A paragraph from the Introduction will serve to show the nature of the treatise as well as a long dissertation: "First, to consider the deep and enjoyable meaning of Oriental floor-coverings; second, to throw light upon the life and work of the weavers; third, to dispel so far as it lies within the power of the author, the obscurity in which the subject has hitherto been involved, and place the reader in possession of such information regarding the rugs, both genuine and spurious, now generally offered for sale in American markets, as shall, in a measure at least, deliver him from the mercy of the decorator, the salesman and the auctioneer; fourth, to emphasize the superiority of the old vegetable dyes, the true Oriental coloring; finally to give an idea of what constitutes true value, of the comparative worth of the various Oriental weavings, and the means of distinguishing them."

By no means the least service that Mr. Mumford has performed is the exposure of the "doctoring" of rugs and the various means employed by the unscrupulous, both in this country and in the East, to deceive the unknowing. The market today is glutted, and has been for years, with so-called "washed" or treated Kirmans, Kazaks, Samarkands, Bokharas, Yuruks, Irans, Kirs-Shehrs, and in fact almost every known species and variety; as it is filled to overflowing with new silk reproductions of old Ghiordes, and Iran, as well as European and American patterns, for which enormous sums are demanded and obtained. It is quite unnecessary to state that a fabric which has been chemically treated is necessarily injured, and is absolutely without value to the virtuoso, any more than a glass diamond or a spurious "precious stone." Neither does he care for the modern silk production at any price.

Of especial interest are the chapters on design and dyes, and Turkish and Persian

fabrics. Everyone should have a hobby, it has been truly said. There is none more fascinating than a study of Oriental rugs, though it is somewhat late in the day for collecting these, as it is for old Chinese self-colors, or even historical old blue and white Staffordshire, unless one be possessed of ample means and still more ample knowledge. But as Thackeray has said about dining, "Next to eating good dinners is to read about them," so one may say with reference to enjoying the subject under consideration with Mr. Mumford as its exponent. He has conducted the reader through a garden of glowing colors and strange flowers, and given him peeps of many a hidden scene beyond the trodden paths of the plaisance and parterre.

It is true we miss among the plates examples of the fine old Kulah and Konieh prayers, a specimen of a really grand old Bergamo, more of the peerless Ghiordes with their flashing prayer panels, pendant mosque lamps, and intricate floral figurings, an example of a glossy Turkish pile made to simulate a tiger's pelt, a Persian hunting-carpet, and an inch-thick satiny product of Sarak resplendent in its gorgeous reds and striking medallions. But these are minor criticisms-one cannot have all, especially in the case of rugs whose variety is as great as the stars in the Milky Way; and the reader may be safely left to the painstaking work of Mr. Mumford, the numerous fine representations of rugs in colors, and the charming letter-press in which the treatise is presented.

Finally, it is impossible within the restricted space at command, to bestow more than a cursory glance on a volume which must at once and for a long period become a standard authority on the subject of which it treats so wisely, entertainingly and conscientiously.

George H. Ellwanger.

THIS

HIS book in the main is a reproduction, in one volume, of papers previously printed in Harper's and the North American Review. Therefore, to that large class of observers and students who habitually read everything that falls from Captain Mahan's pen wherever they can find it, the book presents nothing intrinsically new, but finds its special merit as a permanent assembling, for convenient reference, of masterly papers which it had been pity to leave disjointed in the pages of evanescent magazines.

At the outset Captain Mahan, in a vein of contempt that might seem harsh, were it less deserved, brushes aside the "bogey" of so-called "Imperialism." Men who, equally with himself, have seen throughout the discussion, that the existing attitude of the United States with respect to territorial questions is simply a consistent projection, at the end of the statecraft that blazed the way for its greatness at the beginning of the nineteenth century, still have to thank Captain Mahan for his luminous exposition of their own views. The 66 Anti-Imperialists," the "Little Americans," we have always with us; but they are no more virulent now than they were in 1804, or than when Tom Corwin conjured the Mexicans in 1846 to "welcome our soldiers with bloody hands to hospitable graves;" and by the same token, their virulence is as impotent now as it was then.

At all events, one finds gratulation in the fact that the "Anti-expansion" or "Little American" creed which had an Adams for its prophet in 1804, has no greater figure than in 1900 a Schurz for its high priest.

THE PROBLEM OF ASIA AND ITS EFFECT UPON INTERNATIONAL POLITICS. By A. T. Mahan, Captain United States Navy. Little, Brown & Co., 8vo, $2.00.

