lation of 350,000,000, the number of converts made by the Church Missionary Society, after more than a century's labor, is to-day 35,640, altho no fewer than 3,424 agents are at work. How many of these converts are genuine is a different matter. The above number includes the helpless children. In the year 1889-90 there was a gain of 1,836, mostly the babes of converts. Thus it took two missionary agents and a sum of £113,000 to secure one 'convert' babe, or adult, in a year. What a farce! This ridiculous result, too, is a falling-off on the previous year. The other societies have even a more unsatisfactory record. Mr. W. S. Caine, M. P., on his recent return from India, writing in the Birmingham Daily Post, February 14, 1889, thus sums up his opinon of the attempt to 'Christianize' India: 'Educated India is looking for a religion, but turns its back on Christ and His teaching as presented by the missionary. As far as turning the young men they educate into Christians their [the missionaries'] failure is complete and unmistakable.' A writer in The Contemporary Review for February, 1888, gives his Indian experience as follows: Christianity has taken but a poor grip of Hindu India. Its votaries are nowhere really visible among the population. A traveler living in India for two years might leave it without full consciousness that any work of active proselytism was going on.'

"And the alleged converts? The Church Missionary Society for 1900 says: 'At present there is a rather low standard of Christian living.' It is the same story as was told some years ago by the Rev. Sidney Smith, that the native who bore the name of Christian was 'commonly nothing more than a drunken reprobate, who conceives himself at liberty to eat and drink anything he pleases, and annexes hardly any other meaning to Christianity.' The London Missionary Society in the 1896 Report (p. 186) ask subscribers 'not to despise the low ideas and motives with which they [the converts] come to us.' And, again, at page 145: 'A very large proportion who profess themselves Christians, and are baptized, are so very ignorant that great care and patience are required to make them intelligently acquainted with the fundamental truths of Christianity.' Among the Malay Christians, which the 1899 Report of the Wesleyan Methodist Missions states 'furnish us with the great majority of our converts' (p. 76), a lady worker writes: When one questions them by themselves, the one appalling factor that forces itself upon one is their unimaginable ignorance. In most, the anxiety for the daily bread is the largely bulking factor for their consciousness.' Extracts of this description might be indefinitely multiplied.

"In China, the missionaries are now thoroughly disliked, altho they have not been interfered with unless their zeal has outrun their discretion, for the Chinese, says Professor Douglas in his book on China (p. 370), are 'singularly tolerant of faiths other than their own.' In the Report of the Church Missionary Society for 1900 we are told that 'churches' have been organized by Chinese for the purpose of affording protection in law cases, such as the payment of debts. In 1869 our Foreign Office (Parliamentary paper on China, No. 9, 1870, p. 13) wrote as follows as to Protestant missionaries in China:

"There is good reason to suppose that the animosity which has lately been more intensely shown toward missionaries on the part of the ruling authorities in China is in a great measure to be attributed to the injudicious conduct of the native converts to Christianity. . . . There seems sufficient reason to believe that converts assume and have acted on the assumption that by embracing Christianity they released themselves from the obligations of obedience to the local authorities and from the discharge of their duties as subjects of the Emperor, and acquired a right to be protected by the European power whose religious tenets they have adopted.'

"And, again, Admiral Richards, in an official communication to the British Government (Parliamentary Paper, China, No. 1, 1892, p. 24), says:

"It seems to be the special aim of missionary societies to establish themselves outside treaty limits; and, having done so, they are not prepared to take the risks which they voluntarily incur, but, on the contrary, are loudest in their clamor for gunboats, as their contributions to the Shanghai press sufficiently demonstrate. . . . It appears to be necessary, after the lessons taught by these occurrences, that some understanding should be arrived at with regard to missionary societies in China. . . . It seems altogether unreasonable that the societies should exercise absolute freedom in going where they, please, and then their agents should look to Her Majesty's Government for protection.' "The scandals in connection with the present war in China

published in The Daily Mail and other papers, of missionaries engaging with the troops in looting, and inciting the burning of the houses of the Chinese, must give these followers of the great Confucius-who taught a doctrine in no sense inferior to Christianity, and long before Christianity was known—the notion that missionaries are a kind of barbarian horde, whose real object is plunder and massacre. The number of communicants' in Christian churches throughout China, after half a century's work, is only a few thousands. 'In Ichang.'. writes Mr. Little, 'the Bibles that are distributed broadcast are largely used in the manufacture of boot soles,' and, further, that no respectable Chinaman would admit a missionary into his house. In other parts of the country they [the Bibles] are employed to manufacture papier-maché tables.

