in Belgium, to speak only of French-speaking lands, has taken sides against the English. The first reason he assigns is this:

"At the end of a century which will be called in history the century of the awakening, or the rebirth of nationalities, and in which, consequently, the great political crime, the great international crime, is the destroying of a nationality, that is just what the English have not feared to undertake."

The writer grants that men are not angels, and the extension of English power and wealth has undoubtedly excited the jealousy of other peoples. Their ears have of late been fairly deafened with the "superiority of the Anglo-Saxons," and the amour-propre of the nations has been consequently exasperated. Success. after all, is not always a proof of superiority. A million aire may be an imbecile. Another reason for English unpopularity is the attitude assumed by almost the whole of the English press in the Dreyfus case.

The writer complains that, while the English are the most liberal of peoples, their liberalism is only for themselves ;-it is "not for exportation." English interests alone are considered. They constitute a veritable national religion," with one article instead of thirty-nine-which is, that no regard be paid to the allowed or the forbidden, to good or evil, just or unjust, human or inhuman, but only to English interests. these interests are, alas! only economic.

And

The writer admits freely that the individual conscience is nowhere more tender, more restless, more afraid than in England; and then ventures on the paradox that the personal morality of the English and the immorality of their foreign policy come from the same source-viz., a consciousness and a conviction of the superiority of their race:

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Brachycephalic or dolichocephalic, light or dark, Celt or Saxon, Norman or German, manufacturer of Manchester or city merchant, minister of the Cape or peer of England, the contemporary Englishman is in his own eyes a sort of man apart, the product of a unique selection,and, so to speak, the aristocratic variety of the human species. This is what we have sometimes called his insolence-but the word is only half just. The insolence of other men is intentional; that of the Englishman seems to be involuntary and even unconscious. One cannot precisely say that he despises the rest of mankind he ignores them. But from that ignorance or that insolence one consequence results. The Englishman does not apply the same measure to his actions as he does to those of other men. He does not allow in himself things he would

tolerate in other men-and there is the principle of the respect he has for himself!—but he allows himself to do to others what he would never tolerate them doing to him; and there is the principle of his foreign policy!"

So convinced are the English of the superiority of their civilization that they are prepared, in the name of that civilization, to annihilate a small kindred people. The Anglicization of the world has become in their minds a condition of its future progress. M. Brunetière refuses to allow the superiority of the British to the German or to the French civilization. On the contrary:

"Strictly economic, Manchesterian and Liberal, Darwinian and individualist, English civilization suits England alone; and because the world at last begins to feel that, because the importations of English habits threaten the European nations in the feeling they have for their own personality, because that superiority' often consists only in the facilities which these habits offer for the development of egoism, England has seen let loose against her the almost unanimous opinion of Europe."

UNDE

6

THE DYING CENTURY.

NDER the title "Il Secolo che Muore," the Italian review, La Rassegna Nazionale (Florence, April 16), prints many and long passages from a pastoral letter recently communicated to his diocese by Monsignor Bonomelli, Bishop of Cremona. The pastoral reviews briefly the human situation as it finds itself now at the end of the nineteenth century, compared with such situation in preceding ages. Has the nineteenth century made for good or evil? is the question which the bishop set before himself to answer. It would be matter for surprise to many Americans, if they should read this letter from an Italian Catholic prelate, that it breathes the purest spirit of modern liberality. Whatever a man's opinions may be on Church questions; whatever they may be on questions of philosophy, science, politics, and social prob. lems, if he should read this letter with an open mind he would find that in broadening his sympathies, stimulating his affections, and clarifying his vision he had been benefited by its perusal.

MATERIAL PROGRESS.

