Revie'W of Reviews, Ijl jOb. 



Leading Articles. 



373 



THE WAR ON THE PLUTOCRACY. 



The -Probable Line of Attack. 

 Mr. Hannis Taylor follows up the " Appeal to 

 Millionaires,' which was noticed last month, by an 

 article in the Julv Xorlh Amcriuin Rcviciv on " The 

 Impending ConHict." Like many other Americans, 

 Mr. Taylor en\ies the freedom possessed by the 

 English to legislate without the restrictions of a 

 written Constitution. He says: — 



No EttgliBh jurist will for a moment deny thut the omni- 

 potent Parliament, if it sees fit. may seize and sell llie 

 estates of any landowner in the realm and distrihute the 

 proceeds among the poor of London. The only restraint 

 which protects the holders of property aguinsi such a pos- 

 sibility is the conservatism and sense oi natural justice 

 of a. people who. for a thousand years, have lived under 

 the reigrn of law. 



THE AMERICAN PLAN OF CAMl'AKiN 



Mr. Taylor says : — 



The simple question now is as to the capacity of the 

 existing constitutional machinery to provide the means 

 through which certain iuevitable changes can be brought 

 about without a sudden wrench. That machinery must be 

 so operated as to produce two results: first, the organised 

 aad consolidated power of corporate wealth must be sub- 

 jected, as never before, to State control ; second, the 

 abnormal accumulations of surplus wealth, largely the pro- 

 duct of corporate agency, must be gradually redistributed 

 and made impossible for the future, through a graduaUd 

 tax on inheritances and incomes, on tlie bases outlined by 

 President Koosevelt and Mr. MacVeagli, 'ihe driving power 

 must be an aggressive public opinion. 



A CAUTION TO LAWYERS. 



Mr. V. Gaylord Cook maintains that the lawyers 

 must no longer be allowed with impunitv to defeat 

 the law. He says: — 



If a lawyer be convicted of knowingly and wilfully ad- 

 vising or devising for an indivdual or a corporation a 

 breach of the law or a defeat of le^-al process, not only 

 should he be debarred from fuither practice, but he should 

 also be punished as a principal witli his client for the 

 nfleuce he may thus have advised or committed. 



WAS CHRIST A CHRISTIAN? 



The Rev. K. C. Andersi.n, \^.\)., Cnngregational 

 minister of Dundee, appeals to Protestants in the 

 Hibberi Journal to face the facts and to recognise 

 among other things that Christ was no Christian. 

 He says : — 



JESUS AND THE CHUltC'HES. 

 The time seems to have come for stating plainly and 

 emphatically that .Jesus, as recent criticism of the New 

 Testament is enabling us to see Him, does nut belong to 

 the ortliodox churches. Nothing is so characteristic ol 

 these churches as the claim tliat they own Jesus, They 

 aro constantly defending Him, and claim to say who liave 

 a right to preach Him. Now if anything is clear from 

 i-ecent study of the New Testament, it, is tlial none of the 

 ohara.cteristic ide:is of orthodoxy came from Jesus. What 

 ore the reports that are coming in from all parts of the 

 world to-day? They all tend to a coniirmation of the 

 essf^ntial Gospel of .lesus Christ. What He liiscerned in the 

 depths of His own pure and serene heart, in His own sense 

 of Sonship, men are Hnding to-day in the great universe— 

 the Father, tlie Eternal CnoilneHS, the Universal Love 

 This is the eternal gospel of which all partial gospels are 

 but phases. 



WHO ARE THE HEST CHRISTIANS.^ 



In a curiously discursive essay on " Rembrandt. 

 Ae Interpreter of the Twentieth Century," the Rev. 

 Dr. W. E. Griffis maintains, in the North American 

 Review, that — 



Rembrandt personified science and faith. His interpre- 

 tation in art of humanity is wonderfully like that of 

 another son of man. who came not to the privileged few. 

 Out to the common many. 



