If

level of the organic states of western Europe. Her present formula is not conquest, but capital, and M. Witte, whose policy is to turn his country into an industrial state, is for this reason her most significant figure. But at present, against the accumulation of money during the last thirty years in the United States, in Great Britain, and, above all, from a political point of view, in the German empire, there has been no counterpoise in Russia. In case of a struggle, even France, where the fiscal problem is taking a very grave aspect, would need all her means for herself. the last sovereign wins, as in anything but a defensive war-as in a war against a great power for the Balkans or Asia Minor, or upon the Indian frontier, or at Port Arthur, it must win-it will be admitted to be more probable than appears at first sight that Russia for the present is at an almost immeasurably greater disadvantage than at any time since Peter the Great. To mere numbers, unsupported by moral and intellectual superiority or concentrated striking power, when has the victory belonged?"

There

"Calchas " says that for Russia war could only mean ruin, owing to her want of money. fore, Russia is peaceful, and the Hague Conference was for her an act of the highest policy, quite apart from its moral significance. chas" also foresees revolutionary dangers for Russia in the growth of the industrial population.

SERVIA-A KINGDOM OF PEASANTS.

Cal

IT is pleasant to be reminded by a Humanitarian

interview with the Servian minister in London, Mr. S. M. Losanitch, that for the good blood shed in freeing Servia from the Turk there is something better to show than the scandals of the Servian court.

GOVERNMENT.

To begin with, a nation has been created:

"A people-tall, stalwart men, brave to recklessness, born soldiers; women with magnificent dark eyes, flashing Promethean fire,' and voices whose music has oft stirred the embers of patriotism into living flame-capable of, at any time, putting a quarter of a million of well-armed men in the field, is not likely to submit to being treated as a quantité négligeable."

Mr. Losanitch declares that the recent marriage of the King with a lady whose ancestors were men who fought and died in the cause of Servian freedom has endeared him more than ever to his people. He is assisted in government by a council of state of sixteen or eighteen members, each of at least ten years' service to the state. Then comes the Skupshtina, numbering 230, one

Education, with us, is compulsory and free. To show you the rapid strides made, in 1883 we had 618 schools with 821 teachers (male and female) and 36,314 pupils. We have now 920 schools with 750,000 pupils. In the elementary schools, in addition to the ordinary branches, we teach geography, drawing, history, geometry, practical agriculture, and, in the case of girls, domestic duties. After a child has left school he has to attend classes once a week for the next two years.

There are gymnasia, technical schools and girls' high schools, and a university of three faculties.

The Greek Orthodox Church is the church of the state and the people, but non-conforming sects are also subsidized by the state.

A NATION OF FARMERS.

In his account of industrial and social conditions, Mr. Losanitch says:

We have

"We are a nation of peasants. scarcely any aristocracy. On the other hand, we have no proletariat-the plague of your great cities-no paupers, no submerged tenth. Agriculture and cattle-raising are our principal occupations. . . . Our exports of farm produce and live stock. are very large. Austria is our principal customer; she purchases over 83 per cent. of our commodities. . . . We have doubled our trade during the last fifteen years.

. . Our tradé in. 1899 amounted to £4,486,919. . . . We have the best and latest agricultural implements."

COMMUNAL THRIFT.

The Servian minister then speaks of the social life of his countrymen, the basis of which is the

commune:

"All our peasants are landed proprietors. Some of them are rich, while others are poor; but to prevent entire pauperization, the law guarantees to each peasant five acres of land and the necessary number of agricultural implements. They are inalienable property. The living together of families and relations in community of goods, a custom dating from time immemorial, acts in the same direction,-it promotes social equality between the members of the clan.

"In the next place, each commune is bound by a law, which was first promulgated by King Milan, to have a general central storehouse; each member is bound to contribute to it annually five kilogrammes of wheat or maize. The object is to keep in reserve certain quantities of food (we have at present 40,000,000 kilogrammes stored up), so as to prevent the possibility of famine. Should a local magazine, either through a bad or deficient harvest, or from causes pertaining to a particular place, run short, is obtains a temporary loan from a store more favorably circumstanced.

"I was the means of introducing agricultural societies into Servia. The idea originated in Germany, but I think we have improved upon. it. The central society is at Belgrade. We have now more than two hundred and twenty branches in the country, but we shall not relax our efforts, you may be sure, so long as there remains a village without a branch."

