The Review of Reviews

THE BRITISH TEMPERANCE QUEEN.

A CHAT WITH THE PRESIDENT OF THE B. W. T. A. THE sudden and lamented death of Sir B. W. Richardson calls attention to the newer relation in which science is now caused to stand to temperance. What the late Sir Benjamin did for temperance in regard to medicine has been done in regard to sociology more influentially by none than by Lady Henry Somerset, whom Miss Jane Stoddart interviews in the Sunday Magzine. She elicits a great deal that will be read with wide interest.

HER TRAINING AS A SPEAKER.

Asked what special training she had had for platform work, Lady Henry replied:

"The best training I ever had was through speaking in a tent in Wales. I was

addressing meetings in one of the coaling districts, and as I was travelling from village to village, I made use of a large tent. Those who have tried it must know that a tent is the most difficult of all places for the speaker. When I afterwards addressed meetings in great halls or churches, I arranged that my maid should sit in the back row, and when she failed to hear me that she should lift her handkerchief as a signal. In this way I soon learned to accommodate my voice to almost any building. In America I have addressed audiences of 10,000 and 12 000 people, and have never had any difficulty in making myself heard. I must tell you, however, that I still feel very nervous before I speak in public. Long experience has not made the work any easier, and sometimes the tension before a great meeting makes me almost ill."

Lady Henry Somerset agrees with Mr. Chamberlain as to the need for careful preparation of speeches. She does not write out her addresses, but she studies them very fully. "I cannot understand those people who say that platform speaking takes nothing out of them. То

"How do you account for the marked increase of drunkenness among women?"

"Many causes will account for a fact which is unfortunately too evident. Heredity is at the root of five out of every seven of the cases which come under my notice. A father or mother, a grandfather or grandmother has been a drunkard, and has handed down the terrible vice to his or her descendants. I believe that in a few years the carefully collected statistics of our Home at Duxhurst will throw a startling light on this problem of heredity. Other causes are insufficient food, bad air, and dreary surroundings. Temperance workers too often refuse to recognise those facts. They go round asking the people to sign the pledge, but they never seek to deal with the causes which lie at the root of drunkenness, especially in the

THE LATE SIR B. W. RICHARDSON, F.R.S. (Photograph by Ball.)

my mind every speech which is to influence an audience must have in it something of the speaker's vitality. Some virtue must go out of him before he can hope to do good to others."

A rather significant opinion is expressed at the close of the interview:

I asked my hostess who, in her opinion, is the most eloquent of English women speakers. She replied that undoubtedly the best woman speaker of our time is Mrs. Annie Besant. Such an opinion, coming from so competent a judge, was, I thought, well worth recording.

A NEEDED WARNING TO TEETOTALERS.

Wherein Lady Henry and her school differ from the old-fashioned one-idea'd and single-stringed teetotalers appears from the following paragraph:

case of women-causes which no mere written promise can remove. Consider the hopeless dulness of the lives of Englishwomen in the working classes. In France and Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, the women have their amusements like the men. They go out with their husbands and their children; they have pleasant evenings and abundant recreation. The wife of the English working-man has nothing but sordid, dismal, unrelieved monotony. Is it any wonder that too often she seeks relief in drink?"

LORD ROSEBERY AS A LEADER.

A WRITER Signing himself "Emeritus" in the Fortnightly Review for December, discusses Lord Rosebery under the title of "Democracy and Leadership." "Emeritus" is very severe He on Lord Rosebery. says:

If Lord Rosebery has failed, it is before and above all for the simple reason that he has not recognised that the business of a leader is to lead. Mr. Balfour understands democracy better than Lord Rosebery does, because he understands that democracy wishes to be captained rather than to be catered for. Lord Rosebery, on the other hand, in quiet obliviousness of the creative business of leadership, has been waiting almost passively for the spontaneous generation out of the vasty deep of democracy, of such forces and opinions as would constitute a proper support. Lord Rosebery's habitual caution may be a very different thing from constitutional timidity, but it has the sanie effect in depriving his words of motive power. During his tenure of the Liberal leadership, his utterances have been totally destitute of motive power; and have exhibited, on the contrary, a power altogether singular of spreading doubt, hesitation, and pain in the ranks of his followers. It will be conceded, on the other hand, that nothing in Lord Rosebery's life, as a Liberal leader, becomes him like the leaving of it. Conviction was never asserted with more dignity and success.

