with the common sense of the man in the street who gets the benefit of it from his orators. Does one expect the subject to make a choice of sides when his country is at war: is a person to claim it as a merit that he has not rebelled? "Very well," is the only answer, "so much the

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better for you: non pasces in cruce corvos." The loyalty of India is not only an obligation, but it has hitherto been treated as a matter of course. Indian troops must go whither they are summoned or mutiny, but the regiments that were dispatched to the Mediterranean in 1887, in view of a rupture with Russia, went as readily as those who were lately ordered to France. From 1878 to 1880 a large part of the Indian Army was fighting against co-religionists and a Mahommedan sovereign in Afghanistan. 1882 an Indian division was sent to Egypt, again to meet Mahommedans. In 1885, when a war with Russia seemed imminent, no one stopped to ask which side India and the Indian Army would take. Yet there were certainly more inducements then for an Indian of the upper classes to consider the question as an open one. To begin with, he had heard of the Russian danger for years past, and knew that the Government was constantly disturbed about this prowling approach always coming nearer. It was supposed by many that the Muscovite must prevail in the long run, and in that case it would be policy to be known as having sympathies with the winning side. If the Russians had got to Kabul and Kandahar many a worthy landed gentleman would have been considering the expediency of sending a son to join them, so as to have a foot in either camp. If this seems to anyone an outrageous suggestion, then he has no ground for considering the loyal attitude of 1914 as anything out of

expectation. What inducement had the Indian Raja or zemindar to favor the Germans, of whom he may have scarcely heard, and that through the advances of some sneaking commercial traveler with their suspicious flavor of criminality? The chiefs and upper classes have shown themselves, as on every previous occasion, it would be absurd to say "loyal" as one would use the word of a Sepoy, but as men who have a stake in the common country and know that they must throw in their exertions to preserve it. The masses of the people are, as ever, philosophic on the subject of their governors. So far as there is any reason to doubt the sentiments of the new middle class, that implies a retrocession from the former standard.

In the early part of 1880 the Government of India discovered that an error of nine millions sterling had been made in their presentation of the cost of the Afghan War then in progress. Sir John Strachey, the Finance Member of Council, and General Sir Edwin Johnson, the Military Member, thereupon resigned. Sir John Strachey might well in the particular have thrown the fault upon the financial machine; Sir Edwin Johnson's responsibility for the mistake was purely nominal. But both felt that the financial system for which they stood had incurred a discredit, and they did not require to be told what is the course for the head of a Department in such a case. Mr. Chamberlain's resignation clearly stands on similar grounds. Some people find it difficult to understand. The Commission has not attacked him: to resign when he has not been censured, it is over-nicety, a bad precedent for other statesmen. But if Mr. Chamberlain is unattainted; if the general opinion both in India and the India Office is that he has been excellent as

Secretary of State, Mr. Chamberlain knows that the administration over which he has presided has been convicted of dismal failures, and he does not wait to have it argued out where the exact responsibility for each item in the indictment attaches. It is true that his action implies that the Government of India stands condemned in public opinion; but who doubts that now in face of the Commission's report? Moreover, there are many things outside that report that will have one day to be accounted for to the nation, as, for instance, the jeopardy in which Aden was allowed to fall. This, by the way, is not explained by the removal of the Officer in Command, for generals are not in the way of voluntarily depleting their own garrisons.

We are supposed not to be able to spare naval officers to sit on courtsmartial for determining the simple issues presented by the loss of a ship; but we are apparently to give up the services of three military men of note, with a couple of lawyer colleagues to expedite the proceedings, for arriving at a quasi-judicial finding on questions that defy answer in black and white. Who can say, for instance, that a Finance Minister does ill to keep a tight hold on the public money chest, or at what point his professional instincts ought to give way to larger considerations? One hesitates to quote anything from the Commission's report lest one should fail into another "vile slander," but the general tenor of their remarks does seem to convey that they found the departmental view unreasonably predominant in Sir William Meyer. That the Indian Army was starved for years before the war is patent from the bare fact that the expenditure on it remained practically stationary through during the whole decade preceding, while the cost of British soldier and Sepoy as of

