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which Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury could never allege. To deliver Armenia meant a Russian occupation of Armenia, which, with the AngloTurkish Convention still signed and sealed by the continuous occupation of Cyprus, meant risk of war with England, certainty of war with the Turks, and probably elsewhere. The path of coercion being thus barred, the only other roal was that of coaxing the Sultan so as to use his authority for checking the outburst of Moslem fanaticism.

There may at least this be said for his policy, that it is that which successive English Governments doggedly adhered to for half a century. That there is an Armenian question to-day is due to England's action in 1878. Prince Lobanoff but adopted England's methods to minimise the consequence of England's crime. The excuse may be unavailing bcfore the Great White Throne, but it ought at least to have saved some Eng

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are said to have perished in the streets of the capital, under the very guns of the guardships, was sensational enough for a penny dreadful. A band of twenty-five Armenians, armed with revolvers and dynamite, quietly strolled into the premises of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, exploded a bomb, fired their revolvers, and having driven some of the clerks from the Bank, imprisoned forty others and two directors as hostages, while they planted a dynamite-mine in the cellar, and swore they would blow the Bank into smithereens if

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THE SITE OF THE RIOTS AND MASSACRES AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

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Bank is the financial heart of the Turkish Empire, and there was something magnificent in the daring which delivered it over for several hours to these dyna mitards of Armenian despair. The revolutionary leaders wounded nobody, neither did they steal a piastre. It was a protest they wanted to make, like the American Petition in Boots, only one better

suited to the latitude of the Bosphorus.

The Massacres.

For several hours the desperadoes held the Bank. The troops outside blazed away at the windows, killing promiscuously any one whom they could sight; but the dynamite in the cellar kept the soldiers at bay. After a time the sensational advertisement having scared the Sultan and given a thrill to all Europe, the daring conspirators offered to retreat if they were secured a safe conduct out of Turkey. Sir Edgar Vincent, negotiating under the revolvers of the Revolutionists, guaranteed their safety, and all that were left of them were conducted to Sir Edgar's

yacht.

WORLD

was the Arme

So far as they were concerned, their enterprise had been brilliantly successful. But they had forgotten that every Armenian in Constantinople was as a hostage in the hands of a fanatical and savage mob. No sooner dynamite removed than the reprisals began. nians were clubbed to death at sight, and left in bloody heaps where they fell. Day after day the hideous carnage went on, until at last the Ambassadors computed the slain at from 2,000 to 5,000 men. The women and children were spared, apparently by order, although there was at least one shocking exception to this rule. Shuddering bystanders by the side of these disembowelled and skull-smashed victims of Turkish fanaticism wondered whether Prince Lobanoff's arrangement with Austria included a license in perpetuity for such atrocities as these. And lo! even as they wondered, the Angel of Death summoned Prince Lobanoff into another world.

The Use

Crete.

Before the sudden effervescence of Armeof nian despair, edged with dynamite, and Turkish savagery armed with long white clubs, provided with careful forethought in advance by the authorities, the news from the East had been improving. England had checkmated Russia's proposal to draw a ring-fence round Crete, within which the Turk was to be allowed a free hand. All the nonsense talked about the Foreign Enlistment Act in our press did not obscure for a moment the central fact of the situation-that the Greeks of the kingdom were morally bound to do what men can do to help their unfortunate kinsmen of the island struggling, and rightly struggling, to be free. Therefore we refused to enforce the International Foreign Enlistment Act suggested by Russia and Germany, and insisted that the Dr. Jims of Hellas should have a fair chance in Crete. Such a jewel is consistency, that no one applauded this decision more heartily than those who have been foremost in execrating the raid that ended at Doornkop as if it were "the greatest crime of the century." Foiled in the attempt to maintain peace by providing for the speedy suffocation of the victim, the Powers consented to try the other tack by putting restraint upon his assailant. Here it is believed Lord Salisbury took the initiative, and it was announced with a pardonable flourish of trumpets that the Powers had agreed, that the Sultan had given way, that Crete is henceforth to be a semiautonomous province under a Governor virtually appointed by the Powers. We are all very glad to

hear it. But we rejoice with reservations, if not with trembling, and wait to see whether the Sultan has actually submitted to permit Crete to be wrenched from his fangs.

