as she has no forthcoming ally in Europe. She should also understand that this country is not in the mood to be more generous than she has been, or to suffer longer delay over the negotiations for peace and the surrender of the trophies and acquisitions of the war. Nor in her own interests, as Spanish chambers of commerce and the business communities of the Peninsula tell her, is she justified in further quibbling over terms and delaying to accept the situation. If she closes her ears to siren hope, as well as to the demagogues among her politicians, she will hasten to give effect to the peace proposals, and in so doing she will do wisely. After that she will do well to turn her attention to the recruiting of the nation and to the development of her great internal resources.

the Fashoda matter, declines to cross swords with England. In this she obviously does wisely, since in seeking to invest Major Marchand and his expedition, rescued by the Sirdar, with military rather than with scientific designs, and in claiming to occupy Fashoda as a derelict region which French arms had taken possession of, she assumed an utterly untenable position. It was a position that England, as trustee for the Khedive, for whose government

she had for fifteen years poured out blood and treasure like water, could never admit. Nor for England herself and her own interests, to which the Nile is now as vital as it is vital to the land of the Pharaohs, could she tolerate French claims to sovereignty even in the Bahrel-Gazel region or anywhere within territory which her arms had reconquered for Egypt. This was the view of the matter taken, with firm but quiet dignity, by

Lord Salisbury, and emphatically endorsed even by the chiefs of the Liberal party, as well as by the united voice of the British press and people. On no point of international contention has England in recent years so unanimously and determinedly declared her voice and made her will felt in diplomatic action as in this Fashoda matter. Hence, we repeat

MARQUIS OF SALISBURY

that, in face of this attitude of the English nation, France has done wisely in abandoning her pretentions and in ordering Major Marchand to pursue a course homewards other than by way of the Nile.

The temptation to France at this juncture was great to take an unfriendly line of action towards England, and so seek to divert the national mind from internal trouble. There was, moreover, a natural pride in what Major Marchand, as the

head of a scientific expedition, had accomplished in the still dim places of the once Dark Continent. But English diplomats, as Lord Rosebery chivalrously told the world the other day, had warned France some years ago to keep off this territory; and so unmistakable was the warning and so ready to heed it was the French foreign office, represented at the time by M. Hanotaux, that the latter assured the English ambassador at Paris that Major Marchand was in Africa, not for conquest, but only as an emissary of civilization.” In view of this explicit statement, it was the more unreasonable in the French Government now to disregard international courtesies and set at defiance England's assertion of Egyptian rights in the recovered region. There would have been reason in resorting to diplomacy for an outlet for French commerce on the Nile, if that were the object sought—and if it had been, England, always true to her free trade policy, would, doubtless, have hastened to grant it; but it was fatuous to claim even a swamp on the banks of the Nile as a post for her flag and the symbol of French sovereignty. Nor in taking the position which England, alike for herself and for Egypt, has rightfully assumed, has there been any desire, on the part of either, to humiliate France, or in any way do her injustice, far less a wrong. On the contrary, it was French ambition that sought to do wrong, and by a game of bluff endeavored to insert a wedge of Gallic ownership across the Nile highway, which would have broken the red line of British connection between Cairo and the Cape, and at the same time dispossessed Egypt of her undoubted rights in the region. It was with this design that the Marchand expedition was abetted and encouraged to make for the Nile, and there raise the tricolor at Fashoda. With a like end in view, also, has the French Government for some time past intrigued with the Negus of Abyssinia. That both plottings have failed, and that France, in receding from her standpoint, has not had the consolation of even a British concession for the sake of peace, are not England's fault, but the fault of French greed, obviously instigated by national envy and diplomatic unscrupulousness.

For the exhibition of these ungracious traits of French temper, the nation has no doubt to thank the Colonial party and the bellicose Paris press, especially that por

tion of it which panders to the army and inflames its passions. In this Egyptian matter, however, these journals have had to recede from an impossible position and yield to England what should never have been claimed. What menace may lurk behind the withdrawal of Marchand and the talked-of arraignment of England for her continued occupation of Egypt, time alone will tell. If, as she threatens to do, France raises the whole question of the British occupation of Egypt, Britain can retort by raising the questions of the French occupations of Tunis and of Madagascar. Whatever threatens, England, we may be sure, will not be driven out of the Sudan by the menace of France, nor will she even hasten to commit herself to a protectorate of Egypt until she thinks the time propitious for declaring it. No Power conscious of the justice of her cause could act otherwise than Britain has done in this matter; nor, considering the return to England of the hero of Omdurman and all the excitement which that event has occasioned, has Lord Salisbury said a word that would wound the susceptibilities of France or lead her to feel aggrieved with John Bull at the issue of the affair.