"As to Africa one quotation may suffice. Sir H. H. Johnson, our present Special Commissioner for Uganda, and a man of many years' experience in Africa, says in The Nineteenth Century, November, 1887:

"I regret to say that, with a few-very rare-exceptions, those native African pastors, teachers, and catechists whom I have met have been all, more or less, bad men. They attempted to veil an unbridled immorality with an unblushing hypocrisy and a profane display of mouth-religion which, to an honest mind, seemed even more disgusting than the immorality itself. While

it was apparent that not one particle of true religion had made its way into their gross minds, it was also evident that the spirit of sturdy manliness which was present in their savage forefathers found no place in their false, cowardly natures.

"It is not on the spread of Christianity that African missions can at present base their claim to our gratitude, respect, or support.... In many important districts where they have been at work for twenty years they can scarcely number in honest statistics twenty sincere Christians-that is to say, twenty natives understanding in any, degree the doctrines or dogmas they have been taught and striving to shape their conduct by their new principles. In other parts of Africa, principally British possessions, where large numbers of nominal Christians exist, their religion is discredited by numbering among its adherents all the drunkards, liars, rogues, and unclean livers of the colony. In the oldest of our West African possessions all the unrepentant Magdalenes of the chief city are professing Christians, and the most notorious one in the place would boast that she never missed going to church on a communion Sunday.'

"Considerations of space prevent us following the missionary into other fields of his activity. The tale is pretty much the same wherever we turn. But we have said enough to show how grossly deceived the public are with reference to the doings of

missionaries and the result of their missions. Far be it from us to say that there are not good and self-sacrificing men among them. But,we assert that the fruit of their energies is so small, and the work left undone at home so great, that it is nothing less than a criminal act of human folly to give any special encouragement to the missionary movement."

RELIGIOUS NOTES.

As a result of the Japanese Buddhist mission to this country, instituted a year or so ago, a church called the "Dharma-Sangha of Buddha" has been established in San Francisco, with three branches in other Californian towns. In the San Francisco temple there is a membership of three hundred in the Young Men's Buddhist Association, mostly of Japanese. At an English service on Sundays, twenty or more Americans are present, of whom eleven have already been converted to Buddhism, and have openly professed that they "take their refuge in Buddha, in his gospel and in his order."

THE late Joseph Cook was celebrated for his positiveness, which those who did not admire him termed "cocksureness." The Boston Pilot relates several stories in illustration of this. It says: "When he went over to Scotland to demonstrate by practical experiment the dangerous effects of alcohol on the human brain, he beat up the white of an egg with spirits until the mass coagulated, but it did not convince his audience as he had expected. On the contrary, it only evoked from Professor Blackie the quiet remark: That seems to prove that whiskey must be good for softening of the brain.' But the cruelest sarcasm said of him was when Bill Nye demurely wrote: I understand that my friend the Rev. Joseph Cook has completed a thoughtful essay entitled 'A Bird's-Eye View of the Kingdom of Heaven?' Joseph was capable of looking patronizingly down on even that Dominion-or so his critics said."

THE

FOREIGN TOPICS.

FRANCE AND THE VATICAN.

HE passage of the Law of Associations bill by the French Senate, by a majority which (the despatches tell us) practically insures its approval by the President, has reopened the discussion of France's relation to the Roman Catholic Church, and particularly of the effect the new law will have on France's position as "Protector of the Church" throughout the world. The Osservatore Cattolico (Milan), one of the Italian organs of the Vatican, recently published what purported to be an official announcement that the Italian minister in Peking (the Marquis Raggi) had invited the Italian missionaries in China (the majority of whom have been sent out by the San Calocero Seminary, in Milan) to renounce the protection of France and place themselves under that of Italy. If they refuse to do so, the minister declared that, in the future, means would be taken to deprive them of French protection. The Osservatore Cattolico further declared that the seminary had been informed of the minister's action, that the Franciscan missionaries of Chan-Si had agreed to his plan, and that the society recently formed in Florence for the assistance of Italian missionaries in the Orient had assumed the care of these priests. Commenting on this report and the later official announcement that the Vatican has directed the maintenance of the status quo in the Far East, Alcide Ebray, writing in the Journal des Débats (Paris), says:

