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IN

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N the Gallery of Character Sketches, which have from the first been one of the leading features of the REVIEW OF REVIEWS, I have for the most part chosen individuals as my subjects. Of the séries, of which this is the eighty-fourth, at least eighty have been personages of the day-most of them men. But there were one or two exceptions. There was a Character Sketch of the Times, and another of the Pall Mall Gazette. On another occasion the Liberal Cabinet formed the subject of the Character Sketch. It is therefore no great departure from use and wont if I improve a little upon precedents, and take as my subject this month the Old Year, which will in a fortnight be with us no more.

It will be rather an interesting exercise to individualise the Old Year-to consider him as a person, and to judge him from the standpoint of charitable optimism. There is at least one advantage in such a subject. When William Morris's death was announced on the contents-bills of the evening papers, I overheard one small boy who was selling the papers ask in a tone of blank bewilderment of another of the craft, "William Morris? Who is William Morris?" No one will need to ask who is the Old Year. He is the personal acquaintance of each of us-has been, indeed, in a very real fashion, a segment of each of our individual existences. He is not exactly an old acquaintance, but he has never left us since he met us, and he will remain with us till the end. We are therefore all in a position to criticise him, each from his own standpoint. To each one of us he has been something different; into that personal particularity, of course, I cannot enter. My task is to endeavour to form some judgment upon the Old Year, and the influence which he has exerted upon the progress of the world.

It would be easy to construct a slashing review of the year which began with war and is ending in famine, and whose conspicuous achievement was at home to demonstrate the paralysis of Parliament, and abroad to prove the impotence of Europe to handcuff the Assassin. But that would be false to the principles of this Gallery; and it would, moreover, be a shortsighted, superficial judgment. We may not bow with such devotion as Rudyard Kipling before the God of the Things That Are, preferring to reserve our worship, not for the god of this world, but the God of the world which is to come-a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. But as the two are one, and the Present is the antechamber of the Future, we may do well to make the best of the worst of things, for the best that we can imagine is not so good as the good of the Divine intent. Cromwell's great saying can never too often be in our minds, especially at times of suffering and loss: "Call not your burden sad or heavy, for if your Heavenly Father sent it, He intended it for neither." And, however painful may be the privation or the pressure of the present, they are but as the frost of winter preparing the soil for the birth of spring and the harvest of autumn.

We assuredly need all this philosophy in contemplating the great and marked mercies-if misfortunes may be so described, since devils are said to be angels with maskswhich the world owes to the Old Year. In the sudden and rapid increase in the price of bread which has taken place all over the world this autumn, the English house

holder has been subjected to an impost considerably greater and more immediately felt than the taxation that would be imposed to meet the expenditure of a war. The Chancellor of the Exchequer deals chiefly with the rich; the baker has the poorest by the throat. The taxgatherer levies on the principle that the poor because of their poverty must be exempt. The increase in the price of bread hits the poorest more severely than an income tax of a shilling in the pound. Compared with this sudden rise in the price of the staff of life, all the

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changes of budgets are trifles, at any rate to the immense majority of our people. But this burden, irksome though it may be, is but as the mere shadow cast afar off by the famine which broods over unhappy India.

For the third year in succession the crops have failed, and experienced observers declare that the dearth will be the worst India has suffered for fifty years. The Times correspondent gives the following account of the position in the North-West Provinces and Oudh :

The first area, where the greatest failure of crops has occurred, covers 25,000 square miles, with a population of 13,000,000. Here the famine may be acute. The second area, where there has been severe failure, covers 30,000 square miles, with a population of 14,000,000. The third area, where there has been considerable failure, covers 25,000 square miles, with a population of 12,500,000. The divisions worst off are Allahabad, Lucknow, and Faizabad, with the portion of Agra which is not protected by irrigation.

