88 



The Review of Reviews. 



RUDYARD KIPLING ON THE 

 COAL STRIKE. 



To the National Revieiv for July Mr. Rudyard Kipling 

 contributes a paper which makes one unfeignedly sorry 

 for him. True, it is in the National Review that he 

 writes ; but not even Mr. Maxse in his most delirious 

 moments has ever quite sunk so low. It is called 

 " The Benefactors." It opens with two stanzas which 

 declare that all power, whether tyrant or mob, which 

 suffers from swelled head, ends by destroying its own 

 job, while man, whose mere necessities sweep all 

 things from his path, is foolish enough to shiver at the 

 decrees of these inflated and evanescent powers. Then 

 comes the sketch. The scene is laid, with a sort of 

 grotesque attempt at the low buffoonery of the dram- 

 shop, in Hades, and the narrative continually harps 

 upon the hoar)-, not to say mouldy, pleasantries about 

 burning coal and stoking up the fires. A succession 

 of characters is introduced. \ man with a shadow of a 

 rudimentary tail recalls how he was the strongest of 

 the primitive community, and hit and bit the rest 

 until they did what he wanted. Then someone found 

 he could throw a stone, and killed him. Next the stone- 

 thrower tells how he became chief, until someone dis- 

 covered the bow and arrow, and his day was over. He 

 was circumvented by one who invented armour. The 

 man in armour was in his turn overthrown bv the 

 discoverer of gunpowder. Then a Pope laments that 

 the discovery of the printing-press upset his power. 

 Then enters what Mr. Kipling apparently wishes to be 

 regarded as the leader of the coal-miners' strike. 

 Evidently Mr. Kipling has never met any of the leaders 

 of the coal-miners of this country, from the Right Hon. 

 Thomas Burt to Vernon Hartshorn. Having no know- 

 ledge of their character or speech, he brings out of his 

 repository of puppets one of the \ulgarest Cockneys 

 that even his imagination can invent. He represents 

 this creature as glorying in having done what none of 

 his predecessors had done — brought the whole com- 

 munity to its knees by starving or freezing them into 

 submission. Even before he has finished his boasting 

 he finds himself beset by the children who had been 

 .starved to death in the strike, the men that had been 

 driven to suicide, the girls that had been ruined, and 

 so on. Then, in keeping with Mr. Kipling's idea of 

 humour, there enters his Satanic Majesty, " clothed in 

 coolest white ducks, with white-covered yachting cap, 

 and creamy-white pipe-clayed shoes, so that he looked 

 not unlike Captain Kettle." Then he informs the blus- 

 tering " honest Pete " {the miners' leader) that the 

 strike has taught men to do without coal. The com- 

 munity " didn't like dying, so they rooted, and coal 

 and -Steam went pungo. Pete." The same sable intelli- 

 gence declares that the old prophecy is fulfilled that 

 " democracy came in with steam and will go out with 

 it." 'J'he effusion ends by the devil bidding I'cte hustle 

 into " that starboard bunker." " There are at present 



280 million tons of coal in Great Britain alone, for 

 which no one except ourselves has anv use." 



Ar\A the writer of this stuff was once the author 

 of " The Recessional ! " 



AUTOMATIC BRAKES EXTRA- 

 ORDINARY. 



The experiments with the railophone, which enables 

 signalmen by pressing a button to stop trains on the 

 line almost immediately, make one note with more 

 interest what is told in the World's Work by Mr. James 

 Armstrong of the railway conquest of the Jungfrau. 

 The snow the tourist passes as he rides upward supplies 

 the driving power that propels his car. The streams 

 fed by the snow are used to drive ponderous turbines, 

 which yield the motive electricity. In ascending and 

 descending such a vast height as nearly i2,ooofl. the 

 question of brakes becomes a' matter of supreme 

 importance : — 



The engineer lias ordaineJ that these engines shall run only at 

 a niaxiniiim speed of 5} miles an hour. No matter how playful 

 or impatient the niolors may be, they cannot move the engine 

 forward a yard quicker either uiihill or downhill. The engine 

 carries brakes which are wonderful evidences of automatic action. 

 Directly the speed of the downward train exceeds the above 

 predetermined limits, the brakes come into play and pull it up. 

 The "juice," baffled in its eftbrt to drive the train headlong 10 

 destruction, may sulk, and through a breakdown in its generat- 

 ing ni.ichinery m-iy decline to supply the engine motors with 

 po\yer to revolve, in the hope that gravity may bring about an 

 increase in velocity which power cannot achieve. 



But gravity is foiled as completely as electricity. The train 

 cannot get away. If the avalanche and snow on the uppermost 

 peaks fail to supply the current for the engine, well then the 

 descending slope and gravity must create it. The motors 

 become generators and as weight sends the train downwards 

 it generates the juice independently of the tumbling stream, 

 while the automatic brakes, which are beyond human control, 

 see that no "joy ride " over Sj miles per hour takes place. 



LETTING 



THE CHILD TEACH 

 ITSELF. 



In the World's Work for July Madame Montessori 

 publishes the results of her ten years of investigation 

 and experiment. She says that in her houses the old- 

 fashioned teacher, who wore herself out maintaining 

 discipline of immobility, and who wasted her breath 

 in loud and continual discourse, has disappeared : — 



For this teacher we have substituted the iliilaclic materia!, 

 which contains within itself the control of errors .and which 

 makes auto-education possible to each child. The teacher has 

 thus become a diiector ol\\\e spont.ineous work of the children. 

 She is not a fassivc force, a iHenl |)resence. 



The children are occupieil, each one in a dilTorent way, and 

 the directress, watching them, can make psychological obser- 

 vations which, if collected in an orderly way and according to 

 scientific standards, should do much towards the reconstruction 

 of child-psychology and the development of experimental 

 psychology. I believe that I have, by my method, established 

 the conditions necessary to the development of scientific 

 pedagogy ; and whoever .adopts this method opens, in doing so, 

 a laboratory of experimental pedagogy. 



