A PENNY POST FOR THE ENGLISH WORLD. MR. HENNIKER HEATON'S LATEST.

MR. HENNIKER HEATON contributes an effective plea for a transatlantic penny postal system to the October number of the North American Review. He points out that a one-ounce letter sent 3,500 miles from New York to Vancouver, "a foreign town," costs only one halfpenny, while a half-ounce letter sent 3,540 miles to another foreign town, Liverpool, costs twopence halfpenny. The reason of this heavy tax on transatlantic mails is found in the poverty and greed and shortsightedness of the poor States which form the majority of the postal union, and which at last conference defeated the American proposal to establish an international stamp.

A "RESTRICTED UNION."

Yet the Union Convention permits a "restricted union," with lower postal rates, between any two of its members, such as the United States have formed with Canada and Mexico. Mr. Heaton thinks the time has come for a similar "restricted union" with the United Kingdom, and "perhaps with Germany."

He satirises afresh the insane system of paying the steamship companies twelve times as much per pound for the transmission of letters as for journals, as if the shipowners knew or cared what were the contents of the mail-bag! He urges that the freightage be reckoned simply by weight and bulk, not by other qualities. At present the extra charge on letters really goes as a bonus to the shipowners.

66 BARKIS IS WILLING."

He points to the enormous increase in letter-correspondence with America-from five million letters received thence in 1880 to over ten millions in 1891; and he pleads

Will not some strong and far-sighted American PostmasterGeneral enter into correspondence with the British Government, with a view to the conclusion of a convention for the mutual exchange by the two countries of their mails, the postage rates being identical with their domestic or inland rates? This convention would exactly correspond to the existing American convention with Canada and Mexico. I can positively assure such a minister that Great Britain will heartily and gladly respond to his invitation.

It may be interesting to mention that after a seven-years war with Post Office bigotry and obstruction, I have persuaded the British Government to undertake to establish penny postage to her colonies, provided these colonies assent. Canada, Victoria, New Zealand, and Tasmania have already assented; and the adhesion of the remaining great colonies is shortly expected. Why should not this "restricted union" be extended so as to include the United States, and thus form an Anglo-Saxon union?

STEAMERS TO GO SIXTY MILES AN HOUR.

Mr. Heaton goes on to expand the imagination by quoting "a well-known gentleman," Mr. G. A. Haig, who declares his ability to construct vessels capable of travelling sixty miles an hour. The distance from Ireland to the nearest point of Canadian territory is not more than 1,800 miles, while New York and Liverpool are 3,540 miles apart. The Irish-Canadian voyage could be accomplished in four days and a half.

...

The total amount received by Great Britain for postage of letters and newspapers to North America is about £185,000 a year. Quite recently an enterprising shipowner, Mr. Huddart, has offered to perform the service for a subsidy of £150,000 per annum, a sum sufficient to pay for the construction of several steamships with a speed of twenty knots. Whether his offer will be accepted is not known. But it is quite clear that the postage received will cover the cost. The postage receipts in the States and England together for

transatlantic mails must exceed £300,000, a sum amply sufficient to make the service so swift and constant as to defeat all competition.

He mentions a calculation that every year 39,000 rich Americans visit Europe, spending on the average £300 each, or a total of £11,700,000, and 45,000 rich Britons 'visit America, spending about as much in the States.

THE "NEW MUSIC" OF ENGLISH VERSE.

THE development of English metres is the theme of a rich and suggestive study by Mr. William Larminie in the Contemporary. He traces the introduction of rhyme, which was unknown to the Anglo-Saxons, to the ascendency of French when English was emerging from the struggle with Norman-French. But the blank verse of the Elizabethans and of Milton came to break by force of native genius the tradition of centuries. The writer sets himself to refute the accepted dictum that in English prosody quantity does not count, and adduces many telling examples to the contrary. Stress has hitherto been the main principle recognised: quantity has had no recognition, save as it were unconsciously, by the poet's ear. The ruggedness of many of Browning's lines is referred to his neglect of quantity and regard only for stress.

THE METRICAL SUPREMACY OF ENGLISH.

the

Quoting Professor Dowden to the effect that Mr. Swinburne has "introduced a new music into English poetry," he finds this new music to reside in frequent employment of feet consisting of three or more syllables." The great mass of English poetry is written in iambics, with occasional trochees in lyric verse. To increase the number of syllables in a foot from two to three, as Mr. Swinburne, perfecting rare precedents, has done, is "to double at a stroke our metrical resources." But this development with its swift movement makes it necessary most accurately to observe quantity.

