left the Rector carrying out the books. So she and her company departed with much crackling of wheels and crunching of hoofs, and the donkey revolved one great ear to catch the last sounds of their departure. One by one the Rector brought out his tall folios and laid them in the cart, with a piece of tissue paper between each. They were, indeed, ample fellows, tall of their pages, and not the less companionable in that some were unfamiliar. They included the Institutio Christianæ Religionis of John Calvin, a noble book, appareled in parchment, with a portrait of the author above the date MDCXVII; Joseph Mede's Works, equally tall, but leather bound, a fit memorial of a great Elizabethan scholar, who saw and helped the awakening of Cambridge University with heart and mind ere he joined the great company of scholars in 1638, before the sad days began; An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, written by John Locke, Gent., and dated 1700 (the fourth edition, with large additions), with a superb portrait (from the life) of the author by Sylvester Brunower; and better than this, in its brown boards, the splendid folio issued in 1759 from Oxford at that "Clarendon-Printing House" which William Blackstone had restored, The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, written by himself. The portrait facing the title-page shows a man indeed serene, tremendous, untroubled. Well may he boldly set out the Ciceronian command "Ne quid Falsi dicere audeat, ne quid Veri non audeat."

Tome after tome Mr. Oldham carried out into the sunshine lovingly, appreciatingly. He read as he carried, read aloud, with no one but the ass to hear. He read from the epistle dedicatory of Mr. John Locke to the Earl of Pembroke: "This, my Lord, shows what a present I have made to

your Lordship; just such as the poor Man does to his Rich and Great Neighbor, by whom the Basket of Flowers, or fruit, is not ill-taken, though he has more plenty of his own growth, and in much greater perfection." When the tall books were stored in the cart the middle books came, books such as the delightful parchment bound edition of les Essais de Michel Seigneur de Montaigne, issued at Rouen chez Thomas Dare, Rue aux Juifs, près le Palais, 1619. How it opens: "C'est icy un livre de bonne, foy, Lecteur. . . . Ainsi, Lecteur, je suis moymesme la matière de mon livre: ce n'est pas raison que tu employes ton loisir en un suject si frivole et si vain. A Dieu donc." "It seems," murmured the rector, as he laid the book in the sun, "that all the great men are modest, even Montaigne, when they write prefaces, as the Grand Seigneur did on March 1, 1580." Then he took out the two volumes-Emile, ou de l'Education par J. J. Rousseau, Citoyen de Genêve, published at Francfort, MDCCLXII. Still modesty reigns: "Ce Recueil de réflexions et d'observations, sans ordre, et presque sans suite, fut commencé pour complaire à une bonne mère qui fait penser." As Mr. Oldham laid it down he determined to have no preface to his own book, and then he placed on the top of Emile twelve little volumes of a tiny Hebrew Old Testament from the press of Stephanus of Paris, with scraps of a twelfth century illuminated MS. peeping out of the decayed binding; and on these he laid an Imitatio from the exquisite mid-Victorian press of William Pickering of London. At last the scores of little books were stored away in the cart, and locking the old rectory door, the rector, with a sigh of content, gave the ass his freedom, and murmured as they sped to the moor, "I wish I had been born a printer."

Soon they were on the road, and as the ass knew the way and there were no lions or angels in the path, the rector hitched the reins on the back of the cart and opened the pages of John Locke. It was high noon, and the donkey, recognizing that his driver had ceased to drive, gradually relaxed his pace until at the very edge of the moor where the long stretch opens up and down to Little Greenmoor he saw an open gate and a neglected field full of thistles. The ass whirled his ears furiously for a moment, thinking with all his might, and then he deftly turned the cart into the field. At the same moment the rector's eyes strayed into the bottom of the cart and fell on the bottle of cider. He lifted it and uncorked it with automatic alacrity at the very instant that the ass wrenched a great thistle from the earth. The sun was hot indeed, and the rector drank his cider and ate his lunch while his mind was wrestling with the stately thought of Mr. John Locke. The cart oscillated with the efforts of the ass, and the rector believed that they were progressing, and deeper and deeper he delved into the mysteries of the human understanding. At last the cider bottle was empty, and the sun shining with undiminished force overwhelmed both man and beast. The rector was sound asleep and the donkey was upon his knees asleep also. It was a strange sight, and one to smile at in the kindliest way. The rector leaned back on the rug among his books. His head rested on the book from the Clarendon Printing House in a sort of alcove or niche that warded off the sun. The ass lay among his thistles and twitched his ears to indicate that he was listening to the rector. Slowly the sun climbed down the sky. It was afternoon, late afternoon, early evening, and still they slept. Long ere this Mrs. Prue, seriously alarmed