Glancing first, naturally, at the arts which conduce to the comfort of living, Monsignor Bonomelli notes briefly their extraordinary progress in this century, as in the applications of steam, electricity, and mechanical appliances. Turning to the sciences, he finds nothing to fear in their advancement, whether the fields traversed are old or new. As to the fears of timid

believers, they may be dismissed. The faith of such believers is not sufficiently illuminated. . . . Alas for us, if by our fault there should penetrate into modern society the conviction that we are enemies of science and progress-that we try to obstruct their road! Our apostasy from the Church would be irreparable." And, firm in the faith that all roads, even scientific roads, lead to Rome, the bishop exclaims, "We augur for you [men of science] new triumphs, secure that, after having finished a long journey by diverse ways, you will find yourselves some day united to us at the feet of that Christ who said, 'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.""

DEMOCRACY.

Considering the political tendencies of the present time, Monsignor Bonomelli regards them as unmistakably democratic. "All society marches with long strides toward democracy." But is the movement for good or for evil? "This so profound evolution of political power, considered from the point of view of the public welfare and of religion, ought it to be saluted as a true progress, a benefit; or, to be deplored as retrogression and damage? The answer cannot be doubtful it is a true progress, a true and great benefit, as, by its very nature, it is knowledge and instruction laid within reach of the people." After citing in support of his view the opinion of a French prelate, Monsignor Bonomelli points out that the democracy of which the French archbishop spoke is a sane democracy, not a foment of anarchy and destruction.

:

THE LABOR QUESTION.

And this brings the bishop to the great problem of an industrial and commercial age-the relations of capital and labor. Monsignore di Cremona regards the aggregation of capital into large masses as a result to be anticipated from "the cruel, implacable struggle of competition." But for the profitable employment of large masses of capital, there must be employed under the same direction large numbers of workmen. “And so arise the great companies for spinning, navigation, labor in iron and steel, mining, transportation, railroads, tramways, manufactures of every kind. . . . The work of the individual is absorbed by the little company; that of the little company sooner or later will be absorbed by the larger company, and the larger companies themselves will have to capitulate to others still more powerful; and so capital and labor go on, rapidly agglomerating, and there will be a terrible monopoly. And some day, perhaps not far off, what will remain of individual liberties, of the little companies, of the little work?" The

can only say, "the future will tell." And here, for a moment, the optimism of the amiable and learned prelate seems to weaken.

"This state of things, which perhaps in other times would have been endured, offends now the conscience of our modern men, and produces a movement of reaction and resistance in the name of justice it is Socialism. We note, first of all, that socialism has found a prepared soil.. Because, ... the people that labor reason in this way: . . . How is it that, with this perfect equality of civil and political rights, there is so great inequality of welfare? Some men swim in abundance and do not labor, or very little, and the others labor and suffer want. The remedy, say the army of laborers, is in our hands. We are electors of the legislators. Very well; we will elect legislators who will change this intolerable state of things and will give us economic equality, after having given us civil and political equality. Of what good is one without the other? It is necessary to admit that the reasoning is seducing and terrible."

But Monsignor Bonomelli's faith in the ameliorating tendencies of human affairs does not permit him to believe that the opposing forces, capital and labor, will come into actual and general conflict. There will be adjustments and readjustments. Exactly in what way the problem will be solved, the bishop does not know; only he believes that amelioration will be reached " by the ways of reason and justice, and little by little, as has happened in the case of all the great and durable reforms recorded by history."

MORAL IMPROVEMENT.

Passing to the question of comparative morality, Monsignor Bonomelli expresses opinions and cites evidences which are distinctly noteworthy. He has no hesitation in affirming that our age is morally better than those which preceded it. After running over a large class of crimes which certainly were formerly more frequent than they are now, he says: "And how often, in past ages, the most horrible crimes remained unpunished, on account of the weakness or connivance of the authorities! . . . I could cite, for example, a province next to ours in which every year in times past there were perpetrated about a thousand homicides, and now there will not be at the most a dozen, and the population has more than doubled." And here follows a remark especially worthy of attention. "In those times passed, there was certainly not the religious indifference or, what is worse, the misbelief which we see in our times. Then religion, or rather religious practices, were observed by

nearly all; but with religious practices there were joined without difficulty scandals and pub lic moral disorders of every kind, and the moral sense had descended so low that no account at all was taken of the manifest contradiction of professing a religion which condemned so strongly their own conduct. Religion, too often, was a species of formality, a decoration which

a man ornamented himself with on certain occasions, and laid aside when he felt like it."