Comparing with other tongues our metrical resources, the writer observes that :

Latin, which has a much more perfect quantity, has no stress. But English has stress of a very energetic kind, which greatly helps out the quantitative deficiencies. Italian has no quantity, but it has stress. French has neither. German, like English, has both. But in German the consonants are often so harsh, that with English, in this respect so much more melodious, the final superiority among modern languages remains.

REVOLT AGAINST RHYME.

But, rhyme being still retained, Mr. Larminie finds the burden of technique laid on the expression of the poetic idea too heavy to be borne. He considers that "the force of the rhythmical development has become such as almost of its own accord to reject as an insult the mechanical tag of the rhyme." Blank verse exists, but "why should we not have rhymeless metres composed of three-syllabled feet, with all the variety implied?" The old metres are partly exhausted, and poetic feeling is taking refuge in prose. The finest Biblical prose is metrical; "and had Whitman combined with his great gifts a little more culture, had he understood more clearly the principles that underlay his own most successful work, he would probably have effected a complete metrical revolution.' Further developments suggested are alliteration and assonance. Assonance is "a variety of rhyme which regards the vowel mainly, the consonant not at all, or comparatively little.”

The unconscious practice of assonance has already prevailed to some extent in English poetry. It is often the secret of the very sweetest versification. Why should it not be consciously employed, its possibilities ascertained, its laws investigated?

WOMAN RE-BORN.

LADY HENRY SOMERSET'S ACCOUNT OF HER. "THE world has seen the renaissance in art and literature; the renaissance in religion; it has watched the slow dawning of the renaissance of human brotherhood: are we not now entering the epoch of the renaissance of woman?" So Lady Henry Somerset concludes an admirable paper in the North American Review for October. The secret of present day changes is, she argues, that "woman, like man, is adapting herself to her environment":

THE OLD HOME AND THE NEW.

In ancient days her home was a great domestic manufactory of which she was the head. The flax was spun, the linen woven, by her deft fingers; the bread was baked in a glowing oven under her watchful care; and by her the perfume was distilled from summer flowers. She was the artist whose embroidery decked the cathedral and the palace; for home was not only the factory that supplied domestic wants, but the studio whence came the choicest objects of skill and beauty.

But with the birth of applied science the marvellous invention of man robbed her one by one of her employments. The steel fingers of machinery replaced her skilful and ingenious hand; the city bakeries provided food; the sweet perfumes of flowers were perfectly imitated in a thousand chemical laboratories, and tapestries and silks were woven to the tune of steam, while the roomy old homesteads disappeared and rows of little houses took their place where operatives eked out a monotonous existence. The school with kindergarten attachment undertook to educate her children's powers; trained nurses watched over the pillows of the sick, and woman with folded hands looked out upon the world, her employment wellnigh gone.

THE WIDER HOME, THE LARGER FAMILY.

In view of such a situation, the reasoning mind must ask, Is not woman to adjust herself to these far-reaching changes, even as man has suited himself to the new environment that steam, electricity, and the printing-press have brought to him? The arts and crafts that centred for centuries in the home have expanded until they have become the possession of the world, and man has taken them under his supervision. Why, then, should not woman keep her native place in the world's economy by the regulation of that wider home which has now spread outside the four walls of her own house, and which we call society and government, and take her place with man in framing laws that affect the well-being of those who formerly worked within her kingdom, but who now dwell outside, in that larger family circle that we call a nation?

Exclusion from the wider home lowers woman's recognised influence in the narrower. The mother's guidance of her son is weakened by his discovery that her "prerogatives end at the garden gate," and that she is classed by the rulers of the land with the lunatic and the idiot. Lady Bountiful is popular, but her womanly mission to alleviate suffering requires her to probe and attack the social causes of that suffering. Men who cry that taxation and representation must go together, object to women voting, but never object to women paying taxes. have never found a male citizen keenly desirous to represent my interests when the tax collector called."

MATERNITY VERSUS MILITANCY.

