ANDOM Readings from the Reviews. 



A Dkvout Diplomatist. 



Prince Reuss, the great Prussian diplomatist, who 

 was sent after Sadowa on a special mission to 

 Napoleon III., who, as German ambassador in 

 Vienna, concluded the Austro-German alliance, and 

 who knew the dijiloniulic history of Europe most inti- 

 mately from 1866 till his death in 1906, is the subject 

 of a sketch b\- Mr. Sidney Whitman in the Forlnighlly. 

 ■f'he writer quotes this testimony from one who knew 

 him intimately : — 



His political instinct, his tact, fiis delicacy of touch in the 

 management ofaftaiis were remarkaljle. For at certain critical 

 junctures the alternative of peace and war may be said to have 

 been balanced at the point of his pen. 



It impressed me deeply to find him, at such a moment, 

 sitting in prayer in front of his writing materials. " May God 

 grant to me His grace to give coirect e.\pression to the right 

 thoughts, so that bloodshed may be avoided," and God heard his 

 prayer, so full of simple faith and trust. There was rarely his 

 like, so absolutely exempt was he from everyday vanity and the 

 [lettiness of things. He combined rare modesty with a certain 

 loftiness : the union of a chastened spirit with the wide range of 

 a superior mind, and with it there was a delightful buoyancy 

 and freshness about him. I fancy it was his love of art and 

 nature that gave this mellowness to his mind. It enabled him 

 to see so much of the beauty of things, so much of their deeper 

 import. This again may have had something to do with his 

 charming social qualities, his keen sense of humour, for he thus 

 perceived many things unseen by his cntouia\^e. 



All the Difference 1 



In a most amusing paper by a recent patient in 

 appendicitis, " the confession of a reformed scoffer," 

 which appears in the American Magazine for September, 

 the writer says :— 



" Appendicitis surgically treated might justly be compared to the 

 eradication of a wart ; and scolfers would be right in proclaim- 

 ing : ",'Vw, there's nothing to it." No, and there's nothing to 

 jumping off the Urooklyn bridge until you're in the water. 



A surgeon proffered a statement for $1,000 to a parent— or 

 maybe a husband ; more likely a husband. And the husband 

 kicked, demanding an itemised account. This promptly came. 



For operating J I 



For knowing how gcjg 



So in appendicitis the patient's account should read : 



Operation Nothing doing 



Getting over it Wow! 



The whole paper is one of the most humorous con- 

 tributed to periodical literature lor some linie. 



Cromwell at Drogmeda. 



Fresh light 011 Cromwell at Droglieda is offered in 

 (he Nineteenth Century by Mr. J. B. Williams. Thomas 

 Carlyle had reversed the traditional judgment on 

 Croiriwell's action in that iiistoric siege. Gardiner's 

 greater authority had confirmed this change of opinion. 

 Mr. Williams brings evidence from contemporary 

 letters and newsbooks published without licence to 

 prove that the whole garrison had first of all had their 

 arms taken away from tliem before thev were 



slaughtered, that the refugees in St. Peter's Church, 

 which included women and children, were all slain, 

 neither women nor children were spared. So " to kill 

 unarmed men, women, and children brands Cromwell 

 as a savage, outside the pale of decent human beings." 

 In trying to conceal the truth about Drogheda, 

 Cromwell was but doing what he had done before. 

 Mr. Williams quotes JBa.xter's remark of Cromwell : — 

 " He thought Secrecy a virtue and Dissimulation no 

 vice, and Simulation, that is, in, plain English, a Lie, 

 or Perfidiousness, to be a tolerable faulf in case of 

 necessity." 



The Grievances of the Lower Deck. 



" Ships versus Men in the Navy " is the title of a 

 paper in the English Review by Mr. Stephen Re\-nolds, 

 in which he deals very faithfully with the Admiralty 

 for their neglect of the legitimate wants of the lower 

 personnel of the Fleet. He tells a characteristic 

 story : — 



The outcome on the lower deck has been a growing sense of 

 soreness, of grievance, of being "done down" ; a smouldering 

 discontent which might at any moment recently have burst into 

 a l)laze, and which has, in fact, thrown olf more sparks than the 

 public is aware of. A yarn that is bsing told of Mr. Churchill 

 hits ofl' very neatly the state of the lower deck and its feeling : 

 if not authentic, as I understand the episode to be, it is 

 exceedingly l/eti Irm'a/o. 



The First Lord, to the great glee of the louver deck, has a 

 habit of going straight to the men, with a disregard of ceremonial 

 and official receptions very scandalous to the old school of 

 oflicer. Aboard one of the ships he fell in with a stoker, asked 

 him how long he had been in the Service, and was duly inl'ormcd. 

 Said Mr. Churchill, " D'you like your job?" 



" I can't say I do, sir," replied the stoker. 



" Well, what's wrong with it?" .asked Mr. Churchill. 



"What's wrong with it?" repeated the stoker, looking very 

 frankly into his face. " Well, what's right with it ?" 



And Mr. Churchill was nonplussed. For once he had no 

 an-iwer ready. 'I'he wrongs so far outweigh the rights. 



The truth is that the Navy has brought itself into ill-udouv 

 among the people from vvhoin the picli of the lower deck is 

 recruited ; good men are going out of the Service as quickly as 

 they can ; recruiting is falling off, and would have fallen ofl" still 

 more did it not mostly operate among boys not old enough to 

 know their own minds. Therefore, at last, something is to be 

 done, very largely because, perforce, it has to be done. 



Tuberculosis is well known to be increasing in the 

 Fleet. What else can be expected ? :— 



Fleet-Surgeon 13eadnell stated at Berlin that whereas a healthy 

 person on shore is estimated to require Soo cubic feet of air, a 

 soldier in barracks is allowed 600 feel, a pauper 300 feet, and 

 a training-ship boy 290 feet, the allowance for a man in a, 

 modern Z>reaJnoii!;hi is sometimes no more than 86 feet. As a 

 young seaman in one of the Dreadnoughts expressed it to me : 

 " Vou can't turn in your hammock without disturbing the men 

 each side of you, and when they cough — and there's any amount 

 of coughing aboard ship — the spit comes right into your face. 

 The old ships were a king to these new ones." 



The writer gives in full " the loyal appeal from the 

 lower deck," the naval Magna Charla for 1912, con- 

 sisting of foui [)ages of close print. 



