5^4 



The Review of Reviews. 



THE HAPPY-HEARTED EGYPTIAN. 



Mr. T. p. O'Connor, in his Magazine for April, 

 sketches Kgypt under Kitchener. He draws a pecu- 

 liarly pleasant picture ol the temperament o£ the fellah. 

 lie .say.s : — 



He himself seems laryelj unconscious of any sombreness in 

 his fate. He is one of the gayest and most gtiod-huniourccl 

 Ijoings in the world. Sony is universal in Egypt ; the air is 

 thick with it at all hours of the day and wherever you go, at what- 

 ever work the Egyptian is employed. You hear it first as your 

 bo,it reaches Port .Said — the Gate of the E.ast, .as it has been so 

 happily called ; for the coal-heavers who till the boat from the 

 coal-barge do their work with an accompaniment of song. The 

 boatmen who carry you across a ferry sing the whole time. If 

 your crew have to tie your dahabieh to the land, they at once 

 begin to sing. 



HIS HAPPY-HEARTED RULER. 



Mr. O'Connor adds : — 



For the moment, Kitchener is the real ruler; and, to judge 

 from "what I saw, he is one of the most powerful and one of the 

 most popular rulers the country has yet seen. Everybody says 

 that no servant of a nation ever gave to it so much disinterested, 

 inexhaustible and enlightened work as Lord Cromer did ; but 

 Lord Cromer did not have, in adilition to his many other bril- 

 liant gifts, the gift of making himself beloved — at least by the 

 native. He was respected, he was feared, he was trusted ; but 

 he was not loved. 



Thus it is that already Lord Kitchener is equally popular, so 

 far as I could observe, with European and with native. And, 

 what is best of all. Lord Kitchener is at last at the work he 

 prefers above everything else. 



If Kitchener at one end of the scale, and the fellaheen 

 at the other end of the scale, are enjoying life thus 

 happily, the future of Egypt seems indeed rosy. 



PARIS AS A SEAPORT. 



M. R. P£latan, in an article in the Grande Revue of 

 April 10, revives the question of a canal connecting 

 Paris with the sea. 



The project of a maritime canal from Paris to the 

 .sea has at all times, he says, aroused a thousand anta- 

 gonistic interests, financial or commercial, political or 

 economic, local or general ; and those who condemn it 

 and those who approve of it have somewhat deformed 

 the real and different aspects of the question to make 

 them conform to their own personal views. The writer 

 endeavours to state with impartiality the pros and 

 cons of the scheme. 



The canal, we are told, would be 185 kilometres in 

 length. There would be a maritime port at Paris 

 between St. Denis and Clichy, and secondary ports at 

 .Argenteuil, Poissy-Acheres, Mantes, Vernon, and Les 

 .Andelys. It would take three years to make the canal. 

 Technically and financially tiiere .seems to be no diffi- 

 culty about making a maritime port at Paris. The 

 traffic, it is estimated, would ainount at first to about 

 4,100,000 tons, and the receipts would be about 

 4,650,000 francs. The promoters estimate the e.xpenses, 

 nnt including the cost of pilotage, at 15.470,000 francs ; 

 the tinnual deficit therefore would amount to 

 10,820,000 francs. It will thus be seen that the canal 



could not, any inore than the Manchester Canal, pay 

 any dividend for the first twenty years or so. But in 

 the meantime the tonnage would be steadily increasing, 

 and would be offering to commerce and industry 

 appreciable advantages. The execution of the scheme 

 by the State as a work of national interest, the writer 

 concludes, is most desirable ; and he suggests that a 

 small tax might be levied to cover the expense of 

 making and maintenance of the canal. 



SINGING AT WORK. 



A ch.vrming article on the songs of Labour is contri- 

 buted to the May Cornhill by Sir Laurence Gomme. 

 He says : — 



The joy of work is only understood by the few in modern 

 times ; in ancient times and through the ages it was universal. 

 The necessity for laljour being recognised it did not pall upon the 

 labourer, but was carried out in fullest sympathy with its need, 

 with the result that everywhere the irksonieness of work was 

 subordinated to its delights. We of this age go about our work 

 in a very different spirit, without the divine instinct for it, and 

 therefore without its joy. Our process is to store up the 

 economic results of work and then out of this store to purchase 

 the pleasures of life. It is a deadening process. It comes too 

 late an<l the pleasures are far to seeli ; and if we turn to the 

 lessons of history we shall find that the old joy of work has left 

 the civilised world and made it so much the poorer in mental 

 and physical balance. 



He confesses that at the beginning of his official 

 career he used to add up huge columns of figures for 

 statistical purposes by the simple process of doing the 

 task to the tune of the Church Gregorian music, and 

 he was always correct in his arithmetical results. 



Examples of the practice of perforining labour tasks 

 to the accompaniment of music could, he says, be 

 produced from all over the world. The unrest of labour 

 is, unfortunately, the prevailing note of modern tiines^ 

 but perhaps it will be a relief to many to know that 

 labour has had, and we hope will again have, some- 

 thing of the joy of life. Sir Laurence quotes several 

 ancient work songs. He begins with the song of the 

 women at the wheel, then tells how the Lanarkshire 

 handloom weavers crooned to themselves popular tunes 

 as they wrought, how the strokes of the sickle in the 

 Western Islands, as Dr. Johnson says, were timed by 

 the modulation of the harvest song, in which all their 

 voices were united. We are told of Hebridean oar 

 songs, Highland songs in shearing, spinning, fulling, 

 milking, and in grinding at the quern. The milking 

 songs are sung to pretty airs to please the cows, which 

 will not give their milk without them. In Wales it was 

 customary to sing to the oxen. Sir Laurence Gomme 

 quotes from the old folk-songs of Lancashire. Midlands, 

 Devonshire, and London. One case is mentioned of a 

 pavior forty years ago who neglected to groan rhyth- 

 mically at each thud of the ram, and was " fined a 

 pot " by his companions in consequence. The writer 

 ends by saying, " Merric England is not quite a creation 

 of the imagination so long as we have evidence of the 

 music of labour." 



/ 



