THE GOODNESS OF BADNESS;

OR, HOW DISEASE IS OUR ALLY AGAINST DEATH. THE most remarkable article in the Edinburgh Review is that on the Principles of Heredity. It is bold, searching and suggestive.

THE BENEFIT OF DISEASE.

The reviewer maintains that unless we can extirpate disease from the planet, the consequences of extirpating it, say, from England or from Europe might be disastrous.

Disease is the only stringently selective agent amongst civilised men. The types it weeds out are those that are weak against disease, the survivors are those that are resistant to disease it follows that the only racial progression, certainly the only considerable racial progression, that civilised human races undergo is one against disease. Through the constant weeding out of individuals susceptible to disease, and the preservation and multiplication of those who are congenitally less susceptible, the race is mainly carried on from the latter; and the species must be acquiring an immunity to all diseases to which it has long been exposed.

In exterminating such a disease as small-pox from this and other countries the race would soon lapse into a condition of extreme susceptibility, and if in some part of the world the extermination was incomplete, it might suddenly recur with such virulence as to wipe out civilisation.

WHERE DISEASE HAS BEEN ABSENT.

In support of this thesis the reviewer cites the devastation that has been wrought in the past when a community that has not been rendered immune by disease is smitten with a new malady ::

The voyage of Christopher Columbus was fraught with more tremendous results for humanity than could be then conceived. On that fateful voyage, the crew carried with them the germ of death for millions of persons. Probably the New World was not without its revenges.

Syphilis, imported from Haiti, wrought terrible ravages in Europe, where it had been previously unknown. In our own times sleeping sickness, which was comparatively innocuous to the disease-proof West African, slew millions when it was carried by traders to East Africa :

One race, which has been subject for centuries to a microbic disease and is therefore relatively immune, carries this disease to another race, which, having never previously experienced it, dies off in a few generations.

Endemic disease protects a race against epidemics. Disease is a kind of vaccination.

THE BENEFIT OF POLYGAMY.

The recent introduction of syphilis into Uganda has been attended with effects no less appalling than sleeping sickness. At the present time, more than half the population of the Protectorate suffer from the disease, and in parts of the country no less than 90 per cent. The disease, moreover, is far more virulent in character than anything known in European countries. The introduction of syphilis into Uganda was largely due to the teaching of the missionaries. They taught that polygamy was wicked, and attempted to introduce monogamy, which, being unsuited both to the past habits and to the present civilisation of the people, led to a great deterioration of feminine virtue, followed by the rise of the terrible venereal Scourge,

THE BRITISH EMPIRE FOUNDED ON DISEASE.

In this liability of non-inoculated races to perish the reviewer finds "an explanation of that remarkable induction from history, that in time a conquered race always absorbs the conquerors, while the reverse process never happens." Greeks, Romans, and Moors have died out from their foreign dominions :--

The exception is when the conquerors bring with them new and virulent diseases which completely exterminate the native races. This has been the important factor in the growth of the British Empire. Wherever the British have gone, the British have exterminated the natives not with the sword but with the diseases which they brought, thus leaving great voids which the incomers speedily filled up.

This is much too sweeping a statement: it does not apply to Africa or Asia.

THE BENEFIT OF DRUNKENNESS.

Drunkenness is bad, but it is the most efficient parent of temperance :

Every race is resistant (i.e., temperate) in the presence of alcohol in proportion to the length and severity of its past experience of the poison. There is no exception to this rule.

The further conclusion also follows: the greater the facilities for obtaining alcohol, the greater will be the mortality due to alcohol, the more stringent will be alcoholic selection in purging the race of individuals congenitally disposed to alcohol, and the freer will succeeding generations be from the craving for alcohol.

Great Britain, which has long been intemperate, is gradually becoming purged of its more susceptible elements and settling down into a condition of sobriety. And the sobriety is least advanced among the poorest people, whose ancestors have in general had the least access to alcohol. With opium, the same facts appear.

THE BENEFIT OF EPILEPSY.