at the delay, had organized a search party, and as the first signs of dusk appeared and the saffron August moon came up the sky she approached the spot with the bent gardener and the wide-eyed maid. But Mr. Oldham was saved from all disgrace by the ass, who suddenly awaking, desired food and drink. Swiftly he leaped to attention, and whirling the cart round into the road awakened the rector while help was still sufficiently remote. It was at this very moment that a hirsute tramp of sun-dried and peculiarly unsavory appearance also stirred in the gateway of the field. The ass smote him with impatient hoof, and the monstrous wanderer relapsed into the hedge. Fully awakened, the rector sprang to the aid of a possible parishioner. "Wold moke bit I; you'm old moke," said the recumbent mendicant, looking like a ram in a thicket, as he wiped his bedraggled beard with a dusty, time-worn sleeve. The rector called him "a poor dear fellow," and smoothed him and brushed the dust of ages from him, and after chafing and sponging with a pocket handkerchief dipped in tea the begrimed and bruised limb, placed at the reluctant lips of the ancient faun tea from his flask. Though the tramp murmured as to "the law," yet when the search party came upon the scene no explanation was needed. It was evident that the rector had spent the day reading to the tramp. The sore was salved, the law was ratified with half a crown, and once again the bibliophile moved on. There were few delays on the homeward journey with Mrs. Prue as sole occupant of the cart, and ere the moon was high the books were in their places and the new life had begun.

Mr. Oldham smiled to himself in his garden as he thought over it all. And he thought now of it with something of a new yearning since on the

morrow he was moving on again. A place had been found for him in Syria: not an heroic place, but a place where he could serve the sick and haply comfort the dying. His quiet life of thought and musing was not to be wasted after all. In his soul there was a great peace, and the chance, if chance there be, had come to him to take and pour into the souls of others the peace The Contemporary Review.

which passeth understanding, the peace that he had quietly gathered in all these years, a medicine for souls that he had found in his garden of scented herbs. "This is God's dealing with mankind; He promises more ́than we could hope for; and when He hath done that He gives us more than He hath promised." And the rector had always known that it would be so. J. E. G. de Montmorency.

Three Governments are primarily affected by Mr. Lansing's remarkable disclosure of the Luxburg cablegrams -the German, the Argentine, and the Swedish. On the German part we need not waste words. It reveals the familiar mixture of duplicity and brutality which is coming to be regarded by the non-German world as the Prussian hall-mark. The spurlos versenkt suggestion, with all its atrocity, is only what our public has learned to expect whenever the mask is stripped away from the actions and motives of the German authorities; and this expectation (to do our public justice) has scarcely once in three years been disappointed. It will be interesting to see the comment of the German Majority Socialists. The Vorwärts has just been defending the Kaiser's part in the "Willy and Nicky" correspondence. Will it defend spurlos versenkt as a medicine for neutral shipping? It is clear, from the manner of Count Luxburg's reference, that the spurlos method is a recognized method of the German naval authorities; and the number of neutral ships which have, in fact, disappeared without leaving a trace during the course of the present war seems to be considerable.

Argentina, on her side, is exhibited in an innocent but scarcely an en

viable rôle. Her Government is the unfortunate "pigeon" of the story. When it saw Brazil coming into the war, it thought to go one better by eschewing Brazil's example and negotiating a special agreement with Germany instead. The agreement was made, and the Argentine people have now the exact measure of its worthlessness. The German officials, who smiled in their faces, were picking their pockets all the time. Germany's national reputation, which stood higher in the Argentine than in any other South American country, has received a blow there from which it will not easily recover.

And what of Sweden? The unneutrality of the acts committed in her name by her officials is glaring and obvious. The text of the Luxburg telegrams shows that they were not isolated missives. They were part of a regular secret correspondence between Buenos Ayres and Berlin, conducted permanently through the intermediacy of the Swedish Government, which abused in this way its diplomatic privilege of sending cipher messages over British-controlled cables. The chief subject of the German correspondence is seen to have been the organization of the submarine campaign, the notification of dates at

which its proposed victims sailed, and, in short, the carrying out of belligerent acts of the first importance. It is not necessary to suppose that the Swedish officials who transmitted it were aware of its contents; it was in German cipher, to which, presumably, they had no key. But the Swedish Foreign Minister noticeably refrains from alleging that any guarantee was asked or obtained from Germany as to the innocence of their contents; and what is one to think of a neutral who under these conditions accepts the cipher messages of one belligerent and palms them off on the cable authorities of the other as if they were his own?

We must distinguish clearly in this deplorable business between three sets of agents. First, there are the Swedish officials-the Legation staffs in the various neutral capitals and the staff of the Foreign Office in Stockholm-whom the telegrams immediately implicated. Next, there is the present Swedish Government, of which the Foreign Minister, Admiral Lindman, is among the most pro-German members. Thirdly and lastly, there is the Swedish nation and Swedish public opinion. Though the country is far from being completely democratized it is with the last that we must ultimately reckon; it, and not the others, is the true Sweden.