This is not merely a loan society. It pledges its members" to abstain from intoxicating drink, gambling, and all immorality."

"THE PARADISE OF WIVES.

On the status of women, Mr. Losanitch says: "Our girls receive a very excellent education. They have a choice of professions afterward. Some go in for teaching; some of them become doctors; others, again, are employed in public offices. But the greater number of them prefer to get married. The majority still cling to the domestic ideal-our girls are very domesticated. In the house they reign supreme; no sensible husband would ever think of questioning their authority in the home. The man rules outside, the woman holds undisputed sway withTell your readers that Servia is the paradise of wives.'"

in.

THE

ENGLAND AND FRANCE.

HE Fortnightly Review for June contains two articles of considerable interest on the relations of England and France. The first is by Baron de Coubertin, and is entitled The Conditions of Franco-British Peace." Baron de Coubertin does not share the general optimistic view as to the improvement of Anglo-French relations. Superficially, indeed, relations have improved, but the potential causes of conflict have not been removed. These causes are the colonial expansion of France and her alliance with Russia.

THE ENGLISH VIEW OF FRENCH COLONIZATION.

Baron de Coubertin says that nobody in France dreams of enlarging the French possessions at England's expense. But a much more serious

danger exists from the view which English people in general take of French colonization. The British, says the baron, believe that they alone are capable of bringing civilization to Asiatic races, and that of all the rest the French are the most incapable.

This is a settled conviction with the majority of English people. But it is childish to a degree. Goodness knows that personally I value AngloSaxon civilization highly enough, and I do not mind saying so. But the notion that there can

be any people in the world so perfect that it is desirable for entire humanity to receive its stamp,—that notion is absurd, and cannot stand a moment's serious examination. But if the English interrogate their conscience they will find that, if they do not profess this theory, they in every case act as if they professed it. Result unhappy inspirations, regrettable actions, imprudent words. It does not necessarily lead to open aggression and brutal conquests on their part, but the impression they labor under that the populations of Pondicherry, Chandernagar, and Martinique, or St. Pierre and Miquelon, would willingly welcome the Union Jack, that nothing could more safely insure the happiness of the Anamese and Malagasy than to come under British rule, this impression, I affirm, makes them indulgent to many enterprises and encroachments of doubtful loyalty, which may entail serious consequences, for they are sparks that may set light to a very big fire. In short, they look on our possessions with very much the same feelings with which the Americans regarded their neighbors in Cuba under Spanish rule.

They also regard the French colonies as stagnant, and think that they might turn them into a source of profit to themselves and to the natives.

"This is precisely the new danger which threatens Franco-British peace. I call it new because it has not yet had time to show itself openly, and I am quite prepared to have my perspicacity doubted by any one who reads these lines. Unfortunately, there are too many chances that the future may prove me right, and the friends of peace should have no illusions on this score."

questions have arisen which tend to turn the Dual Alliance into a potential weapon against England. The Asiatic rivalry between England and Russia may develop into war, into which France is likely to be drawn.

66

Supposing one of these incidents, pushed a little bit too far-at a time when England, having settled her affairs in South Africa, is less trammeled in her movements-were to bring on a war between England and Russia, England might be very strongly tempted to attack the enemy nearer home in the person of her ally, to immobilize and if possible destroy that fleet, the first in the world after her own, which might be of so much help later on to Russia. The temptation would be so strong that possibly England might yield to it. And two countries would be fighting without mercy, two countries that stand alone in the whole world as representing all that is best in liberal thought—and all for what? That Manchuria may only fall more surely into Muscovite hands, and that Russian garrisons may be established in Afghanistan."

AUSTRIA.

The Austrian question also threatens the whole world:

"It is on the shores of the Baltic and Adriatic that this moral earthquake will be felt. Our frontiers will be spared; and if a greater Germany is formed, stretching from Hamburg to Trieste, far from being disturbed, we shall benefit by it in more ways than I have time to discuss here without digressing.

"If, then, France were not bound to Russia, she could regard all these events with a tranquil eye, drawing her small profits from them here and there, and carrying on her own development in peace in the midst of the general agita tion.

But, bound to Russia, she finds herself to-day mixed up in all the imbroglio at Peking, and to-morrow she may be concerned in another at Vienna."