The

The Eugenics Society wish to prevent epileptics, lunatics, etc., from propagating their kind. reviewer objects that the epileptic and the microcephalic idiot may be of immense value to the world :

Some of the greatest transformations in the world were wrought by persons suffering from such diseases. Julius Cæsar and Mahommed were epileptics; so also very probably were Napoleon Buonaparte, Alexander the Great, and St. Paul. If eugenics had been in force throughout the ages, some of the greatest names of history would have been lost, and the progress of the world inconceivably altered. Among writers the association of genius with disease is often noted. Rousseau was a nervous" degenerate"; and the French Revolution was largely engineered by diseased persons, such as Marat, Robespierre, Couthon. Comte and many other philosophers have been insane. Schumann, Nietzsche, and Guy de Maupassant were the victims of a vile disease, culminating in general paralysis and insanity. Tuberculosis wrought its effects on Chopin, Rachel, Heine, Robert Louis Stevenson, and John

Stuart Mill.

In short

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide. Hence the reviewer protests against the elimination of elements which, although apparently bad, may be necessary for the production of great good :—

The officiousness of the "scientific reformer" who flings the racial germ-plasm into the mud of political controversy, to be canvassed and fought over by wallowing politicians, may be working damage that can never again be retrieved throughout the future history of the world,

ARE WE ASHAMED OF BEING GOOD? IN the Atlantic Monthly for January Max Eastman expresses his surprise at hearing from the pulpit that "there had disappeared out of the world the fear of being caught reading the Bible." He says with confidence that it is habitual for healthy boys of a certain age to be ashamed of being good. "The feeling that it is ignominious to be virtuous is not confined to boys of nine years. I have seen mortification in the faces of grown men and women when they were accused of saintliness." He attributes this to the mediæval idea of saintliness as shown in stained glass windows. The ideals and facts of men to-day are out of gear, and nothing could be more serious :

We lack the audacity to overthrow the whole calendar, and wash out our minds, and start clean with the natural opinion that virtue is what we deeply want in ourselves and the people around us; and if it is not what we want, then it is not virtue.

The Christian fervour of the ideal of universal love and the Teutonic pride in recognising the equality of men are certainly in advance of the Greek ideals of virtue. But" our virtue will never be heartily loved by us, as virtue was of old, until it is purged of those elements which we condemn in the reality on six days of the week and praise in the ideal on Sunday.”

A "SERVANTLESS HOUSE." PERHAPS the most generally interesting paper in the February Strand is one entitled "A Servantless House: A Domestic Vision of the Near Future," by E. S. Valentine, with illustrations by René Bull. In the form of an interview between husband and wife, some interesting facts are given. There are 4,823 household labour-saving devices registered at the Patent Office. Only a paltry hundred or two have been adopted by the conservative English housewife. A couple of ounces of M. Berthelet's therm-ezoin sprayed into a room will almost instantaneously resolve the dust again into the atmosphere, so that you open your window and blow it out, and your chamber is as sweet as the cabin of a yacht. Why is not the vacuum cleaner used in every home? A bedmaking machine, invented by a barrister named Simmonds, works like a charm :

You pressed a spring and one rod raised the counterpane and drew it out taut, another lifted the blankets, while two others at top and bottom drew off the top and bottom sheets and held them fast and erect to air. It was all done in a moment, and when you wanted the bed made up, down came the slender frames and all was in its place again, silently and as neat as you please.

The mattress was pneumatic, made soft or hard according to taste by a small wheel at the foot of the bed. Stairs could be swept by a spiral brush revolving along a rod fitted into a groove of the banisters. Coals could be supplied by a self-feeder let into one wall of the grate, connecting with an outside bin. The ashes could descend by a trapway beneath the

hearth to an external ashbin. In a few years electric radiators will be in all workmen's dwellings in place of the expensive firegrate. Every window sash might be fitted with two sets of panes, easily adjustable. Once a week a man would come round to change the sashes, while the dirty panes were taken away and cleaned. There are twenty different automatic table waiters or table changers. The table descends through a trap in a carpeted floor, which instantly closes again. Another course has been got ready, then the trap opens again, and the table reappears with the entrée. Some have been let down from the ceiling.

