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SIR PHILIP CURRIE, British Ambassador at Constantinople. (Photograph by Russell.)

that ominous rumours of impending famine are current throughout Anatolia, and this winter it is probable sheer starvation will carry off thousands whom even the Kurd and the Turk have spared. Here, indeed, is a tempting picture for the Imperial cartoonist's pencil.

How the

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Caricature, indeed, finds a tempting Powers hold theme in the way in which the Powers together. are holding together on the Turkish Question. Lord Salisbury's declaration at the Mansion House on Lord Mayor's Day was very explicit. Nothing," he said, "has impressed itself more strongly on my mind than the disposition of the Great Powers to act together, and their profound sense of the appalling dangers which any separation of their action might produce." That is satisfactory so far as it goes. But "the disposition to act together," of which Lord Salisbury speaks, is not very visible to the naked eye. To talk together, yes, To make representations together, also yes. But to act together-hum! It is to be feared their "profound sense of the appalling dangers which any separation of their action might produce," neutralises their disposition to act, and reduces the Concert of Europe to impotence. All the Powers are so afraid of getting out of step if they march, that they keep on marking time, and meanwhile the massacre goes on always like the guillotine in the days of

the Terror.

What will

I have discussed elsewhere, not assuredly have to be in any spirit of uncharity towards the done. Sultan, what Europe will have to do. The difficulty is immense. For if we hit the Ottoman Empire too hard it will break to pieces under our eyes, and the general scramble will begin. But if we are to be paralysed by fear of breaking it to pieces, the Turk will have a free hand to slaughter the Christians into silence. If only the Kurds would kill a few Americans, or even one British Consul, there would be a quick stop put to all this dilly-dallying. But so long as it is only Armenians who are being cut up, the risk of action is too great. What will have to be done sooner or later is that the Sultan will have to be told in plain terms that he must stop all this bloody work or be deposed, and when he is deposed the Ottoman Empire should be administered, as the public debt is at present, by an International Commission. A paper Sultan might be conveniently installed as the figure-head of this Commission, which would do all its business in his name, and which, as it would have cash to pay its troops, would probably be obeyed. If only the Powers could trust each other for five years every one would be astonished to find how simple a problem this Eastern Question is. But there would have to be, first, a self-denying ordinance binding all the Powers to seek no private ends and to respect the integrity of the Ottoman dominions; and secondly,

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would be powerless. The only chance for national, as opposed to sectarian, education lies in the fact that the Duke of Devonshire, Mr. Chamberlain, and Sir John Gorst, who, although not in the Cabinet, is still Minister of Education, are reported to be by no means of one mind with Lord Salisbury on this matter. The real battle will take place inside the Cabinet, and we shall await the result with interest. The position of at least one Liberalwho Rights Unionist Minister has been strengthened by the course of events last month. Mr. Chamberlain, who is now being generally recognised

"The Man

Things."

SIR FRANCIS SCOTT, K.C.M.G., C.B., The Commander of the Ashanti Expedition. (Photograph by Elliott and Fry.)

by the public, although not by his colleagues, as the second man in the Cabinet, was very much en évidence in November. He has launched an expedition against King Prompeh which will certainly make its way, with or without bloodshed, to the Ashanti capital to dictate terms of a settlement that will open up the auriferous beds behind Coomassie to British enterprise. But his chief exploit, and that which won for him from Khama the title of Moatlhodi, "the man who rights things," has been the arranging of a compromise between the Bechuana chiefs and Mr. Rhodes. Of course Mr. Chamberlain was but the go-between. Any awkwardness on the part of

Mr. Rhodes would have made short work of the Colonial Secretary's attempt to be Moatlhodi. It is extremely satisfactory that Mr. Rhodes should have shown such readiness to meet what he regarded no doubt as the somewhat unreasonable prejudice of the British public. It would have been extremely unsatisfactory, and indeed disastrous, if Mr. Rhodes had listened to those who were all for pumping upon Khama, and letting "the British public be d-d!" The settlement by which Khama retains his sovereignty, with power to exclude liquor, over his own territory, under the direct supervision of the Colonial Office, contents him, and what contents Khama contents those who have made his cause their own. In return for this substantial concession of his claim, Khama cedes to the British South African Company a strip of land giving them right of way, and a line of rail through his land to Rhodesia. The reversion of Khama's territory will go to the Company. But that is not a question for to-day or to-morrow.

