554 



The Review of Reviews. 



IVesiminsti-y Gazctie. ] 



One Who will be Missed. 



Mr. AsQUlTH : " Gooti-liye, Aithur ; I'm very sorry you're 

 going, liut I hope you'll come .ind see us as often as you can. 

 We shall all of us miss you I " 



five times the size of Italy, they have not as yet even 

 attempted to occupv. They have marooned nearly 

 80,000 men to suffer from cholera and eiinni at 

 half-a-dozen points along the coast, where they are 

 besieged and constantly attacked by the Arabs. 

 Their fleet, after vainly threatening mighty things 

 in the neighbourhood of the Dardanelles, has been 

 headed oft" by the Powers, whose patience, although 

 long suft'ering, could not quite allow the entrance to 

 the Black Sea to be blockaded as an incident of a 

 raid on 'I'ripoli. Italy, paralysed and impotent alike 

 on land and sea, advances towards bankruptcy and 

 revolution. If the monarchy disappears and Italy 

 splits into two republics, north and south, the Pope 

 will have a rare chance to 'fish in troubled waters, 

 while Austria may remember that her title deeds to 

 Venice are a thousand limes more valid than Italy's 

 title to Tripoli. 



Mr. Balfour's own physical health, 

 which has been undermined by 

 recurring attacks of influenza 

 affecting his heart, is the osten- 

 sible and sufficient reason for his resignation of the 

 leadership of the Unionist Party. He did not feel 

 equal to the strain of rallying a mutinous party against 

 the overwhelming odds brought against him by the 

 coalition. So he has gone amid universal regret. 

 With him passes the last of the greater figures which 

 survived from the Gladstonian era. The country has 

 been spared the spectacle of seeing Mr. Balfour's 

 place occupied by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, who for 

 some time past had been pluming himself upon the 



The Passing 



of 

 Mr. Balfour. 



succession. The choice ot the party fell upon Mr. 

 Bonar Law, whose speech on the Anglo-German 

 question is in itself adequate to prove that he is the 

 right man in the right place. 



The revolutionary movement in 

 The Republic China seems to have reached the 

 China. high-water mark. When W'u Ting- 



Fang, as the Foreign Secretary of 

 the Chinese Republic, issued his appeal to the Powers 

 to recognise the new-born State it was felt to be a 

 little premature. Delegates from the thirteen pro- 

 vinces in revolt were on their way to Shanghai to 

 decide upon the future of China. Yuan Shih-Kai, as 

 Prime .Minister of a Reformed Chinese Empire, 

 spoke them fair, offering them amnesty and reforms. 

 But all the while the Imperial troops were steadily 

 advancing to the attack, and by the end of the 

 month the three great cities which had been the origi- 

 nal seat of the rebellion had been recaptured by the 

 Empire. On the other hand, the insurgents had 

 captured Nanking. The sanguine expectations of 

 some that the Manchu dynasty would vanish like a 

 ghost at cockcrow at the first proclamation of a 

 Republic have abated. Dynasties three centuries old, 

 supported by a privileged caste of eighteen millions 

 of men, do not fold up their tents like the Arabs and 

 silently glide away — but it seems that dynasties seldom 

 last three centuries in China. The only thing certain 

 about the situation is that the new .wine of Western 



M'estmiiiitfr GuzctL 



The Tertium Quid. 



Mr. Chai'I.IN (of the Unionist Training Stables) : " I'm 

 quite sure that you are, both of you, equally competent ; and, 

 in fact, I fnunil it so difficult to choose between you 'hat I have 

 selected a — third party I " 