She adds

THE SECRET SOURCES OF FASHION. "BEHIND the Scenes in the Dressmaking World" is the title of an interesting paper, by M. E. Clarke, in the January Pall Mall Magazine. She tells of the way the dress designer in the great Parisian dressmaking firms submits designs to comrades. that the designers are often men, and, generally speaking, the men are clever in creating some charming decorative idea for one particular woman, or type of woman, but to be a successful model it needs the feminine hand to modify it or extend it before it can be handed on to the actual makers in the work

rooms.

IN MUSEUMS, LIBRARIES, AND CHURCHES.

Most of the fashion designers pass through the art schools, and many discuss with artist friends their designs :

All the best dressmaking houses encourage their artists to frequent the museums when in the throes of evolving models. One or two houses have, indeed, quite good reference libraries for the use of their employés, and here they find old documents on dress which are of invaluable use to them. Then there are several first-class women dressmakers who go themselves to study old church embroideries, old laces and tapestries, which they have copied by their embroidery makers

DEVICES FOR EMBROIDERY AND LACE.

Embroidery is, of course, a specialty. The writer heard of one artist who could weave a thing of beauty out of material such as oilcloth, string, buttons, and suchlike common things. Others copy old

manuscripts, old church vestments, and old tapestries, and every one of them works with the most wonderful facility and grace, just as do the makers of lingerie, the like of which it is hard to find out of France.

Lace-making, apparently, is one of the acquired characteristics that become hereditary :—

One of the largest lace-makers in France once told me that he has women working for him who have eight generations of lace-making ancestors behind them, and, at any rate, he added, "It takes at least three generations to make a good one."

The writer concludes that, taking things all round, the lot of the Paris workgirl in dressmaking places is not so bad. A clever little designer makes about £39 a month.

INDIAN CHRISTIANS AND POLITICS. IN the Indian Review Rev. Dr. Lazarus writes on the Indian Christians, whom he estimates now to number four millions, or one hundredth of the whole population. The rate of increase in their numbers is far greater than that of Hindus. The writer expects that Indian Christians, if they will but take advantage of the boons they have secured, will play a most important part in the nation-building of India. They are a literate people; their girls go to school as well as their boys. One out of every dozen graduates is an Indian Christian. According to population it should be only one out of every forty. Although five-sixths of them have sprung from the depressed

classes

they have produced 1 D.D., 6 M.D.'s, 1 M.L., 19 M.A.'s, 7 B.C.E.'s, 22 M.B. and C.M.'s, 36 L.M. and S.'s, 76 B.L.'s, 10 L.T.'s, and 720 B.A.'s. Their women can boast of 2 M.A.'s, 1 M.D., 9 B.A.'s, and 2 L.T.'s.

Bulk for bulk, they are far ahead of non-Brahmins. The competition is now between the Brahmin and the Indian Christian. These are having a neck-andneck race so far as quality of success is concerned, but as regards number the Brahmin keeps the goal. There are nine times as many Brahmin B.A.'s as Indian Christian. In proportion to the population it ought to be nearly three times. But while the annual output of Brahmin graduates tends to decrease, that of Indian Christians indicates a steady increase. Unfortunately, the Indian Christian, though scrupulously loyal and paying his taxes promptly, "avoids politics as if that was the devil himself." The Government need, however, their help and advice and co-operation.

LORDS MORLEY AND MINTO.

IN the Indian Review for December Politikos pays this tribute to the "two well-tried and sturdy helmsmen who had steered the great bark of Indian State with consummate courage, calm resolution and shrewd sagacity":

Veteran mariners were they, worthy of the genius of the great Anglo-Saxon race which seems born to rule. They were called upon to undertake a most arduous and responsible duty, unprecedented in the annals of the country, at a critical juncture. Men of less courage and resolution might have quailed at it, nay, shrunk from accepting it. But be it said to their credit and honour that Lords Morley and Minto fearlessly and fullheartedly accepted that call of duty and acquitted themselves in their respective posts with commanding insight and political prescience which are the theme of universal praise in England and India alike. They have amply and most successfully discharged the great trust reposed in them. With a singleness of purpose and devotion to Duty, they have laid broad and deep the foundations of the British Indian Empire on more liberal principles than before-principles urgently demanded by the exigencies of time and the greater progress of the people, principles whose far-reaching influence is destined to bring about the most beneficent results. In short, it may be said without fear of contradiction, that Lords Morley and Minto have now established their claim for a conspicuous place in the vanguard of distinguished British statesmen of the past and have reared a monument of their own more durable than brass or the kingly pyramids of Egypt,