The Storm

The East Coast of Africa, from Cairo Band of to the Cape, has been in unrest this East Africa. summer. In the Soudan the rise of the Nile has at last rendered an immediate advance on Dongola possible. Dongola possible. The river steamers have arrived safely, and the short railway would have been in working order, but for a deluge of rain that sponged out twelve miles of the permanent way, as a schoolboy effaces the figures on his slate. Before the end of this month we may expect to hear that the frontier of civilisation has advanced on powder-carts to to the southern boundary of Dongola, where it is hoped it will be ready for a further lift southward as far as Khartoum. On the Red Sea littoral no settlement has been arrived at between the Abyssinians and the Italians. It is only hoped that the establishment of better relations between Rome and St. Petersburg-of which the betrothal of the Prince of Naples and the Princess of Montenegro is the outward and visible sign-may ere long put a period to the troubles of Erythræa.

Tolice Duty

Zanzibar.

The sudden death of the late Sultan at Halim of Zanzibar, which occurred on August 26th, gave the signal for one of those outbreaks of personal ambition which it is necessary to curb by the stern persuasion of shot and shell. A nephew of the deceased Prince, Khalid by name, seized the palace and proclaimed himself Sultan of Zanzibar without so much as saying, "By your leave," to the Power which is Lord Paramount of Zanzibar. Indeed, he went further, and declared by the forcible eloquence of military and naval preparations that he meant to assert his pretensions despite our protests. Now, as we are responsible for Zanzibar, and all its Sultans reign by virtue of our permission, it became necessary to reduce this rebellious upstart to submission. notice was given him; ample time of grace was afforded him for surrender, and then the gunboats opened fire on the palace. The Sultan replied both from his one man-of-war, the converted merchant steamer Glasgow, and from the mainland. Whereupon, as with a tap of his finger, the British commander sent the Glasgow to the bottom, and continued to shell the palace. At last the Pretender could stand it no longer. His palace was in flaming ruins. Five hundred of his misguided

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followers were killed or wounded. So he took refuge in the German Consulate, and our Bluejackets were landed, to swab up the mess, put out the fire, and establish as the rightful heir on the vacant throne Hamoud, the brother of the late Sultan. This sudden and violent eruption of wilfulness cost us one man wounded. Civilisation, in executing her mission of maintaining order among the semi-civilised, is at last becoming invulnerable, at least within range of deep water.

The Anarchy

in

Further south in this storm belt the French are discovering that in Madagascar their work is but begun. The island, say Madagascar. the most recent visitors, is in a condition of anarchy from one end to the other. The French rule in the capital and in a few large towns. But outside the range of their batteries their authority does not exist. The aboriginal elements of Malagasy savagery, the haters of foreigners, the haters of missionaries, and the disbanded troops of the Queen's army have united in a sort of patriotic heathen brigandage, and are levying a war of massacre and pillage all over the island. They have already burnt some three hundred or four hundred churches, and slain many church officials. Freethinking Frenchmen. will not feel many pangs over this Malagasy

The Bicycle in

Uganda.

[August 1, 1896.

variant upon the anticlerical campaign which commends itself to the Third Republic, but the success of this heathen Jacquerie in their new possession will sooner or later compel them to undertake in serious earnest the subjugation of the country. At present the robber bands have it all their own way. Suddenly emerging from a forest, they surround a Christian village and summon the inhabitants to choose between submission and death. In either case its worldly goods are put at the disposition of the marauders. The old native administration has been destroyed, and the French have so far put nothing in its place.