"Our right of protecting Catholic Christians in the extreme Orient has never, until quite recently, been contested, either by national governments concerned or by the Holy See. . . . Despite the clearly expressed wish of the Vatican, however, of late, Germany and Great Britain have begun to deny our right in this matter and to show their intention to assume the protection of their own missionaries. In the face of these pretensions, we have steadily kept to our point of view, that, without denying to foreign governments the right to look after their suppliants, whoever they may be and of whatever religion, we still hold the exclusive right to protect Catholic Christians of whatever nationality, and this right of protection applies particularly to missions and missionaries. If the claim of Germany and England to take from our protection their missionaries because these countries have a Protestant majority is justified in the slightest degree, it seems to us that this should give us a much more clearly defined, less contestable right in the case of Catholic nations."

This writer does not believe that the French Government will accept the new situation. The Débats, in its editorial comment, however, declares that France has brought all this on herself. It also blames Premier Waldeck-Rousseau for the anti-clerical violence which has taken place in France since the associations bill was first submitted to the Chamber. Whether he wished it or not, says this journal, the Premier is responsible for this intolerance which has not only disgraced ecclesiastical France, but political France as well.

The Times (Bangkok, Siam), a paper published in English, under British auspices, believes that Germany is in a fair way to oust France from her position as protector of the church in the East. The Times quotes from a number of German journals, including the Kölnische Zeitung (Cologne), the Trierische Landeszeitung (Treves), and the Germania (Berlin) to the general effect that, while France's position was once a strong and beneficial one, her rôle in the East is now practically a dead letter. The Times points out, however, that the attitude of the Holy See "is and has always been consistently favorable to the protectorate exercised by France."

Commenting on the general character of the associations bill, The Standard (London) remarks:

"It will not affect purely French religious associations existing for a charitable purpose unless they refuse to apply for recognition. But it will strike with effect at such orders as the Assump

tionist Brothers, who are under Vatican influence, and have used their funds for political purposes, and in a spirit of hostility to the republic. The most sincerely Roman Catholic monarchical government in Europe, either of this generation or of the past, would have refused to tolerate the insolent agitation carried on against the state of late years in France."

How to provide for the pious, self-sacrificing members of the proscribed orders, who have devoted most of their lives to relig. ious work and now have no means of support, is a phase of the question that is causing a good deal of discussion in the more thoughtful and less prejudiced journals. A French Jesuit, writing in The Saturday Review (London), in answer to a review

of F. C. Conybeare's recent book, "Roman Catholicism as a Factor in European Politics," says on this point:

"The associations law threatens to bring the cruellest suffering upon thousands of defenseless women-to say nothing of the men -who believing that the religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience formed the most pleasing offering they could make to God, have irreparably shaped their lives and molded their characters in accordance with that deliberate choice. The French Government may or may not think fit, in their munificence, to bestow pensions on the dispersed monks and nuns. But can they give them back their youth, can they find them husbands and wives, or make the very idea of marriage tolerable to them; can they provide them anew in middle age with the love and affection of that home life which they freely bartered for certain spiritual goods, now to be taken away from them by force of law?"

The danger to the republic, which has been used as a reason for enacting the new law, this writer declares to be a mere specious pretext":

46

'Menace to the republic there may be in some sense, for every priest is bound to teach that there are things which belong to God as well as things that belong to Cæsar, and that if Cæsar claim to dominate the conscience, the claim may be lawfully resisted. But the danger is not one that springs from the action of religious congregations or the teaching of Jesuit schools. It is inherent in the whole system of the Catholic Church and indeed in Puritanism or Mohammedanism or any other form of religion which is something more than a name. The complete severance of religion and politics is a chimera, whose unreality is nowhere

more clearly apparent than in the history of English nonconformity. If the principle of the associations law is to be carried to its logical outcome, the state will have to prohibit confession altogether, and to declare that the last will and testament of any person known ever to have spoken to a priest shall be accounted null and void through presumption of undue influence."

The Times (London) agrees, in the main, with the above. It says: "Tho the French Government may have small care to deal tenderly with the folk who go into monasteries and convents, there are certain considerations, of policy as well as of morality, which can not easily be set aside.”

