March 30, to 16 
L A N & \\ A T R R 
It 
the principle of nationalities, the restoration of Serbia, 
the ensuring to Russia of control over the Dardanelles 
and Roumania's right to breathe. All these factors 
exist to day and do not in any way depend upon develop- 
ments in the Roumanian or Serbian jjuimlations of 
Austria-Hungary. We have ample mateiial from which 
to construct a clear policy which can then be pushed 
forward without fear of hurting the feelings of any of 
our Allies. Hut we must have the courage to make up 
our mind. In the Balkans we have never yet done so, 
and the results are pitiable. 
'' (ireat Britain, France and Russia were great in 
the eyes of the small states and everybody respected 
and feared them. But this greatness was only transitory. 
To-day these countries are getting small states into their 
power and endeavouring to persuade to carry on tlicir 
schemes of conquest with the strength of the small allies." 
So speaks a Balkan statesman to-day. It is of small 
avail to point to Salonika as an earnest that we are 
seriously working nut a ])olicy in the Balkans. TIk^ 
details of the liolding of Salonika reflect no credit on this 
comilry. We had to he driven to that decision — if 
we are to hi'liexe well-informed opinion in Paris. And 
so the f)nly jiositive action in the Balkans, the occupation 
of Salonika of which M. Radoslavoff said recently that 
" it represents a serious political dan.ger for the Central 
Powers because it could induce Roumania and (ireece to 
attack Bulgaria at a very unfavourable moment," is in 
no way a sign of a real policy. It is an accidental happen- 
ing, however important it may be. 
Let us therefore have done with uncertainty and 
the making of declarations one day to deny them to- 
morrow. A declaration of policy bearing in itself the 
evidence of reflection and decision will be worth more than 
many divisions in the Near I'-ast." And having decided 
let words be translated into deeds. Pious wishes for 
Serbian future will sound better if we co-operate ener- 
getically in the reorganisation of their army and proclaim 
that we are not thinking of giving Macedonia to Bulgaria. 
Roumania will believe us better if we declare that she has 
a right to breatlu; and that in restoring Serb'> we are 
removing a menace of a (ireater Bulgaria. We have 
all to gain and nothing to lose by such a policy. We have 
so tied our hands that we have no real choice as to the 
form of the policy. So let us at least have the credit of 
])roclaiming what we have done. 
A Balkan statesman recently made a caustic summing 
up of our policy in the Near East. " England asked the 
neutral states to come in with the Entente without 
promising anything. Having failed she began to promise 
much. Having failed again she asked the neutral States to 
continue their neutrality. She was first ))artitioniiig other 
peoples territorits to get intervention in her favour, then, 
liaving not attained favourable results she partitions 
territories for the continuation of the neutrality. At 
iirst she gives little, afterwards mucli. When she fails 
with her large requests, she reduce.; them to a minimum. 
In ordinary commercial Hfe, such a policy is only that 
of a bankrupt. Have we to-day any reason to hope that 
things have changed for the better ? 
A Famous Showman 
By Desmond MacCarthy 
THESE days, when people arc more than usually 
grateful for a book which will as they say, take 
them out of themselves (0, for a Leaf on a witch's 
broom stick !j I do not know that I can do better 
than draw attention to such a book. It ''has been out some 
vcars. It was written by a man, who at the age of eighty- 
live was murdered by a half-crazy protege in iqii. His 
name not long ago was as well known up and down 
lingland as Gladstone's or Jack Johnson's. The book 
is called " Seventy Years a Showman" and it is by 
(I remove the conventional quotation marks from his 
coiutesy title with feelings of profound respect) Lord 
George Sanger. 
\Vhen we hear ot an odd adventurous career, we 
often think to ourselves, " What a book that man might 
have written if he had merely put down what he remem- 
bered ! " Yet .such people when they do write, write 
usually unconvincing, heavy books. It is a melancholy 
fact that as a rule, people to whom exciting things 
happen, or who do things, cannot describe them ; while 
to those who can describe anything, nothing in particular 
happens. His lordship is, liowever, an exception. He 
writes well. His manner is as honest as Defoe's, and as 
engagingly bright and obvious as the decorations of a 
wandering showman's van. 
Nothing is more satisfactory than to see a thing 
grow, even if it is onlv one's own moustache, Few stories 
are more entertaining than the adventures of those who 
live precariously, dangerously, by pleasing men ; nothing 
IS more romantic than the days of our grandfathers, 
when our fathers were young. Such satisfaction, en- 
tertainment, and romance are to be gathered from the 
pages of this autobiography. 
His lordship's father was a sailor. Walking one day 
over London Bridge the Press Gang (which pace the 
recruiting authorities is not yet quite extinct) nabbed 
him and hustled him into His Majesty's Service. He 
served on board the Victory ; fought at Trafalgar, where 
he lost a few fingers, broke ribs, got scalped and saw 
Nelson fall ; experiences which subsequently, when, to 
supplement a pension of lio a year, he took th(> road, 
helped him to excel in jwepshow patter. It was lucky, 
too, lie had as a sailor been kind to two pressed Jews,, 
who havmg come aboard to amuse the crew," had 
strmk the captain as nature's seamen in disguise, and 
had therefore been permanently detained ; for these 
men had taught him in return manv conjuring and 
hanky-panky tricks. So from tlie little peepshow box 
slung across father Sanger's shoulders, sprang the glories 
of the circus and menagerie and the glittering, still ex- 
tant though now dilapidated, halls of Margate. 
It is a fascinating story this ; it is the story of the 
mustard seed of which we never tire. It grew, it grew. 
From peepshow box it grew into collapsible merry-go- 
roind, worked by two boys ; from that to a show with 
a giantess (really six foot high) and "two cannibal pigmies 
of the dark continent " (intelligent Mulatto children, 
aged nine and ten) and to a proper troop ; and from that 
it shot up into the triumphs of his son, who actually 
succeeded in 1871 in linking on his own show to the tail 
to the Royal Thanksgiving Procession through London, 
which commemorated the recovery of the Prince of 
Wales from typhoid fever ; in which Mrs. Sanger (as 
she then was) represented on the top of a golden car, 
Britannia, with a living lion at her feet. One can imagine, 
without in the least inpugning the loyalty of the crowd 
which lined the streets, how much more imposing Sanger's 
appendix to the Royal Progress must have been to them. 
And I note as a striking instance of the dramatic felicity 
of chance, that somehow on this occasion the carriage 
in which, as our author says, " Lord Beaconslield was 
con.spicuous," got left behind and inextricably mingled 
(they did not manage these things so well in the eighteen- 
seventies) with the circus itself. He "rose " our author 
tells us, " and acknowledged the endeavour of youi 
humble servant to enhance the circumstance of the great 
occasion." I like to picture that salute, to imagine it 
coinciding with the passing of Britannia, and to admire yet 
again the master of ironic presence of mind. 
George begins as a handy boy, ready to earn, as acrobat 
or conjuror, a few shillings for his parents ; to take the 
place of a donkey if need be, in an equilibrist's jx'rfor- 
mance when that docile beast is stolen. He then de- 
velops into a strong young man with a dashing paste- 
diamond quality air about liim ; magnificent in dress, 
cutting a fine figure, shouting his patter among " the 
flares " in front of the stage. On his first independent 
venture as " The Wizard of the West," he adopts the 
costume of Hamlet, to which his feminine admirers, who 
throng the bootii, are proud to contribute a ribbon or 
a feather. But to them he remains fascinating, scornful ; 
proof against even the charms of " Watercress Betty." 
'fill, suddenly and irre\ocably, he meets his fate 
in the person of Madam Pauline de Vere, the Lady 