As for the prospects, 1 inches of rain over the provinces within the next fortnight would reduce the difficulties by a half to three-quarters. With no rain until Christmas, but a favourable fall at the usual period towards the end of the year,

it is calculated that relief would have been given to 8 or 10 per cent. of the population in the area worst affected, and to 3 or 4 per cent. in the less-distressed area. In the event of the failure of the Christmas rains the percentage would be doubled, or even higher than this. Prices would in the event of drought up to the monsoon period in June, rule enormously high, but the Lieutenant-Governor does not apprehend a complete failure of supplies next summer, as local stocks will be supplemented by importations. A significant sign that famine conditions are beginning to prevail in certain areas is that the prices of fine and coarse grains are closely approximating. At the present moment 250,000 persons are being employed on relief works. In the Punjaub, 9,200; North-West Provinces, 130 100; Central India, 17,300; Rajputana, 26,000; Bengal, 3,400; Burma, 16,600; Bombay, 11,600; Madras, 36,500.

If Asia has been scourged by the land refusing to yield a harvest owing to the heavens denying the fruitful showers, without which the most fertile loam is as barren as alkali, her sister continent has this year suffered from a disaster hardly less appalling. The rinderpest, said to have been introduced into Abyssinia by plague-smitten cattle sent to supply the Italian army with food, found Africa as virgin soil for its ravages. From the mountains of Rasselas it

KILLING INFECTED CATTLE.

Nor

began its march southward, eating up as it went ninetenths of the hoofed beasts, wild and tame, of the African Continent. The herds upon which the natives of the interior depend so largely for their sustenance were mown down as the meadow-grass falls before the scythe, only the fringes being spared. Nor does the rinderpest discriminate between the domesticated and the wild cattle. The savage buffalo wallowing in the marsh found no method of escape from the invisible Death. were swift-footed antelope able to elude the swifter darts of the deadly archer. Three out of five species of antelope died like rotten sheep. The others, for some cause not yet discovered, seem to be immune. For some time it was hoped that the broad waters of the Zambesi would offer an insuperable barrier to the southerly-marching rinderpest. But the subtle contagion leapt the mighty river and began its ravages in Rhodesia. It is the fashion to speak of war as the sum of all evils. The war in Matabeleland was a picnic to the horror of the cattle plague. It is computed that out of 200,000 cattle in Rhodesia it has not left 15,000 alive. The milk, the beef, the leather, and the transport of the country were all destroyed. Faring southward, the rinderpest struck Khama's country, a land which is far richer in beeves than Rhodesia. The Bechuanas and Bamangwato were mighty herd-men.

They numbered their cattle at one million. When the rinderpest left them, 800,000 beasts lay dead on the veldt, and Khama rejoiced that the percentage of mortality was, comparatively speaking, so low. From Bechuanaland the deadly scourge is travelling to Cape Colony, where it is expected it will eat up the cattle down to the sea. So terrible a visitation, extending over so wide an area, is almost unknown in the annals of Africa. The grievous murrain that smote the herds of Pharaoh was but a parochial epidemic compared with this continental catastrophe.

The year of the Famine in India and Rinderpest in Africa is thus a year of very masked mercy for a very large section of the human race.

But now, turning from these immense disasters which appal the imagination of man, it will be a pleasanter spectacle to contemplate that which has been accomplished by the Old Year in spheres more directly amenable to the action of men.

I. THE SOUTH AFRICA TOCSIN.

1893 has in many respects been a good friend to the world and to the men who live therein. If he has played havoc with rinderpest and smitten us with famine, he has afforded more than one signal illustration of the way in which apparent evils can be overruled for good, and that now, as of old, He maketh even the wrath of man to praise Him.

When 1896 began to live, his advent was hailed with a salvo of rifle, Maxim, and artillery, which heralded the outbreak of the fighting between Dr. Jameson and the Boers. It was but a few hours before midnight that the first shot of the Raid was fired and the rifles went sputtering their leaden death for several hours into the New Year's morn, nor did they cease firing until the New Ycar was two days old. 1896 might indeed be saluted in Walt Whitman's familiar verse, which he originally addressed to the year 1861:

Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the "round-lipp'd

cannon

I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.”