Baron de Coubertin concludes his article as follows:

"These are the two great enemies of AngloFrench peace, the two sources of probable conflicts. Let the French retain their allies if necessary; let the English exercise perpetual self-restraint, so that they may not be carried away by a disastrous cupidity."

A PLEA FOR ARBITRATION.

Mr. Thomas Barclay, who pleads for "A General Treaty of Arbitration between Great Britain and France," is not so pessimistic. He says that since the war of 1870 the French, both officially and unofficially, have seldom been so anxious for

good relations with England. Mr. Barclay does not regard any of the outstanding questions with France as obstacles to arbitration. The Newfoundland and New Hebrides questions are admirable subjects for arbitration.

66 The Morocco, and probably all other difficulties which seem likely to arise for some time to come between England and France, except that of Egypt, will be essentially trade questions. Their interests for England would be singularly diminished if the two countries agreed to a policy of equality of treatment for the trade and enterprise of both for all territory annexed or protectorates assumed by either country in the future. In any case, neither England nor France has any conflicting trade rights to arbitrate upon at present, and, as regards war, it is seldom openly entered upon in pursuit of purely material objects. Even the American-Spanish and British-Boer wars have only received the assent of the two Anglo-Saxon peoples owing to the popular belief that the motives were disinterested, and that national dignity was at stake."

EGYPT.

Mr. Barclay does not regard Egypt as a prob able irritant. The following is his recommendation of his proposal :

"One of the chief advantages of a general arbitration treaty is that, as the two nations would know that no immediate danger of war existed, and that any difficulty would necessarily be settled by negotiation, and, if need be, eventually by arbitration, they would feel no impulse to back up the government by public demonstrations and display of devil-may-care determination 'to fight for country, right or wrong.' It would remove the danger of obstinacy, and of that pandering to cheap popular sentiment above which weak politicians are unable to rise, of those firm stands' which an uncritical public easily mistakes for patriotic duty."

THE

THE FUTURE OF THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE. HE future of the Triple Alliance is discussed by Mr. Lucien Wolf in the New Liberal Review for June. The greater part of his paper is taken up with a description of the origin of the alliance. The chief factor with which he deals is that Italy's adhesion was caused by hostility to France, and that since this hostility has passed away the raison d'être of the alliance no longer exists. Italian vanity was flattered by immediate accession to the rank of a great power, but in every other respect she lost.

Italy seized the opportunity of conceiving new external ambitions, of adding fresh wilder

nesses to her own retrograde acres, of assuming the charge of semi-barbarous populations when she could not care for her own sons, and of risking wars in which she had no interest when the financial burdens of her people had already become well-nigh unbearable. If this was not 'tomfoolery,' it can only be because the word does not admit of a superlative."

GREAT BRITAIN IN THE ALLIANCE.

The interesting part of Mr. Wolf's article is, however, that in which he deals with the relations of Great Britain to the alliance. The renewal of the alliance in 1886 was agreed to by Italy only on the condition that England should become a party to it.

"It happened that Lord Salisbury, who was then in office, was exceedingly well disposed to the Triple Alliance, and there was every likelihood that if its stability could be shown to be bound up with the maintenance of the status quo in the Mediterranean, some sort of official connection between it and England might be contrived. The value of such an understanding to Germany and Austria would be enormous, for if it only took the form of a guarantee of the Italian coasts it would set free 300,000 men for operations on the land frontiers. Overtures were at once made to Downing Street, where they were received with the utmost sympathy. The upshot was that Lord Salisbury, while refusing to sign any definite engagements which would pledge the country and his successors in office, authorized the German Government to assure Italy that as long as he

reasonably hope much, what must be his disposition toward his more formal allies, whose association with his country has been so conspicuously sterile? The accession of the new King, however, was not the precipitating cause of the Toulon festivities-or, rather, of the significant scope they were allowed to assume. That cause must be sought partly in the composition of the new Italian cabinet, in which the foreign portfolio is held by a declared Francophile, and partly in the agrarian agitation in Germany, which renders doubtful the renewal of the commercial treaty which was negotiated in 1891, and which has proved very profitable to Italy."

A BAD TIME COMING.