Inland the Germans in their sphere of influence are having no little trouble as the result of Major Lothaire's unpunished. murder of Stokes. The news of that abominable outrage upon the rudimentary laws of white civilisation in Central Africa led at once to an organised attack upon the German and French settlements on the Lake. After some inevitable massacre, three German expeditions were despatched against the lawless chiefs. The ringleader was killed, his ally was banished, and peace reigns once more in the German possessions. From Uganda the news is all of peace and progress under the British flag. Civilisation, in fact, is invading Uganda, not in its powder-cart, but in a brougham for King M'Wanga, dog-carts for his officials, and the ubiquitous bicycle for the British residents. The natives are even said to be building two-storied houses with glass windows for their chiefs in place of their old grass huts, while the Prime Minister has furnished his office with tables, chairs, stationery cases, and the like. All this veneer may peel off suddenly some day, but for the present it testifies eloquently to the surface tranquillity which has followed our advent.

Mr. Rhodes in the

Further south, in Matabeleland, the rising is officially reputed to be supMatoppos. pressed. The closing scene of their rebellion was the most picturesque incident recently. recorded in South Africa. Mr. Rhodes, who was unarmed, with but three attendants, entered the stronghold of the Matebele Indunas in the Matoppo hills, and asked them whether they were for peace or war. They had been debating in secret what should be done. They were afraid to come into the open for fear of the white troops, but they had sent word they would like to see Mr. Colenbrander and Mr. Rhodes. When Mr. Rhodes arrived, they raised a white flag and ushered him and his companions into the semicircle, where for four hours they discussed the questions at issue. At last the Chief Secombo arose and laid a gun and assegai at the feet of Mr. Rhodes. All the other chiefs did the same. "We submit,"

they said. "We trust you, Mr. Rhodes, for you have trusted us. You have come into our stronghold unarmed. If you had known our troubles, we should never have been forced to rise. If Mr. Rhodes will stay and care for us we will not fight." So ended the palaver, and with it the war. A prominent Government official, who Secombo declared was only fit to keep a canteen in the Transvaal, was complained of, and the whole Matabele council prayed for his banishment. They also complained of their ill

treatment at the hands of the From the Cape Times.] native police. Mr. Rhodes replied

that the official had gone south, and was no longer in Government employ. As for the native police, its appointment had been a mistake and it was now disbanded. But the Matabele, whatever their grievances, ought not to have massacred Women and children. Ultimately, the terms of surrender were arrived at, and Mr. Rhodes, riding back, brought news of peace to Bulawayo. Note that Mr. Rhodes has no official status. He is not even a managing director of the Company. But to the Matabele he counts for more than all the officials put together. For Mr. Rhodes,

stripped to his shirt, when face to face with the aboriginal forces of the situation, is more than High Commissioners and great functionaries in all the bravery of cocked hats and Letters Patent.

Kruger

The position of affairs in the Transvaal and his shows little or no improvement. The Counsellers. Boers are importing material of war in hundreds of tons from France and Germany, and there is no indication of any intention on the part of the landed oligarchy to readjust their old institutions to the necessities of the new situation. The two incorruptible patriots who refused even at Mr. Chamberlain's solicitations to bow the knee to the Baal of the hour are still kept under lock and key. Mr. Chamberlain himself is taking a mournful holiday in the United States, pursued across the Atlantic by the menacing shadow of the coming inquiry. In South Africa the Rev. John Mackenzie, from his retreat at Hankey, has addressed President Kruger a letter such as an old prophet of Israel might have written to one of the kings of Samaria. Mr. Mackenzie appeals to President Kruger in his own theological dialect. to do justice to the Uitlanders and so to lay the foundation of a united community. But when the President is asked to throw away "all prejudice and all evil counsel" he naturally thinks of Dr. Leyds, and the odds are heavy that of him as of many a famous ruler in times past it will be said, "he [August 5, 1896. is joined to his idols, let him alone." Note in this connection a curious prophecy made in Natal last month to the effect that the President's career will come to a violent end in the month of December-his murderer, it is predicted, being a Dutchman. Threatened men live long, and the publication of this prophecy, which was at once communicated to President Kruger, will probably be the best means of preventing its realisation.

