i84 



The Review of Reviews. 



THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. 



The Edinburgh Review lor January is hardly an 

 average number. It opens with a long article on 

 " The Place of Doctrine in War," the writer of which 

 rejoices that the British General Staff has begun 

 to formulate a doctrine of war. The article upon' 

 " The Elizabethan Playwright " is brightly written, 

 and contains a good deal of out-of-the-way informa- 

 tion. In Shakespeare's time the average pay for 

 dramatic work was £,% a play. You could get room 

 in the galleries of a theatre for one penny. One 

 play, " A Game of Chess," which ran for nine days, 

 brought into the company ^1,500, which is equiva- 

 lent to about ;^8,ooo or ^9,000 of our money. 

 There are two articles dealing with the politics and 

 country life of Chatham and Pitt. 



The writer of the article on the Sovereignty of the 

 Air adjures our Government to wake up and not 

 waste the first half of 191 2 as we have wasted the 

 whole of 191 1. The reviewer is very despondent on 

 the subject, and feels it is quite on the cards that the 

 Power that possesses the sovereignty of the air may 

 be able to snap its fingers at our sovereignty of the 

 seas. The article on Russo-Chinese relations is 

 chiefly historical. The reviewer seems to think that 

 Russia will have her own way in Mongolia — 



That she will seek to confirm her political prestige there for 

 the benefit of her trade and manufactures ; and that she will 

 profit by Laniaist goodwill, carefully fostered for some j'ears 

 past, to exercise henceforth a preponderating influence at Urga 

 and at Lhassa — with what further extensions who shall say ? 



The writer of the article on Great Britain and 

 Europe is an enthusiastic admirer of Sir Edward 

 Grey, and refuses to believe that the soreness of 

 Germany is irremovable. 



THE DUBLIN REVIEW. 



The January number contains several articles of 

 special interest which have been cited elsewhere. Mr. 

 \Vilfrid Ward pays a graceful tribute to Mr. Balfour's 

 leadership and his farewell words. But he insists : 

 " This is no termination of a political career. The 

 appropriate word is not ' Farewell,' but ' Auf Wieder- 

 sehen.' " Mr. G. K. Chesterton recalls with exultancy 

 the " agnostic defeat," when " Ideal " Ward, in answer 

 to Huxley's statement that we cannot trust any other 

 mental process except experience, asked, " Experience 

 depends upon memory : why do you believe in 

 memory ? " Huxley rejoined, " I believe in memory 

 because I have so often experienced its reliability." 

 But, as Ward pointed out, Huxley could only experi- 

 ence the reliability of memory by memory itself. 'J'hat 

 is memory, not experience. " Here was one of the 

 very few cases in history in which a great sceptic 

 received in ciiiial fight an answer he could not answer." 

 Rev. Camillo Torrend describes with much heat the 

 anti-clerical policy jiursued by the Portuguese Repub- 

 lic, with especial abhorrence of Senhor Costa's Minis- 

 try. Mr. A. P. Graves gives some very quaint and 

 interesting translations of early Irish religious poetry. 



THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. 



The Fortnightly Review for February does not 

 tend to promote a healthy optimism. There are two 

 articles on the coming triumph for the Tory Party 

 by authors who are absolutely in disagreement as to 

 the means by which that triumph is to be secured. 

 There are two articles on the industrial unrest which 

 are full of most lugubrious forebodings as to possi- 

 bilities. Mr. Laurence Jerrold's article on French 

 " Patriots " and English " Liberals " is equally 

 sombre. Sir J. D. Rees is a veritable Jeremiah con- 

 cerning the recent changes in India. Mr. H. Charles 

 Woods is full of forebodings about the future in 

 Turkey, and Mr. R. Machray, in a, well-informed but 

 gloomy paper, wrings his hands over the inevitable 

 fate of Persia, .•\ltogether, for enlivening reading 

 I would recommend any magazine ratlier than the 

 Fortniglitly Rei<iew for February. 



WOMEN A.S TRAVELLERS. 



A pleasanter note is struck by Mr. F. G. Aflalo in 

 his paper upon " Diana of the Highways," in which 

 he discusses the capacity of women who travel and 

 explore. He says that women travel best by them- 

 selves, or rather by herself, for when there are two 

 women they quarrel, and when there is a man in the 

 party the woman never appears at her best, being 

 inclined to rely upon the man, but when she is all 

 alone she gets on first class. As regards the danger 

 which a white woman runs from natives beyond the 

 pale of civilisation, recorded experience shows that 

 it is negligible. In Mr. Aflalo's glowing tribute to 

 women as travellers, explorers, and mountaineers, I 

 was very pleased to come upon the following tribute 

 to a member of the Review ok Reviews staflT. Mr. 

 Aflalo says : — 



Miss Constance Barnicoat has climbed in a greater range ol 

 longitude than the other women. She has won the freedom of 

 peaks in her native New Zealand and in the Caucasus. .She 

 has done the arduous summer trip to the Ygu.izu Falls, on both 

 the Br.nzilian and Argentine sides. She has made many 

 ascents in I^auiihiny. I believe that she was the first woiiKin 

 to traverse the .-Mlefroide and Tschingelochtighorn, between 

 Kandersteg and .■\delboden, and the second to make the winter 

 ascent of the Creat .Schreckhorn. Such achievements take my 

 breath away in the bare writing. 



THE SECRET OF EMPIRE. 



Mr. P. H. W. Ross, in a very interesting article 

 entitled "The Whirligig of Men," maintains that the 

 gods are just, and that they give the best parts of the 

 world to those who make the best use of them, especi- 

 ally to those who love their neighbours as themselves. 

 This recalls Mark Twain's famous explanation of the 

 Briti.sh Empire, "The meek shall inherit the earth" : 

 but Mr. Ross is (juite serious. He says the best parts 

 of the world are those where men can work three 

 hundred and sixty-five days in the year in the open 

 air without suffering, and these parts of the world 

 have been given to England and America, becatise 

 they have been, on the whole, more merciful to the 

 flocks of the other gods than their earthly rulers have 

 been, especially to the Jews. It is because England 