The clergy, too, Monsignore di Cremona declares, are better than they used to be,-more instructed, more active, more exemplary, more attentive to their duties, and recognized as being so even by their adversaries.

In

M. Maurice Wolff is one of these writers. moderation of view and temperance of expression, his article on "The Alsace - Lorraine Question,' in the French Revue des Revues for May 1, is admirable. But one may doubt whether it does not mark the last stage in the gradual relinquishment of the lost provinces. M. Wolff wrote in the Revue des Revues for October 15, 1899, on the same subject as viewed in Germany.

In the present paper, M. Wolff, while disclaiming emphatically the pretension of resolving the Alsace-Lorraine question by a stroke of the pen," sets forth what he believes will be the outcome of the situation. All the evidences, he thinks, point toward autonomy. But here he uses "autonomy" in a peculiar sense a sense that would be misleading, did he not carefully advise the reader in a footnote. M. Wolff has in mind, not a political autonomy and the recognition of an Alsatian state, to which public sentiment in Germany (we have proved it last year) would

not be disposed to consent, but the autonomy, properly so called-autonomy of sentiments, of thoughts, of domestic life, both literary and social." Various things suggest this view to M. Wolff. There are tendencies drawing Alsace away from France and nearer to Germany, especially the economic advantages which, it is admitted, the Alsatians have found under the German Government-as in the stimulation of trade and production by the lowering of railroad rates and the shutting out of competition by protective tariffs. But these material advantages, while clearly recognized by the Alsatians, will not, M. Wolff thinks, alienate their affections from France. Their interests draw them one way, their affections another; so they will find, and are finding, M. Wolff's autonomy of thought and sentiment.

ALSATIAN LOVE OF FATHERLAND.

Without sharing fully M. Wolff's anticipations, one may admit that his reasons point in the direction of his views. One of the strongest is that a noticeable tendency is showing itself among the well-to-do Alsatians toward making the Alsatian dialect, heretofore despised as bar• baric, a literary language for the drama, romance, and poetry. Certainly there is no more emphatic way of asserting social and domestic separatism than by persistently using a dialect that is unfamiliar to one's neighbors. M. Wolff does not attribute such a tendency on the part of the Alsatians to sullenness, but to love of the native soil. The emigration from Alsace to France, at first so large, has fallen off year by year, so that it is doubtful now if it equals the return current. Many Alsatians return to pass the remnant of their lives near the ancestral home, so as not to die in a land quite foreign." Rather oddly, but perhaps correctly, M. Wolff refers to this return current as showing an Alsatian characteristic which seems to contradict the famous ethnic argument so often invoked by the Germans," because this characteristic differentiates essentially the Alsatian from the German, always ready, on the contrary, to go to seek his fortune far from his country, without even the desire to return there some day to end his life."

INCREASING UNITY.

The Alsatians, then, in M. Wolff's opinion, are drawing closer together. They have passed the stage where they wanted to emigrate to France, and, on the other hand, are not disposed to regard themselves as Germans. While not daring to hope for political independence, they aspire to thoughts, sentiments, and a language of their own. Almost all M. Wolff's paper re

lates to Alsace. It says but little about Lorraine, except that it must be distinguished clearly from Alsace. What the state of feeling is in Lorraine is not set forth.

HOW SMALL STATES BECOME RECONCILED TO

ABSORPTION.

