condemnation of women who act as you approve the Welsh miners acting, and for similar reasons ? You say : “ The only defence the people have against arbitrary undemocratic conduct on the part of their rulers is arbitrary undemo- cratic and violent conduct on their own behalf.”

I do not think that it is “special pleading” to assert that Mr.’ Asquith’s refusal to grant facilities for the Conciliation Bill in spite of its acceptance by a majority made up of all parties-a majority larger than that obtained for the Budget-was arbitrary and undemocratic.

This being so, and the women realising the full import of such unconstitutional procedure, protested in the only way in which their protests have ever attracted any attention.

At best the deputations to the House were expressions of disgust at the insults the Prime Minister has repeatedly offered the women, at worst they were illegal assemblies. Putting it at its worst, can we be surprised a t the indignation of women and men, when a so-called Liberal civilised Government refuses to allow the law to deal with its law- breakers, but gives a license to a horde of brutal police to deal with the women as they (the police) see fit?

So much for masculine chivalry! ALBERT E. Löwy

* * *

T H E PARTING OF T H E WAYS. Sir,-In this excellent number (Dec. I ) of THE NEW AGE,

nothing is franker or more to the point at the moment than “The Parting of the Ways.” One cannot say with equal truth, as J. P. Benjamin does in opening, that “Nothing is more difficult than for a man who has never known poverty to put himself in the place of the poor man.” There is one thing not simply more difficult but actually im- possible, but which men are constantly pretending they- can do, namely, put themselves in the place of women. That “Man is man, and woman is woman’’ is too deep a truth to admit of any man’s arrogating to himself the power to think woman’s thoughts, and so to give the world the benefit of the dual point of view.

Of course J.P.B. knows this, and he will, I hope, give us a further article on “The Parting of the Ways” with his clarity of thought and directness of expression brought to bear on the male and female counterparts of the population. Though there is something analogous in these two pairs of opposite, unlike the prospects of the former, the approxi- mation of the latter will not occur till “we arrive,” as the following article (‘Unedited Opinions” has it, “at the self-born.” R. H. P.

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