Review of Reviews, IjlI/OS. 



the Reviews Reviewed. 



S°i 



THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. 



The Forin>(jhtly licview contains several interest- 

 ing but no c-onspicuously prominent articles. I quote 

 from Count Tol6to}''s afterword and M. Rappoport's 

 Jeremiad about Russia among the Leading Articles. 



TRAITS OF TOGO. 

 Mrs. Hugh Fraser gossips deliciously about Ad- 

 miral Togo, the most modest, religious, and saint-like 

 of fighting men. She says: — 



When Admiral Togo was informed that the city of Tokyo 

 had decreed a pubiic triumph in his honour, he remarked 

 that such distinction was illogical and unmerited, since 

 every man in the navy had done as much as he to secure 

 the country's success. 



When tlie Court Photographer sold his photograph 

 he went to his studio : — 



" I am shocked to find," he said, " that people are buying 

 my photograph. It is very wrong that they should spend 

 money on the portrait of such a stupid person. I wish to 

 have the negative so that you may print no more copies." 



When he assumed the command of the fleet he stated, in 

 the most business-like way. that " Japan would conquer at 

 aea, but not until he himself and Admiral Shibayajna had 

 died." Only once in the whole war did he show any feel- 

 ing of joy, and that was after the battle of the Sea of 

 Japan. 



The article is a mosaic of such pleasant anecdotes 

 about the Japanese Nelson. 



THE NEW GERMAN FLEET. 

 " Excubitor," who recently demonstrated that the 

 Grermans had no fighting fleet worth speaking of, now 

 warns us that their new programme will make them 

 formidable indeed in ten years' time : — 



The last of the Dreadnoughts and tbe final on© of the 

 baker's dozen of armoured cruisers provided for by the 

 amending .\ct will be laid down in 1917, and three years 

 later, when the final ships are ready for aea, the German 

 fleet will be complete in all its power — thirty-eight battle- 

 ships, including eighteen DreadnouobtA, each with a con- 

 centration of gun power equal to practically any two bat- 

 tleships no\v in commission in tlie BritisJi fleet and well 

 armoured. These eighteen ships will be so swift that we 

 shall have nothing to bring them to battle, unless in the 

 meantime we have built ships as powerfuL 



We are therefore invited to a shipbuilding compe- 

 tition on a far larger scale than before. Incidentally 

 the new German programme will necessitate spending 

 ten millions to enlarge the Kiel Canal : — 



The strategical raison d'etre of the canal mtist conse- 

 quently disappear as soon as the new colossal men-of-war 

 of the new programme are completed for sea. 



THE GROWTH OF THE MOTOR INDUSTRY. 

 " Cygnus " gossips pleasantly about the present 

 and future of motor-cars. He says : — • 



In June, 1904, the number of motor-cars registered under 

 the Motor Car .\ct was 18,840. and that of motor-cycles 

 2203; the licenses to drive issued were 54.169. Mr. Worby 

 Beaumont, whose authority stands very high, forecasted 

 tbe British output between September, 1905, ajid Septem- 

 ber, 1906, at £4,000.000. 



" Cygnus " hopes that electi-icity will supersede all 

 other methods of driving motor-cars. He says: — 



It is quite conceivable that the idea embodied in the 

 Kri^ger system, which is actually at work, that a car may 

 be driven by electricity, generated by a separate engine 

 on the car, may be simplified and worked economically. 

 If that time comes, the petrol-driven car will become as 

 obsolete as the pa^khorse. 



THE POLITICS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS PARTY. 



.\n article signed by Mr. Shan F. Bullock and seve- 

 ral other of his friends thus defines their idea of 

 what should be the political programme of a middle 

 class party : — 



Our views on many questions of the day are clear and 

 pronounced. The King, in our opinion the ablest man in 

 England, should visit South Africa. Ireland, we think, 

 must soon have a form of Home Rule, if only to control, 

 and perhaps rectify, the results of Mr. Wyndham's Land 



Purchase Act— an Act, let us say, which presently the 

 Irish people will come to regret. 



As to education, they have decided opinions : — 

 Once one of us tried the experiment of sending bis boy 

 to a Board school. Within a year he contracted the fol- 

 lowing diseases: measles, ringworm, whooping cough, ver- 

 min, ill-manners, bad language, and a cockney dialect. 



That was enough. They say : — 



We are willing to pay. and pay. and pay. But. in re- 

 turn for paying'and enduring, let the State reward us by 

 ceasing to tinker with our Secondary schools; let it forego 

 halt measures, and boldly make of those schools real and 

 efficient national institutions— schools worthy of itself, of 

 us, and our children. Nationalise them. Put them on the 

 rates If the classes must mix. if their children must con- 

 sort, let the union be done thoroughly, decently, and in 

 Older. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE FEAST OF ALL SOULS. 



Mr. J. 6. Fraser. with a great parade of authori- 

 ties, proves that " the nominally Christian feast of 

 All Souls is nothing but an old pagan festival of the 

 dead which the Church, unable or unwilling to suji- 

 pre.ss, resolved from motives of policy to connive. 

 He suggests that the festival of All Souls on Novem- 

 ber 2iul originated with the Colts, and spread from 

 them to tlie'^rest of the European peoples who, while 

 thev preserved their old feasts of the dead practically 

 unchanged mav have transferred them to November 



2nd. 



OTHER ARTICLES. 



Mr. A. C. Pigon writes on the taxation of site 

 values in order to prove — 



first that some transference of rates from ratable to site 

 value is desirable, and, secondly, that uncovered land 

 should be taxed at the value it would have in its most pro- 

 fitable use. These two propositions are the keynotes of the 

 new rating policy. 



Mr. H. Scheffauer, in an article entitled "The Sig- 

 nificance of San Francisco," predicts that 



the nations may now observe the creation of what is to be 

 the youngest, most beautiful city in the world, beam by 

 heaiii and stone by stone, a city that shall no longer be 

 merely the Paris of .\merica. but its Athens and the un- 

 disputed Queen of the Pacific. 



May Sinclair waxes enthusiastic about three new 

 American poets — 



William Vaughan Moodv, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and 

 Rid-'elv Torrence. They are all three rich in imagination, 

 but~Mr Moody is distinguished by bis mastery of tech- 

 iiioue Mr. Robinson by his psychological vision, his power- 

 ful' human quality. Mr. Torrent e by his immense, if as yet 

 somewhat indefinite, propiise. 



THE CENTURY MAGAZINE. 



To the September issue of the Century Magazine 

 Professor A. V. Williams Jackson contributes an in- 

 teresting paper on the Zoroastrians or Fire-Worship- 

 pers of Vezd, whose religion is stated to be nearly 

 three thousand years old. These " Jews of the East," 

 aie, we are told, a much-pensecuted people, but 

 through ages of misfortune they have remained true 

 to their religion. 



In another article, " Down on the Labrador, Mr 

 Gustav Kobbe gives an account of the Eskimos and 

 the Moravian Mission on the coast of Lahrador. 

 The settlement consists of six Moravian mission sta- 

 tions, and the work is directed from the Moravian 

 Settlement at Herrenhut, in Saxony. Most of the 

 missionaries are Glermans. and it is a life of isola- 

 tion from the world which they spend on those 

 lonely shores. The writer thinks the influence of the 

 missionaries over the Eskimos would be much 

 gieat«r if the missionaries were as adept at sport 

 as they are at theology. The Eskimos are said to 

 be a very conceited race, with a very high opinion 

 of tlioir musical gifts. 



