IS ENGLAND TO LOSE COMMAND OF THE SEA? ORD GEORGE HAMILTON contributes to the

a dispasionate statesinin

like paper on the question: "Is England's Sea-Power to be Maintained?" In discussing this he carefully abstains from partisan recriminations or alarmist rhetoric. He quotes Mr. Gladstone's “perfect” satisfaction at the adequacy and capacity" of the British Navy, and then proceeds to give a plain statement of the facts: "The purposes for which the British Navy exists are the protection of the colonies, commerce and territories of the British Empire, against the united naval forces of the two strongest existing foreign fleets, by maintaining against such a combination the command of the sea. France

and Russia happened to be then, and are still, those two powers, and, therefore, their fleets, present and prospective, form the test."

Lord Hamilton reasons that since other nations have few distant coaling stations and their battleships have inferior coaling capacity, the great naval struggle, if it came at all, would most probably occur in European waters. Hence comparison between the British and the allied navies must leave out of count "all British foreign squadrons abroad (except the Mediterranean) as being too remote from the central conflict, and as being mainly composed as second-class cruisers and small vessels, whose functions are not to fight battleships, but to protect commerce."

we

BEFORE AND AFTER THE NAVAL DEFENSE ACT. Lord Hamilton then proceeds to make tabulated comparison at three periods. "In March 1889, before the Naval Defense Act was introduced, . had of effective battleships 32, of 262,340 tonnage, against 23 French and Russian ships of 150,653 tonnage, but . . . many of our ships were old. In April 1894, at the end of the Naval Defense act, ... the five years' work ending in 1894 shows in battleships alone an addition of 14 ships, 179,300 tons to the British fleet, against 13 ships, 120,300 tons to the flects of France and Russia Our ships

are more modern and have relatively a greater concentration of offensive and defensive power than the ships added to the other navies."

These figures do not include "England's present effective armored and first-class cruisers," which number 29 against a Franco-Russian total of 17.

Thus, as the case of the three greatest naval powers of Europe now stands," although England may fairly claim to be equal in strength to her two most formidable competitors, no one can pretend that the margin of her superiority is such that she can afford to rest on her oars."

FRANCE AND RUSSIA BUILDING FIVE TIMES AS MUCH AS ENGLAND IS.

Comparing next the prospective building programme of the three countries on January 1, 1894, as now known. France and Russia will have on January 1, 1894, no less than 23 large ships, with an aggregate tonnage of 210,300 tons, in various stages of construc

“These figures," says Lord Hamilton, "indicate an urgent danger ahead."

The Law of Sea Power.

The agitation for a strengthened British navy naturally finds reflection in the magazines. "Nauticus," who writes from the point of view of "a naval expert of neutral nationality," and of "a publicist who finds in the Indépendance Belge a tribune," expounds in the Fortnightly the laws of "Sea-Power; Its Past and Future." He calls attention to the great discovery published three years ago, by Captain Mahan, of the United States Navy. This was a discovery of the simple fact that sea-power, whether local or universal, cannot be enjoyed by more than one tenant in any given district, and of the law that "sea-power, or mastery of any sea, in proportion as it is complete, confers upon its possessor an ultimately dominating position with regard to all the countries the coasts of which border that sea." This law is verified in the great wars of history in which navies took part. Captain Mahan's demonstration of it has "roused the dockyards of Europe and America to unwonted activity."

sea

GERMANY, NOT FRANCE, ENGLAND'S RIVAL. Many maritime powers forget, however, that " power does not rest primarily upon the possession of a strong navy, but upon the possession and the maintenance of a superior maritime trade. A navy does not make trade. ... Spain had at one time the best trade of the two hemispheres. When she lost her naval supremacy she also lost her trade. The Netherlands inherited Spain's business, but preserved it only so long as the Netherlands navy was equal to the task of its guardianship. .

"If, to imagine an illustration, a naval war were to break out between France and Great Britain, and if the latter were to experience a decisive and crushing defeat at sea, she would lose her trade. But, in the existing circumstances, it would certainly not pass under the control of France. There is no doubt whatever that Germany, which is already the second commercial power, would immediately become the first." ..

Unfortunately France remains "blind to the fact that the vacated place would be occupied by Germany. She persists in believing that she could take it. And this is because she will not accept Captain Mahan's law of sea-power."

