sage, Spain has disappointed our just expectations and refused our just demands; according to the postscript, she has adopted a measure which, if it “attains a successful result," will realize "our aspirations as a Christian, peace-loving people." Having given Congress this very pretty little problem to consider, Mr. McKinley complacently signs his name, doubtless comforted by the reflection that it will be a very good mental exercise for the Representatives and Senators to puzzle it out. Our Japanese friend could have been treated to nothing better in this line at the university to which he gave so singular a form of praise.

What the net outcome of the message must be can hardly be doubtful. The President has practically confessed his inability or unwillingness to assume the responsibility of any positive action. That responsibility will have to be assumed by Congress. Something in the line of the President's recommendation should be, and probably will be, adopted; but the discretionary powers of the President cannot be made as wide as asked for in the message. Had the President shown a stronger touch, or a firmer grip of the situation; had he presented a satisfying record of the diplomatic efforts heretofore made, or marked out a clearer programme for the future, Congress might well have given him an entirely free. hand. But now, this would seem to be out of the question.

As it is, if the conservative members of the two Houses show wisdom as well as firmness, much latitude may still be given to the President with a view to the possibility of avoiding war. But the country

has a right to know the general purpose for which the President's powers will be used. He has failed to indicate this himself; it must be indicated for him by Congress. Mere suspension of hostilities is, in a situation like that of Cuba today, a meaningless thing, for the simple reason that there are not, in any true sense of the word, any hostilities to suspend. It will not do for the conservatives to entrench themselves behind the vague phrases of the President's message; somebody must decide upon a real policy, and if the President does not, Congress will have to do it. Precisely what that policy should be, it will require the best judgment and greatest wisdom of the strongest minds in Congress to determine; but clearly it must be something which everyone will recognize as unquestionably looking toward the independence of Cuba, instead of leaving that object to be mistily inferred from a few phrases picked out here and there in the midst of a voluminous document.

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE

(May 19, 1898)

The death of Mr. Gladstone closes one of the most remarkable careers in all political history. In the distant future, it may be difficult for students of the history of our century to discover precisely wherein lay the greatness of his actual achievements in statesmanship, though the greatness of his intellect, and his marvelous powers of abundant and successful work, will always be sufficiently manifest through a mere summary of the events of his long life. The man who, for the better part of half a century, was, through his hold on the public mind, incomparably the greatest political power in England; who, as an orator, combined a marvelous power of clear statement of the most intricate questions with a wonderful persuasiveness and fascination of manner; who won his most signal Parliamentary triumphs as a financier, and yet whose voice was the great trumpet call against inhumanity and barbarism, whether in Naples in 1851, in Bulgaria in 1876, or in Armenia in the closing years of his life; whose rest from his enormous labors in the public service consisted in the accomplishment of literary and scholarly tasks adequate to represent a lifetime of work on the part of a man of ordinary. powers; that such a man was one of the greatest figures of his age will never be subject to serious doubt.

That his influence on the course of history was really a great one is, however, even now not so easy

to demonstrate if anyone were disposed to question it. He was not one of the world-compelling breed of men. Bismarck formed to himself in early life. a great design, and pursued it with inflexible purpose, with indomitable will, and with keenest statecraft, until it was accomplished in the fullest measure in the creation of the German Empire. Not only had Gladstone no such achievement to point to, but the great measures of progress with which his name is associated were espoused by him only gradually, often after a previous record of obstruction or even of bitter opposition. And yet it is a shallow view which would fail to recognize the greatness of the part he played in their accomplishment. That he was no time-server is evident, not only from that loftiness of soul which is the unmistakable source of his greatest speeches and writings, but from more than one incident in his career, when he deliberately sacrificed political advantage to the dictates of his conscience even upon matters not of cardinal importance. His conservatism at the outset of his career, and his steady advance toward radical liberalism in almost every direction throughout his public life, were due to one and the same cause— his profound sympathy for the institutions of his country, his keen intuition of what was demanded by their safety on the one hand and their development on the other. During the debate on his first bill for the extension of the suffrage, in 1866, replying to a taunt of Disraeli's, Gladstone turned the tables completely against his opponent, and gave the key to his own political history, when he said: "He (Disraeli), a Parliamentary leader of twenty

impressed just the same as the ma right honorable gentleman is now in conceived the fear and alarm of Bill in my undergraduate days a the right honorable gentleman now

Gladstone's service to his country then, in the origination of any grea or in the advancement of any body trine which he had made peculiarly it should be admitted that he did r qualities which mark what we call r the man of genius. But he was p remarkable example in all history statesman which peculiarly belong such a scheme of government as t the English people now live and made a beacon to all the peoples is the type which Tennyson has splendid lines" To the Queen":

And statesmen at her council
Who knew the seasons when
Occasion by the hand, and ma
The bounds of freedom wider

By shaping some august decree
Which kept her throne unsha
Broad based upon her people
And compassed by the inviolate