290 



discovi;hy 



by the Central Authority after the Armistice are 

 examples of relief or maintenance. Abuses very 

 easily creep into the system of granting relief or 

 maintenance, as the conditions described in the Poor 

 Law Report of 1834 clearly show, and a very efficient 

 administration is necessary, if the worst dangers of 

 demoralising the recipients and of undermining the 

 incentive to work are to be avoided. 



Ill 



The responsibility for unemployment cannot be laid 

 at the door of any one party. Unemployment appears 

 to be primarily the price we have to pay for being an 

 industrial state largely dependent on foreign trade. 

 The evil is practically unknowTi in self-supporting 

 agricultural communities. Employers, workers, and 

 the Government, by their actions or want of actions, 

 may accentuate the evils of unemployment, but the 

 fundamental causes appear to be beyond their control. 

 It is not as if the problem had not been carefully 

 investigated and studied. The trade depression of 

 1904-5 led to the appointment of a very strong Royal 

 Commission on the Poor Laws and the Relief of 

 Distress, which reported at stupendous length in 1909. 

 The two chief recommendations in relation to unem- 

 plojTnent — the establislimcnt of Labour Exchanges, 

 and the introduction of compulsory unemplojonent 

 insurance — were carried into effect, yet we arc now 

 suffering from more acute unemployment than that 

 recorded at any previous outbreak. 



It is difficult to avoid being pessimistic in contem- 

 plating the somewhat gloomy picture we have had to 

 draw ; acute unemployment is a great social evil ; 

 several of the so-called " remedies " are Hable to recoil 

 with the most serious consequences upon the com- 

 munity that applies them, yet efforts must undoubtedly 

 be made to alleviate the distress. The one reassuring 

 thought in the situation appears to be our knowledge, 

 gained from considerable experience, that just as bad 

 trade follows good, so good trade follows bad. As the 

 slump came so suddenly, it is not unreasonable to hope 

 that there will soon be a turn in the tide of trade. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 Unemployment, by W. H. Beveridge. (Longmans, los. 6rf.) 

 Unemployment, by A. C. Pigou. (Williams and Norgate, Home 



University Library, 2S. 64.) 

 A Study of Industrial Fluctuation, by D. H. Robertson. (P. S. 



King. 8s. 6rf.) 

 Fluctuations in Unemployment. (Memo. Ill in the Second 



Fiscal Blue Book, ed. 2337.) 

 Labour Gazette. (Stationery Office, 6d. monthly.) 

 Reports of the Poor Law Commission, 1909. 



Timgad: the Pompeii of 

 Algeria 



By F. W. Hall, M.A. 



FelloiD 0/ SI. Joftn liaplist College, Ox/ord 



Ti.MGAD, or Thamugadi, as its founder called it, was 

 until recent times a buried Roman city in Algeria, 

 about a hundred miles from the northern coast, and a 

 little more than twenty from the nearest French settle- 

 ment at Batna. Now that it is uncovered it is the 

 most curious sight in North Africa and can be com- 

 pared only with Pompeii, that famous city on the bay 

 of Naples, overwhelmed by the ashes from the great 

 eruption of Vesuvius in a.d. 79. which the Italians 

 have been gradually uncovering for the last fifty years. 

 In some ways Timgad is more typically Roman than 

 Pompeii. Pompeii had grown out of an earlier Oscan 

 town. Its architects never had a free hand, and it 

 is in consequence full of odd corners and straggling 

 spaces. It was a city of pleasure for the idle rich 

 and is built of brick. Timgad is a model town, the 

 greater portion of which was built at the same time, 

 and on a definite plan at the command of an Emperor. 

 It was therefore compact and well arranged as befitted 

 a towTi that might at any moment have to turn itself 

 into a fortress if attacked by the savage hill tribes to 

 the south. It was founded in the \-ear a.d. 100 by 

 the Emperor Trajan, and is built entirely of stone. 

 In the proud words of the inscriptions still to be read 

 on the arches to the West and North, " The Emperor 

 Caesar Nerva Trajan Augustus Germanicus, son of the 

 Divine Nerva, Sovereign Pontiff, invested for the 

 fourth time with Tribunician Power, tlirice Consul, 

 Father of the Fatherland, founded the colonj- of Mar- 

 ciana Trajana Thamugadi by means of the third 

 Augustan legion, when Lucius Munatius Gallus • was 

 legate of Augustus wth praetorian powers." This 

 Gallus was what we should call the Army Corps com- 

 mander in the Province. The town was almost 

 certainly completed before the Emperor's death 

 in 117. 



It was founded in consequence of a change made by 

 Trajan in the scheme of defence of the southern 

 frontier of Numidia. The great Aurasian range of 

 mountains which runs almost due east and west was 

 then as now the natural line of defence against incur- 

 sions from the south. Rome held the frontier, as 



' Not to be confused with the soldier-poet Callus, the friend 

 of Vergil, on whom see Disco\'ERY, vol. i, p. 3. 