Apart from the automatic influence of Standing Orders promulgated during the past thirty years, a condition of affairs has been created that has totally changed the spirit, consequently the custom, of the House of Commons. The habit of oratory has disappeared. Gladstone was our last orator. Speeches two hours in length, illuminated by classical quotation, concluding with a glittering peroration, are to-day foreign to Parliamentary debate. Even in the House of Lords the habit, though not absolutely dead, soundly sleeps. The fact is, oratory cannot, flourish in the dull hours between luncheon and dinner.

It happens to-day that both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, the former in more perfect form, have the priceless gift of compressing within the space of half an hour, at most forty minutes, all that is useful or necessary to say on a particular topic, however important. Like the quality of mercy this benefaction is twice blest. Not only is time saved by their terseness, but example is set which has far-reaching influence. When Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour habitually confine their speeches to the half-hour limit it would be indecorous for members of less lofty position to maunder over the full hour.

Mr. Gladstone was largely responsible for the flux of words that swamped debate in his day. If he rarely sat down without speaking over a minimum space of an hour and a half, why should private members labour at compression of native verbosity? From a business point of view the new condition of debate is excellent. But it helps to explain the altered state of things that has come over the House of Commons in recent Sessions, with the inevitable result of inducing dullness. It is business, but it is not magnificent.

A SOCIALIST M.P.'S EMPIRE PARLIAMENT. IN the Treasury for February Mr. Frederick Rogers reports his interview with Mr. George Lansbury, whom he introduces as Socialist and Anglican, and describes as two Mr. Lansburys-one obsessed by his own rhetoric, talking with all the vagueness of the average Liberal about social reform; the other, the true Mr. Lansbury, in the committee-room, or the conference, unswayed by popular temptations, with at passion for public work, giving his best experience to the doing of it, winning respect even from his strongest opponents, and with more than a touch of the heroic in his nature. Mr. Lansbury uses the word Church to include all men and women who believe in Christianity. He believes that the future of the Church of England must be progressive, and that it will not be a State institution. It would be much better for the Church of England and Wales to stand on a purely voluntary basis, without the prop of the State at all. Mr. Lansbury went on :

I would also like to say that with regard to the Constitutional question of the relation between the House of Lords and the House of Commons, that I am in favour of a reorganisation of our Legislature on a federal basis.

I think that we need a real Imperial Parliament, representa tive of the adult population of British Dependencies and Colonies; I think such an Imperial Parliament should have control of British foreign affairs, the army and navy, and commercial relationships, not only between all parts of the Empire, but with other countries. This would leave the domestic Legislature quite free to deal with all the pressing social prob lems that confront us here at home.

PET DOGS OF ROYALTY.

IN the Woman at Home Lady Mary enumerates a number of Royal pets-Bruno, a magnificent collie, the favourite dog of the German Crown Prince and Princess; the spaniel beloved by the Crown Princess of Roumania; the Irish terrier of Prince Andreas of Greece; Tauxa, the fox terrier of Princess Wilhelm of Sweden, the gift of Queen Alexandra; Bobo, the dog of the Queen of Sweden, the gift of the Prince of Wales; and Gretel, the terrier pet of Princess Carl of Hohenzollern. Our own Queen Mary is said to be by no means so fond of animals as her Danish motherin-law. She has, however, softened to a mongrel terrier, Happy by name, a singularly intelligent beast who seems to understand all that is said to him, can fetch and carry anything, and is the favourite dog of all he possesses of King George. One of King George's earliest recollections is that of a terrier named Boxer, who was one day stoned to death by a rough boy passing in Green Park. Great were the lamentations of the children when Boxer's dead body came home, and, weeping bitterly, they laid him in a tiny grave dug by themselves in the garden at Marlborough House. On the stone over his remains are written the following lines:

Poor little Boxer !

A miscreant slew him.

None was near to save.