France and It is the misfortune of Hope for France that she has but Dreyfus one Paris. We mean by that, that she has no second city, such as the United States has, and as England and Germany have, of such commanding influence as would tend to steady the political mind of the nation and neutralize the evil effects of cliques and factions, swayed hither and thither by gusts of prejudice or passion. Paris hence revels. in unrestrained fits of excitement, while the leaders of the army, in the absence of a dictator, control in great measure the legislature, and even dictate to the government for the time being what it shall do or refrain from doing. The prolonged scandal of the Dreyfus case illustrates the strength as well as the unscrupulousness of this faction, and before it, and the conspiracy of the army chiefs, we have seen another of the many administrations France has had since the Third Empire topple and fall from power. There is manifestly not much difference in the complexion of parties in M. Dupuy's cabinet and that of M. Brisson which it succeeds. Indeed, two of the former members — M. Delcassé, minister of for

eign affairs, and M. Lockroy, minister of marine are retained. Advantage, however, is taken of the turn of the wheel to assert for the new administration its independence of the army, which, besides being anti-Jewish, we must remember, is also monarchist in its sympathies, and its determination to make the civil power paramount. At the same time it takes care to promise that it will protect the army from "a campaign of ridicule » certainly a large undertaking considering its power of committing folly or worse and that it will hand over the disposition of Dreyfus to the upright Court of Cassation. In this decision the new ministry, it must be admitted, has taken a courageous step, which speaks well for the independence and good sense of its members, and the desire at last to do justice to an unfortunate officer, who has been illegally convicted of an odious crime, which it is more than doubtful that he ever committed.

With revision of the case not only will some measure of justice be done to Captain Dreyfus-and already the Court of Cassation has ordered the prisoner to prepare his defence, since his case is to be retried- but the wrongs will presumedly be remedied of those who have publicly taken up the defence of the condemned, and among them, we trust, will be Colonel Picquart, as well as M. Zola; while hope will be brought to the heart of the devoted wife of the army chiefs' victim. The one fear remains that, after all, malice will defeat the ends of justice by some further diabolical act, in making away, if not with the unhappy victim of the conspiracy, then with the remaining documents, forged or genuine, which are in the hands of the civil and military authorities, and which are necessary to prove, in an incontestable way, either Dreyfus's innocence or his guilt. This, should it occur, would be an untoward affair, though not so calamitous in its effect upon the morality of the French nation as has been the disposition hitherto of almost all Paris to baulk revision in the case of a monstrously ill-used and persecuted man, on the outrageous plea of saving the honor of the army, already besmirched by damning confessions of forgery, by infamous acts of conspiracy against subordinate officers, and by frantic appeals to religious and racial prejudice.

The Kaiser's

The Kaiser's picturesque Pilgrimage tour in the Orient is, as we write, nearing its end, and the chief personage in the pageant returns, with his consort and his elaborate attendant suite, in safety to the Fatherland. The incidents of the tour, which for readily understood reasons has been considerably curtailed, have been many and varied. Apart from the political and commercial interests which have been served by the pilgrimage, the romantic and scenic aspects of the visiting cavalcade in the East, at the head of which has ridden the Christian monarch of a mighty nation, are not the least picturesque features of the imperial tour. These aspects of the pilgrimage have been interestingly commented upon by the German, and to some extent by the English, press. Here is an extract from a descriptive article in the London "Times:"