When we in our day ask, Who have been the best in- 

 terpreters of the Divine in man. and noblest exemplars of 

 the Christ-life." do we go to the churchmen or theologians? 

 Do we inquire of Uiose who have heard sermons, and 

 read 'lesson helps" all their lives? Is it not rather in 

 such men as. whether in hiah office or humble lite, are 

 like the silent, real Washington, the actual Lincoln— men 

 whose " orthodoxy " was uncertain— that we find what 

 Christianity is and means? Instinctively the common 

 people accept these men of like mind and life with the 

 Nazarene. as the Masters real disciples. 



A PLEA FOR BOLD. BAD MEN. 



The writer of a very suggestive article on 

 ■• Rationalism and Apologetic " in the Edinburgh 

 Review says : — 



The virtues of men who play a prominent part in human 

 affairs are seldom of the claustral or academic sort; such 

 men are not commonly burdened with scruples; they make 

 or mar with a strong hand. It has been so in the 

 Church. Its great figures— a Oonstautine. a Theodosius, a 

 Pepin— were not modelled on the Jesuit novice type of 

 sanctity, ana;mic, their eyes downcast, with lilies in their 

 emaciated hands. Loud-voiced, rather, and choleric: men 

 of blood and thunder; used rather to the camp and its 

 battle-axe than to the pulpit and the yien. The most 

 representative poiies have been statesmen, not theologians 

 or ascetics: tlie Leos, the- Gregories. the Innocents, re- 

 ligion was their instrument; a pawn on the chessboard 

 on which thev played for more material stakes. Power 

 meant much to them, ideas little: they moulded abstract 

 theory undisguisedly enough in the interests of concrete 

 fact. And so throughout. A Cromwell, a Napoleon, a Bis- 

 marck, a flavour- such are the men who uproot tyrannies, 

 disperse darkness, diffuse light. Not professional pietists, 

 but men cast in a big moufd, full-blooded human animals, 

 rutliless often enough and unscrupulous, who love and 

 liate. purpose and accomplish on a larger scale than ours. 

 To criticise Uiem from standpoints which were not theirs 

 is as easy as it is futile. The question is. Did they stand 

 for light or darkness? If for light— well, a man's life 

 must be judged as a whole. 



At this rate saints and sinners seem as if they 

 were soon about to change places. 



THE FOOD BILL OF THE ZOO. 



.\Ir. A. E. Johnson, who writes in the Royal 

 Magazine for August an article describing a day in 

 the life of a keeper in the Zoo, gives the following 

 figures relating to the food annually consumed by 

 the various animals. The annual cost of the food 

 is estimated at ;£^40oo. He says: — 



Remember that an elephant gets through 90 lb. of h:iy 

 and 40 lb. of oats, beans, rice and biscuits per day, and 

 tlie hippopotamus half-a-hundredweight each of hay and 

 a in;ish of bran and mangel-wurzels! 



(!oi sider also for a few moments the following items lin 

 round flsure.s) from the annual food-bill: — 



Horse and goat flesh 100 tons 



Pish 40,000 lb. 



Vegetaiiles (greens, etc..) 200 cwt. 



Other veeetahles roots, cress, etc.i 10,000 bunches 



Bread .. ^'OW quarters 



Grain, iiran. et. 600 quarters 



Milk 4,600 quarts 



Eggs ' . 30,000 



p„,i, 13,000 lb. and 



'^™"' ■■ / 160 bushels 



Clover, hay and straw 500 loads 



Tliere are special articles of diet, besides which have to 

 he provided for certain animals at somewhat 6xtrav»g:int 

 prices. Tlie herons and cormorants, for instance, as well 

 as the diving liirds whose meal-time performance in the 

 glass tank is such a popular spectacle, require live flBlies, 

 wjiicii Ikivo to be .specially caught, while the pythons and 

 otiier big snakes demand, in some cases, live rabbits or 

 ducks by the half-doaen or so at a time. 