Queen Alexandra has always believed that the companionship of four-footed creatures is good for children, that no boy or girl who takes care of a dog is likely to grow up a selfish man or woman. It is not etiquette for Royalty to accept an anonymous present, but:

A box arrived one morning at Marlborough House by parcel post addressed to the Princess of Wales. As the box was pierced with numberless holes, and curious sounds were heard to proceed from within, it was at once taken to the Princess, for the butler had a shrewd suspicion that its contents might interest her. Well, the Queen undid the package herself, greatly wondering, and when the box was opened the prettiest little creature jumped out barking, wagging his tail, and flying wildly all over the room in his relief at being let out of prison. The Princess took him to her heart at once, and because of his fuzzy tail, after consulting her children, gave him the name of Fuzzy. Needless to say, the dog lived happily ever after.

Queen Maud of Norway, when quite a little girl, was asked, "Did your dear mother once box the ears of a boy whom she saw ill-treating a dog?" "No, she did not," answered the child, adding naïvely, "but I know she would have liked to." The story is told of the late King's affection for Cæsar, who now is the companion of Queen Alexandra :—

A friend tells me that His Majesty lost the dog for hours once on the sands when last he visited Biarritz and appeared quite boyish in his distress. When Cæsar after his long search was seen bounding to his master, it was difficult to say if the King or dog was more manifestly delighted. The Queen cannot bear for Cæsar to be away from her for an hour

AT 107 YEARS OF AGE.

IN the Royal for February Mrs. Rebecca Clark tells Mr. Walter Brett what she remembers of her long life. She was country-bred and born, being a native of Green Penn, in Buckinghamshire. She thinks that the twentieth century children are far, far luckier, if not happier, than she and her comrades were. The Sunday school was a grand thing in those days. You would sooner have thought of neglecting your dinner than parson's class on a Sunday afternoon. The only newspaper in the village was that bought by the innkeeper. It cost sevenpence, and came out only once a week. But the day of its publication was the most eventful day of the week. The elder of the village, if he could read, would seat himself on a chair in the middle of the green, with his tankard of ale by his side, and, puffing at his long churchwarden pipe, would spell out the news slowly to those who cared to gather round him.

When the good lady had her first railway ride she was too terrified to speak. She thought that if she moved she would upset the balance of the thing and send it off the rails. London sixty or seventy years ago was a much less desirable place than at present. The streets were nearly always dirty, the parks had no flower-beds, the grass was untrimmed, and the walks unswept. The Thames was an evil-smelling waterway. There are many reasons why she would rather live in the twentieth century than in the nineteenth, but she thinks the advance in public decency is most important. The old lady still retains her faculties:

I can sew and even now spend a good deal of my time working with my needle. I can hear almost as well as you; my sight is better than it was twenty years ago, and I have not yet found the need for glasses even when I thread my needle. I can enjoy a walk when the weather is fine, and I can even sing one of the old, old songs, and go through the steps of dances which were all the rage a century ago.

Every Friday, if the weather is fine, I walk up that steep hill yonder to the Post Office, some five hundred yards away, to draw my pension, for I enjoy the distinction of being His Majesty's oldest old-age pensioner.

She has been a teetotaler for forty years. Her advice is :

I say eat and drink exactly what you have been accustomed to eating and drinking all your life. Then, if you go to bed early, get up early, work hard, and are contented, you should live to be as old as I am.

A BANANA plantation in the Spanish main is the subject of a very interesting illustrated paper in Travel and Exploration by Frederick C. Stanley. As an illustration of the fecundity of the soil it may be mentioned that the virgin forest was cleared and burnt, the ashes dug into the soil, a process occupying six months; then irrigation trenches were cut and connected with canals from the Rio Frio River, and the planting commenced. In less than fifteen months the first bananas were ready for shipment. Each root bears four crops in the year.

THE FRENCH VIEW OF THE WAR OF 1870.

MILITARY AND DIPLOMATIC DEFEATS.

In the two January numbers of the Revue des Deux Mondes M. Emile Ollivier continues his long history of the Franco-German War.

PANIC IN GERMANY.