66

Lady Henry thus effectually disposes of the argument that woman must not vote because she does not fight:Women have a greater role than that of fighting; they are the fountain of the race, at which it recruits its losses, perpetuates its hopes, and conserves the results of victories already gained; and I maintain that if service to the nation is to count as a chief article of faith for the voter, the service--aye, and the dangerous service-that woman renders every nation is far greater than the occasional facing of a Maxim gun or the remote contingency of a bursting shell. There is hardly a

woman who is not called to come face to face with death; who does not go down into the great Gethsemane of suffering, and with the dew of eternity on her brow give to the world its sons and daughters. It is woman's fight for the race, the fight in which she too often gives her life. It is a greater service to bear soldiers than to bear arms.

I believe that woman should vote because she is a different being and always will have a different work to do in life from that of man. Should woman take a different view it may not be that it is less wise, less just, less true, but rather in this dawning day when the nations are beginning to understand the brotherhood of the race, men may learn that real brotherhood can never exist so long as one-half of humanity is ignored in the councils of the world.

This paper ought to be distributed broadcast as ammunition in the campaign for woman's suffrage.

SIX THOUSAND MINISTERS TO MINDS DISEASED: AND HOW WE ILLTREAT THEM.

THE ample honour paid to doctors and nurses of the distressed body contrasts strangely with the public indifference towards those who wait on the deranged mind. They are emphatically their brothers' keepers, yet this era of avowed brotherhood recks little of them. It is the more agreeable therefore to find "The Nursing Service of the Lunatic Asylums of England" given a prominent place in the Medical Magazine for October. According to the writer, "an asylum medical officer," it appears that the Commissioners of Lunacy for England and Wales had last year official cognisance of 92,067 insane persons, of whom 62,756 were in county and borough asylums and the registered hospitals. There being an average of one attendant to ten patients, we have an army of over 6,000 men and women who earn their living by attending on the insane.

Asylum nurses are drawn as a rule from the domestic servant class. The male attendants are of more miscellaneous origin: artisans, agricultural labourers and sons of small farmers, discharged soldiers, and so on. Perhaps the best attendants are country youths from agricultural districts who come to the work young and remain at it. The discharged soldier as a rule does not make a satisfactory or reliable attendant.

£22 a year with board and uniform might be taken as the average wage of nurses in county asylums. In one well-managed county asylum the nurses receive £15 the first year, and rise by £1 a year to £24, charge nurses of wards having £3 in addition to this scale. The attendants in the same asylum begin at £25, and rise by £1 a year to £35; charge attendants receiving £5 in addition. The head nurse receives £10, and the head attendant £50 a year.

The writer complains bitterly of the treatment to which asylum nurses are subjected. They are almost wholly left to the arbitrary control of the medical superintendent. Severe censure is passed on this official for his unsympathetic and exacting behaviour.

In any conditions the duty of attending on the insane is most trying; but in addition the hours are long, the food has often been unfit for human consumption, the need of frequent change and sane society has not been sufficiently recognised, and too little care has been shown to train them for their difficult task. A change for the better is happily setting in. The writes urges that

The asylum committees of county councils must learn, and we have faith that they gradually will learn, to take a real personal interest in the asylum staff, feeling themselves responsible for the welfare of the humblest member of it.

MR. E. S. HOLDEN describes in McClure's for October how by photographs taken through the Lick telescope, a "satisfactory map of the moon" is being constructed on the scale of seventeen miles to an inch.

WHERE IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS.

A PLEA FOR KNOWLEDGE.

IN the Free Review Mr. Geoffrey Mortimer has an article entitled "The Great Sin," which of course is not the sin against the Holy Ghost, but the sin against the future generations which is involved in keeping young people in ignorance concerning the laws of reproduction. Mr. Mortimer says:

But would you tear the veil from the eyes of the young? asks an anxious mother.