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Government to restore the C. D. Acts for the benefit of the Indian It is a familiar conspiracy army. which, like an old cobra, though scotched, has not been killed. Lord George Hamilton seems to hanker after that forbidden fruit, and in the Recess it is understood that an attempt will be made by means of cooked statistics to prove that a sanitary sanitary millennium will be attained when Her Majesty provides one medically-certified native subject of hers and sister of ours as the communal wife of each score or hundred soldiers maintained in India. But the Unionist Administration will hardly venture to undertake the official championship of the sacred cause of State-patronised prostitution-especially when the official scribes of the conspiracy do not even pretend there was an increase of admissions to the hospitals of more than 6 per 1,000, or less than one per cent., from that cause in 1895. It would save the AngloIndian doctors much labour if they would understand that "No Thoroughfare" has been posted up once for all by the British public across the road which they persist in trying to re-open.

Royal

Vaccination.

The zealots of sanitation who would The immolate with indifference the principle Commission of liberty and the obligations of morality. on for the off-chance of an infinitesimal improvement in the mortality returns, have just received a damaging blow from the report of the Vaccination Commission. Fifteen men-with never a woman among them, after the usual non-human custom in this country-were appointed seven years ago to inquire into the working of the Vaccination Acts. Of the fifteen at least ten were confirmed advocates of vaccination. The doctors exultingly predicted that the AntiVaccinationists would find that they were hoist with their own petard, and that a Report strongly recommending compulsory vaccination and re-vaccination might confidently be expected. The Royal Commission reported last month, but not in that sense. While strongly affirming the advantages of vaccination, they unanimously condemn the present practice of sending to gaol parents who have conscientious objections to the vaccination of their children, or even of subjecting them to fines for non-compliance with the Act. And they do this in the interest of vaccination itself. "When the law imposes a duty on parents, the performance of which they honestly, however erroneously, regard as seriously prejudicial to their children, the very attempt to compel obedience may defeat the object of the legislation Therefore they recommend that no one should be punished

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for not vaccinating his children if they either satisfied a local authority that they honestly objected to vaccination, or made a statutory decla ration to that effect. This recommendation will probably arrest all prosecutions now pending, even before the law has been altered. It is a notable utterance, which will bear fruit in every Englishspeaking land.

The

Increase

of

The Jubilee report of the Commissioners of Lunacy records an unprecedented increase in the numbers of officially certiLunacy. fied lunatics. Of those not so certifiedincluding, it is to be feared, no small proportion of the officials themselves-no record exists. In England and Wales on January 1st, 1896, the number of officially certified lunatics was 96,446, an increase of 2,365 in the twelve months. In the last twenty years the

number of pauper lunatics has increased by 53 per cent. From these figures some misleading conclusions have been drawn. It is extremely doubtful whether lunacy is really increasing amongst us. What is increasing is the disposition on the part of poor people to send their insane relatives to an asylum. And as our asylums are year by year becoming more comfortable, he would be a lunatic indeed who would keep his demented relatives at home instead of sending them to be much better looked after in a public institution. Yet this growth of humanity on the part of our authorities, and decay of irrational prejudice on the part of our poor, both indications of increasing sanity, combine to produce what is a statistical demonstration of the increase of lunacy.

The

Workhouses.

The Local Government Board have issued Improvement a circular to the Boards of Guardians of our throughout the country, intended to stimulate the present tendency to make the workhouse a desirable refuge for desirable inmates. The Board are desirous that special attention should

be given to this matter by the Guardians and their officers in order that, as far as possible, those persons whose circumstances have compelled them to enter the workhouse, but who are known to be of good conduct and to have previously led moral and respectable lives, should be separated from those who from their habits of speech or for other reasons are likely to cause them discomfort.

It is suggested that they should have a separate day-room for men and women, that they should be allowed more visits from their friends, that they should have special privileges in paying visits outside, and that they might be permitted to attend their own place of worship on Sunday. Separate cubicles might also be permitted. The Board do not favour any difference in dietary ΟΙ in

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