Mr. Wolf concludes his article by presaging a bad time as the result of the Franco-Italian fraternization :

66

That we are about to witness a collapse of the Triple Alliance in form I do not believe, for Germany will make desperate efforts to keep it together, and she will certainly secure the signature even of Signor Prinetti-should he remain in office long enough-if she can manage to guarantee him the renewal of the treaty of commerce practically unchanged. practically unchanged. This, I imagine, is not beyond the combined powers of the Kaiser and his present chancellor. But if the Triple Alliance survives in form, it will have long been dead in spirit."

THE GERMAN EMPEROR AND HIS HOBBIES.

port in shielding her from any unprovoked attack in the Mediterranean. With these assurances Italy was amply satisfied."

In 1891, says Mr. Wolf, these assurances were renewed.

This latter transaction was personally negotiated by the Emperor William at Hatfield, on July 12, 1891. In his later years, Prince Bismarck declared that a protocol was drawn up and signed at Hatfield, but I have very good reason for believing that this was not the case. At any rate, if such a document was signed, it must have remained in Lord Salisbury's private keeping."

ITALY'S NEW POLICY.

More remarkable even than this assertion is Mr. Wolf's statement that the new King of Italy, having leanings to the Slav-Latin combination,

has not failed already to convince our government that his reign is likely to be marked by a sensible diminution in the traditional cordiality of Anglo-Italian relation; and if that is his feeling toward us, from whom politically he might

writes entertainingly in the June number of Pearson's Magazine. He contends that in many respects the popular conception of the Kaiser is mistaken. The Kaiser, for instance, as is pretty well known, is not great in stature.

"A photograph gives no hint of color. The Kaiser is a brown-faced man, the brown of wind and weather, of fierce riding on land, and of a glaring sun on the sea. His face is thinner than one has pictured, and there is a hint of weariness about the eyes. His hair is thin, and his famous mustache is not so long nor so jauntily fierce as one has imagined. But owing to the sin of retouching there is one thing that few of the Kaiser's photographs show to advantage, and it is the most impressive characteristic of his face. And that is its singular sternness in repose.'

Few will dispute the assertion that "William II., however much one may smile at his passion for royal display, has many of those splendid attributes of character which would make a man

great in any sphere of life. It would be a large

company of Germans, indeed, among whom one would tail to select him instinctively as the leader. A first impression, therefore, may thus be summed up: The Kaiser is less a great king than one has imagined, and more a great man. The longer one remains in Germany, and the more one learns of its ruler and his extraordinary activities, the deeper grows this impression."

It is said that on an average the collection of imperial portraits is increased at the rate of one per day. In Berlin, there is no escaping the Kaiser's features, whether in hotel, restaurant, church, or any public buildings. In photographs, paintings, busts, colored prints, medals, basreliefs, the Emperor's face is omnipresent. other parts they are less numerous, and in Munich hardly as noticeable.

WHAT INTERESTS THE KAISER MOST.

The German navy and the advance of German shipping are, says Mr. Baker, undoubtedly the chief interests of the Kaiser's life at present. Allied to this is his absorption in Germany's commercial and industrial expansion, and in finding new markets for her products. After these come many smaller interests which cannot all be classed as hobbies. The Kaiser, according to his character-sketcher, does not care much for science or literature. Horse-racing leaves him unenthused.

"He loves travel; he entertains high respect for religion-a religion of his own stern kind; he dabbles in art and music; he cares nothing for social affairs unless they have some specific purpose, or unless they reach the stage of pageantry in which he is the central figure. But among all his lesser likings nothing occupies such a place as statuary. He is preeminently a monument-lover. Not long ago he said to a friend: There are thirty-four sculptors in Berlin.' He knew every one of them personally, and he knew all about their work. Nothing pleases him better than to visit their studios and to be photo graphed there among the clay sketches."

archy; and now the vexed question in England is how far the new monarch will maintain the Victorian tradition. The power of the crown is theoretically extremely great, but in practice it is considered as purely nominal. Under a régime in which the sovereign exercises all his powers nominally, while in reality he is limited to an absolutely subordinate rôle and cannot exercise any personal prerogative except by the advice of his ministers-under such a régime obviously the personal influence of a monarch is of enormous importance. If he is a man of strong will and clear ideas he can, in such a situation, obtain practically the supreme power in the state; but, on the other hand, if he is irresponsible, pleasureloving, and indifferent to power, he can reduce the part he plays in the state to insignificance. VICTORIA, OUR QUEEN AND GOVERNOR.