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FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE:

THE MOHAMMED OF DARWINISM."

THE first place in the Quarterly is given to a serious and even respectful review of the life and opinions of Friedrich Nietzsche. That of itself is a very significant fact. "His books are sumptuously edited, carefully translated, and studied from New York to St. Petersburg.”

REBELLIOUS BUT PIOUS ORIGINS.

According to the story, which may or may not be substantiated, Nietzsche sprang from a Polish Protestant and rebel. The Anarchist's grandfather was pastor in Thuringia, Doctor of Divinity, and superintendent. His father, Ludwig, was also a Lutheran clergyman, and an intimate friend of Frederick William IV. of Prussia. Of this worthy sire the famous Nietzsche was born at Röcken, near Lützen, October 15th, 1844, on the birthday of the king, after whom he was named. The father died when the boy was only five years old. He received his schooling at Naumburg:

At first he made no friends, and was too earnest for his years. The boys called him "little clergyman"; they took home stories of his extraordinary acquaintance with the Bible, and how he recited hymns that made them cry.

THE OPEN-AIR ALPINE DREAMER.

After his "Joyful Science," recounting his pilgrimage of soul between 1876 and 1881

Nietzsche's style had gained; but his thoughts became incoherent. He never afterwards wrote a connected bock, or attempted in his compositions a logical order. From boyhood delighting in the sun, he would now live, so far as possible, sub divo, under the open sky, and by preference in the lofty Swiss vales of the Engadine. At Sils Maria, from which many of his pages are dated, he pitched his nomad's tent during the years when, released from professorial duties, he could indulge without check the illusions that beset him.

In 1881, "the first flash" of the idea of "Eternal Recurrence" came to him, and led to the commencement of "Thus Spake Zarathustra " two years later. He wrote on until 1888. Next year his reason gave way, and he is now buried without hope of recovery in a madhouse at Naumburg.

66 THE WILL TO POWER."-THE 66 OVERMAN." Of his gospel the reviewer gives a substantial if somewhat decently-veiled account. Later Kant's criticism of the pure reason, Nietzsche extends to the practical reason. Schopenhauer's "Will to live" he develops into " Will to power." "Mankind has one supreme task-not a moral duty, but a physiological necessity to produce the "overman.""

on, his comrades made a hero of Friedrich; his sister worshipped him, and her recollections of his skill in amusements at home, his fantasies and fairy tales, his enthusiasm for the Russians during the Crimean War, his Homeric studies, which infected all around, and his anxiety to understand as well as practise the religious principles taught him, furnish us with a child's biography, not very deep or philosophical, but pleasing and true.

THE EFFECT ON HIM OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM.

Fritz, enamoured of music and verse-making, used to compose "stanzas, some of which betray remarkable perfection of form, and a truth of emotion that is exceedingly rare in boys of twelve or thirteen." In 1858 he was given a scholarship in the Land School at Pforta. There he spent six years, shining in classics, "an imbecile in mathematics," impassioned with music. Reserve, reverie, depression, grew upon him. At twenty, in 1864, Nietzsche went to Bonn University, ending his school tasks with a panegyric upon the tyrant Theognis, having already chosen "the unpopular anti-Liberal and Napoleonic" side. He soon withdrew from the wild student-life into solitude, began to prepare for a clergyman's lot, investigated the Christian origins, and, under the shock of Biblical criticism, ended by ceasing to be a Christian.

A GERMAN CARLYLE.

