470 



The Review of Reviews. 



General in the person of General Lyautey. 'J"he choice 

 is excellent^ and now we may hope that the adminis- 

 trative confusion of the past will be ended, and that 

 under the firm rule of this able soldier Morocco may 

 become a French Egypt. It is certain that General 

 Lyautey will be supported both by warships and 

 large numbers of troops, and will have practically a 

 free hand. 



For so many years now people 

 The have been speculating as to what 



Dual Monarchy, would happen when the Emperor 

 Franz Joseph should die, that the 

 news came as a real shock that the venerable monarch 

 had threatened to abdicate- should the Hungarian 

 Cabinet not abandon their attitude on the question of 

 the army. Always a sore point with the Hungarians, 

 the Emperor was undoubtedly right from the point 

 of view of the Empire's interests. His threat, made in 

 all seriousness, had the desired effect, but it would 

 seem as if the old wrangles between Austria and 

 Hungary are about to break forth again. This is 

 probably inevitable, since it seems as if Hungary had 

 firmly made up her mind to ignore the fact that 

 words alone do not make a people into a nation, but 

 that there must be organisation, administration and 

 a definite programme. Meanwhile in Croatia, the 

 Servian province of the Empire, things are far from 

 being satisfactory. It is no new thing for efforts at 

 suppression to be made or for representati^•e institutions 

 to be ignored; but on the last occasion things have 

 gone further than usual, and a step towards the 

 union of the Southern Slavs has been achieved, thanks 

 solely to the mistakes of Vienna and Buda-Pesth. It 

 is a significant fact that the Croatian students visiting 

 Belgrade cheered King Peter as King of the Southern 

 Slavs. The question of the nationalities grows day 

 by day more serious ; it will soon be vital in Hungary. 

 It is, however, good to read the recent declaration of 

 Count Berchtold, the new Minister for Foreign AfTairs, 

 as to Austrian policy towards England : "To continue 

 to cultivate our traditionally good relations with 

 England," he said, " will be our sincere endeavour. 

 We hope that the points of contact which occur in 

 the policies of Austria-Hungary and Great Britain will 

 in the future be always rightly recognised both here 

 and in London in accordance with their respective 

 interests, and correspondingly judged." 



The first Ad\isory Council o( the 

 China's Republic Chinese Republic, over eightv 

 and w f 



Failure. young men, resolute of coun- 



tenance, filled with Western leaven, 

 and rather afraid of the immediate population, listened 



to an address from President Yuan Shik-Kai, and pre- 

 pared to re-model the institutions of 400,000.000 of 

 people whose ideas and traditions ante-date the 

 Pyramids. The immediate future is, however, not with 

 the college-trained theorist, but with the army and with 

 the financier. The Manchus fell because they neglected 

 the army, and the new Council met protected by some 

 thousands of soldiers with their rifles at the " ready." 

 It is curious to think that in the country where the 

 proverb runs, " You do not use good iron to make a 

 nail or a good man to make a soldier," the whole situa- 

 tion lies in the hands of the men of iron. Another irony 

 of fate is that the country which has always esteemed 

 and cherished commerce and banking should now be 

 wallowing in the most impossible financial subterfuges, 

 the success of which would seem inevitably to mean 

 the destruction, not only of the Republic, but of the 

 Chinese nation as a whole. All these facts seem to 

 point towards an early change from republicanism to 

 a military dictatorship and the founding of a new 

 dynasty. One thing the revolution and Republic will 

 have done, and that is to inaugurate the era of limited 

 monarchy in China, to start the nation on its way to 

 progress and cohesion^ — possibly even to intelligent 

 patriotism in the place of unthinking pride. There 

 should be a great future for China, a future full of 

 menace commercially, industrially, and, in a military 

 sense, to the world ; but it is difficult to imagine this 

 future under a Republic. Meanwhile the question of 

 loans is of vital importance. Ignoring the small visits 

 to ^arious foreign money-lenders, we find that it is 

 proposed to borrow up to £260,000,000 almost at once. 

 The si.x Powers behind the syndicate are Great Britain, 

 France. Germany, United States, Russia, and Japan. 

 Even for a stable State with sound government this 

 borrowing would be doubtful policy; for China, owing 

 already some £140,000,000, disorganised and undeve- 

 loped, with a poverty-stricken population, it is mere 

 midsummer madness or worse. It must inevitably 

 lead to default or repudiation, and then the integrity 

 of China is vitally and certainly imperilled. Theories 

 are good, money is good; much money without specific 

 object is much better to a new republic with new 

 officials, but it is not sane politics, it is not business. 

 The great duel between Mr. Taft 

 T^fl and Mr. Roosevelt has been the 



V. 



Hooscvclt. outstanding feature of the month 



in the United States. The earli( i- 

 indirectitudes have been dropped ; the two antagonists 

 are now assailing each other with something like thei 

 directness of Homeric combatants. Mr. Roosevek has 

 been found to possess a greater following within the 



