62 



REVIEW OF REVIEWS. 



March 1, 101$. 



RANDOM NOTES. 



A WAR correspondent's ADVENTURE. 



Mr. Angus Hamilton tells his experi- 

 ence as a captured war correspondent, in 

 the Fortnightly. Riding from the 

 Turkish lines, he was seized by Bul- 

 garian troops. After being promised 

 courteous treatment he was declared by 

 another company of officers to be a 

 Turkish spy, and condemned to be shot 

 next morning. His statements were de- 

 clared to be lies and his credentials for- 

 geries. Happily he was identified in 

 time and eventually liberated, with 

 apologies for his maltreatment. 



THREE VIEWS OF HOME RULE. 

 "Sir. ^Maurice Woods, in the Nineteenth 

 Century, laments the lack of attention 

 that has been paid to the industrial 

 aspect of Home Rule, and is especially 

 indignant with the English Labour 

 Party for having refused to include fac- 

 tory legislation as Imperially binding 

 equally on Ireland and Great Britain. 

 Mr. J. H. Morgan. Professor of Consti- 

 tutional Law, warmly commends the 

 Home Rule Bill, and especially ap- 

 plauds its distinguishing feature of 

 flexibilit)-. Nowhere are there any hard 

 and fast lines of demarcation. The 

 Earl of Dunraven pleads again for 

 settlement by consent, and urges that, as 

 the Radical Party have adopted the 

 agrarian policy of the L'nionist Party 

 as expressed in Mr. W'yndham's Act of 

 1903, there would be great future gain 

 to them if the L'nionist Party would 

 adopt the Radical political policy. He 

 insists that settlement by consent is the 

 only way of securing a permanent solu- 

 tion. 



NO YELLOW PERIL. 



The future of Japan exercises Mr. E. 

 Bruce Mitford, in the Fortnightly. The 

 old order, monarchical and religious, is 

 giving way to irreligion, material ends, 

 and even Socialism. But he anticipates 

 no danger of aggression, either from 

 Japan or from China. The union, if 

 not the fusion, of these two races is re- 

 garded by him as inevitable, but unless 

 the West is unpardonably aggressive, 

 there is no Yellow Peril for the world. 



WERE WATTS PORTRAITS POT-BOILERS? 



Mr. M. H. Spielmann, while glorify- 

 ing in the Nineteenth Century the por- 

 traiture of Mr. G. F. Watts, sa}-s that 

 Watts frankl}' disliked portrait-paint- 

 ing. He regarded it simph- as his " base 

 of supply." His art and genius lay in 

 the painting of ethical compositions: — 



Had Watts painted nothing but his portraits 

 they would have constituted him, both as to 

 merit, importance, and the sheer output of 

 labour they represent, one of the greatest masters 

 of the English school; a few of them set him 

 very nearly, if not quite, among the highest of 

 any school and of any period. And yet he ac- 

 counted them of relatively far less account than 

 his works in other directions, and doubtless they 

 occupied infinitely less of time and thought. 



THE DRAIN OF GOLD IN INDIA. 



Mr. Moreton Frewen, in the same 

 magazine, holds out the following cheer- 

 ful prospect. He says: — 



When the tale is told in the completed Govern- 

 ment Returns next April, it will be found that 

 India has drained us in two years of fully 70 

 millions sterling of gold. Xext the banking world 

 will awaken to the sinister significance of theee 

 figures, and will discover that the foundations for 

 its huge paper emissions have been undermined. 

 We shall then have a 10 per cent, bank rate; 

 credit contraction; and a huge subsidence of the 

 whole plajie of prices shown by the fall in the 

 " index num.bera." 



His remarks suggest that the old pro- 

 blem of the silver standard many be re- 

 vived b)- the silver contract with the 

 Montagus. 



THE DUTCH ARMY. 



Vragen des Tijds has an article on 

 the deficiencies of the Dutch Arm\- ; too 

 much stress is laid on what is commonl\- 

 termed discipline, but the idea of dis- 

 cipline varies considerabh', with un- 

 favourable results from a military point 

 of view, while the junior officers do not 

 have a good chance of proper training. 

 In short, the Dutch are grumbling about 

 their army as we are about ours. " The 

 Philosoph}- of History " is an essay on 

 the possibilit}- of constructing a science 

 of the causes of certain events ; having 

 regard to the different psychological 

 factors (compare the people of Western 

 Europe with those of China, for in- 

 stance^, the task would be a very diffi- 

 cult one. 



