Reriev of Reviews, 20/3/06. 



Leading Articles. 



x 73 



THE NEW ULSTEE. 

 -Mr. S. Parnell Kers, writing in the Contemporary 

 on '• Stands Ulster Where it Did ?" answers his ques- 

 tion by declaring that it does not. Ulster is finding 

 salvation : — 



The younger generation in Ulster have already begun to 

 abandon the garrison theory. They begin to have a senti- 

 ment for Ireland as a whole; to feel that they have a part 

 as well as the Southerners in the great traditions of culture 

 aud learning locked up in the Irish Celtic records. But 

 young Ulster is becoming national, is becoming Irish. 

 Take, by way of proof, the spread of the so-called Celtic 

 movement. The other slight indication of the drift to- 

 wards Celticism is the spread of the work of the Gaelic 

 League in Ulster- 

 There are other definite movements in Ulster. Mr. T. W. 

 Eussell, M.P. for South Tyrone, has one all to himself. His 

 followers are mostly tenant farmers who desire the compul- 

 sory expropriation of landlords reluctant to sell. Then 

 there is a very pronounced Labour movement in the great 

 industrial centre of Belfast. In trains and tramcars, wher- 

 ever men meet and talk you will find sentiments expressed 

 more generous and more liberal than has ever been the 

 case before in Ulster — at least since the Home Eule agita- 

 tion began. There is even an independent Orange institu- 

 tion which is partially sane already, and is making progress. 

 Men of all parties in Ulster now recognise, and openly ad- 

 mit, the crying need for political and social reforms in 

 Ireland. English politicians, and especially English Liberal 

 politicians, should remember Ulster. Thev should remember 

 its latent Liberalism, and be of good courage. 



A SUGGESTION FOE ME. HALDANE. 



The most brilliant and comprehensive article in 

 the magazines on the work of the new Ministry is 

 that which appears in the National Review under the 

 title, " The Liberal Cabinet : an Intercepted Letter 

 Communicated by the Fabian Society/' It purports 

 to be a letter written by C.-B. to his colleagues, in 

 which he, the pseudo C.-B. — or shall I say the dis- 

 guised Sydney Webb ? — sketches out in semi-gro- 

 tesque the duties he expects each of them to per- 

 form. Here, for instance, is his suggestion to Mr. 

 Haldane as to how he might make military service 

 universal in Britain. C.-B. is represented as say- 

 ing: — 



If it suited you to give up all the old-fashioned nonsense 

 about living in barracks, and the necessity of the soldier 

 beinar drilled into a mere machine and outlawed in the 

 name of discipline, instead of being as free as a policeman 

 or a signalman, yon might eaSily get compulsory military 

 training all round as a mere development of Free Trade. It 

 is really quite simple. You have in the past taken a great 

 part in freeing the children from factory labour — indeed, I 

 remember how effective your help was in making it pos- 

 sible to fix the age for half-time at fourteen. That was a 

 great, stroke for freedom. Why should you not now extend 

 the half-time clauses in the Factory Act. so that no boy 

 under twenty-one finds himself compelled to work for more 

 than thirty hours a week. Eescue these young hooligans 

 from the tyranny of the streets, and the obsession of the 

 music-hall gallery. Save our industry from its increasing 

 fatal dependence on boy labour. Put the boy. in the half- 

 time that you have rescued from the workshop and the Mile 

 End Road, through a well-planned seven years' course of 

 organise! outdoor games and physical exercises, real tech- 

 nical education of all sorts, and finaJ.lv drill and the use of 

 the rifle— and you will have set up again the sadly degene- 

 rate physique of the race, found a substitute for apprentice- 

 ship, delighted the Trade Unions by making boy labour 

 irksome to the employer, and trained every male adult I i 

 the delence of his country- all without a single day's in- 

 termission of industrial employment or a single night of 

 the demoralising barrack life. By heavens, what a coup! 

