phere of convincing, vigorous mental superiority, philosophical rectitude, and urbanity which enabled him to bring learned judges to his view.

While he was working at the Chancery Bar, with a practice that endowed him with a very large income, he found time to translate, in collaboration with a friend, Schopenhauer's World as Will and Idea." He also collaborated with Professor Seth in publishing" Essays in Philosophical Criticism." while his other literary work included the "Life of Adam Smith" and "Education and Empire." But the empire over which his intellect ranged was not all of this world, as witness his Pathway to Reality," which formed the subject of his famous Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews, and in which he set himself to answer the question: "How, in the commencement of the twentieth century, ought we to conceive God?" For Religion is the elder sister of Philosophy, and Lord Haldane's mind is broad enough for both.

In 1885 he was elected to the House of Commons as Liberal member for the Scottish constituency of Haddingtonshire. He was transferred to the House of Lords in 1911, not because he had any personal craving to be a peer, although he may have had an ambition to be Lord Chancellor. He was sent to the Lords because the Government Front Bench stood sorely in need of strengthening.

He had represented the same constituency in the House of Commons for twenty-five years. He belonged to the Liberal-Imperial school, wherein his endless range of knowledge and almost superhuman capacity for hard work and hard thinking distinguished him as a man apart, destined for great achievements and high honors. His ideals have been always in close harmony with those of Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister, of whom he has been a lifelong friend.

Lord Haldane has been always a commanding figure in political life, and an intellectual giant. He is acknowledged to be the most erudite man in the British Parliament.

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has the stimulative agents of mental and physical fitness which are the God-given attributes of the man in public life. He has a Napoleonic cast of features, but his mental resemblance to the Little Corporal begins and ends with his genius for organization. man of his commanding presence might be supposed to possess a voice like the Bull of Bashan, but it is soft and soothing as zephyr breezes. His argumentative facility halts not, neither does it stumble. He divides a speech into sections and sub-sections and sub-sub-sections, and deserts the main channel of his argument to meander on and on along some new tributary, to return, however, with unfailing accuracy to his main theme. In outlining a great scheme he will give each member of his audience the impression that the one thing needful to his perfect happiness is that individual's approval—that his sole reason for laying bare his mind with transparent frankness and simplicity is to secure that approval; and where is he in whose breast the milk of human kindness has so dried up that he can withhold the sympathy that is so unostentatiously invited? It is a cheerful, optimistic, sympathetic personality.

Lord Haldane's greatest achievement is his record as Minister of War. When, in December, 1905, on the eve of the first great Liberal triumph, the late Sir Henry CampbellBannerman sent for him and suggested one or two offices, Mr. Haldane-as he then was-replied that there was one office about which he knew very little, but which he would like to have on account of the fascinating problems which it presented. "What is that?" inquired Sir Henry. "The War Office," answered Mr. Haldane. The Prime Minister was astonished, but pleased. one will touch it with a pole," he said, and there and then Mr. Haldane became the

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willing horse. He took upon his shoulders a stupendous task. War Office administration, under the previous Conservative Government, had become synonymous with inefficiency and bungling. It had sunk to its lowest depths when Mr. Brodrick-now Viscount Midleton--was War Minister and Lord Roberts Commander-in-Chief, just after the South African War. It was run by obsolete methods; the old Volunteer system had broken down; "graft" existed during and immediately after the war; new phantom army corps were created on paper; the War Office had become the despair of statesmen.

Although a lawyer, Haldane showed before long that he was a brilliant organizer; he revolutionized every department of the War Office. It was immediately acknowledged that there never had been so able a War Minister; and, when, after six years, he quit the office, he left it more efficient than it had ever been.

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Lord Haldane started on a well-defined plan of reorganization so far as the forces. were concerned. He held that the first line of defense for a country so peculiarly situated as Great Britain was the navy. plan, therefore, was to provide out of the regular army an expeditionary force for oversea service larger than anything that the country had hitherto been capable of sending forth at short notice, while this army was also to be adapted for recruiting, in time of war, Britain's Indian dependency and other outposts of empire. He did not intend to denude Britain; his object was to provide for home defense a Citizen Army-to bring into proper cohesion all the old-time military forces, the Regulars, the Militia, the Yeomanry, and the Volunteers. It meant the

ending of the volunteer force, which became the popular "Territorials" under County Associations. Coincident with greater efficiency, Lord Haldane aimed at reduced expenditure on what was practically a new army. And, having matured his scheme and set the machinery in motion, he did not spare himself in bringing personally to the notice of every man in the country his new policy. For months he spoke almost daily at public meetings, appealing to the good sense and patriotism of his countrymen to make the Territorial Force a success. This Citizen Army, properly organized and rendered efficient, was to be the answer to the Conscriptionists. If I were a Frenchman or a German," said Lord Haldane a few weeks ago, "I should accept the notion of a nation in arms and the entire manhood of the country compulsorily trained to defense, because I should feel that it was impossible without that to resist the enemy who, might come over the imaginary land frontier and conquer my country. But we live in an island, and put our faith in the command of the sea."