Tersely-if almost roughly-disposing of such parasites upon the body politic, Captain Mahan proceeds to survey the logical relation and weight of the United States as a world power with particular reference to potential bearing upon the Problem of Asia. Necessarily the United States must be viewed as a secondary factor or as a correlative element in this problem. The prime factors and major elements are England and Russia; one the embodiment of Sea Power and the other the embodiment of Land Power as directly applicable to the conditions involved.

Around these two central figures Captain Mahan groups the other world powers, in secondary capacities. Generally speaking, he assigns the United States and Germany to the side of England, and France to the side of Russia in his grouping of potentials. The importance, in a local sense, which he inferentially ascribes to Japan-also on the side of Englandmay be debatable; unless we view Japan as wholly subsidiary, in the financial sense at least, to the Western Powers with whom he associates her.

Granting, however, for the sake of brevity, the logic of Captain Manhan's assignment of factors, we arrive immediately at his subtle analysis of the potentialities and possibilities of Land Power and Sea Power, respectively, in the operations by which the problem of Asia is to be solved.

In this analysis one traces an undertow of what might be termed Anglophilism, though it is free from the accompaniment of Russophobia common in such discussions. In fact, Captain Mahan's leaning to the side of England seems due rather to his noted prepossession in favor of the grandeur of Sea Power itself, in

the historical abstract, than to national or racial bias. All that he says concerning the greater mobility, the broader strategical scope, and the superior moral potentiality of Sea Power as compared with Land Power when both converge upon a focus of action far distant from the base of either, will be instantly admitted by anyone who knows what the words practically mean.

All the elements of the art of war enter into this problem, whether we consider war-strength in its primary function as an agent of compulsion or of conquest, or in its secondary though no less important office as a moral agent at the back of diplomacy and statecraft. As Captain Mahan points out, the situation between England and Russia, viewed as prime factors in the Problem of Asia, is that of an overwhelming Sea Power exerted over, say, twelve thousand miles of ocean routes and a colossal Land Power operating over, say, five thousand miles of railway. The Land Power has the advantage in distance and in time. But its routes must be first built and then maintained at vast expense, and their capacities for grand strategy and logistics are bounded not only by supply of rolling stock but also by traffic-limits of tracks. The ocean-routes, on the contrary, are already built, upkeep themselves, and their capacities of transit are limited only by the ability of the Sea Power itself to build ships. In our own experience we have seen that, of the total cost of throwing a force into the Philippines and of supplying it there, by far the major part is incurred in assembling the troops and material by land at San Francisco or New York, and a comparatively minor part in transparting them thence by sea so far as mere transit is concerned.

With more space at command the task of reviewing Captain Mahan's analysis in minuter detail would be captivating. But under present conditions we must be con

tent to say that his book affords exposition of the facts and deduction of the logic of current history that are most opportune; not so much for their military instructiveness as for the undertone they carry of reminder to our people of the duties and responsibilities which circumstances have forced upon them, and of warning as to the consequences that hesitancy even-not to speak of failure to meet them firmly, grasp them broadly, and deal with them. decisively, must entail upon our national future. The fact that no such hesitancy -much less such failure-is possible in view of the lately expressed temper of our people by no means reduces the intrinsic value of Captain Mahan's work. Indeed, it must to his further credit be said that when he wrote the views and conclusions now before us, the verdict of the people. was yet in the future, and what is history now had some of the aspects of prophecy then.

Captain Mahan's supplementary chapter on the "Transvaal Dispute" is germane to the Problem of Asia only in the sense that whatever conduces to the solidarity of the British Empire must to the extent of its importance in that respect weigh favorably in any scale of Asiatic struggle. His attitude upon the merits of that dispute and upon the results of the war it brought on will be approved by that class of catholic thinkers who perceive and bow to the tendency of our time which is towards the political solidarity and territorial integrity of great and responsible powers, and against the pretensions or even the perpetuity of weak, irresponsible and effete states, whether small monarchies or fantastic oligarchies, called -or one might almost say masquerading as

harmless screams, or in twisting from time to time the not over-sensitive tail of the British Lion.

Captain Mahan's Problem of Asia is a book that should find place not only in the

libraries of students, but also on the desks of men of affairs who aim to keep abreast of the greater events and au courant with the broader concerns of our time. Augustus C. Buell.