WHAT EUROPE HAS A RIGHT TO DEMAND.

vious neighbors to the idea that in a quarrel with her they are foredoomed to defeat. Upon no other terms is her presence in the Mediterranean either tolerable or defensible. . . Her sea-power has ceased to be convincing, undoubted, recognized; to-morrow it could be shattered, perhaps immediately, by France alone, if only France had no other preoccupations and if she were assured beforehand of Italy's non-interference. For the citadel of British sea-power, the vantage-point upon which rests the centre of the British position in Europe is in the Mediterranean ; and, excluded from the Mediterranean, the United Kingdom would in a few years be no weightier a factor in international politics than the Netherlands or Denmark."

"Nauticus" shows by comparative tables British naval inferiority to France in the Mediterranean, and concludes that England's "present policy of pretension and powerlessness in the Mediterranean is perhaps the most formidable of existing menaces to the peace of the world."

"The rhetoricians of Ireland eat one another up at such a pace that a decade suffices for a generation. . . Each succeeding group rises, talks itself into ascendency, and culminates either in securing office or in being broken by prison and exile, or on the wheel of public disfavor. Sundry general rules are observable, too, in the alternations. A given series of silver-tongued place-hunters will by reaction produce a crop of violent reformers. It is a story of

talk, practically nothing but talk.”

THE CHANGE UNDER PARNELL.

In this light the chief Irish movements of the last hundred and twenty years are reviewed; "From Flood to Isaac Butt the controlling idea behind every representative Irish voice had been to produce an effect upon England and the English. Sometimes the design was to cozen or seduce, again to awe and terrify. Now the thought was to curry immediate favor, now to create a dazzling impression of wit and eloquence, now to build up that solid sort of repute which suggests a judgeship."

Biggar and Parnell introduced a new era. They imbued their "young bloods" with the " spirit of scorn for English applause and of distrust for English assent." "It is, perhaps, the highest proof of Parnell's power that for six years he was able to keep this big rhetorical force under tolerable control." "The discipline was a rigorous and exacting one."

WHAT UNMUZZLED THE RHETORICIANS.

The result was deeds, not words; the conquest of the English Liberal Alliance and the restoration of belief in Ireland as a nation. But "the fatal trouble was that the new 'union of hearts' and the old contempt for English opinion could not be brought under the same blanket. . . This release from the tension of discipline unmuzzled the rhetoriciansand in a very short time the Irish Nationalist party had gravitated to pretty much the level of the other Irish parties that had gone before."

Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien are selected as initiators of this "reversion to type." When Parnell fell, and they were in jail, “the practical men," the men of the "latent common sense in the country," "held the national ship off the rocks,” and got the Nationalist party into capital fighting trim. With the release of the two prisoners began "the triumph of the rhetoricians within the party organization. There is no member of this majority who has to his credit a single clause of effective legislation. Collectively they have done nothing but talk and write during their dozen years of public life. The old taint of selfseeking has reappeared. There are charges of corruption already in the air, and it will be a matter for surprise if, during the lifetime of the present Parliament, a formal rupture does not take place."

CAMEOS IN EPIGRAM.

Then we are presented with a series of what purport to be photographs in epigram of the Irish leaders. Exaggeration is said to be an Irish failing ; with Mr. O'Brien it is a disease." At first "he impressed his associates as a modest man and a good fellow." Then "he blossomed forth suddenly as the most tremendous egotist of anybody's acquaintance" who is yet sincerely conscious of his own utter unpretentiousness. Mr. Dillon "is a narrow man, selfcentred to a remarkable degree, and with an extremely small stock of ideas."

Of Michael Davitt we are told: "Where other men carry written the lessons gained in human contact, and acquired knowledge of their fellows, he has a blank space. He does not get on smoothly with others; he picks his co-workers badly; he gets jealous of the wrong people, and is perpetually looking for figs among the thistle spikes.

66

Mr. Edward Blake, who was imported from Canada, will go back again some time at the spontaneous suggestion of an entire Irish party. . It was hardly worth while to go so far at this late day for an inferior imitation of Butt."

Mr. T. P. O'Connor's plans and ambitions "do not bear any appreciable relation to Ireland whatever : " "This self-constituted Directory, having gathered into its hands the reins once held in Parnell's vicelike grasp, discloses no disposition to drive anywhere. Its sole discoverable idea is to stop still and make speeches from the box seat."

Nevertheless"X." declares "the defeat of the practical men" to be "more apparent than real."

able information for the many people interested in the improvement of country roads in the United States. France, as is well known, has one of the best systems of roads in the world. In that country the roads are divided into three classes, the national roads, built and maintained by the government, and the department roads, built and maintained by the departments, and vicinal roads. Besides the villages have a number of small roads or streets leading to their most important points. Most of the national roads were built by the government for general use previous to the railroads, when freight was hauled from city to city by horse power and public hacks were all the luxury a traveler could enjoy. The roads of France are not, it would appear, the result of a slow, progressive process. Mr. Lagron tells us that about fifty years ago France was in as bad a condition as we are at present.

