Again, if the science, the courage, the energy, expended in the service of the War Offices were concentrated upon commerce and manufactures, our mechanical and mercantile progress would move at a faster pace. That also is possible. But it does not by any means follow that the world would be better, as well as richer, for the change. Wealth does not always bring happiness and virtue to the individual, nor does it do se necessarily to the nation. The Cobdenite ideal of a State, in which every citizen is ceaselessly engaged in the ennobling process of buying cheap and selling dear, leaves something to be desired. The accumulation of riches, and the steady pursuit of material comfort, do not tend to the development of the highest type of character. Comfort, luxury, material prosperity, freedom from external shocks and alarms, are very desirable things in their way; but they tend to be enervating, and even destructive, if they are not counteracted by an occasional experience of danger, anxiety, discipline, and selfsacrifice. A country so sheltered from external alarms that patriotism is superfluous is not at its best. We began to realize this ourselves in the middle period of the present century, when England approached closer to the Cobdenite standard than it is ever likely to do again. The country was very busy, very prosperous, fiercely absorbed in its money-making and industrialism, most ardent in the pursuit of its profits and its business. The Empire was regarded with suspicion: it was the time when eminent Liberal permanent officials at Downing Street were anxiously holding open the door for the colonies to walk out; the Army was neglected; the Navy was in a most disgraceful state of inefficiency. The "Manchester School" was in the ascendant, and the reign of peace and free competition seemed to the sanguine British Progressive to have set in" for good."

Fortunately we were shaken out of our dream of bourgeois vulgarity and gross content before it had lasted long enough to sap our vigor too ruinously. International struggles and dangers, the thunder of war abroad, the revival

of the Imperialist spirit, the urgent necessity of converting England once more into a great naval and military Power, taught us the old lesson that nations do not live by bread alone; not even if the bread is buttered.

Moreover, the mere material gain to the nation, as a whole, which would be caused by the cessation of warlike preparations is not by any means so certain as is assumed. No doubt there would be a saving somewhere, if the great ships did not have to be bought and the battalions fed and trained; but who would profit most by it? It is at least an open question whether much of that increased wealth would go into the pockets of those "masses" for whom Cobdenism, be it on the throne or in the library, professes so tender a care. Before we abolish the soldier on economic grounds, we had better arrange for the diffusion as well as the increase of wealth. Otherwise we may find that the blessings of turning the wasteful cost of militarism into the "productive expenditure" of industry have not been as widely felt as we could wish. Can we guarantee that the artisan thrown out by the closing of Portsmouth Dockyard and Woolwich Arsenal will obtain secure employment at higher wages in private service? That the bluejacket or "Tommy," who is at least fed and clothed at the expense of his more opulent fellow-subjects, will find a better market for his stout limbs and modest brains? If disarmament really meant that the poor would have more money to spend and less misery to endure, one might risk much to bring it to pass. But if it signifies only a higher level of middle-class comfort and wider scope for the financier, the monopolist, the promoter, and the great capitalist, it is not so easy to see its advantages. Peace in her vineyard, with a company forging the wine, is not a more inspiring figure than War, helmed and shielded, and keeping sentry-watch through the beating wind and driving rain.

On this question of militarism and national wealth we are not wholly at the mercy of theory. The assertion is constantly made that the burden of their armaments is crushing the nations

into poverty. But where is the proof of this? We do not know how rich the nations of Europe might be if they had not had to spend hundreds of millions on fleets and armies. But what we do know is that some of them have combined to make themselves uncommonly prosperous in spite of the "blood-tax." It is true that Russia is pretty nearly bankrupt, and Italy is seething with discontent mainly due to the poverty of the people. But both Russia and Italy are in any case miserably poor countries. They have great natural rescurces, which have remained undeveloped owing to lack of capital and want of efficient industrial enterprise. Both have suffered heavily through administrative incompetence and official corruption. It is not due to the military system that the communal authorities in Sicily rob the people of their bread, or that the persecution of the Jews and the proscription of foreigners have left Russia without an intelligent mercantile class. A country, divided between an idle and incapable aristocracy and vast hordes of impoverished peasantry, living from hand to mouth by the most primitive agriculture, with no bourgeoisie to speak of, and no reserve of capital to assist production, cannot be rich; nor can a country, with little foreign trade and stagnant manufactures, which has to support a rapidly increasing population by the cultivation of its own soil, pursued without intelligence or scientific methods. With or without armaments, such States as Russia and Italy and Spain will not be prosperous till they undergo an economic and political transformation. the other hand, where different conditions prevail, the burden of warlike preparation does not seem to impoverish. France contrives to be very reasonably prosperous in spite of the conscription and a naval and military expenditure not far short of 1,000,000,000 francs annually. Germany, which can mobilize an army of something like 3,000,000 of men on the war footing, and spends nearly thirty millions a year on its defensive services, has been doing extraordinarily well of recent years. The "blood-tax" and