After two years at Bonn he studied a year at Leipzig, where he discovered the works of Schopenhauer, who thenceforth became his master in thought, as Emerson, singularly enough, was chosen for his master in style. An accident as cavalry conscript next year freed him from military service, though he afterwards served in the Franco-German War; and in 1868 he was appointed Professor of Classics at Basel. His first work was published in 1872-"The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music." In this he copied the Romantic School -Heine, Wagner and Schopenhauer. Dionysus was to him the spirit of ecstasy-"the will to live"-and Apollo the lord of measure, which together made Greece the creative spring of highest life. His earlier essays in substance and in form remind the reviewer of Carlyle. He was still a hopeful soul." He then saw in Wagner, whom he afterwards renounced, a return of Dionysus

SERVILE TRIBE."

Sympathy is "the slave morality, the system of the herd, on which democracy is founded." "The will to power, the sacrifice of the multitude to some few sovereign spirits," that is Nietzsche's principle. THE JEWISH PROPHETS AND THEIR 66 His tract," Beyond Good and Evil," is to the reviewer "Darwin made consistent with himself, or physiology the test of morals." Huxley's contrast of ethics and cosmic struggle is, says Nietzsche, Christian doctrine, not science. "Sympathy is surrender, Christianity decadence." To Nietzsche, the dominant note of evolution is "conquest"; and "in the long run the individual conquers for himself."

This enthusiast for systems discredited in our day would bring back an aristocracy of blood to withstand universal suffrage. True, he holds a patent for genius, whencesoever sprung; but genius will make its own way, provided that the multitude of hoofed-animals be not allowed to trample it down. The "herd" is the danger. "Equal before God," the old Christian watchword, has now become "equal before the mob." They, shrinking and cowering in their misery while the conqueror smote or plundered them, first found out the word "pity"; they made it a god and expanded it into a religion. The prophets of Israel, for example-have not they lifted up their voices against pride, power, luxury, art and war, "calumniating all these things as the world,' and calling them evil"? That servile tribe, the Jews, with their millenniums of peace and the lion lying down with the lamb, it was they, surely, that taught men to look on pain, inflicted or endured, as the chief curse of humanity. Their moral law may be summed up in the one commandment "Be kind.” The high races of the world painted on their escutcheon very unlike commandment-"Be noble."

THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.

THIS month's issue contains two articles of eminent value. Professor Ed. Caird's "Characteristics of Shakespeare" is alone sufficient to make any number distinguished, and the same may be said of Elisée Reclus' Progress of Mankind," both of which, along with Mr. Bousfield's paper on the Unemployed Report, claim separate notice.

WHY THE POPE CONDEMNED ANGLICAN ORDERS.

Mr.

Rev. Thos. Lacey investigates the sources of the Bull. He was in Rome while the Commission was sitting, and was led to expect that the result would have been favourable. He points out what he describes as blunders in fact, and from these, along with other peculiarities in the Bull, infers that it was not drawn up with due care. The question is now declared to be settled by a decision of 1704, in the case of John Gordon, an Anglican Bishop, who was expressly required to be re-ordained. Lacey wants to know why, if this case was so decisive, did the Pope appoint a Commission to consider the matter? He finds, however, that the Gordon decree was given on a Thursday-a day on which only extraordinary sessions of the Sacred Congregation are held under the personal presidency of the Pope. A decree issued on such a day is peculiarly binding and may not be reversed, perhaps not even by the Pope. Mr. Lacey is informed that the Pope felt himself debarred from reversing the decree. The question of Anglican orders can only be re-opened in one of three ways: by abandoning the definition of infallibility; or reprobating the opinion which holds the Gordon decree to belong to faith or morals; or proving the decree defective in matter of fact. There is nothing in the Bull to prevent this re-opening.

HOW CARDINAL VAUGHAN WON OVER THE POPE.

