HOW THE YOUNG TURKS ARE GETTING ON.

MR. D. G. HOGARTH, who visited Smyrna and Constantinople in 1908 and again this year, contributes an article to the Contemporary Review entitled "Turkey After Two Years."

He has seen much of Turkey during the last twenty years. He states that he has only the slightest personal acquaintance with the leaders of the Young Turks. He confines himself strictly to giving his impressions of the changes brought about by the Young Turks during the two years they have been in office. The first thing they have done is to make the man in the street speak freely and aloud, and to make him look his fellows in the face unashamed. The longer one stays in Constantinople the more one sees that this personal freedom is the real thing. Another thing accomplished is the abolition of the internal passport, whereby under the old régime no one could move from his village or town without permission of the Government. Now anyone can move about at will, and there is no condition about leaving or going back. As a result Turks, high and low, are touring about over the Empire for the mere joy of feeling that they can go where they please, and wealthy Turks are visiting Europe in increasing numbers.

As to the administration, he says that every department and every official is behaving very much as it or he likes, but considering all things they are behaving extremely well. They grumble about capitulations, but regarding these it will not be possible to do anything until education has made more progress. The Young Turks are doing their best to promote education, and the Turkish soldier is obviously improving both in smartness and in temper. On the whole, it will be seen that Mr. Hogarth is optimistic. But, he says, it would be idle to ignore the fact that there are serious dangers ahead.

These are largely due to the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria. This made the Cretan question practically insoluble. The most serious international difficulty arises from the multiplicity of its races with different traditions. What Turkey seems to need at present is less a parliament than a council not popularly elected. The Young Turks up till now have absolutely refused to make any concessions to the demands of the Arabs and the Albanians to govern themselves according to their own ideas. The ideal is that of absolute uniformity and centralisation, an object which is quite impossible as long as such races as the Arabs and the Albanians are not admitted to equality of privilege.

The Greek difficulty is very menacing, and the Young Turks have shown that they have scant regard for the rights of the Greeks. In conclusion, he declares that he sees only one possible policy with any chances of success, and that is the liberal granting of home rule to such districts and provinces as are inhabited by races different from the Turks or to any considerable extent by Christians, He

thinks that the fall in British influence in Constantinople is not due to our diplomatists, but to the effect of militarism and coercion, which are now in the ascendent, and these being alien to Great Britain the Young Turks have gone elsewhere for support.

TO MEND OUR MANNERS ABROAD. WANTED: WRITTEN LAW FOR TOURISTS.

IN the January number of Chambers's Journal Mr. F. G. Aflalo has an article which he entitles "Wanted: Written Law for Tourists."

THE FOREIGN OFFICE TO THE RESCUE.

At a time when nations are striving after a better understanding with one another, Mr. Aflalo asks whether we could not do something to ensure that a more favourable impression of us as a nation be made by those British people who spend their holidays in foreign capitals. The Little Tourist who travels in personally conducted parties, the writer says, often leaves such manners as he has on this side of the Channel. It is now suggested that the Foreign Office might issue with every passport a code of hitherto unwritten law, an epitome of etiquette, and the opinion is expressed that such an innovation would contribute more to the friendship of nations than a Hague Conference. Much mutual distrust among neighbours arises from a lack of moral perspective and a sense of humour. Those who spend a month in Continental capitals need to be told how to behave in churches, in railway carriages, restaurants, or at public entertainments.

OUR LACK OF REVERENCE.

The

The Foreign Office should supplement its passports with a general instruction that there are other countries besides Great Britain. There is Italy, for instance, where the tourist is seen at his worst. globe-trotter should also be exhorted against raceprejudice generally. The etiquette of the railway carriage is another matter in which the British tourist needs to be guided to a better understanding of his obligations, and there are the minor offences connected with dress and tipping. Outrageous holiday dress covers our national prestige with ridicule, especially in the East. Most of all British people need serious instruction about the proper reverence for the holy places of other sects and creeds. The tourists of the Orthodox and Latin Churches, in Mr. Aflalo's experience, are more reverent in both Christian and Moslem places of worship than Protestant tourists. Were Moslems to enter one of our churches and comment in audible whispers on the congregation, how should we feel? Why, then, should such conduct be condoned on the part of British tourists in a mosque?

