FORBES 



3246 



FORCED LOAN 



Forbes, EDWARD (1815-54). 

 British naturalist. Born at Doug- 

 las. Isle of Man, Feb. 12, 1815, he 

 was appointed in 1843 to the chair 

 of botany at King's College, Lon- 

 don, and became curator of the 

 Geological Society. In 1853 he be- 

 came professor of natural history 

 at Edinburgh. He is chiefly known 

 by his work on the starfishes, 1841, 

 and British mollusca (with Han- 

 ley), 1853. He died near Edin- 

 burgh, Nov. 18, 1854. 



Forbes-Robertson, SLR JOHN- 

 STON (b. 1853). British actor. Born 

 in London, Jan. 16, 1853, eldest 

 son of John Forbes-Robertson, art 

 critic and journalist, of Aberdeen, 

 and educated at the Charterhouse 

 and Rouen, he 

 studied art 

 at the R.A. 

 school, and 

 elocution un- 

 der Samuel 

 Phelps. He 

 made his stage 

 debut,March 5, 

 1874, at The 



Princess's, London, as Chastelard, 

 in Mary Queen of Scots. In the 

 same year he appeared with Ellen 

 Terry at Astley's. Associated in 

 turns with Charles Calvert, the Ban- 

 crofts, Henry Irving, Wilson Bar- 

 rett, and John Hare, he achieved 

 his first notable success as Geoffrey 

 Wynyard in Dan'l Druce, at The 

 Haymarket, Sept. 11, 1876. His 

 first venture as an actor-manager 

 was at The Lyceum, Sept. 21, 1895, 

 when he appeared as Romeo to the 

 Juliet of Mrs. Patrick Campbell. 

 His farewell season in London was 

 opened at Drury Lane, March 22, 

 1913, and closed on June 6 follow- 

 ing. In this year he was knighted. 



Gifted with a magnetic person- 

 ality and exceptional elocutionary 

 ability, he was one of the most 

 popular actors of his time. Of the 

 many parts he played, his Hamlet, 

 the title-role in The Passing of the 

 Third Floor Back, and Dick Heldar 

 in The Light That Failed, were 

 memorable. 



He toured in the U.S.A. in 

 1885, 1891, 1903-4, 1906, 1909-10, 

 1911, 1914, and 1915 ; and in 

 Germany in 1898. His brother, 

 whose stage name is Norman 

 Forbes (b. 1859), also won dis- 

 tinction as an actor ; and his 

 sister, Frances Forbes-Robertson, 

 was the author of several novels. 



In 1900 Sir Johnston married 

 May Gertrude, sister of Maxine El- 

 liott (q.v. ) and daughter of Thomas 

 Dermot, of Oakland, California, 

 who, as Gertrude Elliott, made her 



Sir J. Forbes-Robertson in character as, left, The Stranger, in The Passing of 

 the Third Floor Back ; right, Hamlet 



The British unit of force, called 

 a poundal, is a force which produces 

 in one second a speed of one foot 

 per second to a mass of one pound. 

 In the centimetre, gramme, second 

 system of measurement, the unit 

 of force, called a dyne (q.v. ), is the 

 force which produces in one second 

 a speed of one centimetre per 

 second in a mass of one gramme. 



The word force is also used of 

 a body of men, e.g. police force ; 

 in card playing for the forced pro- 

 duction of certain cards ; in horti- 

 culture for the forcing of plant 

 growth ; and for the power exerted 

 by an explosion. 



Forced Landing. Aeronautical 

 term for the coming to earth of an 

 aircraft through some cause over 

 which the pilot has no control. 



Forced Loan. MSney taken by 

 kings and other rulers from their 

 subjects by compulsion, but with 

 the promise of repayment, thus 

 differentiating it from taxation 

 proper. Something of this kind has 

 been done almost as long as society 

 has existed, but in England it first 

 became prominent in the time of 

 Charles I. In 1626 Charles re- 

 sorted to the device of a forced 

 loan. He dismissed Coke from the 

 chief justiceship for denying its 

 legality, and he punished those 

 who refused to pay by billeting 

 soldiers upon them and in other 

 ways. The question was tested 

 in the courts of law by the Five 

 Knights' Case ; in this the judges' 

 decision implied that the king alone 

 could decide whether or not a loan 

 was illegal. To this the parliament 

 replied by the Petition of Right, 

 which declared the exaction of 

 " any gift, loan, benevolency or 

 tax without common consent by 

 Act of Parliament to be illegal." 

 During the Great War suggestions 

 were made from time to time that 



tirst appearance on the American 

 stage in 1894, and later won much 

 public favour as Peggy, in Mice and 

 Men; Ophelia; Desdemona; Portia; 

 Cleopatra, in Caesar and Cleopatra; 

 Maisie, in The Light That Failed ; 

 Stasia, in The Passing of the Third 

 Floor Back ; and other parts. 



Forcados. River and town of 

 Nigeria, W. Africa. The river forms 

 the most important deltaic arm of 

 the Niger, discharging into the 

 Bight of Benin. Vessels proceed- 

 ing to Burutu, the headquarters of 

 the Niger Company, and all ships 

 proceeding to the ports of Warri, 

 Kokotown, and Sapele enter here. 

 The town is on the left bank of the 

 Forcados river, near the coast, 

 with a commodious harbour. It is 

 60 m. S.S.W. of Benin. Pop. 

 3,189, including 33 Europeans. 



Force (Lat. fortis, strong). Fun- 

 damental conception defined by 

 Newton as that which changes or 

 tends to produce change of motion 

 in a body on which it acts. Origin- 

 ally a muscular conception, it now 

 incorporates electrical and mag- 

 netic manifestations, e.g. the power 

 of a magnet to attract iron, etc., 

 the attraction of the earth, sun, 

 etc., i.e. gravitational force, etc. 

 Force has been defined also as the 

 rate per unit of length at which 

 energy is transferred or trans- 

 formed, so avoiding the conception 

 that force is a thing of itself, or that 

 it can exist without the presence 

 of matter. Certainly the existence 

 of force without matter is unknown. 



In dynamics force is measured 

 by the rate of change of momentum 

 (q.v. ), and is usually represented by 

 lines of definite length and direc- 

 tion, and the resultant of two 

 forces can be represented as the 

 diagonal of a parallelogram, the 

 sides of which represent the forces. 

 (See Composition of Forces.) 



