The Socialists in

the Reichstag.

The Socialists, who are now the strongest single group in the Reichstag, had the rare satisfaction of seeing one of their number sitting for one session as president. The president originally elected had resigned, and Herr Scheidemann, one of the vice-presidents, took the chair until his successor was elected. All he had to do was to move that the House do adjourn, but the moment was enough. Mr. Cadbury is reported to have told a German Socialist that the German Socialists had killed Jingoism in Germany. If Mr. Cadbury ever said this, he must be very ill-informed as to how things stand in Germany. Without going so far as Dr. Dillon does, who maintains that the return of 110 Socialists will make no difference in the naval and military policy of Germany, one finds him much nearer the mark than Mr. Cadbury.

The Emigration

of Youngsters.

Mr. Hawkes, Canadian Emigration Commissioner, paid a hurried visit to this country last month for the purpose of inspecting what may be called the seedling crop of the future citizens of the Empire. Mr. Hawkes is a shrewd observer, and he has got the right idea in his head. Immigration is far more important to Canada than emigration is to Britain. An emigration agency in this country ships a boy across the Atlantic and is done with him. An immigration agency has to look after that boy in his new home and see that he grows up a worthy, self-supporting citizen. New Zealand and Australia are both on the look-out for likely seedlings to transplant to the dominions across the seas. It will be well if our local educational authorities take more pains in familiarising the boys and girls under their care with the opportunities and duties which lie before the emigrant to the Colonies.

Lord Spencer, who appointed his

"Dear Old Charlie" college friend, Mr. Charles BrookTriumphant. field, to be Examiner of Plays and virtual censor of the morals of the

London stage, has resigned. He has been succeeded by Lord Sandhurst, whose mother was one of the first women who sat on the London County Council. Dear Old Charlie" has been revived by Mr. Hawtrey, and is nightly delighting London audiences, who chuckle sympathetic

ally at the glorification of a double adultery without passion, and rub their hands with delight at the spectacle of trusting husbands being betrayed by their"friend." "Dear Old Charlie," meantime, continues to exercise his duties. A promising attempt was made to call

the attention of His Majesty to the kind of play the Censor of Plays placed on the stage. But it miscarried. The memorial fell into the hands of men whose zeal against the institution of the Censorship has eaten them up. Instead of getting signatures to the short and simple memorial to the Crown which Mr. Archer suggested, they produced a column-long rechauffé of the arguments against any censorship. This immediately brought about the signing of a counter-memorial.

Between the two memorials

nothing will be done. Instead of concentrating upon the one definite point on which, with the exception of the Daily Mail, everyone was agreed, they raised the old issue, with the same old result. The King ought to go to see "Dear Old Charlie," and form his judgment as to the fitness of its author to be the keeper of his conscience as to the morals of the stage.

carving of the

human body a wonderfully safe means of restoring it to health. Such marvels have been wrought by his aid as to set men dreaming of the time when surgery will be employed as readily and as fearlessly to remove internal excrescences and superfluities

as we now use the art of the barber and the manicurist to remove redundant hair and nails.

Dr. Fairbairn was far and away the foremost constructive theologian of the non-sacerdotal section of British Christendom. He brought the Free Churches out of the shadow of Agnosticism and of a merely

literary religion. His glowing faith freed them from the dread of free criticism, and bridged over the chasm of negativism into which so many had fallen, making the way easy from the positive belief of the past to the positive faith of the future. He stripped the science of comparative religion of its supposed perils, and showed it to be an ally of the Gospel. His most overt and obvious achievement was the founding of Mansfield College at Oxford; his most vital was the fusing of science and religion, of social and personal evangelism in the lives of his followers. The rapidity with which public

Crusade Against opinion is setting in the direction of freeing the richest country on

Poverty.

this side of the globe from the shame and pain of starving the poor is shown on many sides and in the highest quarters. The Chancellor of the Exchequer long ago proclaimed his jehad against poverty. But he is Mr. Lloyd George : and Englishmen make liberal discount for Welsh enthusiasm. Only last week, however, the Prime Minister, with all the authority of his position as head of the Government, and with the utmost emphasis, pledged himself to give effect to the "tremendous principle" of "a reasonable minimum wage" for all underground workers. Still, Mr. Asquith may be said to have spoken under the dire dread of a national paralysis. Perhaps most significant of all, as a proof of the movement of the most staid, cautious, and conservative elements in our national life, was the deliverance of the Primate, made in the course of his quadrennial Charge in Canterbury Cathedral. The Archbishop said :