The Neue Freie Presse (Vienna) congratulates M. WaldeckRousseau on being able to keep the ministry together for three years, despite the bitter religious controversy over the associa tions law; but the Pester Lloyd (Budapest) believes that a reaction will soon set in, and that the French premier is in by no means an enviable position. The Frankfurter Zeitung thinks France need apprehend no danger. The societies worth keeping, says this journal, will comply with the law. "The republic will suffer no loss if a congregation prefers to give up its activity or transfer it to another country rather than abide by the law of the land." The real, old Gallic spirit, almost smothered by the Napoleonic concordat in 1803, says the Hamburger Nachrichten, has at last reappeared. “It is now the church in the state, not the state living by permission of the church." The Archives d'Israélites (Paris) one of the organs of French Judaism, declares that, in all matters of religious toleration, but particularly in their treatment of the Jews, the French people seem to have advanced but little during the past century.-Translations made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

this kind has been tried before. Poland and Lithuania have already been divided into new governments and counties some four times; bishops have been removed, not to Silesia, but direct to Siberia; Roman Catholic churches have been changed into Orthodox churches; penalties have been imposed for speaking Polish on the street; "and there has been attained just this much, that to-day there are in the Muscovite empire just twice as many Poles as there were a hundred years ago." It will be the same thing with Prussian Poland, adds Ameryka: “Nations are the work of God. The hand of man can not kill a nation that wants to and can live. But the hand of man can breed in that nation feelings which it would perhaps never have conceived at all. It is evident that, since nothing is done in history without design, and since the Germans appear to be working hard to incur Polish hatred, Poles must learn to hate the Germans even more than they now do." If the Germans would treat the Poles fraternally, observing the constitution strictly, the aversion of the Poles toward the Germans would, most probably, disappear and Germanization would stare Prussian Poland in the face. But as it is now, concludes the Ameryka, “we not only need not fear Germanization, but, on the contrary, the Polish national spirit is growing fast and is bearing fine fruit. We need not grieve, therefore, at the German freaks in Prussian Poland. The result will be for our welfare and for Prussia's ill. Let them rage and bluster as much as they like. The Poland of the future may even be grateful to them for this compulsory school of patriotism."-Translations made for THE LITERARY DIGEst.

EUROPEAN FEAR OF AMERICAN COMMERCIAL

COMPETITION.

THE

PRUSSIAN POLES.

HE recent action of the Prussian post-office authorities in refusing to deliver letters addressed in Polish, and the governmental order removing the Polish language from the cur

the United States form the one subject in which almost every section of the older continent takes a lively and increasing interest. European journals are full of warnings against the growing commercial power of this country, of schemes for oppo

of comment from the Polish press of America. Polish journals in Prussia are, of course, not permitted by the authorities to discuss the matter freely. The Dziennik Narodovy (Chicago) observes that the German is not straining his mind to invent a new system for the destruction of everything Polish, but is only endeavoring to apply with better effect the system elaborated by Russia, and, "since he does not recoil from anything, it is not known who, in this effort to crush the Polish population, holds the palm-the Muscovite or the German."

The treatment of the Poles by the Prussian Government, this same journal holds, has proved that the Prussian jingoes have "lost all sense of decency and have simply become wild." The Ameryka (Toledo) says that the Poles have achieved a great feat. Since the times of Tacitus, the Germans have been looked upon as an intelligent, grave, and calm people. But now hatred to Poles and fear of the Pan-Polish agitation have brought the Germans to such a state that their mind performs the funniest somersaults. Papers heretofore looked upon as dignified are coming out with such wild and clearly silly projects that it is difficult to suppose that they could be written and printed by men of sound sense. For example, there is the project of a new division of the grand duchy of Posen and Western Prussia into new circuits; the renaming of these provinces North Silesia; the removal of the archiepiscopal see from Gniezno (the Archbishop of Gniezno was formerly primate of all Poland and is still venerated greatly by the Poles) to some place in Silesia. All this is evidently to kill the Polish agitation; but a better knowledge of the history of Poland subsequent to the partition would show the Germans that in Russian Poland everything of

accounts of our triumphs in trade all over the world.