Yet the Jameson Raid was but as the percussion cap to the cartridge which it exploded. Intrinsically nothing could be less important than the ride of a handful of men across the undefended border of a sparsely peopled territory such as the Transvaal. It was a mistake, no doubt, but it was only one of a long series of similar mistakes which make up most of the history of the Transvaal. The only difference between it and its predecessors was the fact that in all previous cases the Boers had been the raiders, whereas, on this occasion only, the familiar rôle of Paul Kruger and his men was taken by Dr. Jameson. But the Boers did not like to be fed with the same sauce they had so often served to their neighbours, and as very many of our people persisted in applying to the judgment of frontier raids in South Africa the standard governing long settled countries in Europe, an altogether exaggerated degree of importance has been attached to Dr. Jameson's exploit. It was well meant, and if it had succeeded it would have been condoned even by these who are now loudest in its condemnation; but in itself it would never have received attention or deserved prominent mention in a survey of the Year's history but for its effect on forces lying beyond South Africa. Yet of all the New Year's gifts which 1896 brought in its hand, there is probably none for which we have so much cause to be grateful as this same Jameson Raid. In making it,

Dr. Jameson and his friends in Africa and London builded more wisely than they knew. The moment Dr. Jameson crossed the frontier he forced the hand of the Boers, who by their instant appeal to Germany for assistance unmasked a conspiracy which had been diligently promoted for years past.

The German Emperor's telegram, which in itself might have been ignored, was as the torch thrust into the pile of fagots which in olden times was prepared on every beacon hill to warn the nation of the approach of the foe. Now, as in olden times, the war-flame spread from peak to peak until the alarm reached the capital, when

With one start and with one cry, the royal city woke. So England roused herself in the early days of the New Year, when from Berlin came that unlooked-for challenge of our right to pre-eminent domain in South Africa. War is so hateful, that even the contemplation of its possibility is painful to any humane mind; but nothing for many years in our recent history added so much to our national consciousness, not only of our Imperial strength, but of our unanimous resolve to exert

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all our strength in defence of challenged rights, than the outburst of indignation which followed the revelation of the German complot in the Transvaal. Once for all, it was made manifest throughout the length and breadth, not only of the continent of Africa, but of all the continents, that Britain was Britain still, and that in the defence of her Imperial position she would no longer stand alone. European allies she might have none, but from the East and the West, from the North and the South, wherever men of English speech had founded commonwealths which enjoyed British freedom under British law, there came forth warm-hearted words of sympathy and unsolicited offers of succour, until the Mother Isle was seen to be surrounded and defended by the stalwart progeny with which she had peopled the waste places of the world. For that great moment of inspiration, for that apocalyptic vision of the new English-speaking world which had been created by our hundred years of colonising labour, it were well worth while to pay the price of a dozen Jameson raids. For long years the Genius of England had appeared to many of the most patriotic amongst us to have been somewhat, to borrow Milton's metaphor, like an eagle in the moult. But no sooner did the call to arms by the "bugle's note and cannon's roar" fall upon our ears, than once more, like Milton's eagle, she

renewed her mighty youth, and asserted what every Englishman at heart believes to be her natural and destined place in the community of nations. "Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just," and in tho attempt to oust us from the suzerainty over the Transvaal -the only thing which we had retained for ourselves when we surrendered all other sovereignty over that Statewe were freed from any misgivings if, which God forbid, we had been forced to defend our right by the mailed might of our own right hand. There were some bitter moments, no doubt, but as colony after colony sent in its messages of cheer and promises of support, men did not need to have much imagination or feeling to see in the strangely altered scene something like the political realisation of Lowell's magnificent image, when speaking, not of the national embodiment of the cause of Liberty and Right, he said:

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong, And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng Troops of beautiful tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.

Memories of that great national awakening, that Imperial rally, when it seemed really as if once more, as in the brave days of old "none was for a party and all were for the State," enabled us to regard with composure the mean and ignoble episodes which followed. The secret of the almost kaleidoscopic revolution in public opinion was not difficult to explain. As against German aggression in South Africa, the nation and empire felt themselves on firm ground, and did not fear any appeal that might be challenged in defence of their rights. But in relation to the immediate details of the petty, parochial, and somewhat squalid dispute which occupied the boards when the actors who played the Imperial rôle retired from the scene, we felt ourselves in a much less satisfactory position. We were technically in the wrong, and had to get out of the situation into which some zealous and too sanguine spirits had blundered. We had to deal moreover with an adversary who was extremely keen and not over scrupulous, who pressed to the uttermost the vantage ground which Dr. Jameson's move had given him. In the Transvaal we have been bested at every turn. We were too backward when we should have played forward, too forward when we should have played backward. We had no one capable of adequately representing England at the capital of the Boers, while at Cape Town we had but the shadow of a great reputation, in the shape of a veteran whose failing health and weakened heart ill qualified him for coping with the exigencies of a difficult crisis.