A VISIT of editors from Canada and the United States to Mexico is described in the Bulletin of the Pan-American Union for November,

A PHOTOGRAPHER OF ROYALTY. IN the January Royal Mr. E. M. Brereton describes the rise of Mr. Ernest Brooks. He was, to begin with, the son of a servant in the Royal household at Windsor, and had been a pupil in the Royal school at Windsor. He procured for himself a camera to take views oí celebrities for the Press. He went to Cumberland Lodge, and Prince Christian not only permitted the taking of the photographs, but came out to watch operations, and eventually stood for his photograph. Then the Prince gave permission for the photographs to be published, and a week or two later sent for Mr. Brooks to do some more work. This, of course, gave the young photographer his opportunity. He seems to have been throughout treated by the Royal circle with the greatest of consideration and kindness. His portrait of the late King out with the guns is the Royal Family's favourite photograph of His Majesty as a sportsman. He received on this congratulations from Queen Alexandra, the King and Queen of Norway, and the Princess Victoria. He was permitted to accompany Prince Christian on a shooting expedition in the Carpathian Mountains, and he undertook the duty of

chef. With the aid of an oil-stove he would heat the soup and cook the game. The block below is an illustration of Mr. Brooks' art.

The Lord Mayor.

"A MORE transparently natural man than the present Lord Mayor I have never met," says an interviewer in the Organiser. Anticipating a stiff, formal, official creature, the interviewer found instead a gentleman, quiet and incisive of speech, readily opinionative on the subjects that life had made his own, and willing to spare for this purpose a lengthy hour or two long after midnight. Sir Vezey Strong's business philosophy is summed up in the principle that the head of the establishment must know all. There can never be, he said, any commercial enterprise as efficient as that of the individual. No committee and no nation can be as efficient as the individual. The Lord Mayor confesses that he has neyer had the habit of saving. The real secret is that of living within one's income. "The one great thing that from my personal experience tells on success is relentless, unflagging industry." The Organiser is a good number.

PLEA FOR A UNITED SOUTH AMERICA. FOR THE PRESERVATION OF LATIN CIVILISATION. WRITING in the first December number of La Revue, M. Manuel Ugarte pleads for a Union of the South American Republics for the maintenance, of Latin civilisation.

THE NORTH AMERICAN DANGER.

The Congress which met at Buenos Aires in the summer, he writes, voluntarily refrained from discussing the problems which affect the vital interests of the Latins of America. Such questions as the future of the Antilles, the position of Nicaragua, or North American intervention in the civil affairs of certain Republics, for instance, did not receive the smallest comment. Meanwhile the United States, true to its policy, had just put its hand to an intercontinental railway which must sanction its hegemony in South America and seriously compromise the commercial interests of Europe. But the defiance of the Latin Republics has not been disarmed. A desire to check the advance of Anglo-Saxon America made itself felt even in the Congress, and since the Congress this tendency has been more and more accentuated.

THE A.B.C. ALLIANCE.

The three most important of the Latin Republics have elected new Presidents, and these men seem inclined to favour the new direction of opinion. The A.B.C. Alliance, as the Argentine-Brazil-Chili Alliance is called, is beginning to be popular from the Mexican frontier to Cape Horn. Such an alliance, which would unite nearly twenty-five millions of men, emphasises a point of view which cannot fail to interest Europe, and especially France. It is the first attempt at co-ordination before the North American danger. South America is realising that what it might lose is the possibility of retaining, from one end to the other of its territory, its character, its habits, its personality, and its future. Without exaggerating the consequences, the writer points out that this alliance, intended to check the advance of the United States in the Southern Continent and to, defend Latin thought, is but the first episode of an unequal duel between the two American continents, and he desires to draw the attention of Europe to the danger.

IS THERE A GERMAN DANGER IN BRAZIL?