The Swedish official class is almost irredeemably pro-German. The example of the Germanized Court, the influence of German universities and military schools, and the traditional antagonism to Russia, all contribute to this sentiment. Left to themselves, the officials of the Swedish diplomatic service might be trusted to help Germany just as they have helped her. But that is not what Swedish public opinion desires. With the exception of a small and dwindling minority of "Activists," it has always desired a neutral policy; and whereas

the "benevolence" within its neutrality was for nearly two years turned in Germany's direction, it has for more than a year been increasingly turned in ours. The change is a matter of self-interest as well as of sentiment; for the Swedes are hard put to it for supplies, and perceive that most of them can only come from the West. Our enemies have nothing to export except coal; and even of coal there is a fast-growing shortage in Germany itself.

The problem is, how to get the neutrality desired by the Swedish nation carried out by unneutral officials, who are supported in their way of thinking by the Court and the Conservative aristocracy. It is a problem which the Swedes themselves must solve. It will never be solved by a Foreign Minister like Admiral Lindman, who shares the pro-German sympathies which led his officials astray, and who, if he does not share their guilt, has shown himself, in the statement which he issued, unready either to recognize or to censure it. This document, so far as it goes, makes things rather worse than better. It admits the wrong pretty fully, and then tries to argue that it is not a wrong. The prevaricating excuses of which it mainly consists are utterly unworthy of the dignity of Sweden, or, indeed, of any Occidental Power, and they can only intensify the disinclination of the Allies to put any further reliance on the word of the Swedish Foreign Office while Admiral Lindman remains at its head. Of course, the objection of persona non grata cannot be formally urged against a Foreign Minister as it can against the chief of an Embassy or a Legation. Sweden is a free country, and can keep what Foreign Minister it likes. But it should be obvious that the sooner Admiral Lindman follows Count Luxburg into retirement the sooner will there be a chance of putting

Sweden's relations with the Allies again on a healthy footing. Indeed, it scarcely seems that there is any other chance.

Englishmen have towards the Swedes, as towards the Norwegians and Danes, a great deal of fellowfeeling and liking. In many ways the Scandinavian peoples resemble the inhabitants of this island more than any other peoples on the Continent. The preservation of their independence and the enhancement of their prosperity appeal to us alike on grounds of interest and of sentiment. So far as Norway is concerned, this feeling has been greatly strengthened by the events of the present war. We could wish that it had been The New Statesman.

similarly

strengthened in the case of Sweden. The discovery that, while Norway has been the principal neutral victim of the submarine war, Sweden has been its principal neutral tool and abettor, has inevitably had an opposite result. But this is not a time for sterile popular recrimination. We believe that the intentions of the Swedish people towards us are much fairer than the practice of its Government. Let it insist upon their prevailing; and full recognition will be promptly forthcoming on our side. The Allies ask no favors; they ask only for good faith and for that impartial neutrality from which the present and the preceding Swedish Cabinets have both unmistakably departed.

There is at present a good deal of discussion on the subject of how to Ideal with the enormous debt which our short-sighted system of war finance is piling up for the future. This discussion is all to the good if it reminds our happy-go-lucky financial rulers of the pretty crops of problems that they are sowing. Mr. Gardiner, the editor of the Daily News, in one of those very interesting articles in which he periodically illumines current questions with the light of robust Radicalism, dealt recently with the question, "How to Pay for the War." On the assumption that the war by some miracle ceased at once, he calculated that we should be left with a net debt of £3,000,000,000, involving an annual charge, including sinking fund, of roughly £200,000,000, and so necessitating a total revenue, with pensions and increases in normal expenditure, of £500,000,000. He added that the total revenue needed would almost certainly be far more,

probably £600,000,000, and that each year of war will add £150,000,000 to the total. To meet this problem, Mr. Gardiner proposes to make a levy on capital, on the following lines:

The capital of the individuals of the nation has increased during the war from 16 thousand million to 20 thousand million. A 10 per cent levy on this would realize two thousand millions. It would extinguish debt to that amount, and reduce the interest on debt by 120 millions. In doing so it would nearly balance our budget and preserve our national solvency. The levy would be graduated-say, 5 per cent on fortunes of £1,000 to £20,000, 10 per cent on £20,000 to £50,000, up to 30 per cent on sums over a million . . . [The individual] would pay it in what form was convenient, in his stocks or his shares, his houses or his fields, in personalty or realty.

It is obvious at once that many difficulties are involved by Mr. Gardiner's scheme. In the first place, we