6o 



REVIEW OF REVIEWS. 



March 1, 1913. 



under the auspices of foreign mission- 

 ary societies, and these are doing some- 

 thing towards the education of the 

 masses. 



WILL CONSTANTINOPLE 

 VANISH ? 



This is the announcement contained 

 in the Lady's Reahn, on the testimony 

 of the geologists. Investigations since 

 the great earthquake of August 9th have 

 made it certain that Constantinople is 

 sinking : — 



" It is only a question of time," says Hede- 

 meyer. " If an earthquake does not destroy the 

 city, then subsidence will. It may take a thou- 

 sind years; it may take a day. But it is certain 

 that a thousand years hence all the present lower 

 levels of Constantinople, including the Bosphorus 

 palaces, will have sunk beneath the sea." 



So it is all the same to-day whether Turk or 

 Slav wins. Neither will keep for ever the New 

 Rome. And it appears that the Dorion colonists 

 who built Byzantium two thousand five hundred 

 years ago were told truly by their augiir, that 

 "All the peoples will strive for this city; but it 

 is destined to belong to none." The north coast 

 of the sea of Marmora, of the Dardanelles, and 

 of the Bosphorus, lies directly over the earth- 

 quake centre which in prehistoric times here rent 

 Europe and Asia in twain. 



buy or not. Each must be left to stand upon his 

 own responsibility. No premium will be conferred 

 upon ignorance revealing itself on either side. 

 It is every man's duty to look out for his own 

 interests, and it is not tbe merchant's duty to 

 consider the interests of his patron more than 

 the latter considers the interests of the merchant. 



The Baron concludes by saying 

 that: — 



Aiming to be perfectly moral, the merchant 

 should go on with this ideal, carrying it into 

 practice as far as lies within him, selling as 

 good goods as he can get, making as fair profits 

 as he can, gaining the confidence and satisfac- 

 tion of his customers. Such is the path he should 

 tread, and if he cannot do it he* had better not 

 be a merchant. A merchant must be a man as 

 well as a trader; and if a man cannot prosecute 

 the profession of buying and selling without 

 losing his manhood, the fault probably lies more 

 in his personality than in his trade. The idea 

 that a man cannot be a true gentleman, bound 

 by the dictates of righteousness, and be a mer- 

 chant, is absurd. The man who does not follow 

 the same rule of morality in business that he 

 observes in the ordinary walks of life will be 

 run out of business as surely and as rightly as 

 he would be in any other sphere, social or other- 

 wise. 



COMMERCIAL MORALITY IN 

 JAPAN. 



The Japan Magazine prints a parti- 

 cularly strong article by Baron Shibu- 

 sawa on the charges brought against 

 Japanese merchants. He is heartily sick 

 and tired of the expression, "Japanese 

 commercial morality," and repays the 

 Western critics in their own coin. He 

 asks, without venturing into the jDre- 

 serves of the preacher, what is morality ? 



There 's no doubt it is a universal spirit that 

 all are ex,jeoted to honour and rise to. It is the 

 very life of the body politic, and the body social. 

 It is a power for righteousness working for the 

 good of the whole body of humanity. Morality 

 does, therefore, enter into commerce as a depart- 

 ment of human activity; and its imperative 

 demand there is that cxsmnierce must be made to 

 work for the good of the world. The wealth of 

 a few must be made consistent with the good of 

 all, or not be at all. Consequently some of our 

 great merchant princes have been great bene- 

 factors to their nations, and people without 

 specially aiming to be so, simply because they 

 were controlled by a highly moral spirit in all 

 their transactions. I have no desire to make the 

 question more difficult than it ie. Generally speak- 

 ing, there should be no difficulty. A man offers 

 his goods or products for sale, and his customers 

 are at liberty to examine them and decide for 

 themselves whether it is to their advantage to 



PHILATELIC AUCTIONEERING. 



When, in 1872, the first stamp auction 

 was held in London, at Sotheby's, with 

 such dubious success that a long in- 

 terval was allowed to elapse ere the ex- 

 periment was again repeated, it scarcely 

 seemed possible that within thirty years 

 there would be such specialised develop- 

 ment in philately as to call into exist- 

 ence a Philatelic Auction Rooms. Yet 

 such was the case, and the firm of Mar- 

 tin. Ra\' &: Co , founded in iQOi. has to- 

 day an internationally famous successor 

 in the firm of Harmer, Rooke & Co.. a 

 catalogue of whose 539th sale, with its 

 410 distinct lots, now lies before us. 

 The rapid development of the magni- 

 tude of these public transactions may 

 be seen from the increase of a total of 

 16.398 lots offered in 1906 to 28,296 lots 

 offered in 1912. The scope of the busi- 

 ness carried on seems worthy of the in- 

 terest of every philatelist. Collections, 

 single rarities and miscellaneous lots are 

 offered for auction, and the philatelist 

 who wishes to keep in touch with prices 

 realised can be supplied with priced 

 catalogues of every sale by payment of 

 an annual subscription. It is stated that 

 nearly 40CO catalogues announcing 

 coming sales are distributed each 

 month by the firm among the prin- 