Many British military experts are of opinion

that Lord Haldane's triumph in the reform of the Regular Army was greater even than his success in creating an entirely new fighting machine in the personnel of the Territorials.

Apart from having perfected the expeditionary force and created the Territorials, he instituted the General Staff in 1906, a body of distinguished officers to whom has been delegated a voice in the business management of the army, along with the work of training in peace and leading in war. He initiated the Officers' Training Corps, while the Technical and National Reserves, in connection with whom he transmitted to private citizens some of his own energy and enthusiasm, are also products of the last six years. The Cadet organization, in addition, took a new form, which received the approbation of King Edward VII a short time before his death.

The Army Estimates for 1912-1913 furnish eloquent testimony to the economies introduced by Lord Haldane during the six years that he was Minister of War. They amount to $139,300,000, and represent a saving of about $10,000,000 as compared with the last financial year of the last Conservative Government. He combined economy with efficiency.

The War Minister was a marvel as a business man. Before he assumed command the War Office was a tangle of red tape. The officials occupied a large part of their time in writing to each other from adjoining rooms; it took days and sometimes weeks to obtain a decision. Lord Haldane soon abolished all these bad traditions. He set the example himself by being accessible to every one who had any call to see him. When differences of opinion on policy arose between officials or officers, he had them before him and settled matters at once. He carried through big transactions with a rapidity which astonished those accustomed to old routine methods. The British War Minister has a prodigious amount of work to do in normal times in the way of conferences, correspondence, official functions, etc., besides which he has to pass most of the day in Parliament. Lord Haldane is one of those extraordinary men who do a lot of work without even appearing to be busy. When a visitor called upon him at the War Office he was found sitting at the head of a big table, smoking a cigar, without a scrap of paper before him; the table was clean; one basket might contain a bundle of letters to sign, another a series of official documents; newspapers lay in orderly array on another table,

but the Minister was apparently doing nothing. He talked to you in a quiet, leisurely way and promptly finished the business you had to do with him.

Lord Haldane is a man with a well-trained mind and a gift for method and organization. All the time that he was at the War Office he found time not only to do his share of work as a member of the Cabinet and to deliver more speeches than his colleagues, but he was Chairman of a Royal Commission on University Education. He has a passion for education. An educational reformer before he is an army reformer, his view is that moral power, and not brute force, commands predominance in the world; that armaments will tend to diminish and ultimately to become extinct; and that the ap pallingly increased effectiveness of the means of destruction to which the advancing science of war is yearly adding, and the accompanying increase in the burden of cost, are progressingly cogent arguments against the force of arms. Lord Haldane's scheme of improved educational facilities has for its object the formation of tastes rather than the mere communication of knowledge, and he would have democracy insist on equality of opportunity as something that should be within the reach of every youth and maiden. He loses no chance which offers to preach the gospel of Civic Universities, and he has been instrumental in stimulating and encouraging the foundation of a number of new university colleges. To him also belongs the credit of a British Charlottenburg-a high technical school. His great ambition as an educational reformer is to see public education in England democratized so that the best training will be available for the poorest children, and that the ladder between the common or elementary school and the university will be complete. He feels that the Liberal Government, of which he is a member, has failed to deal adequately with education, and he is the real author of a new Reform Bill about to be introduced and the inspirer of the policy which it represents. I would not be surprised if, should the Liberals continue in office for many more years, Lord Haldane stepped down from the august and mighty office of Lord Chancellor and became Minister of Education.

Since he has been a member of Mr. Asquith's Cabinet, Lord Haldane has taken a keen interest in foreign policy. The weak spot in British foreign policy in recent years

has been a certain misunderstanding with Germany arising partly from naval rivalry. Last year Lord Haldane went on a mission to Berlin and began a new policy leading to mutual confidence and trust between England and Germany. That policy has been quietly but steadily developed since Lord Haldane's memorable visit. No one is better fitted to represent England in these friendly negotiations. German statesmen admire him, and know that he knows their character and the institutions of their country better than any other Englishman. He approaches German statesmen with an intelligent appreciation and sympathy. He is on friendly terms with the Kaiser and the Kaiser's chief Ministers. This friendship with the Emperor William and the veneration in which he holds German philosophers are shown in Lord Haldane's house in Queen Anne's Gate, overlooking St. James's Park, where a portrait of the Emperor, who has lunched here when on a visit to London, occupies the place of honor. Here are also hung portraits of his mentors, Hegel, Goethe, Schiller, Voltaire, and so forth, while the literature which crowds the bookshelves in his library is largely German. The German Emperor recently accepted five thousand copies of Lord Haldane's book, "Universities and Public Life," for distribution among the school libraries of the RealGymnasia in the German Empire. On the occasion of one of his recent visits to Berlin,

Lord Haldane was presented by the Emperor with a bronze bust of his Majesty and a graciously worded autograph letter. In all that has taken place between England and Germany since Lord Haldane opened the door for a better understanding he has played an important part, and as a result the future is full of promise both for the friendship between the British and German Empire and for the peace of Europe.