THE

HE career of Henry George will long be regarded as an interesting and pathetic episode in the recent history of humanity. It is pathetic because, notwithstanding its laboriousness and its hopefulness, it remains only an episode. It might have been supposed that Henry George's activity, courage and originality of thought would have made a more lasting impression on his time. He was the propagator of a novel doctrine, the apostle of a new gospel, the ardent defender of what he conceived to be the birthright of mankind; yet, as the generations go and come, it is likely that his will be regarded as the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

The first thirty years of Henry George's life were spent in frequent transitions. from a ship's forecastle to a printer's case. To those who knew him well he gave promise of ultimate success as a public writer; it appeared that his mind, when ripened by experience, might develop some novel form of philosophy; he was ever a thinker. He was thirty years old when the sharp contrast of deep poverty and great wealth appealed to his sensitive nature as unjust and radically wrong. Why so vast a difference in the conditions of the very poor and the very rich should exist in a well-ordered state of human society was to him like the riddle of the

THE LIFE OF HENRY GEORGE. By his son, Henry George, Jr. With portraits. Doubleday & McClure Co., 8vo, $2.50 net,

sphinx. Himself poor and often ground by severe privations, he was keenly alive to the apparent injustice of these inequalities in the relative conditions of mankind. After two years of anxious cogitation, it came to him "like a flash of light” that the root of this world-wide evil was private ownership in land. To correct this evil, to set right the times that had been out of joint these six thousand years, was the divine call to Henry George. Like Saul of Tarsus, journeying to Damascus, he had been overtaken by a heavenly vision, to which, loyal son of truth that he was, he could not be disobedient. Henceforth he must preach the gospel of universal ownership in land.

He had made several tentative essays in the domains of moral science and political economy; and at the age of thirtyeight he began the book on which his title to fame chiefly rests-" Progress and Poverty." This work, constructed with much skill and labor, embodies the Georgian philosophy; it is the Alpha and Omega of the Georgian gospel. Incidentally, George was a disseminator of other radical ideas; he advocated the abolition of tariffs and custom-houses and the adoption of absolute free trade; he favored a modification of land laws irrespective of the fundamental theory that private ownership in land is altogether vicious; and to his efforts to introduce into this country the so-called Australian ballot our freedom from corrupt practices at the

ballot-box is chiefly due. But his days and nights were given to the propagation of his new philosophy.

Surely, never was a man more thoroughly devoted to a life-work than this man. Unselfish, generous and intent on making sacrifice for the betterment of the condition of mankind, he took no thought for himself, nor for the frail body which he was ready to waste in the struggle for the furtherance of what he conceived to be the cause of truth. His famous book was sold by the millions of copies; but the receipts from these sales he regarded with complacency only because they indicated a further spread of his gospel and gave him means to sow yet wider the seed of his thought. Again and again he was induced to ask office at the hands of the people; but he never consented to take this attitude except when he was persuaded that official station would enhance

his influence as a preacher of righteousness in the disposition of lands. Of a buoyant temperament, he saw in the enthusiasm which his alluring theories evoked and his attractive personal qualities kindled, the indications of the dawning of that better day for whose coming he watched and waited. Often it happened that warmth of welcome in foreign lands and curiosity to see and hear him appeared to him an assurance that the day had really come at last. Again and again he said: "The revolution has started. It cannot be hindered. We are no longer necessary to its ultimate success." With some such feeling as this, we may suppose, he went into his last political canvass, when, in 1897, he consented, for a second time, to be a candidate for the office of mayor of the city of New York. In a little knot of his friends and disciples the expediency of his accepting the nomination was discussed; and George's only part in the debate was to cut short as ir relevant all reference to his failing health.

He believed that even if he died in the fight, or if killed by the harassments of the office, that event might inure to the advancement of the sacred cause. To him the truth as he saw it was dearer than life, dearer than the spoils of office or the

gauds of power.

gauds of power. He might have made his own the lines of Michael Barry: "For whether on the scaffold high, Or in the battle's van,

The fittest place for man to die

Is where he dies for man."

In this temper he went into the campaign and died with his armor on. It had been agreed that he should make only four or five addresses during the canvass. With his usual impulsiveness, he soon threw discretion to the winds and made four or five speeches every night. A career that might have been prolonged for years of useful activity was cut short on the eve of an election. His life-drama ended tragically; his mission was closed, leaving his revolution suspended in the air.

Henry George's character was simplicity itself; he was only ambitious to have a hand in securing what he believed to be the rights of the people; he shunned all appearance of lionizing; flattery nauseated him, and honest praise was accepted only as a tribute to the power of the truth he preached. Of a temperament naturally sanguine, he regarded as solid and real an Arcadian theory of life in which other men saw only an iridescent dream. His industry was incessant, and whatever may become of his scheme concerning land ownership, the work of his pen remains a part of the literature of his native land. His biography, written by his son, is a monument of filial piety and affection. It is an elaborate and systematic work. sparing no detail of private life, however trivial; and it is commended to the study of all who would gain something from a story of nobility of purpose and singleness of aim in life. Noah Brooks.