Review of hemewa, S0/SJ06. 



The Reviews Reviewed. 



315 



THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 



The Contemporary for February is fair average. 



AN INTERNATIONAL NAV^i PROGRAMME. 

 Mr. G. Shaw-Lefevre, at the close of an article on 

 " Kival Navies," asks: — 



Would it not be possible to devise some international 

 arrangement under which a limit should be imposed on 

 the armaments ot the tliree Powers.-' The French and Ger- 

 man naviea are so nearly equal in strength of armament 

 that it would seem to be possible to come to some arrange- 

 ment. It would no doubt be conceded that England, by 

 reason of its insular position, and its great possessions 

 beyond the seas, and its vast commerce, is entitled to main- 

 tain a navy at least equal to those of the two other Powers 

 combined. Meanwhile it has been shown by the Board of 

 Admiralty that the construction of four powerful vessels 

 in each year will adequately meet the programmes of France 

 and Germany. It appears to follow logically and with 

 financial precision that an expenditure ot £6,500,000 a year 

 on new constructions will provide these four powerful 

 vessels in each year, and give us ample margin for other 

 naval requirements. 



NERVOUS BREAK-DOWN. 



Dr. Guthrie Rankin, writing on nervous break- 

 down, says it is more frequent among the rich society 

 women than among the poor. But he warns us 



that " break-down of the nervous system " is no mere so- 

 ciety craze which it is fashionable to suffer from, but is 

 becoming a national calamity which bids lair to rob our 

 descendants of many of those qualities which have done so 

 much to make this empire what it is. 



Prevention is only possible if public attention can be 

 aroused and individual effort enlisted. In so far as social 

 customs and personal habits are contributing to the in- 

 crease of nerve-instability, they must be altered if we are 

 to escape that downfall of our supremacy which other 

 great nations before us have experienced. A more vigorous 

 public sentiment, fostered by an example of greater self- 

 denial and more rigid adherence to simplicity of life on the 

 part of those who set the pace and lead the fashions of 

 the day, would do much to arrest the downhill rush of the 

 multitude; pronounc«d social disapproval of the immode- 

 rate use of alcohol and tobacco, and the stern forbidding 

 of both under the age of puberty, would shield the nervous 

 centres from two of their most deadly enemies. 



For sufferers from nervous break-down, Rest — Rest 

 -—Rest is the only safe prescription. 



SCOT'nSH EDUCATION AND THE STATUS OF TEACHERS. 

 Principal Donaldson, writing on " Scottish Educa- 

 tion, How Ought it to be Organised?" urges the ex- 

 ample of Prussia: — 



Teachers are hoping for a better tenure and a better 

 treatment by wider areas as laid down in the New Bill. 

 But I feel confident that they will be disappointed. Ihe 

 one solution is the establishment of a regular pension sys- 

 tem carried out by the State and a fixed tenure. 



THE ELECTIONS TO THE DUMA. 



Dr. Dillon continues his chronicle of the Russian 

 Revolution, which seems to be disgusting the nation 

 with the Revolutionaries. He says : — 



In a word, at the present moment a wave of Conserva- 

 tism seems to be rolling over the land, and although I 

 write with the utmost diffidence and reserve, keenly aware 

 how unexpected are most of the events that happen daily 

 in Russia, I cannot wholly throw off the belief that the 

 elections will send a majority of very moderate Liberals, 

 whom some would term Conservatives, to the Duma. 



HOME RULE BY INSTALOMENTS. 



Professor Dioey is much concerned about the future 

 of the Union. He says : — 



No Unionist can support a Home Rule policy or a Home 

 Rule Government, and this for more than one reason. The 

 cause of Unionism is in greater danger than in any year 

 since 1886. Its assailants are united. English Home Rulers 

 command as Free Traders a huge Parliamentary majority. 



Irish Nationalists are rightly encouraged by the turn of af- 

 fairs. They can once more count upon tiie support of a powerful 

 English Party, and this English Party is strengtheuea and 

 flushed by electoral victory. Unionists, on the other hand, 

 are for the first time disunited; they are diviued into 

 opposed and hostile camps. 



A policy of Home Rule by instalments is more injurious 

 to the whole United Kingdom than the open attempt to 

 dissolve the Union and revive an Irish Parliament by a 

 supreme act of Parliamentary sovereignty. A Home Rule 

 policy threatens far greater injury to England than a Home 

 Rule Bill. It will give to Great Britain none ol tliose com- 

 pensations which were offered by the Bill of 1886. 



THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW. 



The February number is very good, the amusing 

 sketch "of our parlous condition under the Labour 

 Party having been separately noticed. The opening 

 paper is a short statement of " Why Free-trade 

 Wins " ; following it is a paper on a subject which will 

 appeal to many, " Earned and Unearned Incomes and 

 the Income Tax," in which the writer says it is vir- 

 tually impossible to discriminate properly between 

 earned and unearned income tor the purpose of tax- 

 ing them differently. Even to the argument that 

 earned incomes are more precarious than unearned, 

 he replies that wherever interest is over a certain 

 rate the element of risk comes in, perhaps strongly. 



A writer signing himself " Efficiency " recommends 

 Mr. Bryce to advise the immediate appointment of a 

 Royal Commission to inquire into the duties, scales 

 of pay and methods of the Irish Civil Sen-ice, which, 

 he says, is a fearful incubus on the country as at pre- 

 sent conducted. 



Mr. David H. Wilson's article on " The Economic 

 Causes of Pauperism " comes back to the old question 

 — the land, and how to people it. His remedy for 

 pauperism is co-operation more than anything else. 



Space allows of no more than a mention of an in- 

 teresting paper on the Pedagogue in Fact and Fic- 

 tion, the point being that the latter is apt to be the 

 superior. An otherwise just and discriminating paper 

 on Adam Lindsay Gordon hardly allows enough for 

 the fact that Australia was but the land of his adop- 

 tion. He is an English poet who lived under the 

 Southern Ci-oss, not a true Colonial product. 



A PENNYWISE AND POUND FOOLISH POLICY. 



Mr. Swiney's paper on " The Omnipotent Half- 

 penny " is a severe censure of the saving of a half- 

 penny on the Education Grant and rutiilessly closing 

 the schools to infants under five. This halfpenny sav- 

 ing in the richest country in the world, he says, 



will indirectly increase by some thousands of pounds the 

 sum total spent on our juvenile reformatories, our prisons 

 and our workhouses, our asylums and our hospitals, and 

 give a fresh impetus to the awful deathrate among infant-s, 

 because tliey will unwisely deprive tiiemselves of the only 

 means by which, in the majority of cases, the young chil- 

 dren of the working classes can be early brought in touch 

 with civilising influences, and be rescued for some hours of 

 the day from the depressing, baneful environment of the 

 slum and alley; the only means, moreover, by which dire<,-t 

 help and relief can be given to the harassed, overworked 

 mothers in the care and training of their younger children. 



The mortality of working-cla.'^s children under five 

 in London and elsewhere is 38 per cent, to 50 per 

 cent. : and for every child that dies a dozen others 

 are damaged of those surviving tlie first year. This 

 on tbe authority of Sir William Broadbent. Things 

 will now go from this bad to a worse. 



The Sunday at Home is an unusually interesting 

 number, opening with an editorial on Budapest, and 

 the state of religious life there; and containing Mr 

 Douglas Sladen's interesting paper on "Tunis: the 

 Gate of the Orient." 



