the trustees of tradition and the conservators of the religious element. They are a living and most striking evidence of the falsity of that pernicious doctrine . . . the natural equality of man. The political equality of a particular race is a matter of municipal arrangement, and depends entirely on political considerations and circumstances; but the natural equality of man taking the form of cosmopolitan fraternity, is a principle, which, were it possible to act on it, would deteriorate the great races and destroy the genius of the world.

The native tendency of the Jewish race... is against the doctrine of the equality of man. They have also another characteristic, the faculty of acquisition. . . . Thus it will be seen that all the tendencies of the Jewish race are conservative. Their bias is to religion, property, and natural aristocracy. . . . But existing society has chosen to persecute this race which should furnish its choice allies, and what have been the consequences? They may be traced in the last outbreak of the destructive principle in Europe. An insurrection takes place against tradition and aristocracy, against religion and property. Destruction of the scientific principle . . . the natural equality of man, and the abrogation of property, are proclaimed by the secret societies who form the provisional governments, and men of Jewish race are found at the head of everyone of them. The people of God co-operate with atheists; the most skilful accumulators of property ally themselves with Communists; the peculiar and chosen race touch the hand of all the scum and low castes of Europe! And all this because they wish to destroy that ungrateful Christendom which owes to them even its name, and whose tyranny they can no longer endure. When the secret

societies in February, 1848, surprised Europe, they were themselves surprised by the unexpected opportunity, and so little capable were they of seizing the occasion that, had it not been for the Jews, who of late years unfortunately have been connecting themselves with these unhallowed associations, imbecile as were the Governments, the uncalled-for outbreak would not have ravaged Europe." And then Disraeli proceeds to prove his statements in detail.

We make no apology for so long a citation from a passage so profound and prophetic. "Whoso is wise will ponder these things." If our Premier, who too often takes the color of the last acquaintance peripatetically encountered, had only pondered the problem and been conversant with its mainspring, he would never have indulged in cheap chapel oratory about Kerenski's "able and powerful Government," about the sun shining in the sky over the "dark glen," or about "Russia, dazed with the light." He has neither seen nor foreseen, and it is a great misfortune that he invited the Delegates, congratulated internationalism, and connived at the stifled Stockholm Conference. Did our Ambassador, did Lord Milner inform him how and why these manoeuvres arose? And if not, why not? For to every student not misled by the post-impressionists of politics the causes were as clear as day. But this is not a time for reproaches if only we take the lesson to heart. The Socialists bid fair to ruin every country that they are allowed to mishandle. The Italian débacle is largely of their making, the Russian is wholly so. But Socialists can, in their turn, prove the most repressive of tyrants, and the New Democracy by no means implies our ancient freedom. The "pacifisms" in the life-and-death struggle for honor and existence. are a very real

In

danger, which Germany is not slow to exploit by every machination. One day Russia will revive consolidated, and, maybe, a predominant power. But we do not expect to witness that renaissance while the war lasts. going to peace she will go to pieces. She cries out (as Ireland and India cry out) for a firm hand and an understanding brain. Explanations never decide things, they only confuse them. Yet on we go "explaining" that it is for this new-fangled Democracy— heaven save the mark-that we are fighting. Emphatically we are not. We are battling for our country and to keep our word-very plain and pressing causes, that we wish Russia would remember. Let her warn us against politicizing issues so vast and vital. And let us learn that repression, even under Democracy's banner, is certain to entail menacing reactions. As we sow, we reap.

A long course of Socialistic propThe Saturday Review,

aganda preceded the Revolution. Russia, locked in medievalism, panted for escape from herself. Morbid and neurotic, confronted by the contrasts of extreme luxury and poverty, she brooded as in some madhouse, on the visions of violence and the dreams of brotherhood. In vain did the Duma offer her constitutional medicines. The war rendered her melancholy impatient and consigned it to the fury of quacks or fanatics, who prescribed the forbidden vodka. It will take her long to recover, though only some five per cent of the population approve of insanity. "More haste, less speed." Here let us be lessoned also, and never be led away by the demagoguedoctors who are poisoning Europe. Muscovy remains an iceberg drifting to be warm. Formerly it was Constantinople, now it is the worldleague that will meet her. But warmth is only to be found by the fireside. Like Charity, it begins at home.