It would require the pen of the author of "Tancred" to do justice to the picturesque tour by which the German Emperor enlivens contemporary annals. Romance, we are often told, is dead; which means that it never exists save for those who can master the flux of circumstance and grasp the essential features of humanity under the motley of the masquerade. But here, in this new crusade, we have romance made visible, palpable, and insistent. The nineteenth century, which men call prosaic, is own brother of the twelfth, which they reckon good material for dithyrambs. The head of a Christian State professing a very modern form of Christianity puts aside for a time all the pressing duties of his high position and makes a pilgrimage to the holy places, in order to promote the interests, ecclesiastical and other, of his Christian subjects. He meets the Sultan in his capital surrounded by his Paynim chivalry, and adduces, we may be sure, arguments sufficiently cogent to ensure some at least of the advantages he desires. It is the old story over again. The paraphernalia, the methods, the arguments, are different. Beside the caiques of the Bosporus there are screw propellers, quick-firing guns, and electric lights; things which oppress and obfuscate those who do not possess that desirable "fire in their belly » which Carlyle admired so greatly in Ram Dass. But the essence of the thing is the same, the meeting of East and West. That delightful German Emperor has brought the romance of the ages to our very doors, and if he is surrounded by all the newest and most scientific things made in Germany," what does that matter? They are all written in the Arabian Nights as in a dream, and the waking realities are infinitely more wonderful and more poetic. It is the old crusade, as full of humanity as ever, springing from an equal wealth of human

hopes and desires, pointing to an equal future of human achievement, and for sole difference dressed in the fashions of a new age."

Barring the alliance with the Sultan, whom many good Christians to-day, and with reason, term "the assassin," the visit of the Kaiser to the Dardanelles and the Levant has evoked no little enthusiasm. As the "Times" observes, it "has brought the romance of the ages to our very doors," and reproduces, yet with vast changes, the twelfth century at the end of the nineteenth. It partakes of the pageantry of the era of the Templars and Crusaders, when Frederick II of Germany, in 1229, took Jerusalem, and, in spite of the Pope, had himself crowned king. Nor does the expedition fail to recall, if not to rival, the greater pageantry of an earlier reign, when Frederick Barbarossa organized the great crusade in which Richard the Lion-heart of England bore a distinguished part. But the motives of the present visit are all so different. The design was not now to recover Palestine for the Cross and, if practicable, win the Holy City by treaty from the infidel. Yet it is impossible that William II, following in the track of the crusades, consecrating a German Evangelical church in Jerusalem, and placing at the disposal of his Catholic subjects in the Holy City a site acquired from the Sultan consecrated by many pious memories, should not have recalled the scenes enacted by his Hohenstaufen predecessors seven centuries ago, or failed to allow his active imagination to be incited by the associations as well as by the sights around him. That he was so impressed we may be sure, though the practical motives of his visit, in the interest of the German colonies and German commerce in the Holy Land, were not disregarded. To his Teuton subjects in the land of pious memories who are seeking, as did its inhabitants in Bible days, to make the desert blossom as the rose, the visit of the Kaiser to Palestine was most grateful as well as opportune.

Remote as we are from these scenes on this Western continent, we little reflect, even if we know, to what extent Palestine is becoming Germanized and how much the country owes, in its improved material conditions, to German industry "and the pure ideals of German Protestantism." Where formerly the only people to be met with were vagrant Arabs and fanatical Mussulmans, with a sprinkling of Russians

of the orthodox Greek church, are now to be found prosperous German agriculturists, with occasional Swabian colonies, alike on the slopes of Carmel and on the shores of the Levant. In the towns and villages German communities have also settled, and the shopkeepers are now German, and the best inns are those of the German sort. Aside, therefore, from all motives of diplomacy and designs of state, there was reason for the Imperial visit and policy in undertaking it even under Turkish auspices.

Japan and China

Japan is to be congratulated on its progress, though the adaptability of the nation, and the readiness with which its public men copy Western fashions and manners, at times lead it into trouble. Into trouble it has just fallen by the failure of its first essay in party government, which with more eagerness than wisdom it had borrowed from the Occident. The Cabinet has resigned, owing, it is stated, to inability to agree as to the selection of a successor to one of its members, who held the post of minister of justice. In discussing who the new minister was to be, it seems, the government were at odds, and failing to agree, its members threw up their portfolios. The new cabinet, we are told, is likely to be a coalition one, composed of Liberals and Clan leaders, it being deemed the proper thing, according to Western example and tradition, to try a fusion of parties when a deadlock ensues and the machinery of government cannot be worked by one of them singly. But there is a more serious cause of disagreement than the one we have just named. It is the common one with which most administrations in this mundane sphere have to contend, namely, the difficulty of making both ends meet. There is, it appears, a deficit in the current year's revenue of thirty million yen, to meet which there is a necessity for increased taxation. The need for increased taxation, is, however, not favorably regarded in the country, especially during the present stringency in the native money market, and Japan must either call a halt in the lavish expenditures which have been going on since the war with China, or face an embarrassing condition of her national finances. This will put a damper on the ambitions and elated feelings of the people, which, however, need the sobering effect of a check or set-back, which is,