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the bloated armaments have not prevented our Teutonic rivals from advancing at an astonishing rate in the development of their industry and commerce. The figures in connection with this subject are so well known, and have been referred to so often of late, that it is unnecessary to discuss them here. This is not the place to go into the "Made in Germany" controversy again. Whether it is to protection, or better education, or 'superior industrial methods, that the result is due, need not now be considered. any rate, we are faced by the fact that the great military empire has been increasing its export trade faster than our own country, and almost as rapidly as the North American Republic, which has been content so far with a thirdrate navy and a standing army of 25,000 men. 25,000 men. The industrial unarmed United States have pretty nearly doubled their export trade in twenty years. But the progress of Germany, armed to the teeth and drilled to the nines, is scarcely less remarkable. The conscription, the large standing army, and the powerful navy have not prevented Germany from nearly doubling her export of metals since 1880, from multiplying her steel production eightfold in fifteen years, and from enabling Hamburg to beat Liverpool in the tonnage cleared and entered, and to become the second shipping port in the world.

Clearly, then, the obligation of maintaining large forces, and training its whole population to military duties, does not necessarily prevent a nation from making substantial progress in industrial and commercial prosperity. It may, I suppose, be urged that, prosperous as Germany is, she would have done better still without the army and the conscription. That, however, is a mere assumption. The facts show that Germany is advancing under her present system of national defence; and if we choose to theorize about them, we may make one deduction as well as another. Why are we not entitled to assume that the conscription has rather aided than retarded the material development of the coun

try? Most competent observers tell us that the success of the Germans in commerce is due not merely to administrative assistance, to sound technical education, and to cheaper labor, but also to the discipline, the sense of order, and the conscientious docility which the German artisan displays in his work. Some years ago a deputation of employers and working men, representing the iron and steel trades of the North of England, was commissioned to examine into the conditions under which the industry is prosecuted in Germany, and to account, if they could, for the extraordinary increase of production. The Commissioners drew up a valuable report, in which they gave due credit to the economy of German methods and the scientific knowledge brought to bear on manufactures. But they seem to have been most impressed by the precision, the drilled alertness, and the ready obedience of the men. These are the qualities fostered by intelligent military training. It is at least a reasonable hypothesis that they have been developed in the German working man, who is not by nature or character quicker and more alive than the Englishman, by his term of service. with the colors. The young German is taken, a loutish peasant, from the fields, or an ill-regulated half-fed hobbledehoy from a town slum, and put into barracks at the critical age of eighteen or nineteen. He is properly clothed, fed, and exercised. He sleeps in well ventilated rooms, he is taught to wash himself and attend scrupulously to his person, his muscle is brought out in the gymnasium, and his intelligence in the schoolroom, he is made to walk straight, to give and obey orders, to be alert, patient, and attentive. He learns the valuable lessons of punctuality, promptitude, and absolute unswerving devotion to discipline. It stands to reason that a man, so trained and educated, goes back to civil life with some advantages over the youngster who has slouched into the factory, from a school. where the moral discipline has been unimportant, and a home where it may have been non-existent. The military profession has its drawbacks. Single

con

men in barracks are not, as Mr. Kipling reminds us, ling reminds us, "a lot of plastersaints." But, conducted as it is in Germany, the conscription is a tinuation school" for the people, for which we have no substitute in this country. It is surely better for a young fellow to be up at five in the morning, shouldering a rifle on the paradeground, and learning that uncleanliness, disorder, and disobedience are offences involving sharp penalties, than for him to be hanging about the streetcorners, infesting cheap music halls, and letting off his animal spirits in "Hooliganism" and ruffianly horseplay. One would expect the drilled man to do his work better, and that, it appears, is the case in Germany. The military system trains the individual as well as the nation; and, so far from being anxious to abolish it, a wise ruler might be prepared to make sacrifices to retain it, or even to introduce it where it does not exist. This, I know, is an unpopular view in England, where we are rather proud of the fact that we decline to make those personal sacrifices for the national security which are endured by the citizens of most other civilized States. No one likes to talk about a conscription. But if a conscription would restore to the English working man that superiority in the habits of order, discipline, and steady industry which he seems to be yielding to his foreign competitors, it would be worth its cost.

We have drifted from the question of war to that of warlike preparation. But in point of fact, it is the latter much more than the former with which modern Europe is concerned. The Disarmament Conference would be intended to get rid not so much of war as of the Armed Peace. The latter condition contemplates actual hostilities, but does not necessarily involve it. Europe has seldom known so long a spell of freedom from disastrous wars as during the period of complete national armaments. There has been fighting in the Balkan peninsular, and outside Europe; but for seven-andtwenty years there was peace among the Great Powers of the civilized world.

How many similar periods of tranquillity does the history of the past five centuries exhibit? The fact is, the great armaments do not tend to promote war, but the contrary. It was easier for an ambitious sovereign to plunge into a conflict with a rival when he had only to give marching orders to a few thousand regulars. It is another matter when war means an expenditure of hundreds of millions, and the paralysis of the whole industry of a nation. The conscript army is too cumbrous a weapon to be used lightly; and the tremendous risks attendant on failure, when the whole people is in arms, might deter even a Frederick or a Catherine from fighting in mere vanity or caprice. War is a graver business than ever, and it will not be entered upon between two great Powers without the deepest reluctance and the longest hesitation. It is worth noting that the only country which has been almost continually at war since 1870 is that one which has a comparatively small mercenary army, and does not depend upon the conscription. England has done more fighting than all the rest of the world put together. We do not hazard enough in one of our small foreign campaigns to regard the firing of a shot with the shrinking anxiety of the owners of the vast military armaments of the Continent.