A great many people are saying that our naval policy is recumbently defensive and that fleets so supreme as those of the Allies ought to be in the posture of attack. We fear that our constant succession of small wars in which the British fleet has been able to do what it liked has given many of us false ideas of the real nature of sea-power. It never meant anything more than control of the communications oversea. This control enables the Power exercising it to bring about certain results of military importance. The first and most important is the interruption of the communications oversea of the enemy. This interruption was complicated in this war by the fact that Germany has several neutral neighbors, but it is now quite

complete. The second result is the isolation and conquest of all foreign possessions of the enemy which could not be reached except by sea. This result, too, except for the resistance which the Germans are maintaining in a corner of East Africa, is completely accomplished, and it is now true to say that Germany has no oversea colonies. Her writers are fond of pointing to their conquests on land, but measured in square mileage our own conquests, thanks to sea-power, are more extensive, and if we count in the effective use of the sea, which after all occupies three-fourths of the world's surface, even the territorial acquisitions of the Allies are enormously greater than those of Germany. The third use of sea-power is as an adjunct of the

army. Sea-power never put itself forward as the equal of military power on its own element. Throughout the greater part of the Napoleonic wars France was in possession of Belgium, but except for the disastrous Walcheren Expedition no attempt was made by our supreme navy to recover it. No naval victory in the history of the world ever made such noise as the Battle of the Nile, but it did not prevent Napoleon from invading Palestine afterwards. Trafalgar would never have been fought if the French fleet in Cadiz had not been forced by starvation to come out. The bombardment of Copenhagen was the one operation of the navy in Nelson's days to which there is no parallel in this war. When we expect the navy to be supreme, not only on its own element but to meet modern shore fortifications on equal terms, we are asking for something for which there is no warrant in the whole of our naval history. Let us be reasonable.

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Let us remember, too, that the changes in the world since the last great war have all been against the effective exercise of sea-power. the first place, science has brought about a great shrinkage in the earth's surface. A hundred miles now corresponds to ten miles then, and to get the same immunity from the "silver streak" that we once did we should Ineed to be moored a thousand miles out in the Atlantic. Secondly, the submarine has made close blockade impossible. In the old days our navy was nearer the enemy and our coasts farther away; now our coasts are nearer and our ships farther away. Lastly, mines, especially in narrow waters, have tended to neutralize large areas of the sea. For example, the Baltic, owing to the mining of the narrow entrances, is now apparently a closed sea, at any rate to our surface craft, with the result that Ger

many has been able to concentrate an overwhelming force against Russia in the Baltic in spite of the even more overwhelming superiority of our naval forces outside. All these things have tended against the effectual exercise of sea-power as compared with the Napoleonic wars. Yet the modern navy need not fear comparison with those times. Our blockade of Germany is as strict as ever it was of France; our denial of the seas to the enemy's naval craft is even stricter, for though Germany, thanks to the employment of submarines, has done our merchant marine more injury than the French privateers did in the wars with Napoleon, she has done it at the price of bringing in the United States against her, whereas then it was our tyranny at sea that was resented by neutrals. In 1812 the United States went to war with us owing to our exercise of naval power; now that boot is on the enemy's foot.

Nor should we be too exercised in mind over raids like that in the North Sea. So far as surface craft is concerned, our sea-power is more absolute than anything ever dreamed of in Napoleon's wars. This is one of the respects in which science has favored us. In the old days, when the blockade was conducted by sailing ships, a wind offshore often broke up the blockade. Now, thanks to steam, our blockade, though more distant, is more constant, and far fewer surface craft attain the open sea than in the old days. The exceptions of today were nearly the rule in the old

wars.

We are not deprecating criticism of the navy, but merely anxious that it should be fair and relevant. Fair and relevant criticism of the present action of our navy would fall under one or other of the following heads. First, are the existing arrangements for patrol in the North Sea the best that could be devised? In particular, is

our system of air patrols adequate, and can we not devise some system of patrol by air at sea which would give us an immunity from air attack not absolute, indeed, but corresponding to the immunity enjoyed by our coast towns from bombardment by surface craft? We are not satisfied with the answers usually given to such questions as these, and have a rooted objection to our air defenses at home being governed by military ideas. The sea is the region in which we should be defended from raids. Secondly, can our navy be used more effectually in combined operations with the army? It could certainly if we had used the navy to better purpose in the Eastern Mediterranean, but there it was usually our army authorities who held back the military support necessary if naval power was to exert its full military effect. But against fortifications such as the Germans have by this