perhaps, best administered in the form of a refusal to lend their nation money in the financial marts of the world. Foreign capital, we note, has already taken alarm at the pace Japan has of late been travelling, and has shown by its cautious attitude that it will not encourage the government's unrestrained zeal for spending. The warning, it is to be hoped, will not be lost upon the lusty young kingdom, but will teach it to lop off its extraordinary expenditures and place a curb on its soaring ambitions. There is the more urgency for this, seeing that it has already spent the Chinese war indemnity, of nearly two hundred million dollars.

Across the Yellow Sea, the elements of disturbance are many in the Middle Kingdom. Reform has suffered in the setting aside of the sickly Emperor by the ambitious Empress Dowager, who opposes the Westernizing of the kingdom with a hard-set face. The atmosphere of Peking is moreover impregnated with suspicion of all sorts of intrigues, and the street rabble, at the instigation of the Mandarins, openly shows its hatred of those whom it is pleased to term, with unreasoning detestation, "foreign devils." So precarious at present is the mood of the nation that the European embassies have ceased to trust the imperfect protection they have hitherto received from the central government, and have surrounded their quarters by guards of marines drawn from the warships of their respective countries stationed at the treaty ports. It cannot be doubted that the presence of the armed foreign troops is a wise precautionary measure, though the occasion for their being called in is unfortunate. That their presence is unwelcome is evident from the protest which the Tsung li Yamen has addressed, through a member of the diplomatic corps, to the Russian embassy against the number of its guards and escorts, which the Yamen affirm is calculated to incense the populace. The protest would seem to indicate that Russia is not so manifestly favored at Peking as the other Powers appear to think, though if Yung Li is still the trusted counsellor of the Dowager Empress, the complaint may be a mere blind.

Wherein legitimate authority at present resides in China, it would be difficult, with a deposed or secreted Emperor, now to say. This renders interference by the foreign Powers a delicate matter, though

we may be sure that, in the event of further and overt menace to the European residents, the representatives of the Powers will not be slow to act wherever the symbol of native authority may be. Relief from a strained situation is, however, as likely to come from within as from without, for so autocratic a woman as the Dowager Empress must have enemies; and we know that among the better elements of the kingdom, removed from the corrupting influences and intrigues of the capital, the clamor for reform is persistent and loud.

The Late

D. A. Wells

Free trade in this country has in the death of David A. Wells lost one of its few but faithful friends. Those who on principle oppose protection may well shed a tear at the departure of this upright man and doughty opponent of artificial tariffs, designed, in the main, for the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many. It is singular that the country continues to keep its eyes so determinedly closed to the evils of a system by which rings are created and maintained, the national legislature is corrupted or coerced by the lobby, and the country loaded with unnecessary taxation. Against this giant evil the late Mr. Wells, when his own eyes were opened, fought stoutly, but alas! in vain.

- his protest being but a voice crying in the wilderness. At one time (1867) the Senate, we believe, passed a freetrade revision of the tariff which the economist had prepared, only, however, to be vetoed in the House.

Mr. Wells's death occurred at his home in Norwich, Conn., Nov. 5. His was a long and laborious career, both as a public man and a writer. In 1847 he graduated from Williams College, and was for a time associate editor of "The Springfield Republican." It was while engaged in journalism that Mr. Wells conceived the notion that books and newspapers might be folded by machinery, and to effect that innovation he assisted in inventing a machine for the purpose. His practical interest in science dates from the period when he took a course under Agassiz at Harvard, where he was engaged as a lecturer, and subsequently he edited an "Annual of Scientific Discovery." Economical subjects, however, were those which were to engage his chief attention, and perhaps there was no better authority