In the Revue pour les Français of September 25th M. Angel Marvaud asserted that there was no such thing as a French danger in Brazil; but he thought a German danger was very possible. Yet Brazil, he said, preferred France, and was glad to have French. capital. In the Deutsche Revue of December Oliveira Lima has an article on the Germans in Brazil. does not think the German danger has as yet assumed definite shape. In the towns the Germans mingle

He

freely with the Brazilians, and in time adopt the native manners and customs and language. There are in fact prominent personalities in the political and intellectual life of Brazil with German names who do not understand a word of German. In the German colonies it is different. Here the colonists retain their own language and customs. The chief blame for this rests with the authorities, who have not introduced a proper system of education or made the Portuguese language compulsory. Had they done this at the beginning the German colonies would now be Brazilian villages.

When the content lies between 2 and 7 per cent. the steel is generally quite brittle. When, however, the upper limit is well past, a new substance emerges. Instead of a highly brittle metal, the manganese steel thus produced is a very tenacious and strong material. This is a marvellous result, but not an unexampled one. R. A. Hadfield called attention, over a score of years ago, to a similar behaviour of copper-and-tin alloys, as observed by Fesquet. When the proportion of the tin is distinctly less than that of the copper the alloy is hard and brittle. And when it is about one-half that of the copper the substance is exceedingly hard and quite brittle. But when the content of the tin begins to exceed that of the copper a change to a softer character commences. Now steel, having a manganese content of between 2 and 7 per cent., is practically worthless because of its brittleness. With certain larger percentages, however, it becomes very tough and strong.

The steel so formed combines both hardness and toughness to a high degree.

THE MANGANESE RAIL AND THE CARBON RAIL.

Where there is great friction on rails the manganese particles may be somewhat displaced, but they are still there, when the abrasive action would carry off particles of pure carbon steel, On the Boston Elevated Railway the curves are very numerous, and the wear and tear on the rails correspondingly great. A Bessemer rail was worn out in only forty-four days' service, having suffered a vertical reduction of the head amounting to 078 inch. A manganese steel rail, after 2,291 days' service, or fifty-two times as long as the Bessemer rail, had its head reduced vertically about 0'55 inch. So the manganese steel, though costing about five dollars per linear foot, was cheaper than the Bessemer rail which cost about o'39 dollar. High carbon Bessemer has, however, a life about four times that of the low-carbon variety. Manganese steel is also said to be especially serviceable in the making of safes.

IMPRESSIONS OF INDIA AND ITS RULERS.

BY AN AMERICAN IMPRESSIONIST.

IN Scribner for January Mr. Price Collier, one of the most vivacious, slapdash American journalists, who wrote an entertaining book on "England and the English from an American Point of View," begins a series of papers intended to describe what England is doing and has done for India. His first paper is chiefly devoted to his impressions on his way out, prefaced by a general dissertation as to the need for educating the American people concerning the reality of the German peril and the Japanese peril, with Mr. Price Collier's ideas on things in general.

GERMANY A WOLF VERY MUCH ON THE PROWL." Mr. Price Collier is of the school of Rudyard Kipling. He is a eulogist of war and a despiser of peace. So great is his contempt for those who say a word on behalf of poor peace that he does not even take the trouble to inform himself as to their views. It is rather curious to find him describing the man who first propounded the two-keels-to-one formula as if he were one of those blind to the realities of the international situation. The following extracts will give the reader a taste of Mr. Collier's quality :

The German peril and the Japanese peril are just as much a fact as the law of gravitation. Germany has a territory smaller than the State of Texas, and a population of over 60,000,000, and Germany can no longer feed herself. She can feed herself for about two hundred and fifty days of the year. What about the other one hundred and fifteen days? That is the German peril, and that, on a smaller scale, is the Japanese peril, and to discuss the question as to whether it exists or not is mere beating the air. What childish nonsense to call this crying "Wolf!" It is an insult to that great Power not to admit that it is a very fine, full-grown wolf-and just now very much on the prowl. That is the fundamental factor to be remembered.