I answer, “Yes, in the interest of humankind, I would teach youths and maidens just those very things that they must learn sooner or later by sad experience." It is the beginning of the battle of life amongst adults for the sexes to know themselves and each other. But fathers and mothers, in the main, are historic suppressors of knowledge. Are there not families in which the affection and solicitude of the mother are the direct causes of the wrecking of the daughters' lives? I know of many. It is the "love" of misguided mothers that sends the virgin decked in "spotless innocence" to the horrible lifelong ideal of an inharmonious physical intimacy. It is the loving parent who stunts the intellect, and blunts the consciences of daughters in the name of decorum and Mrs. Grundy. Let the old order change: let the daughter of thirty acknowledge, if necessary, that there are things in heaven and earth not dreamt of in mamma's philosophy. I met lately a woman of more than fifty-the daughter of a schoolmaster-who told me that she had never read one line of Shakespeare, because papa" thought play-acting immoral. Another woman, aged thirty, informed me that she had not read any of Zola's novels because "mamma " would not approve. Surely, it is right to *each resistance against this degrading domestic despotism. Little wonder, indeed, if such women attain dotage without learning the alphabet of Mr. Stead's "elemental forces." Our society abounds with women who are practically babies in their knowledge of human nature. They train the young in the family and the school; they write tales and magazine articles; they engage in mission work of various kinds, and though their intent is often good, the outcome of their influence is perhaps more often distinctly bad.

In the New Review Lady Burton writes sensibly and well on the same subject:

:

I think innocence and ignorance are too much confounded, and yet they have no connection-no relation to each other. I believe that half the crime, and misery, and ruined bodies and souls, and the fall of families proceeds from ignorance, not from knowledge. Are there not wise and good educated moral people who could obviate this? Is there no way of having a little physiological instruction, at once religious and scientific, with which parents, or guardians, or pastors could open the eyes of a boy of ten, and a girl of thirteen, to show them the straight path? I see so many parents utterly unfit to have children, and to bring them up. They will cry out "Fie! for shame; what! take the bloom off the peach? if the world is horrid, we would so much rather our dear children did not find it out as long as possible, not till they are grown up men and women and married." Then all I have got to say is, one day the beautiful bloom on the skin of the peach that is cut open will show you the whole inside rotten to the core. You cannot keep your darling under a glass case and lock it up in a room, and if you did Evil would come down the chimney. There are bad companions, there are public schools, there are dictionaries, there are infamous nurses; and nowadays there is cheap indecent literature and prints, and some suggestive plays. Nature begins to speak, but the child does not understand its language, and when it does know, it is too late.

Mrs. Wolstenholme Emly, of Congleton, Cheshire, has published a very remarkable little booklet, entitled "The Human Flower," in which a very delicate subject is treated with great freedom and delicacy.

IF ALL WEALTH 'WERE DIVIDED. IN an article on "Rousseauism Revived," the Quarterly reviewer tempers his delight at the downfall of Radicalism with dread at the advance of the thoroughgoing Socialist. The proletariat have, he says, abandoned Liberalism. Just as you find a Tartar when you scratch a Russian, so under the public guise of a Liberal M.P. you come upon a capitalist. Liberalism achieved its mission with the last extension of the franchise. The people are now passing under a new bondage to the State as real as the old bondage to the feudal lords of the soil. True, Socialists are not united :

There are fire-cating Progressives who despise the Social Democratic Federation; the Social Democrats contemn the Fabians; the Fabians, who ruminate on the imperfections of society over drawing-room tea-cups of ancient china, look on both with a blend of benign despair and sweeter hope; and the Anarchists, in supreme disdain, are not on speaking terms with any sect of the Progressive Alliance.

But the reviewer holds that, despite these differences, the Socialist state would in any case "make all men socially equal. It would give to all men incomes of the same amount." He proceeds to state what this involves for the United Kingdom :

In the event of the division of wealth which the Communist seeks, a workman at present in receipt of £70 a year would receive £110; but he would not be able to be at leisure long.

There would be little happiness in having our £70 increased to £110 at the cost of working at least as hard as at present, without any hope of being allowed to strike for a decrease in the hours of labour.

Mr. Mallock estimates the income of the United Kingdom, with a view to division, at £1,200,000,000.

Now, the people of the United Kingdom number a little over $38,000,000. The share of each person, therefore, would be about £32. As we are not all of the same age, and not all of the same sex, the commune, it is probable, would resolve upon certain mitigations of equality. £1 a week to each man, 15s. to each woman, 10s. to each boy, 9s. to each girl, and 4s, 6d. to each baby, might be considered an arrangement equitable in the light of reason; but, as men and women and children live in families as a rule, we will take the family as the unit. It consists of four persons and a half on the average, and there are 8,500,000 families in the United Kingdom. It would seem, then, that each family would receive an income of £140; but the tax-gatherer would not disappear with the establishment of the commune, and if his exactions remained at the rate now current, which, as the cost of government always increases with the extension of state-control, would be extraordinary, each family would be taxed to the extent of £16, and its net income would be £124. Our hypothetical income for every adult man, that is to say, would be reduced to 19s. 6d. a week; that of every adult woman, to 148.