In the first number he deals with the first few weeks of the war. The French were ready, he repeats. The military resources were in great part mobilised and were in the hands of the troops, and if the army was inferior from the point of view of numbers, that inferiority was largely compensated by quality. Everyone was convinced that the offensive must be assumed at once, and some of the generals began to act on their own initiative. The plan was to take advantage of their superior readiness and make an attack on Mainz or the Southern States while the Prussian mobilisation was still incomplete. Moltke remarked to Bismarck, "We must expect anything from those French devils. If they come and throw themselves into the midst of our mobilisation I hardly know what will happen." There was a general panic in Germany.

HESITANCY OF THE FRENCH.

But no sooner had the French military machine been set in motion than the Emperor Napoleon III. suddenly intervened, and the order was given to remain on the defensive on the frontier. M. Ollivier explains the action, or rather the inaction of the Emperor. It was due, he says, to a diplomatic matter which military critics seem to have ignored. The French could only assume the offensive by crossing the Rhine or the Saar. The choice depended on the attitude of Austria. If Austria decided to cooperate with France, the French troops were to cross the Rhine to join the Austrians, but if Austria was going to remain neutral, it would be necessary for the French to enter Germany by the Saar. The strategic plan of the Emperor calculated on the co-operation of Austria, but as a Triple Alliance Treaty with Austria and Italy which had been drawn up was not yet signed, Austria in solemn council on July 18 proclaimed her neutrality.

ATTITUDE OF AUSTRIA.

If this neutrality had been declared absolute and irrevocable, like that of Russia, the Emperor would have understood the situation. He would certainly have crossed the Saar and have entrenched himself on the right bank of the river, and there as master of the railways would have been able to operate against one or other of the German armies, not one of which was at that time prepared for an assault. But Beust announced the Austrian neutrality as provisional; it was only to be the beginning of the promised Alliance. Gramont confirmed the vain illusion, and the Emperor, hoping always for a favourable decision from Austria, remained inactive, or rather uncertain.

ILLNESS OF THE EMPEROR.

It was the inaction of the French from July 20th to August 6th which was the cause of the first, and perhaps the most irreparable, of their reverses. When one of the French Generals heard that the Emperor had stopped at Saarbrücken, he cried, "We are lost!" Another serious cause of the Emperor's inaction, says M. Ollivier, was not numerical inferiority. It was that the command of the army was in the hands of a chief whose eminent qualities of valour and intelligence were paralysed by the serious physical infirmity from which he was suffering.

HOW BISMARCK INFLUENCED EUROPEAN OPINION.

The second article is entitled "Our Diplomatic Defeats." M. Ollivier begins by showing how Bismarck encouraged hostile opinion of France in Europe. Among other things, Bismarck with Lothar Bucher concocted a long series of damaging articles and sent them to Dr. Busch, who transmitted them to the newspapers. One idea in particular occurs in them over and over again. It was to the effect that war was not imposed on the Emperor by the opinion of the French people. It was the men in power who, to serve their own ends, had over-excited the irritable amour propre of the nation. Bismarck also endeavoured to influence Europe against the Emperor, but a few months later, when he had to prepare Europe for the dismemberment of France, he contended that it was public opinion which had compelled the Emperor to go to war against his own desire for peace. M. Ollivier solemnly affirms that the Emperor never had the smallest desire for revenge for Sadowa, of any desire for conquest, or indeed any desire for anything but the maintenance of peace.

ALL SYMPATHY ALIENATED FROM FRANCE.

At the beginning of the conflict, continues M. Ollivier, public opinion was more sympathetic to France than to Prussia, and nearly all statesmen were agreed that for three years the French Government had made every sacrifice possible in the interests of peace, but that the time had arrived when the last limits of patience had been reached. The demand for guarantees against the Hohenzollern candidature lost France some of that sympathy; the brutality of the Ems affront restored it; but the false charges of Bismarck concerning the Belgian treaty alienated it again definitively. If at that time M. Ollivier had had in his hands the documents which he has since had, the attempt of Bismarck to dishonour France, he says, would certainly not have succeeded, and he would have been defeated diplomatically once more. But this time, alas! Bismarck was victorious all along the line. Every statesman at once became hostile. The effect of Bismarck's revelations was especially felt in England. The British Government declared its neutrality on July 19, and asked the French to sign a new treaty, renewing the stipulations of the Quintuple Alliance of April 1, 1839. M. Ollivier says he had hoped for better things of England.