"Catholicus," writing on the policy of the Bull, roundly avers, "There is not the smallest doubt that the Pope gave way before the violent pressure of the English Catholic bishops and the Roman congregations." Cardinal Vaughan did everything he could to get the unfavourable decision. "His last and perhaps most telling stroke was a collective letter from the whole of the Catholic Episcopate of the United Kingdom," a letter the existence of which "is absolutely certain." The staple argument was, "to allow it to be believed that Anglican orders are valid would be to dry up the source of individual conversions." Catholicus" holds the decision to be now final and incapable of revision. But he shrewdly indicates a theological consequence of the Pope's argument:

In order to condemn Anglican orders the Pope has had to lay down the principle that a form of consecration which would be sufficient in the case of an orthodox rite is insufficient in the Anglican Church, because in the orthodox rite the formula is understood with an implicit meaning which the Anglicans chose to exclude. The sacrament can therefore no longer be regarded as a sort of magic formula working in virtue of its own force independently of the sense attached to it by those who use it.

THE SULTAN'S DOMESTICITIES.

Diran Kélékian gives a great deal of information about "life at Yildiz." The personnel of the palace numbers about 12,000 individuals, including 3,000 ladies

of the harem. The Sultan is only allowed seven lawful wives:

There is one day of the year on which the Sultan-Mother, and even the wives of the sovereign, are required to present him with a beautiful Circassian virgin. These girls are brought up with much care, and they are taught certain little accomplishments, among them singing and playing on the lute. The market value of a young Circassian, fit to be offered to the Sultan, is from £1,000 to £2,000. In the choice of young girls much attention is paid to the marked preference of the present Sultan for blondes.

The Sultan often presents one of his Ministers with a wife from his harem, and ladies who have not become mothers he provides with husbands and dowries. To the rest, not thus freed, the palace is a prison, and consumption is excessively prevalent in the harem. It appears that "it is a family tradition among the heirs of Osman to speak in a loud voice. Abdul Hamid's utterance is strident and imperious."

ARMENIAN REFUGEES IN CYPRUS.

Miss Emma Cons reports favourably on the work done by Mrs. Sheldon Amos in planting Armenian refugees in Cyprus. Miss Cons thinks the Armenian peasant more open to assimilate new ideas than the Cypriote and also a good leader of the natives in agriculture :

As far as we could judge, given English capital and English energy in the first start, Cyprus would be able to absorb a not inconsiderable number of Armenians, and be all the better for doing so. Would it not be simple justice that the island, so far as not utilised by the present inhabitants, should be applied by England, so far as possible, for the benefit of the exiles? Cyprus does not pay its way. With its present small and ignorant population and its backward industries, it cannot do So. Is it not folly not to bring in an industrious, energetic, and progressive Armenian population?

OTHER ARTICLES.

An amusing, if somewhat savage skit is contributed anonymously, purporting to be a report of what took place in Lord Rosebery's Cabinet after the "cordite" vote. The indirect duel kept up between the Premier and the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the principal feature. Mr. H. W. Wolff combats the impression that the Savings Banks cost the taxpayer somewhat, and shows that so far they have only brought gain to the exchequer. He regards Trustee Banks as doomed, and looks to the development of People's Banks, along with the extension of Post Office Banks, as the chief agencies of popular thrift. Mr. Vernon Lee writes a delightful homily on the duty of cultivating Leisure as a means of acquiring Charm. Mr. E. H. Parker discourses on Chinese Humbug, and gives many instances of his humbugging the Chinese as well as of their little tricks of bluff and sham. Yet he testifies that mercantile operations are carried on as methodically and honourably in China as in any country.

PARISIAN models with portraits form a feature in Ludgate for December. Mr. Clive Holland is the writer. From what he says, it appears that artists not infrequently marry their models, and in that sense possess model wives. Mr. H. P. Pugh contributes a very able sketch of the absinthe hour in Paris, which lies between five and seven in the afternoon. The making of a glass bottle is described duly by Mr. J. S. Fletcher. The "first appearance” sketched is that of Mr. Forbes Robertson.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

I NOTICE elsewhere Mr. Sidney Low's article on the Olney Doctrine," Mr. Crouch's "World Beneath the Ocean," and Mr. Thwaite's "Commercial War between Germany and England." Mr. Macnamara's "Local Support of Education" also requires special mention.