In the chaos and confusion which reigned in English councils in South Africa there was fortunately one bright spot. When Mr. Garrett went to Cape Town in February, 1895, I ventured to remark that his appointment might possibly prove even more important for the destinies of South Africa than the choice of a Governor of the Cape Colony. No one who has followed the course of South African politics since 1895 will fail to recognise that England has had no one in South Africa better qualified than he to speak on her behalf with enemies. within and without the gates, to keep watch and ward over her interests, and to see that, whatever happened, the Empire should suffer no hurt. Mr. Garrett had a great opportunity, and he has greatly used it. Journalism is quite as important a field of Imperial service as the army or the navy, and in that department England has reason to be proud of her brilliant son, who in the course of less than two years has made the Cape Times the most potent factor for good that exists in South Africa.

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But

the strength of nations lies, not merely in the character of their ordinary men, but also in the greatness of their great ones. A nation which has lost the capacity of begetting great men is a nation in its decadence. to know the greatness of the truly great it is necessary to pass them time and again through the ordeal of adverse circumstance, to smelt away their dross in the crucible of trial and temptation. It is only after a long-continued series of these processes, which indeed never cease while life lasts, that mankind is able to ascertain beyond all doubt who are really worthy of supreme homage as the heroes of the race. 1896 has not been devoid of the tests supplied by trial and temptation to the great ones of the earth. Bismarck, for instance, who for many years towered like some magnificent column above the waste of European diplomacy, has afforded only too painful demonstration of the faults and failings which assail the statesman in retreat. But despite the revelations, which seem to be prompted more by impatience of the dull obscurity of Friedrichsruh than by any consuming desire to promote the interests either of his country or of European peace, he remains one of those whose greatness has been best ascertained and best proved. On the fallen pillar the lichen may grow, and here and there its marble may be flawed and stained; but it is a pillar still. Not even Prince

Bismarck himself, with the Hamburg newspaper as the Mephistopheles continually at his side, can destroy, or even appreciably impair, the reputation of the maker of modern Germany.

Another of our greatest, perhaps one who in his own way is as great as Prince Bismarck, has this year been tested and tried, and found not wanting in the qualities which made him great. Mr. Gladstone has continued to manifest that marvellous vivacity of boyhood which he has carried into extreme old age, and he has also shown that not even the snows of eighty winters can chill the ardour of his aspiration for liberty, and the passionate vehemence of his recoil against cruelty and wrong. But 1896 has also revealed Mr. Gladstone as one who, if he has not worsened in his best qualities, has not improved in those which have always been the despair of his friends. Mr. Gladstone, who in 1876 sent around the fiery cross on behalf of Bulgaria and the Southern Slavs, whose cause Russia had made her own, was also the Mr. Gladstone who, in 1885, came perilously near going to war with Russia in one of the worst causes that any nation could have made its own. In 1896 we see the same two currents of good and evil blended. There is the same enthusiasm against the atrocities of the Turk, but there is also the same unsympathetic incapacity to recognise the difficulties of Russia's position which in 1885 so nearly brought the two Empires into collision. Mr. Gladstone has never quite learnt that without Russia England can do no good in the East, and his apparent advocacy of the adoption of an isolated policy that would have brought us into antagonism with Russia is a curious instance of the survival of the instinct which made him approve of the Crimean War and threaten to fight over the Afghan boundary.

Among the great established reputations to which 1896 applied the touchstone of life, that of the Pope must be numbered as those which have survived. Leo XIII. has continued to maintain the prestige which has compelled even the non-Catholic world to hail him as one of the greatest of pontiffs. This year he showed that his passion for Christian unity and his desire to include all mankind

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