M. Wolff's discussion of the Alsace-Lorraine question, as we have said before, is excellent in its temper; and excellent it is, too, in its reasoning, so far as the reasoning goes. But nevertheless, one element of the situation, and the most important one of all, is ignored or forgotten. If a conquered province finds that it is not worse off than before the conquest as regards its material condition and the freedom of its sentiments, it easily becomes reconciled to absorption by a great power. Small states, when they have become used to the change, find a reason for pride and happiness in being part of such a power. That was the secret of the Roman Empire; that was the secret of the greatness of France, and of the attachment of Alsace itself to France; that is the secret of the United States of America; and, if Germany continues to be a greater power than France, the attachment of Alsace and Lorraine to France will dissolve away in a stronger attachment to Germany.

A

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NOTES ON MODERN TRIPOLI. CURSORY glance at Deputy Guicciardini's Impressions of Tripolitania," in Nuova Antologia for April 1, might suggest the idea that the impressions are merely the hasty jottings of a vacation run in that country. So far as the article is a description of scenes and places, this is probably the case; but in its main stuff and body, it is not a recital of a flying tourist's impressions it has a much more serious purpose. The deputy's contribution to Nuova Antologia is another of the many evidences showing how industriously Italian officials are stimulating Italian commerce and colonization.

In September, 1899, Deputy Guicciardini sailed from Valletta, the capital of Malta, in the steamship Africa for Tripoli. The Africa was making the initial voyage of a subsidized line of Italian steamships about to ply between Malta and the Barbary coast. The details of the jour. ney may be passed without comment, but some of Guicciardini's statements about Tripolitania and its inhabitants are noteworthy. The deputy says that vast, treeless regions there, which look like desert and are so called, are not infertile ; that they are uncultivated because of the scant population of the country. For proofs of this statement he cites a report made by Captain

Camperio, published in the Esploratore, of Milan, in 1880 and 1881. He himself saw a plantation

of the Franciscan Mission in land neither irrigated nor irrigable there in the desert," which now is a magnificent fruit-farm, full of vigorous and fruitful vines, of magnificent olives, of palms, and other fruits, cultivated by the estab lishment for making wine and oil."

A CHRISTIAN GOVERNMENT WOULD BE WELCOMED.

Quite as noteworthy is Deputy Guicciardini's assertion that the Arabs and other Mohammedan inhabitants of the country,. except the Turks, expect, and will welcome when it comes, the establishment of a government by some Christian European power. "The Arabs," Guicciardini tells us, "have a very lively sense of justice; and nothing offends them so much as acts opposed to that sentiment. Now the Turkish dominion, which is manifested almost exclusively as a dominion of exaction of imposts levied in every arbitrary way, and destined not for the benefit of the country, but for the exclusive benefit of its masters-the Turkish dominion is for them the personification of despotism, a continual offense to that sense of justice which in them is not less lively than the religious sense.

"Moreover, the Arabs of Tripolitania are not ignorant of the benefits which the French have brought to their brethren of Tunis, and those, even more obvious, brought by the English to the indigenes of Egypt; and knowing that a civil government, while it does not offend customs and religion at all, assures justice as to person and property, they have come almost unconsciously into a state of mind which regards the cessation of the Turkish government and the substitution of a Christian government as something not so much for resignation as desire."

ITALY'S COMMERCIAL ADVANTAGE.

Almost all the spun and woven fabrics used in Tripolitania are brought from England, its flour mostly comes from France; but Deputy Guicciardini thinks that these trade relations need not always remain. Two things especially give Italy an advantage (1) nearness; (2) the commerce with Europe is almost wholly in the hands of Israelites. Why the latter circumstance is an advantage for Italy is explained by the fact that most of the Jews in Tripolitania are either subjects of, or protected by, the Italian Government; furthermore, the Jews there avail themselves of the Italian schools maintained in the country, because the schools are not confessional. attaches great importance to the influence of Italian foreign schools, and thinks they ought to be carefully nurtured.

He

THE

SEPARATISM IN SPAIN.