If, letting moderate incomes alone, we dealt with the most flagrant incomes, which are those of the peers and the country gentlemen, of the National Debt and the railway companies, and of the Monarchy, none of us would be appreciably better off. Out of the ruin of the great landowners, each adult would gain a little over a farthing daily; the interest on the National Debt and the profits of the railway companies would yield him barely more; and from the confiscated income of the Monarchy he would draw sixpence halfpenny a year.

THE Pall Mall Magazine, elaborately illustrated and decorated as usual, enjoys the distinction this month of a poem contributed by Paul Verlaine. It is entitled "Conquistador," and was written in London a year ago. Lord Roberts continues his Life of Wellington through the Years 1805-1810. M. Lionel Dècle gives the first part of his humorous narrative, "How I Crossed Africa," and in his own easy English. Mr. George Clinch and Mr. Walter Besant supply historical sketches of Christ's Hospital and of Westminster respectively.

MR. GLADSTONE ON THE ATONEMENT.

A SECULARIST'S REPLY.

MR. J. M. ROBERTSON, formerly editor of the National Reformer, and now editor of the Free Review, takes up the cudgels in his own pages on behalf of Mrs. Besant. Mr. Robertson devotes the first part of his paper to administering a castigation to Mr. Gladstone for the way in which he referred to Mrs. Besant. He first takes exception to Mr. Gladstone's most unworthy reference to Mrs. Besant's discussion of the law of population, and declares that the expression used by a man in Mr. Gladstone's place of a woman in Mrs. Besant's position is both coarse and cowardly. Theologising, says Mr. Robertson, seems to be worse for his moral health than politics, and in the study he deteriorates for lack of the discipline of the forum. Mr. Robertson thinks that it is characteristic of Mr. Gladstone to get rid of a root difficulty in politics by aspersing it as loathsome, when in reality it is beyond his intellectual range. For Mr. Gladstone has no science; he is the greatest of empirics, and for posterity he will figure as an eminent statesman who never got beyond applying the rule of three in politics. Equally unworthy of Mr. Gladstone, as a controversialist, he says, was his sneer at Mrs. Besant's portraits, for if there is any statesman who has been photographed in family postures for the public, it is he. Decidedly, says Mr. Robertson, Mr. Gladstone is deteriorating over his books of devotion. But still more reckless was his sucer at the extraordinary permutations of Mrs. Besant. Herein Mr. Gladstone has laid himself open to a smashing tu quoque indeed, and Mr. Robertson does not spare him. Mrs. Besant's permutations, he says, have been serious enough in all conscience, but at least she can claim that they were never the indexes of her self-interest. Her changes brought her insult and odium, and when there was no odium she did not change because it was advantageous to do so. Can Mr. Gladstone claim as much? After thus disposing of the personal matter, Mr. Robertson turns to deal with his theory of the Atonement. Robertson says:—

Mr.

On the doctrine of blood redemption the whole fabric of organised or historic Christianity stands; and no amount of verbal juggling will ever enable the Church to be at once rationally moral and faithfully Christist. Let us put a test which Mr. Gladstone carefully evades. The old creed-farmers, albeit they had their own compromises, had a far firmer grasp of the logic of their position than the modern trimmers, and this is what they came to in England three hundred years ago.

He then notices the thirteenth and eighteenth of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, and maintains that their sense is unmistakably in opposition to Mr. Gladstone's argument. Mr. Robertson also presses the question as to the bearing of death-bed repentances upon Mr. Gladstone's argument. The Protestant, or Evangelical, or Gladstonian doctrine of forgiveness comes to the same thing as the Catholic-it is merely absolution minus confession :-

Nothing further is needed to show that Mr. Gladstone's defence is "naught "-is only the old sophism to glose the old lilemma. To defend a doctrine framed for the case of incurbly fallible men, he makes the hypothesis of an ideal "rectification" of the will on the act of belief-a thing which never occurred and never will occur.