WHAT CAN BE DONE HERE.

Considering the question "How can we do something similar here," Mr. Lagron says: "The most serious objection I have heard against such a question is that the citizens of the United States are too proud to surrender their rights. Each town and township having charge of the roads will not let the State infringe upon their privileges. I do not pretend to dictate to our legislatures what they ought to do, but it is evident from our experience of the past that a power must be created to order and build roads; in other words, there must be a centralization or there will be no unity of action.

"With unity of action we will have uniformity of work. Some localities have good road-making materials; some have not. Some towns will be so situated as to have but a small mileage of roads to build, where others will have more than their share. The centralization will balance the expenses more evenly, and whatever assessments are made, special taxation to property owners should be but a small fraction, county and State paying the rest.

"My opinion is that when the proper authority has decided that a road should be built between two points, passing through one or more other points, a careful survey ought to be made somewhat like for a railroad, looking for the straightest line with the best grade and cheapest location. Of course it would be policy not to injure farms unless for a real benefit to the road. Then when the survey should be approved, a law should be passed to order it built, the right of way secured or condemned, the assessments made upon the State, the counties and the property owners in a certain district through which the road should pass. Then let competent engineers take charge of the construction according to approved specifications.

"By no means should the vigilance of the central power stop here. The question of maintenance is of vital importance and should not be neglected."

THE ITALIANS OF TO-DAY.

As Sketched by a French Artist.

N recent numbers of the Revue des Deux Mondes

In recent numbers of published three interesting

articles on "The Italians of To-day." They are very eloquently written; but so many fine descriptions of Rome and the Campagna exist in literature that the practical details of architecture and husbandry contained in its pages are best worth specifying.

seen.

ROME.

Rome is in reality quite a small town, and during the last twenty years it has been struggling in the grip of an alien civilization. Its population has nearly doubled since 1870; for it had then 226,000 inhabititants, and now can boast of nearly 400,000. Out of four people walking in a Roman street barely half are Romans. And to house this surplus of strangers the old city has been pierced as by dividing knives, an attempt being made to construct new streets on a regular plan, of which the chief example is the long handsome Via Nazionale, which possesses undeniable beauty, but might just as well be a thoroughfare in Turin or Milan. Baron Haussmann was in Rome when the Italians became masters of the city, and the trace of his transforming hands is still plainly to be The fever of speculation which seized upon the Roman nobles and made them play into the hands of building firms, and the devastating ruin which fell upon the spiders as well as upon the flies, has become matter of history. Old travelers who remember the Rome of their youth wail over the desecration, and say that a unique result of ages has been destroyed for the creation of a handsome town like any other town; that the new houses are blindingly white or unpleasantly yellow, and the pity of it is that innumerable buildings are left unfinished, the openings walled up with boards and sometimes literally inhabited by squatters. In some instances fine frescoes adorn the walls of half-built buildings, but the dire fate of commercial failure fell upon the masters and men, and a washerwoman may be seen carrying her pile of linen up the unfinished stairs. M. Bazin tells us that the army of 50,000 workmen, contractors, artisans and speculators put to flight by the crisis are gone, and there is no sign of their return.

THE CAMPAGNA.

Leaving Rome, which must ever possess the Coliseum and the Vatican, the seven Basilicas, the rushing fountains of the past, and whose new streets must be endured with resignation, M. Bazin bids us take our stand with him on the steps of St. John Lateran and look across the Campagna. The Agro, or vast land surrounding Rome on every side, is full of tormenting questions and the subject of most contradictory statements. Enterprising husbandmen of all ranks try their hands on it, but it is full of fever, and in the old Roman literature we find lamentations over the malaria which might have been written yesterday, and amidst the ruins of ancient suburban houses of the larger sort are votive stones to the great goddess

Fever. What the Popes did, what the Italian government has done or tried to do, and the story of the immense emigration of Italians to foreign countries, notably to South America, leaving this great and almost uncultivated desert at their very gates, is told very powerfully and picturesquely by M. Bazin. While the rural Italians are leaving their native land, the mountaineers of the Abruzzi are being brought down in hordes to work on the great estates. These poor people receive the smallest pay; they are contracted for as if they were all but slaves. M. Bazin's article is full of feelings of picturesque description. Rome enthroned in its Campagna is the most striking and poetical place in the world; but there appears to be a spell upon all attempts to make it a satisfactory home for modern civilization. Crops there are, and herds of cattle, and men and beasts compose endless unsought pictures; but the genius of the people and

innocent of meat or wine; breakfast being composed of pepper-pods dipped in oil and eaten with black bread.