There are several hungry wolves about now, and one can almost see the hungry grin when they hear those martial heroes, Stead, and Carnegie, and William Jennings Bryan, telling the sheep: "Oh, it is only the old cry of Wolf!" In spite of all that is preached by the maudlin provinciality of the day, even by respectable men like Stead, recently engaged in the ghoulish pursuit of gramophoning the dead for political purposes, or Carnegie, a fierce, and it is said unprincipled, fighter for his own hand in other days, nothing is more disastrous to civilisation than Peace. War is the essential condition of all life, whether animal, vegetable, individual, or national.

THE DUTY OF AMERICANS.

Mr. Collier has travelled extensively in all the continents, and he tells his fellow-countrymen that the Washington dictum of "no entangling alliances" is a thing of the past. We cannot play the game single-handed. We must have a partner or partners, and we must look on at the game of Eastern politics and policies, not only with interest, but with a keen desire to know which partner to choose when the time of choosing comes. The inherited prejudices and quarrels of foreign-born, or of parent-foreign-born Americans, must be swept up in the dust-pan of provincial national housewifery and thrown away, that America as a whole may profit.

than that of Germany or the United States, and while great perils threaten abroad, the Chancellor of the Exchequer cracks jokes about a £200,000,000 Budget. There is smoke arising in India and Egypt, and without India England would be but as Holland. Nevertheless, "as an admirer of John Bull, I wish to call attention to the good health and good spirits, to the cheery, damn-the-consequences optimism, which this situation illustrates."

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE EAST.

Mr. Collier says that he has had good opportunities of studying the East :—

It was the unstinted, and instructed, and experienced hospitality of the English in India and China, and of the Japanese in Japan, Korea, and Manchuria, that made my visit profitable and immensely enjoyable. Through them, and the native princes of India, I was given a universal passport, and welcomed as a chartered and privileged guest, and the burden of my debt to them for that glorious year is beyond lightening by any poor words of mine.

He is disgusted with the cuisine of the P.O. liners, and his observations on this point may be commended to the attentive consideration of the directors.

The following is the first of the conclusions at which he has arrived :

I begin to understand that all of us Occidentals are provincial, that we have over-estimated our importance, our influence, and the effect of our impact upon the Orientals. We may have conquered the Eastern world, but, apparently, we have changed it very little. Our much-vaunted civilisation does not impress them, as we think it should. They look upon our civilisation, apparently, as an attempt to make men com. fortable in a life which men ought not to love.

The subsequent papers of this impressionist artist in words will be looked forward to with interest. One thing is certain-they will not be dull reading.

Fighting a Preventable Disease.

IN an article in the Miligate Monthly for October, entitled "A Crusade Against Consumption," Mr. Douglas Herbert asserts that consumption is preventable, and that it could be stamped out in twenty to thirty years. At least this is the pronouncement of experts, and is the most hopeful message of medical science we have had for a generation. In these islands alone 40,000 people die every year of consumption, and we have in our midst a population of 250,000 to 300,000 suffering from this disease, so that the work of eradication will be no trifling matter. The tuberculosis dispensary which has been introduced aims at building up the strength of the suspected person, increasing his individual resistance, and safeguarding him from the risk of further infection. It is a British institution, and it has succeeded so well that it is being copied all over the world. The institution at Montreal which King Edward opened by pressing an electric button at Chichester was a copy of one established in Edinburgh by Dr. Philip in 1887. A tuberculosis dispensary should form part of the health department of every large urban area.

SENATOR ELIHU ROOT.
BY AN ENEMY.

IN the January number of the Cosmopolitan Mr. Alfred Henry Lewis publishes a comprehensive malediction upon Mr. Elihu Root, whom he accuses of plotting to be made Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Lewis says there is shrewd reason for thinking that President Taft will nominate him, which only' shows that Mr. Lewis's fears are sometimes unfounded. Mr. Lewis's article is remarkable as an instance of the bitterness which is generated by friction between the people and the trusts in America. Mr. Root,

