The Reviews Reviewed. 



18=; 



and America have been better to the Jews than 

 any other nation that they have been rewarded by 

 the plums of all the continents. Mr. Ross is very 

 enthusiastic about the Jews. He says : — 



I suppose it would be impossible to estimate the benefits that 

 this one class of immigrants alone has conferred upon England. 

 In politics, finance, music, art, science, and commerce the Jew 

 has been simply invaluable. .\lwa)s sensible, practical, useful, 

 busy, obedient to law, he makes the most excellent of citizens. 



It is just those nations which have welcomed and 

 been kind to the Jew that have prospered the most. 



A PESSIMISr VIEW OF CH.ANGES IN INDIA. 



Sir John D. Rees contributes a very bitter article 

 concerning the transfer of the capital from Calcutta 

 to Delhi and the undoing of the partition of Bengal. 

 He declares that the Government of India's despatch 

 is full of thin sj)Ocial pleading, sham history, and 

 false sentiment. He thus sums up his verdict upon 

 Lord Hardinge's achievement : — 



In short, so far as can be judged so soon after the event, they 

 have been received by the .\nti-English parly in Bengjl with 

 satisfaction, tempered by regret at the loss of Calcutta as capital, 

 by the powerful and independent European commercial com- 

 munity of Calcutta, and by the Mahomedans of Eastern Bengal 

 with natural disapproval, and by Hindus and Mahomedans 

 in general with that indifference which might have been 

 expected. Orientals have little or no sentiment. But that such 

 great concessions to a moribund agitation, and such far-reaching 

 administrative changes should have been made over the heads 

 of all concerned, and without the previously ascertained assent 

 of Parliament, the provincial Governments, and public opinion, 

 is generally regarded as an unwarrantable exercise of authority, 

 and another unjustifiable use of the royal prerogative. 



THE ECONOMY OF THE DREADNOUGHT POLICY. 



" Excubitor " boldly takes up the cudgels on behalf 

 of the adoption of the Dreadnought policy on the 

 ground that it has been most economical, and he 

 gives many facts and figures in defence of his thesis. 

 In the five years after the beginning of the Dread-^ 

 nought we actually spent less on new ships than in 

 the five preceding years, though the outlay of rivals 

 increased — German e.\[)enditure being nearly 

 doubled. For the moment wc have succeeded in 

 cutting down expenses and still maintaining or in- 

 creasing our naval predominance, but the future fills 

 the writer with alarm : — 



Wc have an anipli- margin to-day, but the Admiralty's new 

 proposals will have to be based un the conditions which will 

 exist in 1015. In the interval we shall have added to the sca- 

 j;oing fltet ten l>reailnoughl5, Germany fourteen, Russia, 

 .\u»tria, Italy, France, and the United Stales, at least four 

 each. 



OTHER ARTICLES. 



Mr. I'hilip Oylcr contributes an interesting natural 

 history pajjcr explaining the reason why liritish birds 

 and quadrupeds have adopted the peculiar markings 

 both in colour and in contour. Mr. John Gals- 

 worthy publishes an essay entitled " Vague Thoughts 

 on Art." It is an eloquent and somewhat dithy- 

 rambic meditation, leading up to his conclusion that 

 we all out selves are but " little works of Art — ripples 

 on the tides of a birthlcss, deathless, equipoised 

 Creative Purpose." 



THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 



The Contemporary for February publishes several 

 articles of topical interest which are briefly noticed 

 elsewhere. 



The Bishop of St. David's protests against the dis- 

 endowment of the Welsh Church. The Bill, 



subject to vested interests, takes away from the Church in 

 Wales all its endowed income for the maintenance of the ministry 

 except IS. 6d. in the £,, takes away every penny of their endow- 

 ments from 511 out of 9S3 incumbencies in Wales, and leaves 

 132 others with less than £,\o a year each. 



On the Other hand, Mr. Llewellyn Williams, M.P., 

 exults in the coming disappearance of the Establish- 

 ment : — 



Wales is the only country in Christendom which still has an 

 alien Church established by law. The Church of Ireland is 

 sounder, purer, and stronger to-day than ever it was before 

 Disestablishment. Wales owes her success and her increase 

 largely to her Nonconformity, To-day she reaps the fruits of 

 her devotion and self-sacrifice. 



Mr. Norman Lamont, • writing on " The West 

 Indian Recovery," suggests that the proposal to 

 federate the British West Irtdian Colonies, rejected as , 

 premature in 1894, is now ripe for action : — 



Everything depends on the first step. What is it to be? 

 Not, let us hope, yet another Royal Commission. Rather let 

 it lake the form of a free and open Conference, summoned, 

 indee<l, at the suggestion of Downing Street, but held in the 

 .Antilles. 



Canon Barnett, writing on " Charity Up-to-date," 

 defines it as follows : — 



Charity up to dale is Ihat which gives thought as well a? 

 money and service. The cost is greater. " There is no glory," 

 said Napoleon, "where there is no danger " ; and we may add, 

 there is no charity where there is no thought, and thought is 

 very costly. 



Miss Florence B. Low describes enthusiastically 

 the novels of Clara Viebig. She says : — 



Clara Viebig gives us the peasant as he really is : his dense 

 ignorance, his hard struggle with a soil that yields the minimun) 

 of result for the maximum of labour, his wonderful power of 

 endurance, the influence of religion — the district is Roman 

 Catholic — and the strength of human lo«'e, even among the 

 roughest and most brutal of beings. She sees the Gerinai> 

 peasant as Crabbe saw the English peasant at the end of the 

 eighteenth century. 



Atlajitic Monthly. 

 The contrast between the British and .\nierican 

 novelist coold scarcely have been drawn more strik- 

 ingly than in the ojiening pages of the Atlantic 

 Monthly for January. Mr. H. G. Wells, as he has 

 often previously done, claims to bring all life within 

 the scope of the novel, with inseparable moral con- 

 seciuences and powerful moral suggestion, reflecting 

 the insurgent thought of the age against authority. 

 The American novelist, Mr. Winston Churchill, as 

 noted elsewhere, proclaims, like a modern John the 

 liaplisl, the nearer and fuller advent of the Christ, 

 the dawn of a greater religious era than the world 

 has ever seen. Mr. Churchill's paper alone confers 

 distinction on the number, which is otherwise remark- 

 ably good. 