HE separatist movement in Spain has attracted the attention of other countries. In Spain, what will be its outcome is the problem of the hour. As yet separatism masquerades under an advocacy of autonomy, and there may be some sincerity in the pretense; for those who engage in a revolutionary political movement seldom foresee where they will be carried by it. But in the present disaffection in Spain, the masses, "the plain people," in the disaffected provinces are separatists; it is their leaders, or a part of them, who profess to aim merely at autonomy. The thinness of the demarcation between autonomy and separation is shown plainly in an article in Revista Contemporánea (Madrid, April 15) by the Sr. Juan Ortega Rubio, lecturer in the Central University. The article is called " Changes and Revolutions in Catalonia." Catalonia is the very important department of which the progressive city of Barcelona is the capital. Three insurrectionary wars waged by the Catalans, or a part of them, are described by the writer. These recitals, however, are merely preliminary. Evidently they were set down as admonition. They have no bearing on the present situation, except in showing that the Catalans have had for centuries a separatist tendency, and that for things which they regard as important they are ready to fight obstinately. After dispos

ing of these three insurrectionary wars, two of which turned out favorably for the Catalans, the writer comes to the real matter in hand, and says:

"We have come to the most important point of this article; that is, to the movement in Catalonia going on now. In the year 1898, there was published in Paris, in the French language, by the Catalan Nationalist Committee,' a pamphlet called The Catalan Question.' Contrasting a son of Catalonia and of Castile, it says:

The one, positivist and realist-the other, capricious and a charlatan; the one, full of prevision-the other, faithful type of improvidence ; the one, drawn along by the industrial current of modern people-the other, nourished by the prejudices of the hidalgo, staggering under debt, and full of pride' And farther on: The universities do not teach, the government does not govern, the officials do not administer, our squadrons go to the bottom of their own accord before our adversaries; and our armies serve, not to conquer our outer enemies, but to impose despotism within. Such is the Spanish state.""

Other quotations from the pamphlet cited in Revista Contemporánea assert that the outcome of

the present situation must be either a reorganization of the state on the basis of the federation and autonomy of the different regions which possess a well-defined personality," or it will depend on France to make predominate the annexation party or that of independence. In 1892 the Catalan General Assembly adopted a resolution recommending autonomy and federation. But no doubt the feeling which such resolutions voiced at the time has become much more intense since the war with the United States, and it is reasonable to believe that now separation would be better liked by the Catalans than federation. To the great majority of the people of the United States, disruption seems a poor remedy for national faults and disagreements. Compromise and government by the majority sum up. the American idea of national politics. But in Spain the prevalent feeling has always been far different. Local independence suppressed by a national army is the Spanish idea of national unity. In Spain, separation has been fostered in all periods by the permanence of dialects. There is no Spanish language in the sense that there is an English language, or a French language, or even an Italian language. In Spain there is hardly a pretense of such a language. One speaks there Castellano, Andaluz, Catalán, Gallego, etc., as the case may be. Spanish is a figment of the imagination. The discourse of the president of the Catalan League, September, 1898, cited by the Sr. Rubio in the present article, was "printed in Catalán, Castilian, and French." Two other pamphlets mentioned by him were printed in Catalán, and we have seen that the propagandist pamphlet previously quoted, issued by the Catalan Nationalist Committee," was printed in French. Communities divided by impassable barriers of language are kept in coöperation only by external pressure.

The sympathies of the writer of the article in Revista Contemporánea are plainly with the Catalans; but the writer does not confess that he is a separatist. To those who say that the separatists are few, he replies: "But the people of Barcelona do not cease chanting revolutionary hymns." His nearest approach to defining his own position is in a declaration of faith in the profound knowledge of politics and of life that has been evinced by the President of the Council of Ministers, the Sr. Silvela. "I believe it is difficult, but not impossible, to unite in one idea, in one sentiment, and in one aspiration VascoNavarros and Castilians; I believe it is difficult, but not impossible, to unite in the same manner these and the Catalans."