according to Mr. Lewis, has always been employed by the public enemies the black-flag trusts. He has been the best of trust pilots, knowing every inch of the channel, and having, as law-making politician, assisted in dredging, widening and deepening it, he brought in safely the corsair trusts. As senator he has only a salary of £1,500 a year; as practising lawyer he made £75,000 a year. Mr. Root was born in Oneida County, in the town of Clinton, where his father was professor of mathematics. This was in 1845. At the age of twenty he was school-teacher in the little village of Rome. At twenty-two, as a full-fledged lawyer, he sat down to practise at the New York bar. One of his earliest retainers came from Boss Tweed, with six city lots as his fees, upon one of which Mr. Lewis is told that he lives to-day. From that hour onward he devoted himself to the law. Mr. Lewis accuses him of subordinating everything, even his friendships, to the making of money. He joined the Union League Club with his thoughts upon his pocket and his eye upon himself. When he was still struggling along he was discovered by Mr. Rockefeller, whom Mr. Lewis describes as first in craft, first in greed, and first in contempt of his fellow-countrymen. Then came Morgan, Harriman, and the rest. His first office came from President Arthur, who made him U.S. District Attorney for New York in 1883. In 1889 President McKinley made him Secretary for War. Mr. Roosevelt made him Secretary of State in 1905. After Mr. Roosevelt left he became Senator for New York, a post which he now holds. No one knows how rich he is. His genius for secrecy makes him like a burglar-proof safe. "He was never charged with benevolence, tenderness, charity, patriotism, or letting a dollar get away. He has one fad-money, and one ambition-to get it. He is trustworthy to the extent of his own interest; he is honest while it pays; he is a true friend to himself." If he has a weakness it is a licking, purring pleasure in being flattered. Of the great mass of humanity he knows nothing. The article, which occupies ten pages, is illustrated by no fewer than thirty-two portraits of Mr. Root, who is posed in almost every conceivable attitude.

IN East and West Mr. L. MacDermott satirically draws a sketch of the evolution of "the big tin god."

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE IN GERMANY.

MR. ELMER ROBERTS contributes an interesting article to the January number of Scribner's Magazine entitled "Experiments in Germany with Unemployment Insurance," in which he traces the development and present state of German public effort in this direction.

He mentions that the interest of the State in the question is due to a desire to keep Germans in Germany, and in order to accomplish this the Imperial policy is to make life at home as easy and endurable as possible, so that the workman, however obscure may be his position, will at least be conscious of the powerful support of the Fatherland, which will not allow him to become utterly submerged.

Insurance against unemployment is part of the business policy of many large firms, who desire to keep around them a corps of skilled workers even in times of depression, so that they may at all times be able to cope with demands made upon their plant without the constant need to engage and train new Thus, for instance, the firm of Heinrich Lanz, in Mannheim, has a capital specially set aside for the maintenance of skilled workmen during seasons of slackness.

men.

At present the further development of the principle is in the hands of various progressive industrial municipalities, the principal of which are Munich, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Cologne, Strassburg, Mayence, Lübeck, Rostock, Karlsruhe, Elberfeld, Magdeburg, Cassel, Altenburg, Quedlinburg, Erlangen and Wernigerode. The funds are usually raised by a municipal. appropriation, assisted by voluntary contributions and the premiums of the insured workmen. In all the places mentioned the scheme has worked sufficiently well to justify its continuance. In some cases there has been difficulty with the trades unions, who thought such insurance an interference with their own particular functions, but it has been found in practice that the position of the trades unions is actually strengthened. By working in conjunction with the labour exchanges the operation is simplified, and no serious objections have been encountered.

In Leipzig the work is carried on by private means, the Municipality refusing to participate, owing to the opposition of the Socialists on behalf of the trade unions, which pay out yearly in Germany about 5,000,000 marks on account of intermittent employ

ment.

Following a resolution of the Reichstag in 1902 the Imperial Bureau of Statistics was charged with the preparation of a report on insurance against unemployment, which was presented in 1906, but which, owing to the rapid progress of the municipalities, is already out of date and useless. It is believed that the Government will take definite action towards the preparation of an Imperial scheme, based on the experience of the municipalities, as soon as the present demands on the Imperial finances have relaxed.