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Mr. Cham

Mr. Chamberlain made a very important berlain's speech at the banquet given by the Manifesto. Agent-General for Natal on November 6th to celebrate the completion of the Natal-Transvaal Railway. Mr. Chamberlain put his foot down with emphasis upon Matthew Arnold's " weary Titan" theory of the British Empire. His speech was full of buoyant hope and confidence in the future of the race which inherits the influence, resources, and power of the British Empire:

We have a common origin, we have a common history, a common language, a common literature, a common love of liberty and law. We have common principles to assert, we have common interests to maintain. I have said that it is a slender thread that bound us together. I remember on one occasion having been shown a slender, frail wire which a blow might break, and I was told that it was capable of transmitting an electrical energy that would set powerful machinery in motion. May it not be the same in the relation that exists between our colonies and ourselves, and may not that thread be capable of carrying a force of sentiment and of sympathy that will yet be a potent factor in the history of the world? I am told on every hand that Imperial Federation is a vain and empty dream. I will not contest that judgment, but I will say this-that that man must be blind indeed who does not sce that it is a dream which has vividly impressed itself upon the mind of the English-speaking race; and who does not admit that dreams of that kind, which have so powerful an influence upon the imagination of men, have, somehow or other, an unaccountable way of being realised in their own time? If it be a dream, it is a dream that appeals to the highest sentiments of patriotism, and even to our material interests. It is a dream that is calculated to stimulate and to inspire every one who cares for the future of the Anglo-Saxon people. I think myself that the spirit of the time is, at all events, in the direction of such a movement.

Well done, Joe! But how these glowing Imperial heroics will be chilled when treated in the Cabinet with the frosty cynicism of Lord Salisbury! Mr. Chamberlain has also made an important

speech intimating pretty plainly his conviction that what Australia wants is more labour-a truth over which the Australian trade unions will gnash their teeth. Why should the flies on the rim of the saucer be expected to rejoice at the prospect of sharing their good fortune with anybody else? Mr. Chamberlain's concluding achievement-up to date -has been to promise a subsidy of £75,000 a year to the fast mail steamers that are to run between Canada and the mother country, and to arrange for a special Colonial Committee to discuss the question of the Pacific cable.

and pass on."

The Liberals have kept strangely quiet. We smile,, Lord Rosebery has been almost the only ex-Minister to make his voice heard in the political void. And Lord Rosebery did not speak. He only wrote a letter. But it was a very good letter, and it may herald a happy new departure, in which statesmen may be allowed to compound for their absence from public platforms by inditing long epistles which will be read by competent elocutionists to assembled multitudes. By means of letters, they can address a dozen meetings at oncea consideration not to be overlooked in these days of crowded engagements. Lord Rosebery's letter, addressed to the Liberals of Airdrie, was a reply to Lord Salisbury's taunt that Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell would not have approved of the present programme of the Liberal party. Lord Rosebery proceeded :

It seems a dubious device to dig up dead statesmen in order to pelt the living with them, but whether graceful or not it is beside the mark, for it betrays a radical misconception -excusable enough in Lord Salisbury-of what Liberalism is. It is not a fixed dogma graven long ago on a rock, it is necessarily a moving, adaptable creed, to be adjusted to the wants of a rapidly changing age. It is nothing to us what Pym, or Walpole, or Fox would say in 1895, for we have to deal with the spirit of our times and not theirs. We do not, for instance, dwell on the Cavendishes who fought against the Irish Act of Union; we smile and pass on. It is enough for us to deal with the contradictions and anomalies of living statesmen. Let the dead bury their dead. What we have to achieve is a living work, to keep in touch with living people, to adapt living principles to living wants and aspirations. If Liberalism be not that, it must perish; but being that, being a living force and not a mummy creed, it must in the long run, in spite of temporary discouragement, best represent and embody the broadest, brightest, safest tendencies of our Empire and its people.