everything required for putting them into the field was steadily mounting. Sir William Meyer seems even to have had his hopes that it would be possible to carry on the war for the twenty million pounds per annum, which he probably regarded as a handsome allowance for so unprofitable a branch as defense, in spite of the fact that India has had its naval protection for nothing. But, after all, it is not a sin in the guardian of a Treasury to be inexpansive: if the Financial Minister carries economy to lengths inconsistent with more urgent interests it is the business of the Viceroy and Council to overrule him, as they do when they want new capitals or more millions for new colleges and schools. The reason why the financial side has been too strong and the military side too weak goes back to the administrative coup effected by Lord Kitchener, which abolished the Military Department of the Government of India and the Military Member. In the decade 1885-95, when India was confronted by the menace of an invasion, the balance of power was different. In fact, the eminent financial members of that period, Sir Auckland Colvin and Sir David Barbour, both openly complained after leaving office that they were not in a position to put sufficient check upon the Council's tendency to expenditure, meaning military expenditure. The reason was that Lord Roberts had at this side as Military Member first Sir George Chesney and afterwards Sir Henry Brackenbury. Had the Government of India included a Member of this stamp, it could not have glided into military disrepute as it has done. Certain ardent soldiers hailed Lord Kitchener's assumption of sole authority exultantly as a sign that the military interest was now coming into the front seat; but those who knew the system foresaw with

every certainty that what the change meant was the coming ascendancy of the Finance Department.

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Even before Lord Kitchener left India there were plain signs that the process was setting in and that he himself was conscious of it. His successor not only found himself kept on a strict allowance, but had to suffer the appointment of a Committee to inquire into subjects of Army administration, which, under an officer of higher standing than his own, sat for a year at his elbow in Simla. A strange position for the military dictator of anticipation. recent times the Indian Government has undergone the humiliation of having two campaigns taken by degrees entirely out of its own management; and the worst of it is that no one can say that the change was not necessary. These things cannot come about without loss of prestige. It is notorious, for example, that no officer in these days seeking a command from the War Office would find his chances improved by the fact of his coming from the Indian Army. But the deterioration is not necessarily the fault of any one man, nor can it be ascribed to a single particular cause or moment. The diversion of Russian ambitions to the Far East and the subsequent friendly agreement as to Persia and Afghanistan were a blessing to India, but for the Army they removed the grand incentive to a standard of efficiency and constant readiness. Lord Kitchener's increase in the numbers of the officers per regiment-a most necessary measure in itself-was detrimental in its effects to the officers personally. As the increase all took place at the bottom, while there remained but one commanding officer and one second in command to each regiment, a deadening block in promotion became inevitable. As a palliative the period

of tenure of a command was reduced, which might be some help to those below, but was detrimental to the commandants; and as time went on officers of cavalry in congested corps were transferred to the infantry or vice versa, which might lessen individual hardships, but was an admission that efficiency had ceased to be the sole consideration. But what was to be done? The Boer War had produced the impression that the Indian Army was reserved henceforth for service in Asia, and in the absence of the Russians there seemed no longer visible any enemy in Asia likely to oblige. The admirable officers of the Indian Army seemed in fact to have become too good for their work and prospects, and we appeared to be likely to drift gradually back towards the condition of the old Company's army, when men would take any outside employ (Post Office or pension paying, if nothing else offered) rather than stagnate in a regiment.

All this time the shadow of the dark purpose formed at Berlin had been stealing over Turkey and across Asia Minor till its apex was approaching the head of the Persian Gulf. Everyone but the incorrigible optimist knew what it ultimately portended. Still, the collision might not come for another ten or twenty years, and in any case the matter was not within the competence of the Government at Simla any more than of New Zealand. Thus any question of the unpreparedness of India melts into a question of the responsibility of the Cabinet. the establishments of India were short of guns, aeroplanes, reserves of every kind, and all the appliances of modern warfare, was it not in obedience to a policy and standards of expenditure approved, if not literally prescribed, by the Ministry in London? But it is easy to see that we are thus brought

If

up against questions that are no more answerable once for all by a quasijudicial inquiry than by any other. Many of them must remain to the end matters of opinion. But this may be surely said, that it will be a sad thing, and a long regret, if the nation hastily visits its wrath upon an unfortunate officer who in the turmoil of the fray only remembered the axiom of toujours l'audace, and forgets The Fortnightly Review.

the sin of those who so nearly involved it in the terrible position of being plunged into war, with a civil war already upon its hands, who for the sake of their own personal purposes, within a few weeks of the bursting of the terrific storm, were striving to bring their followers up to the required pitch by telling them that there were worse things than bloodshed-bloodshed among fellow-countrymen.

G. M. Chesney.

The profession either Navy or Army is its own justification. It has everything in its favor; heroism, danger, bustle, fashion. Soldiers and sailors are always acceptable in society. Nobody can wonder that men are soldiers and sailors.-Mansfield Park.