 I almost wish I could go back to the War Office myself just 

 to see what, faces those old militaires would pull. Hut you 

 are the very man for it. with your Factorv Legislation 

 knowledge. Only you mustn't let the War Office run the 

 seven years' training— better eive it to the Education Com- 

 mittee-; of the County Councils, with a grant in aid. 



THE CHINESE IN THE TRANSVAAL. 



Mr. F. D. Chaplin, writing in the National Review, 



expresses a confident belief that the Boers will vote 

 in favour of the Chinese. He admits that General 

 Botha and Mr. Wolmarans — and he might have 

 added the Boer committees generally — have de- 

 manded the expatriation of the Chinese, but he 

 says : — 



That section is, however, a small one. The greater num- 

 ber of those concerned in the direction of Boer policy will 

 almost certainly continue to look on Chinese importation 

 as a necessary evil, for which they were not responsible, 

 but which by assisting the revenue of the country will be 

 the means of providing funds for the advancement of agri- 

 cultural interests and will to some extent check the com- 

 petition for Kaffir labour. Last, but not least, opposition 

 to Chinese labour may be turned profitably to account as a 

 means of obtaining from the Government or from the min- 

 ing community concessions to . Boer feelings and interests 

 as occasion may arise. When, therefore, the question of the 

 continuance of Chinese labour is submitted to the arbitra- 

 ment of the Transvaal electorate— and all shades of opinion 

 in the Transvaal are agreed that no other arbitrament is 

 possible — it is scarcely possible that the decision will be in 

 favour of repatriation, either immediate or gradual. 



WHAT OUGHT TO BE DONE. 



" A Student of Public Affairs " in the Fortnightly 

 is quite cocksure as to what the Liberal Government 

 ought to do. In the first place, 



they can restore to the people that immediate and direct 

 control over their local affairs of which, for nearly twenty 

 years, the Conservative party has been engaged in depriv- 

 ing them. They can eliminate from locaf administration 

 the insidious and pernicious principle of co-optation. This 

 principle was first introduced, if my memory serves me ac- 

 curately, in the Local Government Act of 1888. A new phase 

 was added to it in the Local Taxation 'Customs and Excise) 

 Bill of 1890. The coping-stone was added in the late Educa- 

 tion Acts. 



In the second place, a Liberal Ministry may do good work 

 in reforming the present preposterous and odious franchise 

 laws. As they stand they are an abiding inducement to 

 perjury and false pretence. 



In the third place, a Liberal Ministry may earn a claim 

 to national gratitude by thorough-going reforms of the pre- 

 sent land system ami Poor haw system. Both have existed 

 so long without attention that they have grown hoary with 

 accumulated abuses. 



In the fourth place, they must yield nothing to the 

 Roman Catholics in Education. If they will 



propose a measure of thorough-goins reform founded upon 

 strict justice, and regardless of sectarian shriekings, thev 

 will rally all sensible men to their support. If the House 

 of Lords rejected such a measure, as it probably would, the 

 Liberals should go to the country upon it. 



Writing in the Monthly Review on " Bulgaria To- 

 day." Lady Thompson says: — 



The Bulgarian has not appealed to the outside world as 

 a sympathetic personality, partly because he has been over- 

 shadowed by the more showy qualities of bis neighbours, 

 the Albanians or the Montenegrins, and partly because of 

 the old prejudice in favour of his hereditary enemy, the 

 Turk. The taint of centuries of contempt and servitude 

 cannot be altogether thrown off in a generation, but the 

 characteristics of the Bulgarian peasant are. as a rule, 

 are least associated with a subject race. Brave' 

 hardy, frugal, patriotic to the verge of Chauvinism, the 

 hard I Bulgarian, with his utilitarianism tempered by 



his pas-ion iment of nationality and his love of 



his mountains and plains and rivers, is certain to prove 

 ideal material for a buffer State and for a formidable 

 army. 



She refers to Prince Ferdinand's personality as 

 " curious and interesting," but the real power lies in 

 the hands of his mother, Princess Clementine, the 

 deaf old la'dy of 86. who has been called " the 

 cleverest woman in Europe." 



