512 



The Review of Reviews. 



THE KING OF V/ATERWAYS. 



A Prose Poem on the St. Lawrence. 



The St. Lawrence forms the .subject of a paper in the 

 Quarterly Review for April, which in many passages 

 rises to the dignity of a prose poem. Colonel Wood, of 

 (^)uebec, thus glorifies the greatness of the Canadian 

 river : — 



If tile whole of the Amnzon and all its tributaries, and all 

 the other rivers in the Old World .and the New, with all their 

 tributaries, and every lake in every land as well, were all to 

 unite every drop of their fresh waters, they could not equal 

 those which are held in the single freshwater reservoir of the 

 five Great Lakes of the St. Lawrence. So if the St. Lawrence 

 River itself and its many tributaries and myriads of minor 

 lakes are added in, we find how much more than half of all the 

 world's fresh water is really Laurentian. But even this is not 

 all. There is more salt water in the mouth and estuary of the 

 St. Lawrence than in all the mouths and all the estuaries of all 

 other rivers. Moreover, all the tides of all these other rivers 

 do not together form so vast a volume as that which ebbs and 

 flows inlandward between Belle Isle and Lake St. Peter, nine 

 hundred miles apart. Thus, in each and all the elements of 

 native grandeur, the Laurentian waters— salt and fresh, tidal 

 and lake — are not only immeasurably first among their rivals, 

 taken singly, but exceed all their rivals united together, through- 

 out the world. But its lasting appeal is to a higher sense than 

 this, to the sense of supreme delight in the consummate union 

 of strength and beauty — of beauty that is often stern and wild, 

 with strength that is sometimes passive ; but always in both 

 together. 



THE MUSIC OF THE RIVER. 



Of this glorv we have a beautiful syinphony in pen 

 and ink : — 



Can it be that the ear is duller than the eye to the infinite 

 appeal of water ? At least, I like to think it is not always so. 

 Lach year, when I go down the river, the different currents, 

 eddies, reef-tail swirls and tide-rips greet me wjth voices 

 as individual as those of any other life-long friends. I 

 recognise them in the dark, as I should recognise the 

 voices of my own relations. I know them in ebb and 

 flood, in calm and storm, exactly as I know the varying moods 

 and tones of men. And, knowing them thus, I love them 

 through all their changes. And often of a winter's evening 

 they wake the ear of memory within me by a symphony of 

 sound that has now become almost like a concerted piece of 

 music. It steals in on me ; swells, vibrates and thunders ; and 

 finally dies away again — much as a "Patrol" grows from 

 pianissimo, through moJcrato, \.o fortissimo, and then iluiiinticn- 

 dots slowly into silence. 



CRESCENDO FROM CALM 10 STORM. 



Always, when it begins, I am in my canoe, and there is a 

 universal calm. All 1 hear, aft, is the silken whisper of the 

 tiny eddies drawn through the water by the paddle, and, for- 

 ward, the intermittent purl of the cutwater, as it quickens ami 

 cleaves in response to every stroke. N'cxt, along sliore, I hear 

 the flood-tide lipping the sand, pulsing slowly through reeds 

 and sedges, and gurgling contentedly into a little halt-filled 

 cave. Then the stronger tidal currents join in, with the greater 

 eddies, reel-tail swirls and tide-rips ; " and all the clioral waters 

 sing." Then conies the breeze ; and, with it, I am in my yawl. 

 It comes at first like that single sigh of the air which drills 

 across the stillest night, making the halyards tap the mast a 

 little, the yacht sheer almost imperceptibly, and the rudder 

 swing just enough to make the main-piece and pintles whimper 

 gently in their sleep. But it soon pipes up, and lam olT, with ilie 

 ripples lapping fast and faster as the yacht gathers way. Pre- 

 sently I am past the forelands, where the angry waves hiss away 



to leeward. Then an ominous smooth and an apprehensive 

 hush, as the huge, black-shrouded squall bears clown on ihc 

 wings of the wind, with a line of flying foam unacrneath, 

 where its myriad feet are racing along the surface. .And then 

 the storm, the splendid, thrilling storm ; the roar, the howls, 

 the piercing screams, the bullctings, the lulls— those lulls in 

 which you hear the swingeing lash on shore and the hoarse 

 anguish of the excoriated beach ; and then the swelling, 

 thunderous crescendo and the culminating crash. After that the 

 wind diminishes, little by little, and finally dies away. When 

 it ceases, all the choral waters sing again. And when these, in 

 their turn, have played their part, 1 hear the half-mufiled gurgle 

 that tells me the tidal wave is almost full. And, at the last, 

 the reeds and sedges rustle softly, as the end of the flood 

 quivers between their stems ; and tide, and reed, and sedge, 

 and the lipping on the sand, the purl of the canoe, and the 

 silken whispering eddies from my paddle, all mingle, faint, 

 and melt away once more into the silence out of w hich they 

 came. 



This is the voice I hear so often — the natural " voice of many 

 waters," which, like the divine one that spoke in Revelation, 

 also proceeds out of a throne. For the St. Lawrence, this 

 King of Waterways, is more than royal, more, even, than im- 

 perial ; it is the acknowledged suzerain of every other water- 

 way, from the Mountains to the Sea, and from the Tropics to 

 the Pole. 



THE LATE PRINCE ITO ON INSURGENT CHINA. 

 Sir Valentine Chirol contributes to the Qiiarlerlv 

 Review for April a paper on the Chinese Revolution, in 

 which he quotes largely from an interview which he 

 had with Prince Ito in the spring of 1909. Prince Ito 

 said : — 



"The greatest mistake which you Western people, and more 

 especially you English people, made in all }'our dealings with 

 China was to help the Manchus in putting down the Taiping. 

 Rebellion. The history of China shows that, by some fateful 

 dispensation, the appointed term comes sooner or later to all 

 her successive dynasties. When they have become incapable of 

 performing their proper functions in the .State discontent makes 

 itself irresistibly felt, widespread disturbances occur, and ulti- 

 mately, whether by rebellion at home or through the instru- 

 mentality of an alien conqueror, the ruling house is swept aw ay 

 to make room for some new and more effective occupant of the 

 Dragon Throne. There can be very little doubt that the 

 Manchu Dynasty had reached the end of its proper tether when 

 the Taiping Rebellion occurred ; and, by preventing its over- 

 throw, Gordon and his 'ever-victorious army ' arrested a normal 

 and healthy process of nature. Nothing that the Manchus have 

 done since then affords the slightest evidence that they deserved 

 to be saved. Rather the contraiy. And when they fall, as fall 

 they must and will before very long, the upheaval will be all 

 the more violent and all the more protracted for h.aving been so 

 long and unduly postponed." 



He went on to point out the diiTercnce in the con- 

 ditions in China from those that heralded the re\-o- 

 lution in Japan. The Prince says : — 



"In China one looks, I fear, in vain for any great national 

 idea that can alTord a rallying-cry to the dilVercnt loixes which 

 are combined only, as far as one can see, in a spirit of confused 

 revolt against the old order of things." 



The people could not, he said, rally round the 

 dynasty, nor is there any class capable of directing 

 iind controlling a great national movement. Sir 

 Valentine Chirol hiinself thinks that it is as hard 

 to-day as when Prince Ito spoke to .see any defiiiiir 

 indication of the constructix'c forces which Chini 

 needs. 



