532 



The Review of Reviews. 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY-AND AFTER. 



The Ni7!elec>!ih Cenlury for May is a good average 

 number. One or tv\o papers have been separately 

 noticed. 



THE RULE OF FUNK,, BY ONE WHO IS FUNKY. 



Mr. Lilly heads his paper, " The Rule of Funk." 

 Doubtless he intends to suggest that it is our statesmen 

 who are afraid to grasp the nettle of lawless Labour. 

 But his paper is a much more effectual proof that the 

 writer himself is under the rule of funk. For he says 

 progress since the Reform Act of 1832 has been like 

 that of the Gadarene swine. Rousseau's theory has 

 pervaded Europe : — 



It is unqiicslionablo that the leaders of many tr.ide unions — 

 avowed .Socialists or Syndicalists — are animated by this con- 

 ception of underhand war and ultimate pillage. It is equally 

 unqucslionalile that the success of the organisers of the coal 

 strike will hugely encourage others to follow their example. 

 Nor can we even dismiss the Syndicalist notion of a gener.al 

 strike as a bad dream. It will probably come, though it may 

 be long in coming. But what we have immediately to expect is 

 a scries of gigantic strides, fraught with ruin to British 

 industries, and fraught with intense suffering to manual labourers 

 and to the poor generally ; for the war thus waged is not merely 

 against capital, but incidentally against other branches of 

 labour. That is the prospect before us. 



HOW MILTON HAS DOMINATED ENGLISH FAITH. 



Bishop Welldon, writing on the theology of Milton, 

 points out his many heresies and his religious isolation, 

 which make his influence on Christian faith in the 

 English-speaking world one of the strangest of para- 

 doxes. For he says : — 



Milton, in spite of his theological errors or eccentricities, has 

 by his writings produced a strong and lasting, if not altogether 

 happy, effect upon the mind of English-speaking Christendom. 

 It is he more than anyone else who is responsible for the literal 

 acceptance of the early narratives in the liook of Genesis. The 

 story of the Garden of Eden is so lightly touched by the author 

 of Genesis, and lends itself so easily to allegorical interpretation, 

 that its literal accuracy was never a recognised part of the 

 Christian Creed until after the Refortnation, and, indeed, until 

 after the publication of " I'aradise Lost." 



CURRENT GERMAN FICTION. 



Madame de Longgarde describes recent Lierman 

 novels by saying that the first thing to strike one is 

 tiiat, taken as a whole, they are virulently national, 

 either sentimentally steeped in or aggressively bristling 

 with that ideal of universal Gerniun brotherhood which 

 for forty years has been spinning its thread from 

 north to south. She begins with " German Sorrow," a 

 novel by an Austrian artillery officer, which glorifies 

 the German Empire as the Holy Land of German 

 aspiration. 



TO I'REPARE YOUNG MEN FOR LIFE. 



N. C. Macnamara, after much recondite writing on a 

 physiological basis for education, emerges at the close 

 with this practical suggestion : — 



A large percentage of lads leaving our primaiy schools at the 

 age of fourteen arc then thrown on their own resources, having 

 been taught neither how to work nor lu.w to think, and being 

 without habits of self-reliance, they find it well nigh impossible 

 to obtain any fixed employment. 



This condition of affairs might be avoided if, within a year of 

 leaving school, a lad who had not become an articled apprentice 

 to some trade, or obtained some fixed employment, should be 

 obliged to undergo a course of training for three years either as 

 a seaman or as a military cadet, and at the same time be taught 

 a trade or occupation which would enable him subsequently to 

 gain a living wage, if not higher remuneration as a skilled 

 workman. 



WOMEN IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



A. J. Grant Duff suggests that light may be flung 

 upon the much-controverted question of women in 

 politics by the action of women in the French Revolu- 

 tion. The endeavour is to show that the little known 

 Madame Robert, who had no vote and took little part 

 in political life, really started the idea of France as a 

 Republic ; that the women of the lowest class com- 

 pletely swamped the more educated ones ; and that 

 the conduct of women towards each other was so bad 

 that even the Terrorists had to protect women from 

 women. The obvious moral is not drawn. 



OTHER ARTICLES. 



H. E. Braine sets out to e.xpose the fallacy of the 

 extremists who support the white arm, to the exclusion 

 of the rifle, or vice versa. He argues for the idea that 

 cavalry trained ecjually in the use of the fire-arm and 

 of an arme blanche might be made far more eftective 

 th.an if only taught to rely mainly on one weapon. 

 E. M. Konstan sounds the alarm that, under cover of 

 Lloyd George's national valuation, the whole of the 

 increase of rent will gradually be taken for the public 

 as advocated by the United Committee for the Taxation 

 of Land Values. Roper Lethbridge inveighs fiercely 

 against the Government for having excluded India 

 from the scope of the Royal Commission on Imperial 

 Trade, and for leaving an excise on all Indian-made 

 cotton, instead of taxing the foreigner. He declares 

 that every known politician of Indian birth is a Protec- 

 tionist, and nearly every .\nglo-Indian is a Tariff 

 Reformer. 



THE LONDON MAGAZINE, 



The May issue is full of interest. We like 

 everything but the cover, which somehow suggests 

 " filthy lucre." We notice Mr. Belloc's characteristic 

 war article in another column. Among other contribu- 

 tions which must he noted is Mr. Cooke's "A Socialist 

 Incubator," in which he describes the activities of 

 Ruskin College, and the resultant offshoot, the Central 

 Labour College at Earl's Court. Mr. Cooke is of opinion 

 that " it is the irrcconcilablcs who are setting the pace," 

 and recent events do not contradict him. Dr. Ash deals 

 with " The Miracle Cure," and ascribes the remarkable 

 recovery of Miss Dorothy Kcrin to some kind of psychic 

 influence, but he avoids being dogmatic, and is content 

 to suggest that the operations of faith arc a sufficient 

 explanation of such cures. Admirers of Mr. H. de Vere 

 Stacijooic will welcome " Molly Beamish," a new story 

 from his pen, which also finds place in this sixpenny- 

 worth. 