WANTED A NAVAL RESERVE.

The Hon. T. A. Brassey, writing on "Manning the Navy in time of War," insists upon the importance of paying more attention to the reserve. He says:

The policy of maintaining the personnel of the navy in peace at war strength is too costly and too wasteful of our national resources. Rather we should address ourselves to the task of building up a powerful reserve. As a first step, and before adding to the numbers, the conditions of enrolment must be altered so as to secure greater efficiency. Of the three sources of supply the fishing population alone can be relied upon to yield at once a substantial body of recruits. The colonies, which are not at present in a position to make a serious money contribution to the naval defence of the Empire, could furnish good men for a naval reserve. remedy is possible without substantial assistance from the State.

AN EMPIRE ROTTEN AT THE HEAD.

Professor R. K. Douglas, writing "Some Peking Politicians," begins his article by giving the following illustrations of political blackmail which prevail in the Chinese capital:

It is a matter of common knowledge in China that Li Hung Chang, when deprived of his viceroyalty and ordered to Peking, was compelled to distribute among the Court officials and others no less a sum than eight million taels, equivalent to about one million sterling, in order to protect himself against the attacks of his political enemies.

In such a hotbed of corruption, it is only natural that Conservatism should flourish:

At the present moment the anti-foreign element is more than usually rampant at the capital. The man who has the main direction of affairs is a certain Weng, the quondam tutor of the Emperor and a Confucianist of the Confucianists. For some years he has exercised considerable influence over the Emperor, and has been a consistent opponent of Li Hung Chang and all his works.

Mr. Douglas despairs of any improvement:

Such being the condition of affairs in China, we may well despair of the future of the Empire. The whole system of administration is rotten to the core, and there is no sign or symptom of any effort towards progressive reforms. Ninetynine out of every hundred mandarius are wedded by long habit and by personal interest to the existing system.

MACHIAVELLI AS TUTOR OF THE ENGLISH.

Mr. W. A. Phillips has an article on "Machiavelli and the English Reformation," which suggests the thought that the phrase "perfidious Albion!" which has been bestowed upon our beloved country by our neighbours across the Channel, may really be due to the extent to which English statesmen in the formative period of our history embodied the teachings and were saturated with the spirit of the famous Florentine. Certainly it is difficult to describe more exactly the typical English idea of the right way to make reforms than was done by Machiavelli:

"Whoever desires to introduce reforms into a State," Machiavelli had written, "in such manner as to have them accepted, and maintained to everybody's satisfaction, must retain at least the shadow of o'd institutions, so as to appear to have altered nothing, while in fact the new arrangements are entirely different from the old."

Mr. Phillips says:

During the reign of Elizabeth, even more than during that of Henry the Eighth, the statecraft of Machiavelli seems to have been consistently applied. The conditions obtaining in England at the time of the Queen's accession were, indeed, not altogether unlike those which had prompted Machiavelli to write his "Discourses." If Elizabeth did not derive her principles and method of government directly from Machiavelli, it is more than probable that they were suggested to her by the most trusted of her ministers, who, without doubt, had studied him to good purpose.

ON THE SELLING OF BOOKS.

Mr. Shaylor, of Simpkin, Marshall and Co., writes an article which will be read with interest by all concerned in the making and disposing of books. It is not an article which can be summarised, but there are one or two facts which stick in the memory after we have laid the magazine down. One of these is that in what I presume is Simpkin and Marshall's establishment:

In addition to the trade at the counter, 1,500 letters were received from country customers in one day, resulting in the despatch of seven hundred or eight hundred parcels. It will thus be readily understood that the labour involved in grappling with the details of the work must be prodigious. During the busy autumn season as many as seventy new books are sometimes submitted for "subscription" in one day.

Mr. Shaylor recalls another fact which is worth remembering. He quotes the authority of Mr. Macmillan and Mr. Chatto:

The former, at a recent dinner, stated that his firm only accepted 22 out of 315 MSS. submitted to them in one year, and the latter in a Press interview asserted that his firm retained on an average about 13 out of 500.

