Review of Reviews, 



THE REVIEWS REVIEWED 



THE AMERICAN REVIEW OF REVIEWS. 



The American Beviexc of lie virus for January con- 

 tains, besides the Editorial survey of the progress of 

 the world at home and abroad, a number of articles 

 of interest to readers outside America. Among these 

 are Mr. Stead's description of the new Liberal Cabi- 

 net and Miss Agnes Lant's graphic account of the 

 sufferings of the unemployed in London. Dr. Baum- 

 feld, the American correspondent of the Neue Freie 

 Presse, describes the recent effort made by the Euro- 

 pean Powers to coerce the Sultan. Dr. Baumfeld 

 takes an optimist view of the operation, and says, 

 "The Macedonians will now attain their rights." Will 

 they? Nous verrons! Mr. Cyrus E. Adams tells the 

 story of how a Norwegian singlestick sloop, the Gjoa, 

 of forty-seven tons, under Captain Roald Amundsen 

 and his seven men, made the North-West passage. 

 The Gjoa was driven by a small petroleum engine. 

 Mr. Yarros writes on the strikes and lock-outs in 

 America in 1905, and predicts another anthracite 

 strike in the near future. Mr. S. P. Gerrie speaks 

 enthusiastically on Canadian Progress in 1905. The 

 Reviews of tiie Magazines of the World are as full 

 as usual, and the illustrations are not less numerous. 



THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. 



The December number of this Review is very North 

 American. The articles on " The Difficulties and Dan- 

 gers of Government Rate-making," " The Way of Free 

 Rural Delivery," and " A Democrat in the Philip- 

 pines," are only interesting to Americans. I notice 

 elsewhere Mr. Vanderlip's excellent paper on '-Insur- 

 ance for Working Men." 



A GER.MAN VIEW OP INDIA'S DANGER. 



Lieut. -Gen. von Alten, of the German Army, quotes 

 Von Moltke a- saying twenty years ago, "The Rus- 

 sians have not now much further to go to reach India ; 

 the British must beware." He thinks that it is a vain 

 delusion to expect any assistance from the Japanese in 

 defending the frontier of Afghanistan. He concludes 

 his paper as follows: — 



Neither diplomatic arts, money, threats, nor even the 

 British armv on the Indus can avert the fate of the Buffer 

 State. Afghanistan, which civilised Great Britain would 

 deprive of the blessings of roads and railways. The ulti- 

 mate victory is on the side of the spirit of progress, which, 

 moving forth from the Russian steppes, is destined to bind 

 Afghanistan, with girders of iron, irrevocably to the Em- 

 pire of the Tsar. 



THE JEWS— PAST AND PRESENT. 



Dr. Isidore Singer, in the course of a very interest- 

 ing " Bird's-eye View of the Condition of the Jews in 

 the Past and Present," savs that in 1880 there were 

 only 80,000 Jews in New York. There are now 750,000, 

 or three times as many as all the Jews in Great Bri- 

 tain. There are more Jews in the United States than 

 in any other State except Russia and Austria. There 

 are eleven million Jews in the world : five millions in 

 Russia, two millions in Austria, one and a-half million 

 in the United States. There are onlv 86,000 Jews in 

 France, 586,000 in Germany, and 250,000 in Great 

 Britain. Dr. Singer says that from the de-t ruction of 

 the Temple till the Arab invasion, from 70 to 711, the 

 Jews centred round Babylonia and were very happy. 

 From 711 till 1348 they were free from persecution. 

 But from the Black Death till the French Revolution 

 they were everywhere persecuted, shut up in Ghettos 



and treated as outcasts. Since the French Revolution 

 they have been regaining their rights as citizens. 



A STORY OF KING EDWARD. 

 When our present King was travelling in India as 

 Prince of Wales, says Mr. Theodore Morison, he estab- 

 lished a great reputation for tact. In support of this 

 Mr. Morison tells the following story: — 



It is related, for instance, that he was once entertained 

 at a dinner by an Oriental potentate who was little fami- 

 liar with the social customs of the West. While he was 

 talking to his royal guest, a servant handed him a dish of 

 potatoes, into which the chief, lapsing unconsciously into 

 the simplicity of Eastern manners, dipped his hand and 

 took out a potato with his fingers. H<_ j was covered with 

 confusion upon realising the indecorum of his behaviour; 

 thereupon King Edward signed to the servant to hand the 

 dish to him, and, dipping his hand into it, took out a 

 potato and ate it with his fingers in the sight of the whole 

 table. 



THE UNITED STATES AND THE OPEN DOOR. 



Senator Newlands (Dem.) discusses the future of 

 American policy in the Philippines. He condemns the 

 proposal to give the Philippines free access to the 

 American market, because this would imply giving the 

 Americans the right of free import into the Philip- 

 pines, while all other nations would be taxed 20 per 

 cent, as at present : — 



Such a proposition involves the closed door in the Philip- 

 pines at a time when we are strenuously urginu the open 

 door in China, Manchuria, and Korea. This is both wrong 

 and impolitic; wrong, because consistency is required of 

 nations as well as individuals, and impolitic because it 

 will give Japan and China an excuse for securing favoured 

 arrangements in tire Orient which will exclude our pro- 

 ducts. If we get the monopoly of imports into the Philip- 

 pines, it would not compensate for the losses which we 

 would sustain in the rest of the Orient by the assertion of 

 this policy. If we refuse equal opportunities for Japanese 

 trade in the Philippines, how can we insist upon equal 

 opportunities with Japan in Manchuria and Korea? 



OTHER ARTICLES. 



Mrs. Meynell writes on " The Euglish Women 

 Humorists" — George Eliot, Jane Austen. Mrs. Trol- 

 lope, and Elizabeth Inchbald. Mr. Henry James's 

 article on ''New York and the Hudson," that appeared 

 in the Fortnightly last month, was republished simul- 

 taneously by the North American. Mr. Howell's 

 second paper on " English Idiosyncrasies " is noticed 

 elsewhere. 



THE C0RNHILL MAGAZINE. 



The Cornhill is keeping up very well. In the 

 January number a new story by Stanley Weyman is 

 begun, and '' The Reminiscences of a Diplomatist" are 

 continued, dealing this time with St. Petersburg be- 

 fore the War. Sir Algernon West, who agrees with 

 Dr. Johnson in thinking Loudon the best place in 

 summer and the only place in winter, writes on May- 

 fair, hardly a square, street, or house in which has not 

 some delightful association with the past. In his 

 article lie pleasantly blends associations with actual 

 personages and those of Thackeray's novels. 



Viscount St. Cyres has an amusing paper on 

 ''Judges' Wut." Scottish judges bear off the palm for 

 eccentricities, but English are first in the matter of 

 wits. Sometimes the laity have scored off the judges 

 and barristers, but rarely, very rarely. "Nearly all 

 the good stories in the legal jest-books turn on the 

 discomfiture of a witness, or the bamboozling of a 

 jury, by some clever counsel." In this paper are many 

 good stories. 