After having thus demolished Mr. Gladstone's arguments to his own satisfaction, Mr. Robertson proceeds

to set forth his own theory of the Atonement, which is as follows:

There is nothing better established than the fact that the Christian doctrines of Incarnation and Atonement are merely adaptations of beliefs and practices which go far back to the times of utter savagery.

The doctrine of redemption from sin and punishment by the blood of a crucified or otherwise slain victim, who becomes a God in virtue of being chosen as a sacrifice, is seen nowhere more energetically in action than in the two far-removed cults of the Khonds in India and of the leading deities of preChristian Mexico. In neither case had Christianity any part in setting up the belief: Christianity is simply one of the forms in which it has been maintained. The only difference is that the Christian doctrine affirms one sacrifice for all sin, while the Mexicans and the Khonds repeated the sacrifice at least every year. That makes no difference to the ethic of the doctrine it only represents the development of a humaner civilisation on the side of practice-a development in which many Pagan cults shared equally with the Christist.

This is the true key to the ethic of the Atonement; and Mr. Gladstone might even in his old age, with his elasticity and his conscientiousness, have learned to use the key if only he had sought the knowledge which gives it, or at least if he were further under some practical pressure to use it. But he remains steeped in scholastic theology and in the doctrine of the Dark and Middle Ages, leaving the lore of modern science carefully alone.

Mudie's Library.

MR. W. PRESTON writes in Good Words upon Mudie's Library, describing the method in which that old institution is managed. The following figures are interesting:The number of volumes in circulation is, in round numbers, about three and a half millions. The monthly postage of the library comprises 8,000 letters, 3,000 English and foreign packets and papers, and about 25,000 English and foreign circulars; and the written communications by letter, postcard, etc., received daily number not far from 1,000. The staff required for carrying on the work of the various departments numbers altogether 254, of whom 76 (men and women) are employed in bookbinding (increased to 85 in winter), and 178 are absorbed by the library.

A Tramp Round the World.

Two adventurous young men from South Wales, by name E. R. Louden and Mr. Field, partly from love of adventure, and partly because they wish to begin their journalistic career by walking round the world, are at the present moment making their way on foot through France. They are young men of good education and good social position, who have given up situations of competence in order to carry out an experiment which savours rather of Jules Verne than of the sober, practical spirit of the present day. They carry with them one of Eastman's Kodaks, and letters of introduction to all newspaper offices and public functionaries. Their idea is to work their passage round the world. When last heard of, after having made an honest penny by loading apples into trucks at Amiens, they were earning sufficient to live upon and to put by against a rainy day by washing bottles at Beauvais. By this means they hope to cross Europe to Constantinople, and then to traverse Asia to the shores of the Pacific. They expect to reach San Francisco in the year 1900. They propose to write a book of their travels, to which they have been good enough to invite me to contribute the preface. Many things, however, will happen before then. Should the two young adventurers cross the path of any readers of the REVIEW OF REVIEWS, they may take it from me that they are quite genuine.

THE VERACITY OF MR. W. Q. JUDGE. I PUBLISHED in the last number of the REVIEW an extract from a significant manifesto in Lucifer, signed by Annie Besant and others, which affirmed the excellent doctrine that it was a good thing to speak the truth, especially for Theosophists. I introduced it by a sentence in which I assumed, as a matter of course, that the need for the publication of this manifesto against lying, even though good might come from taking liberties with the truth, had arisen because of the discovery that Mr. Judge had allowed Mrs. Besant to believe that communications which had been written with his own hand had been precipitated from the Mahatmas. This, however, has been denied by Mr. Judge's friends, and I have been requested to publish the following letter, to which of course I willingly give the same publicity that I gave to the article to which they take exception :To the Editor of the REVIEW OF REVIEWS.

62, Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square, W. October 25th, 1894.

Dear Sir,-As Mrs. Besant is at present in Australia, and therefore unable to speak for herself, we trust you will allow us to make a very necessary correction in your notice-in the October REVIEW OF REVIEWS-of a "Theosophical Tribute to Truth." You there associate the issuing of a circular entitled "Occultism and Truth" with the result of the inquiry intɔ certain charges brought against Mr. Judge.

Mrs. Besant, who originated the circular, was asked directly whether it was connected with the charges or whether it was in any way aimed at Mr. Judge. She gave an emphatic denial to both questions to many who took the same view expressed by you.