IN PRAISE OF "TRISTRAM SHANDY."

Mr. Herbert Paul writes an essay on Sterne, which is full of delicate appreciation of the great humorist. Mr. Paul says:

There have been few greater masters of conversation than Sterne, and in what may be called the art of interruption no one has ever approached him. He is one of the makers of colloquial English, and thousands who never heard of Shandy Hall repeat the phrases of the Shandy brothers. Of all English humorists except Shakespeare, Sterne is still the greatest force, and that the influence of Parson Yorick is not extinct may be seen in almost every page of the "Dolly Dialogues."

WHO IS THE SLEEPING EMPEROR?

Mr. Karl Blind devotes some pages to an attempt, and apparently a successful attempt, to prove that the Emperor of Germany, who Germany represents as sitting asleep in the Kyffhauser Mountains, was not the famous Barbarossa, but a very different Emperor indeed. Mr. Blind says:

Taking all in all, it is manifest that the "Barbarossa myth is quite a late graft upon the stem of the original tale about Kaiser Friedrich the Second, an enlightened adversary of priesteraft, the antagonist of the Papacy, the expected Reformer of the Church, and Disestablisher of Monkhood. Many of the sayings attributed to him, which show him in the light of a man who would readily have assented, had he lived in our days, to the doctrines of Darwin, Huxley, and Häckel, would find little countenance, at present, in high quarters at Berlin.

A DOCTOR ON VACCINATION.

Dr. Malcolm Morris does not like the finding of the Vaccination Commission, and calls it in his article the Superfluous Vaccination Commission. His title destroys in advance the force of his argument that the antivaccinationists have no reason to claim the report as a

I would retain the element of compulsion in full force as far as primary vaccination is concerned, but I would make "martyrdom less cheap." Instead of repeated penalties, I would impose one fine sufficiently substantial to act as a deterrent. In case of persistent disobedience I would go the length of temporary disfranchisement, a penalty which is not too great for an act of bad citizenship. Re-vaccination should be promoted by a system of rewards. I am inclined to think that it would be better to entrust the duty altogether to public vaccinators, who should seck out the persons to be vaccinated at their own homes, and whose work should be under Government inspection. I think also it is the clear duty of the State to make itself responsible for the supply as well as for the use of pure lymph.

HOW ENGLAND HAS ROBBED IRELAND.

Mr. J. Clancy, writing on The Financial Grievance of Ireland," holds out a pretty prospect for the English taxpayer. He says in a postscript:

Since the foregoing pages were written, another Parliamentary return has been issued on the motion of Mr. Joseph A. Pease, M.P., an examination of which will show that the overtaxation of Ireland, which the Royal Commission found to exist, has been considerably aggravated by that great effort of Liberal statesmanship, the Finance Act of 1894. On the lowest estimate the over-taxation of Ireland now amounts to more than three millions sterling a year.

Even if this be an exaggeration, and the amount be under instead of over £3,000,000 a year, it is not surprising to learn that:

For the present it would appear as if the political campaign on the one side and on the other in Ireland were about to be suspended in favour of an agitation, participated in by all parties, in support of the demand that the robbery referred to should cease. One great result of the work of the Financial Relations Commission is, as has been said, that the controversy as to the facts of the financial grievance of Ireland may be said to be ended.

Mr. Clancy deals with the various answers that are made to rescue this wholesale plunder of the weaker country by the richer. He says, for instance :

The taxes which Great Britain pays, and which Ireland does not pay, amount to just £1,188,300; and if Ireland paid her share of those taxes, the total result would scarcely be altered to the extent of a decimal.

Then replying to the assertion that excessive taxation is balanced by excessive expenditure, he reminds us that:

The excessive expenditure in Ireland is the direct result of British policy. Why, for instance, does the Irish Constabulary cost a million and a half annually instead of half a million, which would be the cost if that force were organised on the same scale as the police in England and Scotland? Because Great Britain is governing Ireland against her will.

Books

The Review of Reviews, Volume 14