Whether modern Italy can ever be brought successfully into the ways and methods of the nineteenth century remains to be seen. The transition from the mediæval to the modern world has been too sudden, the country has not developed from within, all socalled improvements having been imported from without, and as yet alien to the genius of the Italian people. As is but natural from his point of view, the author of the article looks forward to a day, when, discarding the Triple Alliance, Italy will awake to a better tradition, and seek both prosperity and safety by entering into amicable relations with France.

MATABELE MANNERS.

EN years' residence among the Matabeles enable

beats up against those ancient ramparts and is worsted in the struggle.

NAPLES.

M. Réné Bazin's concluding article on "The Italians of To-day" deals with the South of Italy, and opens with a piteous picture of Naples. The older portions of the town, those inhabited by the poorer part of the population, were always narrow and squalid, and the piercing of new streets has much impaired their condition. As so often happens, the artificial creation of a workman's quarter has not answered; the new flats are taken by the better class of artisans, and the world of small dealers, sellers of fruit, fish and macaroni, and the hand-to-mouth classes driving small trades, or living on beggary, cannot move into a distant quarter of the city without dislocating their precarious industries. When the cholera seizes on the older streets of Naples it carries off a thousand victims daily, and M. Bazin leaves on the mind of the reader an impression that nothing effectual is being done in the way of remedy.

M. Bazin gives a terrible picture of the condition of the Neapolitan poor, who actually see day by day great palace-like houses erected, not so much in the place of, but absolutely above the miserable hovels which represent to them home. In many cases whole families are turned out at a moment's warning when the edifice above them is advancing near completion.

THE DESERTED GARDEN OF EUROPE.

The country districts of South Italy are in an even worse plight, and nothing is left for the peasants to do but emigrate to the South American States; more than eighty thousand men went in one twelve months, yet M. Bazin observes that in Calabria he looked out from the train on more than three hundred kilometres of lonely uncultivated districts. As for the country populations at Reggio, where bergamot scent is distilled, the workmen go to bed at five in the afternoon, rise at ten, and work all the night through, and until three the next afternoon. For these fifteen hours' hard work in the scent factories they are paid the sum of one shilling a day. Their food is naturally

London Missionary Society station in their land, to furnish to the Sunday at Home a very interesting series of papers on Matabele customs and beliefs. On Lobengula and his government, Mr. Carnegie thus pronounces: "He is their god, who rules by fear, overrides justice, kills the innocent, plunders his peaceful neighbors' cattle; is, in fact, as far as it suits his cunning heathen craftiness, the same sort of a monster as his father was. Round this heathen monarch and his counselors cling tenaciously superstition, witchcraft, and caste, which are other names for what we term the government of the country, which really is no government worthy of the name, but a patched-up combination of heathen laws and customs, of self-conceitedness, pride, and arrogance and ignorance, upheld by fear and terror, guarded by jealousy and revenge, and the frequent sacrifice of human life.

LOBENGULA'S TITLES.

Thus far the missionary. The Matabele lavish on Lo Ben among other laudatory titles these: "The Heavens, The Spearer of the Heavens, Rain-maker, Great Father, Great Mother, Great King, Great Black King, King of Kings, King of Heaven and Earth. At the dance they often call him by the titles of Rain, The Full River, Mighty Gushing Sounding Water, The God of Rain, Rain-maker, and other such high-flowing phrases. . . Many think that by some strange process or other the sun dies every evening, and a new one is born every morning. This opinion is more general in regard to the moon. They believe that the chief creates the new moon every month, and on their first seeing it they thank the king.

The war dance alluded to takes place every year in January and February : This is held at Buluwayo, where people from every town in the land congregate, dressed up in all their finery, which includes black and spotted calico, pink and black beads, twisted round their legs, necks and arms; skins-monkey, tiger cat, jennette, buck, sheep; old coats, shirts, hats and patches of rags of every description. It is the

annual gala fair to which they come to thank and praise the chief for sending the rain."

"NO WORK, NO FOOD."

With all their savagery the Matebele are civilized enough to impose the labor test on every rank: "Lazy persons who will not help in sowing or reaping are driven from town to town. No work, no food is the motto for them. The queens themselves dig their gardens, and everybody who can must help to prepare for the dry season."