He was prepared quite deliberately to express his own belief that, given a little time, say a couple of generations, for bringing about the change, real poverty of the extreme sort, crushing, degrading poverty, ought to be, and in a Christian land like ours might be, practically abolished altogether. He did not believe that anything short of that would satisfy even elementarily the conditions of Christian brotherhood. Different reformers and guides would have their own ways of trying to lead them to that result. He could see no obvious and simple road. But that there was a road, and a Christian road, he was sure. That it could be found, and that by prayer and pains and perseverance it would be found, he had no doubt at all. It was the task of workers in the Church of God to foster the growth of such a spirit as would make these results certain to promote such a sense of responsible brotherhood in the Church of Christ on earth that men should see that the solution, by whatever pathway reached, was imperative and inevitable. Be that their resolve and prayer. Could they doubt that it was the Will of God? Could they doubt that it was the duty of His Church on earth to set it forward?

When an Archbishop of Canterbury declares for the abolition of poverty in a couple of generations, as an elementary condition of Christian brotherhood, the end of destitution cannot be very far off.

RALPH NORMAN ANGELL LANE is the name that was given to him by his godparents in baptism. But Norman Angell is the part of his name by which he has made himself known to the public. Nobody knows Ralph Lane save the newspaper world of Paris and his colleagues in Carmelite House, where he long ago made a reputation for himself as one of the ablest newspaper managers who ever took office in Lord Northcliffe's service. It is somewhat odd that Norman Angell should come out of the Daily Mail office, but good things

wild countries), without an ounce of animal magnetism to spare for any public meeting. Yet he holds his audiences. He is going to Germany to preach his gospel there, and everyone must wish him God-speed. For it is a gospel indeed of good tidings of great joy. It is an old gospel in a sense. For it is but a reiteration of the old saying that we are "all members one of another." But whereas the old saying is often limited to the city or the commonwealth, Norman Angell demonstrates that it is equally true when applied

to the whole civilised world.

I first met Norman Angell in Paris, when I was on my way to Constantinople, but I interviewed him last month in London at the Salisbury Hotel. He was, as usual, quiet in manner, lucid in speech, and perfectly certain of his position.

"People constantly misrepresent me," he said cheerfully. "They assert that I have declared war to be henceforth impossible. In presence of the records of contemporary history it is inconceivable that I could make such an assertion. What I have asserted, and not only asserted but demonstrated, is that war is a game which is no longer worth the candle, which in the nature of things must miss its aim, futile because when you have achieved your victory the present organisation of the world will prevent your turning it to account. In former times you could make war pay. The Norsemen who harried our coasts found it a profitable operation. That day is past. No one can make war pay nowadays. It is an illusion that conquest means profit, or that you can increase your wealth by annexing territory. When that fact is recognised war will die out, as religious persecution has died out."

of Bankers. For bankers need no convincing as to the extent to which civilisation is built on credit, and that the very existence of modern society facilitates international peace.

In appearance Norman Angell resembles the Apostle Paul, whose personal presence is said to have been in marked contrast to the weighty and powerful productions of his pen. He is short of stature, delicate in constitution, physically far from robust (though he has lived a rough life on the frontier and travelled in

We all agree," I said; "but I think you slightly overstate your case in one direction, and understate it

Do you

think she could ? "

Certainly she could. For instance, she need impose no tribute, levy no indemnity, annex no territory. All that she need do would be to compel Britain to place the administration and control of the British Navy exclusively in German hands. They need not interfere with our self-government. They would man, control, and command the Navy, and we would pay just the same Naval Estimates as before. Nay, they might even promise to save us twenty millions a year in the cost of the Navy, since the old Anglo-German rivalry would be extinct. They could disband their own navy, and command the seas with one-half of the British fleet. Each nation would be saved twenty millions a year; and Germany would be master alike of sea and of land."

"I would like to put on my considering cap," said Norman Angell, "before fully answering that objection. But practically it amounts to nothing. You cannot postulate the costless conquest of Britain, and the attempt at conquest would cost Germany more than, in your hypothesis, she would save by annexing our fleet. Besides, the gain of a reduction of estimates might be brought about more simply by a friendly agreement without a war."