When, in 1912, Lord Haldane vacated the War Office for the Woolsack, he could not take his heart from the army, although there were aspects of the Lord Chancellorship which appealed to him. He remains a mem

ber of the Committee of Imperial Defense, and continues to give the country the benefit of his views on the Army and Imperial Defense. One of the last reforms which he carried out before leaving the War Office was the creation of a joint naval and war staff, bringing the two great defense departments into closer co-operation.

Lord Haldane, who is a bachelor, lives in Queen Anne's Gate, a quaint old-fashioned street near the Houses of Parliament, and overlooking St. James's Park. It is a street which is in process of transition and is being taken possession of by architects, engineers, and official offices. At one end of it stands the new administrative mansion of the AngloAmerican Oil Company-the British branch of the Standard Oil Trust.

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N English poet has written,

"The sultry summer past, September comes,

Soft twilight of the slow declining year.'

But this will not do at all for our American September. The flame of summer has by

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means died down-often it flares high before the month closes. Only the longer coolness of the dark hours gives the month much distinction from August, and, weary of the heat, we welcome the occasional chilly breeze or rain from the North, as suggestive of bracing days to come. The outdoor world seems likewise worn and faded. All the streams are sluggish and half empty, their fishes dull in hue. Hillsides and meadows are mottled with brown, and where a fortnight ago stood a field of waving gold one sees only grizzly stubble, with whirling flocks of sparrows, or shore-larks, and quail, calling anxiously. The foliage in the woods and along the roads is dusty, droops a little, and sprinkles the ground with crumpled, insect-bitten leaves whenever a wind shakes the tree-tops.

Their falling lets in the ripening sunlight, and more and more reveals the products of a busy season's work-a wealth of fruits, red, golden, black and white, burdening the tree boughs and glistening among vines and herbage. Heaps of ripe apples dapple the greensward of the orchard; and peaches with downy cheeks, wearing the blush of mellow ripeness, are drooping voluptuously from their slender boughs," as Wilson Flagg depicts it.

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Animal life responds to the quieting influences of the aging summer as it adorns itself with purple and gold. The furry mammals are shedding their hair in ragged patches, among which are slowly growing the new and warmer coats for which trappers are waiting. The autumnal molting of the birds is also at hand. The fledglings, now fully grown, are putting off childish ways and clothes, and getting new suits more or less like those of their parents. Sometimes, in mature birds, the change is more apparent than real, due to

wearing away of the colored tips of the feathers; but it is often true and striking, as in the cases of the scarlet tanager, bobolink, goldfinch, and others, which lose their gay nuptial dress and put on a traveling suit of soberer hue.

All the wood-folk are making haste to grow fat-especially woodchucks, which do not neglect the good things our gardens provide whenever there is a hole in the fence: and they, and the skunks and chipmunks, are digging the deep burrows to which they will presently retire. Now, too, as the corn develops into its sweet, milky stage, the 'coons, old and young, come to feed on the juicy kernels-stealing from the woods by moonlight, watching for dogs and men, dodging among the shadows, racing across the lights, and with eager whimpering stripping the husks from the coveted ears. The milky corn is climbed and nibbled by mice and squirrels too, but they go by daylight.

The characteristic feature of the month in the naturalist's eyes, however, is the southward return of the birds. The domestic duties which urged them to hasten northward in the spring are completed, and back they come to their winter haunts in the South. Restlessness to depart seems to stir them as soon as they have seen that the family eggs are hatched and the young are becoming able to travel. Again we notice unfamiliar sorts last seen in May, and their coming seems to excite our resident birds to take to the long road. Snipe and shore-birds gather in chattering bands and dart away in the dusk to marshes not threatened by frost; the woodland songsters flit cautiously from copse to copse; ducks and geese cleave their way through the twilight to fresh feeding-places: and the marshes are clouded with vast flocks of blackbirds, swallows, and the like, congre gating to fly southward in company.

In this gregarious tendency the autumnal migration differs very strikingly from the spring flight. The birds always seem at this season less hurried than in spring, loafing along by day-for food is still abundantand making their journeys mainly after dark.