"We smile and pass on." The phrase is good and likely to be historic. It represents with only too great fidelity the genial philosophic calm which is at once the weakness and strength of our leader. Mr. Morley, after a few months' dubitation, has decided that the House of Commons possesses greater attractions than his study or than that course of foreign travel which he

Honest John for Montrose.

at one time contemplated. This is to be regretted. Mr. Morley needed a year's rest. He could not have employed it better than in making the tour of the world, and especially in making a prolonged visit to the United States. The Greater Ireland is across the Atlantic. It is there only where the political genius of Mr. Morley's political protégés has full scope to develop, and the result, whether satisfactory or not, well deserves the attention of the Home Rule philosopher. The Montrose Burghs are about to lose their Member, and they naturally pitched upon the most distinguished Liberal outside the new Parliament to represent them. They will return Mr. Morley free of expense, and find him cheap at the price. Mr. Morley-like Mr. Asquith, Mr. Campbell Bannerman, and Sir George Trevelyan-will therefore become a Scotch member. Where the Opposition front Bench would be but for Scotland and Wales it is somewhat difficult to say. At the same time it would probably have been of better service to Mr. Morley, although not to the House of Commons, if the Burghers of Montrose had selected Mr. Shaw Lefevre as their future Member. The Death month. Sir H. Ponsonby, for years the intimate private adviser and secretary of the Queen, one of the best men for one of the most difficult posts in the Empire; M. Alexandre Dumas fils, the great French dramatist; and M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, the last surviving advocate of the English Alliance among French public men, all died in November. They had lived their allotted span, and had done the full measure of a man's work. Lord Salisbury has succeeded in extracting £6,000 compensation from the Congo Mr. Stokes. State for the murder of 'Mr. Stokes. Capt. Lothaire is to be tried by court martial. There will be great disappointment if Lothaire is not hanged. Give him a fair trial by all means, although he gave no fair trial to the man he slew; but the fairer the trial the more certain the issue, unless all our intelligence is false: which is most improbable, seeing that it reaches us from Belgian

Roll.

The Murder of

sources.

Russia.

There were three notable deaths last

The Empress of Russia has been safely Progressive delivered of a princess which has been named Olga. The Empress insists upon nursing her own baby, a departure from custom that has excited much remark. The innovation, although excellent, may postpone the longed-for arrival of the son and heir whose advent was so eagerly

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The Procurator-General of the Holy Synod has transmitted to the Minister of the Interior a document, in which he states that the assimilation of the western frontier populations with the heart and core of Russia is being accomplished in a satisfactory manner, and that the Orthodox Church is showing gratifying growth in those parts. The Procurator adds that extraordinary measures need no longer be taken by the authorities to help forward the work, and that the Ministry of the Interior may, therefore, for the future, refrain from taking any such steps.

EMILE ARTON,

'As he appeared before he left France.

On November 4th he announced the policy of the new Administration from the Tribune. It is frankly Radical and definitely Anti-Moderate Republican. His programme is as follows:

(1) Thorough investigation into alleged corruption in high places. Nothing is to be hushed up. All the dirty linen is to be washed on the house-top. In earnest whereof Arton has been arrested in Clapham and is to be extradited. Now Arton is accused of being the briber-in-chief in the Panama days. (2) Legislation to disqualify as Deputies all men who are directors of companies having contracts with the State, or who participate in syndicates of guarantee for the issue of stock. (3) The Budget must be passed at its normal date. (4) A Progressive Succession duty.

(5) Reform of the Liquor Laws. Exemption from duty of all hygienic drinks.

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