Unfortunately, industry does not destroy mendicity: "From the queens and head indunas, down to the meanest slave, men and women, and boys and girls, all of them are persistent beggars. Their

reason for having this begging propensity so largely developed is Because,' they say, 'we white people were created in the long ago-long before them, which accounts for us having so many good things and they so few.'"

A RICH LAND.

Mr. Carnegie speaks highly of the resources of the land: "The soil is very well suited for all kinds of European seeds. You may have two crops a year, and good ones too, provided you attend to your land as you ought to do. You need never be without green vegetables all the year round; fruit trees grow luxuriantly, grapes and oranges and bananas flourish abundantly. The land is rich with deep soil, the valleys are well watered, and fountains bubble up everywhere. Irrigation can be made easy; hundreds and thousands of cattle, sheep, and bucks graze here, and many more would but for the primitive mode of rearing live stock. . . No doubt coffee, tea and cocoa would also grow if they were planted; and the settler may reckon on fir, spruce, larch, and other kinds of trees thriving as well."

THE KING'S PALACE.

In a similar article in the Leisure Hour Mr. Carnegie gives this picture of the royal residence: "There is a dwelling house of red brick at Buluwayo, with three apartments in it, in which are kept tobacco, mats, skins, picks, corn, beer, calabashes and various other articles. One or two pictures grace the walls, the plaster of which, when I was last there, had partly fallen off, and which can scarcely be discerned on account of dust and cobwebs. Her Majesty the Queen's picture is there among others. Rats and bats, not to mention other live creatures, ants, beetles and such like, abound in every part of the house. The original fire place is discarded, and another one, in the form of an old broken clay pot placed in the middle of the floor, is used instead.

"Outside in the veranda are tusks of ivory, rhinoceros' heads, lions' skins, tigers' skins, a box or two. an old chair and some native-made baskets. Just alongside is another brick building in which are stored clothing, calicoes, beads, shawls, guns, powder and other lumber. A brick wagon house, recently built in place of an old pole one, is on the 'sun up side of the large building, while at the back, and

partly round this inner yard are the huts of the queens and their slaves. Just hard by the wagon house is the cattle kraal; and beyond it the large open inclosure some thousand yards in diameter, round which are built the huts of the town of Buluwayo."

IN

A PLAGUE OF RABBITS.

N the December Lippincott's Mr. J. A. Ingram gives some startling statistics of the plague which came upon the Australian settlers through their inadvertence in introducing bunny to their far away Eastern continent. Three pairs of rabbits were brought by an enterprising settler and deposited upon the 2,900,000 square miles of Austrailia. They were naturally for some time regarded as curiosities, but having multiplied exceedingly, to the manifest delight and fatness of the wild dogs and various other carnivora, they finally exceeded the capacity of these predatory animals, and began to be noticed in unpleasant numbers among the gardens of the settlers, who were themselves becoming more and more numerous.

"As the bunnies continued to increase the havoc on the crops became greater and the destruction in orchards and gardens more general. The colonists became frantic with their grievance. They called

a public meeting to consider the matter. After much argument, it was decided that either the rabbits or the colonists would have to leave. A crusade was organized against the intruders. Volunteers were

enlisted and companies organized. The forces moved in mass on the animals. The rabbits moved in mass elsewhere. Their migration did not improve the condition of adjacent districts, nor advance the welfare of the neighboring settlers. The reception of the rabbits was neither cordial nor pleasant. Hostilities were declared in advance, and extermination began on their arrival.

A GREAT ARMY OF BUNNIES.

"On account of dangerous conditions and hostile surroundings, the rabbits formed resolutions of confederation, and banded themselves into herds for general security and private protection. The herds doubled and quadrupled within a few months. As their moving hosts grew they covered the plains like the locusts of Egypt, and swarmed along the borders like sands on the sea-shore. The great armies of bunnies finally numbered millions and tens of millions. They moved over the settlements in such masses as to devastate the farms, deplete the fields, and lay waste whole districts. The grass on the plains was eaten up and the pasturage destroyed; the track of the devastating hosts was left as barren as a desert. No sprig of grass was seen or blade of herbage left. The cattle were driven away into other provinces, or starved on naked plains. The flocks died or were removed from the pathway of the devouring plague. The grazing interests were no less injured than the agricultural.

The people found themselves powerless to cope with their raiding adversaries. Their forces were inadequate to the war. The increase of the rabbits