The Manchester Guardian.

time erected along the coast of Belgium we do not believe that the navy, with or without an army, can be used so as to produce decisive military results. In the Dardanelles, and in the East generally, it might; on the coast of Belgium we doubt it. The conditions in the German operations in the Baltic were entirely different. Still, we are open to conviction on this point, which is admittedly contentious. Lastly, should our navy rest content with its exclusion by mines from a large area like the Baltic? Could we have done more to help Russia against the German naval concentration than we apparently have? The question of the Baltic is the most serious and searching of all, and we find it exceedingly difficult to reconcile ourselves to a system which makes the Baltic a closed sea. For this is a permanent question. If we acquiesce now, we acquiesce for good and all.

PARLIAMENT AND FINANCE. With his incurable habit of saying the wrong thing, Mr. Bonar Law introduced a supplementary vote of credit of 400 millions in a speech full of jaunty optimism which can only have a bad effect. It will confirm public sentiment in its slipshod slackness with regard to finance, and it will not help the sales of National War Bonds, which already show a considerable dwindling after the opening rush. It will be remembered that the House was alarmed when, during the period covered by the first vote of credit for this financial year, the expenditure showed an increase of two

millions a day above the Budget estimate. It was explained at the time that exceptional circumstances had produced this increase, and there was every reason to expect that it would not continue. Because it has not continued, and since that time the excess over the estimate has come down to about one million a day, the Chancellor of the Exchequer seems to think that all is well with finance, and proceeds to deal with the subject in a strain of airy carelessness, encouraging the country to follow its natural bent and do likewise. He dealt with the whole period from the beginning of the financial year to Sep

tember 29th. During this period he finds an average daily expenditure (presumably out of votes of credit) of £6,648,000, an increase over the estimate of £1,237,000 per day, of which the Army and Navy took £590,000, miscellaneous services £306,000, and the amounts advanced to Allies and Dominions £341,000. Thus during the first half of the year the Budget estimate has been exceeded by roughly a million and a quarter a day. If this rate is continued-and in the second half of the year it seems at least likely to be exceeded, owing to the costs of the Government's policy with regard to wheat and its increase in the pay of soldiers and sailors-the Budget estimate of expenditure will be increased by roughly 450 millions. And yet in the face of this staggering miscalculation the Chancellor made a speech which produced, we are told, a greatly reassured feeling in the House. He did so by showing that a large part of this increased expenditure is spent upon stocks which are afterwards sold or is in other ways recoverable, and ought, therefore, in the Chancellor's words, "not to be regarded as if it were a dead weight burden upon our expenditure." These items were as follows:

Millions. Loans to Allies and Dominions.. 611⁄2 In hands of Treasury Agents.. 151⁄2 Advances to Dominions 24 Raw materials, food and ships...741⁄2 Payments on behalf of Allies.. 32

admitted that the fact that most of these sums were, in his opinion, some day recoverable, did not make any difference to the amount that we have now to find for the war, and by making this admission he knocked the bottom out of his own argument. Because it is this problem of finding money for the war and of doing so in the right way that the nation has to be induced to face seriously, if it does not care to risk grave danger to its financial staying power. Moreover, to treat all these assets as worth their cost price in his balance-sheet is an example of very questionable .bookkeeping. We know that many of our Allies will be very seriously impoverished by the war-much more so than we shall; that it will be impossible to expect them to begin to pay us interest (unless we lend them the money to do so) for some time after the war; and that the repayment of the capital advanced is a matter for which we have to wait for perhaps a generation, or several. This being so, not many respectable accountants would be inclined to put their signatures to the Chancellor's statement without a qualifying footnote. Moreover, with regard to the biggest item-raw materials, foodstuffs and ships-one must feel again considerable doubt as to whether the price paid by the Government will necessarily be recovered by it. In view of the example pointed out by the Expenditure Committee's report of 26 million pounds worth of Australian wheat, which is rapidly deteriorating because the Government bought it first and then began to think about shipping it, we feel that for this item also there should be considerable reserve for contingencies. Mr. Bonar Law, however, thinks that because so much of the Government expenditure has now gone into articles or securities which may perhaps some day be turned into money, he is