Another fact is not generally known, and leads peopleyourself, among others-into unconsciously committing an injustice. The charges against Mr. Judge were never substantiated, and the committee appointed to inquire into them declared that they were illegally laid.

Mr. Judge is personally known to both the undersigned, who have seen the splendid work achieved by him in America, who know the high esteem in which he is universally held there, not only by Theosophists, but by all acquainted with his work, and we therefore trust you will be good enough to correct an error which might lead many to suppose that Mr. Judge had either acted upon or had taught the fallacions doctrine that "the end justifies the means."-We are, faithfully yours,

ERNEST T. HARGROVE, (Member of Committee of Investigation.) ARCHIBALD KEIGHTLEY, (Member Executive Committee European Section T. S., and of Investigation Committee.)

WHY NOT GROW OUR OWN TIMBER?

SYLVICULTURE v. AGRICULTURE.

THE subject of afforestation having been connected with the question of the unemployed, the art of sylviculture is likely to receive the attention it has long lacked in this country. The article in Blackwood's on "British Forestry " supplies some pertinent facts. It is interesting to know that "we have to thank the Roman invaders for the English elm, the lime, the sweet-chestnut, poplar, and other trees, which have been a boon of no small value to the country." English forestry began before the reign of Edward IV. At present eighteen millions' worth of forest produce is imported into this country; but there is no reason why we should not in

fifty years' time produce more than half that quantity. Dr. Brown ("The Forester") is quoted :—

There is no climatic reason why a very considerable portion of the £9,207,905 worth of timber that was imported into Britain during 1892 from Russia, Scandinavia and Germany should not in future be supplied of home-growth, when once the crops raised have been subjected to rational treatment from the time of their formation onwards.

Were this done, these millions sterling would be kept at home, men out of work employed, the soil fertilised, opened, and warmed, extremes of temperature reduced, and the landscape beautified. Germany spends annually over £4,000,000 and employs more than half a million men in or about forestry.

On its commercial value Dr. Brown declares:

It may be stated as a general rule, based on, and verified by, actual practical experience both in England and Scotland, that land which is from various causes unfit for arable occupation will, if brought under sylvicultural crops, and subjected to rational and careful management, at the end of seventy years pay the proprietor nearly three times the sum of money that he would have received from any other crop upon the same piece of ground.

Is there no hint here for the distressed landlords of Essex? or will Essex clay stubbornly refuse to grow anything but the wheat which American competition has rendered unmarketable?

The Moneyed Militarism of the United States. A PROMINENT feature in the October Arena is the series of pictures of "Armouries" in Massachusetts and New York, which accompany Mr. B. O. Flower's indignant protest against "Plutocracy's Bastiles," as he calls them. These structures are being erected by the subscriptions of capitalists. They are meant to overawe, or, if need be, to crush the risings of the oppressed poor. They are citadels of the army of occupation. Organised wealth is alarmed by recent mutterings, and looks to the soldier to shoot down its assailants. He remarks on the fact that the armoury of "the Seventh Regiment of New Yorknot inappropriately termed 'the rich man's regiment '— which has cost nearly a million dollars, is free from debt." The state and the county were not asked for a cent. All this money came directly from the pockets of individuals.

In the words of a young gentleman:

"You see, this regiment is made up of rich men's sons and men in sympathy with wealthy people. The Seventh Regiment can ask anything it wishes of the rich men of New York, and it will get it, for they know they can depend upon that regiment in times of trouble." Then he added significantly, "The militia of New York is being largely officered from the Seventh Regiment."

The Boston Cadets is a similar organisation, and is composed largely of rich men's sons and friends of rich men. The magnificent armoury now approaching completion will, it is estimated, cost between $300,000 and $400,000, every cent of which is subscribed for by private individuals. Here is more than a quarter of a million dollars which individuals are paying for an armoury for the Cadets, although Boston has already two enormous armouries.

Mr. Flower adds ominously:

The multiplication of armouries is perilous for a Republic, and doubly so where organised wealth has gained the power it sways in America.

MR. J. T. CARRODUS is interviewed on Violin Playing in Sylvia's Journal for November. The article forms No. 6 in the series " How Musicians are Trained," by Miss Flora Klickmann.