And what may that be?"

The absolute certainty that no war between the two Triples could ever be fought to a finish by naval or military weapons. The one dominating factor of the fate of nations is not the Sword; it is the Stomach. How long do you think Germany could have kept on the war if it had broken out last midsummer?"

One of the leading bankers was asked that question the other evening," said Norman Angell. "He replied, 'Not longer than a month.' He was speaking solely as a financier."

The financial crash will be bad, but it is the secondary effects of the collapse of credit which will be decisive. Germany, like Britain, lives from hand to mouth. She has now twenty millions more people to

In

feed than she had in 1871. These people are fed from abroad. They live from hand to mouth. Their daily bread depends upon the uninterrupted working of the vast complex machinery of modern commerce. olden times every community was a self-contained, self-sustained, self-feeding unit. That day is gone for ever. We live from hand to mouth to such an extent that a two-days' railway strike brought our industrial North Country towns within sight of famine."

"There are countries which feed themselves." "Yes. In Russia there is food enough for her millions. Turkey also, and sparsely-peopled countries need not starve, but if a densely-peopled industrial community goes to war it cuts its own throat."

"Then, if war broke out between the Triples, what do you think would happen?"

"A cataclysm, in which society would temporarily disappear a catastrophe, in which all thought of carrying on war against the foreigner would be effaced by the far more pressing necessity of finding rations for starving millions. The twenty additional millions of Germans, instead of being an added strength, are so many useless mouths that would demand food, and no food would be forthcoming. The same thing would happen to us if we lost command of the sea."

"I think there is a good deal in what you say," said Mr. Norman Angell, "but even my moderate understatement, as you call it, has penetrated far and wide. My little book has been translated into many languages, and I hear echoes of its doctrine in quarters where the book itself is unknown."

"Lord Esher told me the other day," I replied, "that he was one of the first to recognise the immense cogency of your argument. He bought copies of your book and sent them to half the sovereigns and statesmen of Europe."

"I have never seen Lord Esher," said Norman Angell, "though I owe him very much. He wrote. suggesting that I should expand my argument, as he believed that it would have more influence than any book since Seeley published his Expansion of England.""

Thinking over your thesis," I said, "suggests to me that modern civilised society is like a city built upon a frozen lake. If a thaw comes the whole city will descend into the depths. Our credit system, our hand-to-mouth system, are the foundations of our industrial civilisation. They presuppose as a condition precedent a state of uninterrupted peace. When war comes the whole fabric will collapse."

"Yes," said Norman Angell, "and the notion of keeping the thing going by armaments is as absurd as if the builders of your city on ice were to try to keep off a thaw by surrounding it with walls, which not only are powerless to prevent a thaw, but increase the pressure on the ice when the frost gives."

WHEN the Russian visit was over I had a pleasant talk over the tea-table in the House of Commons with Sir Albert Spicer, M.P., former president of the London Chamber of Commerce, who was one of the twentynine selected guests who had enjoyed the hospitality of the Russians at St. Petersburg and Moscow.

Sir Albert had enjoyed his visit. That, at least, was obvious. So, he said, had all the other visitors. They had had a royal time and an Imperial welcome. But what impressed me more than anything else," said Sir Albert," was the universality of the enthusiasm

huge mistake if the visit had not taken place; and from we have now seen, it would have been a great disappointment to a large number of the Russian people, including peasants, working men and students, if we had not gone. Everywhere and by everybody our presence was hailed with evidence of the most friendly feeling; wherever the train stopped it was the same. If it is said, 'Oh! the reception was engineered,' all I can say is that there was overwhelming evidence from the receptions at all sorts of places that such a thing was impossible."

"What impressed you most?"

What I have just told you. The sentiment of friendliness, the desire to clasp hands with the nation which stands for liberty and progress. After that I was most impressed with the vast, almost immeasurable material wealth of that enormous Empire. From the Baltic to Behrings Straits there stretches an enormous expanse of territory, much of which, I gathered, is still undeveloped."

"Sir Robert Morier," I observed, "used to say that Siberia would be to the twentieth century what the Western States of America were to the nineteenth." "As to developing commercial relations, I had to respond to the Commerce Dinner in St. Petersburg,