Upon the 18th of July 1917 it was a hundred years since Jane Austen ended the short, tranquil life, lived during the period of glorious victories by sea and land, then unparalleled in English history. The date therefore excuses a brief divergence from her attitude towards the Services, to her winning personality, for if she could awaken like the "Sleeping Beauty" in the fairy-tale, she would be astonished to find herself so famous. The tepid commendation of her contemporaries, accepted by her with such modest gratitude, was then far rarer than such enlightened adverse criticism as that Sense and Sensibility was "downright nonsense," Mansfield Park "had nothing interesting, language poor," whilst the opinions of another gentleman about Emma were "so bad they could not be reported to the author"-who would certainly have survived them.

If but a few of her devout lovers could be summoned to do homage to her delightful ghost she would be amazed by their number, dazzled by

their brilliance, and amused at their variety. Sir Walter Scott would be there with the oft-quoted discerning panegyric, inclining us to forgive even his over-estimation of the handsome, preposterous "Swan of Lichfield" and the ponderous Joanna Baillie. Ever of knightly chivalry towards the woman writer, he gave unstinted acknowledgment to the then ultra-fashionable Maria Edgeworth for his supposed literary obligations to Castle Rackrent, and the rest. But he was the first to crown Jane Austen queen, and she has kept her throne unchallenged.

Tennyson, Coleridge, and Southey would compete for the post of Poet Laureate, not forgetting the gallant Lord Morpeth, who sang of "Miss Bates our idol, though the village bore," in the Keepsake of 1825 to the best of his moderate ability, ending with the apt couplet:

While the dear style flows on without pretense,

In unstained purity, and unmatched

sense.

There would be Sydney Smith for Court Jester, serious a moment to confess his passion for meek Fanny Price, and Sir James Mackintosh would be at hand to contradict Mad

ame de Staël when she dared impudently to libel the masterpieces as "vulgaires."

Guizot, one of Jane Austen's stoutest champions, would shower upon her the praises he denied to Thackeray.

I am a great novel reader [he writes], but I seldom read German or French novels. The characters are too artificial. My delight is to read English novels, particularly those written by women. C'est toute une école de morale. Miss Austen, Miss Ferrier, etc., form a school which in the excellence of its productions resembles the cloud of great dramatic poets of the Athenian age.

Our armies might be at war with Napoleon when the books appeared, but busy pens set to work to prove they could triumphantly survive the ordeal by translation. They have no politics proper, yet it is pretty to note that Persuasion, with its heroes from Trafalgar rechristened La Famille Elliot, shared the popularity of Raison et Sensibilité, Orgueil et Préjugé. makes it clear that if England had not yet learned to view her anonymous author with all the pride she now inspires, ever liberal-minded France was ready to make her acquaintance without prejudice.

This

Madame de Staël, whose death centenary fell on the 14th of July, was apparently alone in her absurd opinions. Once more she displayed the deadly lack of humor which has probably denied her the édition définitive, which is the order of merit necessary for the making of a classic in France. Her day has ended. Halfforgotten yesterday, she will be remembered bitterly tomorrow as one whose De L'Allemagne helped to foster illusions frightfulness has torn away. Oblivious even of gout, Sir Henry Holland would sympathize with Disraeli "fresh from my seventeenth reading of Pride and Prejudice,” and

Andrew Lang penning a billet doux happiest of his Letters to Dead Authors. G. H. Lewes would bawl out that he would sooner have created the said Pride and Prejudice than Tom Jones, unabashed because failing to realize himself incapable of either.

Space forbids an endless lengthening of the imposing list, yet a royal admirer cannot be ignored. George the Fourth had one redeeming feature: he appreciated the Austen novels, caused a set of them to be placed in each of his palaces, and graciously expressed readiness to accept the dedication of Emma. His librarian, Mr. Clarke, conducted the negotiations in a style worthy of the immortal Collins, but remorseless dates destroy the pretty hypothesis that he posed for his portrait. He is a rich example of those unconscious humorists worthy of gratitude rather than contempt; nor could the Kaiser himself be readier to proffer superfluous instruction. Jane Austen was to cease her dealings with the sailors she understood, and the soldiers of a stay-at-home Militia she regarded with a touch of playful disdain. Even G. H. Lewes, commanding Charlotte Brontë what to do and what to don't, scarcely cuts a poorer figure than the fatuous Clarke advising Jane Austen to "delineate" weird clergy who should resemble Beattie's "Minstrel":

Silent when glad, affectionate though shy,

And in his looks was most demurely sad,

And now he laughed aloud, and none knew why.

Gilbertian comment on Mr. Tupper is recalled: "It of course was very clever, but she didn't understand it"; nor were there Beattie Societies to elucidate the cryptic passage, which might account for Lamb's inclusion of the works of this bard in his black list of "books which are no books."