But if the armed peace does not lead to war, and if it supplies a really admirable training and education for the nation, in its corporate capacity as well as for its individual citizens, we need not be distressed at its continuance. The rare and brief, if terrible, wars of modern times will supply that occasional tonic-Jean Paul's "Iron-Cure" -of which the body politic stands in need. Meanwhile the careful and systematic preparation for the possible conflict is an invaluable discipline, which seems to be required in an age when comfort is growing, and religion is losing its power to lift the spirits of men above a grovelling materialism. These considerations may perhaps console us when the failure of the Czar's disarmament proposal is established, as in due course it will be. I have not

discussed the Imperial suggestion as a practical measure, because its eulogists hardly claim for it this character. It is an ideal, confessedly not likely to be attained, or brought appreciably nearer, by any agreement which could be concluded by the representatives of the Powers assembled in Conference. But it is as well to "clear our minds of cant," and ask ourselves whether, having to deal with a world as it is and not as it might be, it is even desirable that the goal should be reached, at least in our time. A period will come when militarism will appear as unnatural as slavery now seems to ourselves. But that "peculiar institution," the soldier, is not yet a superfluous survival, or a merely ornamental legacy from the past, like the Goldsticks in Waiting and Gentlemen of the Bedchamber of European Courts. No International Convention can as yet enable us to dispense with the drilled man trained to arms, and all that appertains to him.

There is one passage of the Emperor's rescript which points to an undeniable truth. His Majesty dwells on the perverted waste of ingenuity due to the constant invention of new warlike appliances, which are no sooner adopted than they are superseded by fresh discoveries. Here the Emperor puts his finger on a very weak spot. The pestilent activity of the modern military and naval inventor is simply a cosmopolitan nuisance. Whatever view may be taken of national defence, this ingenious person's devices are nothing but a costly and useless burden. All the benefits that can be derived from drilling with the Lee-Metford could equally well be obtained if the Martini were still the rifle of the British army. If cordite and smokeless powder had never been invented, none of the nations would be any the worse, and all of them would have saved a great deal of money. If there were no torpedoes the Admiralties could have been quite content to pile up cruisers and battle-ships against one another, without racking their brains and spending enormous sums to produce 30-knot machinery-boxes. Each new effective invention means a fresh draft on all

the war-chests; for as soon as one country has accepted it the rest must follow, and the relative position, which is the only thing that matters, remains the, same as before. It seems a pity that an International Convention cannot be arranged, whereby any individual proposing a new machine or device for warlike purposes should be immediately taken out and hanged. If the Czar could induce the delegates at the Peace Conference to pledge their Governments to an arrangement of this kind, he might be doing almost as much for peace as if he were to decree that the

standing army of Russia should not in future be more than, say, double as large as that of Great Britain. Unfortunately, there are so many practical difficulties in the making (and keeping) of even a quite simple and obviously advantageous rule such as this, that I fear it is no more likely to be adopted than any other schemes of general pacification. In spite of the Czar, civilization must still contrive to move forward, sometimes, as Lowell said, "on the powder-cart."-Nineteenth Century.

"THE worth of a biography depends upon whether it is done by one who wholly loves the man whose life he writes, yet loves him with a discriminating love. Few of these gossiping biographies are the man, more often the writer." Such were the remarks made by the poet to his son in 1874 on the "compliments and curiosity of undiscerning critics." Of the wholehearted love displayed by the son in the recently published Memoirs of his father there cannot be a doubt; and if the keeping oneself in the background, and allowing the subject of the biography to reveal himself to us by the record of his everyday life-his conversations with his friends, his interchange of letters with all ranks in society, from the Queen herself down to the Lincolnshire laborer who wrote to him from the United States about the old Somersby days, his hopes and fears for his work, his general outlook on men and affairs, and his unfailing sympathy with the joys and sorrows of humanity are not evidences of the power of discrimination on the part of the writer and compiler of these volumes, additional emphasis, at least, is given to the truth of the poet's own words:

"For whatsoever knows us truly, knows That none can truly write his single day, And none can truly write it for him upon earth."

The lives of men of genius are not always pleasant reading: there is often a want of harmony between the inner and the outward man; they have not learnt how to accommodate the outward life to the interior vision. But no such misgivings assail us as we turn the pages of these volumes. The life of Tennyson, like the life of his great predecessor Wordsworth, adds one more striking testimony to the truth of Milton's noble words:" He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem; not presuming to sing praises of heroic men or famous cities unless he have in himself the experience and practice of all that which is praiseworthy." From the reminiscences contained in these Memoirs of the poet's early life in his father's rectory, down to the latest recorded conversations between himself and his son in the summer of 1892— the year of his death-there is the gradual unfolding of a life rich in promise, attaining its meridian splendour in the strength of a magnificent