The press

of the Continent is particularly apprehensive. Scarcely a week passes but some influential German or Austrian journal has a serious article calling the attention of Europe to the trade preeminence of the United States. The utterances of Count Goluchowski, M. Leroy-Beaulieu, and Admiral Canevaro were recorded in THE LITERARY DIGEST of May 25. The latest appeal to Europe against this country appeared in a recent issue of the Munich Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the most conservative of German journals, written by Dr. Alexander von Peez, a Bavarian political economist. The weightiest and most enduring interest of the future for Europe, Dr. von Peez believes, will not be in China or in the Transvaal war, but in the race between the great industrial countries, England, Germany, and the United States. "Slowly has England grown commercially, more rapidly has Germany risen after gaining political unity and establishing the protective system, but like a storm is the forward movement of the United States." Dr. von Peez reviews the commercial progress of England and Germany, and then consid. ers the United States, which has "risen in the New World with sinister rapidity." The American people, he declares, have had a splendid natural equipment. We quote as follows:

"Its [the American people's] nationality has its roots in Germanic traits. It received, either from its Celtic mixture or as a characteristic gift from American soil, its qualities of restlessness, assertiveness, and unexpectedness in action. The American has had the good luck, besides, to draw to himself from his two competitors a share of their own skill and of their own acquisitions. through emigration from Germany and England. From the combination of all these qualities has resulted the undoubted

superiority of a mighty land, stretching from ocean to ocean, full of coal and iron and treasures of the soil, inhabited by a trained, numerous, and daring people, free from distraction, spiritually and morally, and ardently devoted to their various pursuits."

All three competing nations, Dr. von Peez continues, suffer from obstacles which hinder their free movement. Germany has China, England the Transvaal, and America the Philippines. The United States, however, he predicts, will be the first to throw off its burden, and then "the American industrial advance upon Europe will be fully manifested." Dr. von Peez then proceeds to consider the various commercial treaties and the tariff systems of Europe, and calls for careful study of American methods and conditions in order that Europe may be prepared to demand the renewal of her commercial agreements with America on advantageous terms. In agriculture and manufacturing, he says, the United States displays a consciousness of victory, and she is even now absorbing Europe's money. Despite her phenomenal success, however, the United States has “as yet not unbuckled one piece of the almost impenetrable armor in which she is encased, while demanding open doors of others everywhere." Europe's opportunity, he believes, will come with the renewal of the commercial treaties. We quote again:

"What should first be done in defense is to follow the example, in regard to tariffs and trade treaties, which the United States has set for us. At the European seashore (England is included herein) a tariff should be established counter to that of the Union, while the European nations should arrange tariffs touching each other which would not materially differ from those now existing. But only the restoration of the tripartite imperial alliance would offer all those guaranties which are requisite in a matter of such great importance. It is probable that the yet powerful but muchthreatened Great Britain would not remain outside such a union."

The Post (Berlin) believes that a high-customs tariff and the abolition of the most-favored-nation clause in regard to America would bring Uncle Sam to terms. European nations, it says, all of which have to reckon with the American danger, must help Germany in this, so that the continent will obtain favorable tariffs by treaty. "In order to do this it is necessary that foreign countries [foreign to Germany], without listening to cosmopolitan free traders and without prejudice, should take up an examination of the tariff."

The report that one of the large New York banks intends to establish branches in the principal European cities is received with alarm by the Politische Nachrichten (Berlin). Germany must arm in time against such a danger, says this journal, and it calls for drastic reform of the Prussian Bourse law as the first necessary step. Dr. Vosburg-Rekow, whose volume on the commercial treaties which Germany will renew in 1903 called forth so much comment about a year ago, recently declared that Americans, "tho lacking in the superior technical education of the Germans, improve, thanks to their practical eye, upon our [the German] methods and apparatus." The Americans "have no thorough education, nor do they possess a modern industrial system as we Europeans understand the terms." "Theirs is rather the activity of an experimentalist than that of a trained craftsman; but a clever faiseur, if he have the assurance and some luck, may distance the educated master."

Dr. Vosburg-Rekow advocates a Russo- German commercial alliance against the United States, which alliance, he believes, would sooner or later be joined by England. This idea is strongly commended in a recent article in the Kölnische Zeitung, a journal which is often the mouthpiece of the German Foreign Office. The struggle for existence in Europe, says the Rhenish organ, demands that the exceptional position of the United States be abolished, or, at least, nullified. The United States is the most dangerous competitor Germany has in the iron trades, and the tariff policy of the empire must be framed with this in view. It is a matter of life and death now, concludes this journal; an

entente with Russia would provide ways and means to compel America to conform to the commercial system of Europe.

One of the oldest and most widely circulated of German journals devoted to manufacturing is the Confectionair (Berlin). In a recent review of the condition of trade in the empire, it said (we quote from an American consular report):

"It is an unpleasant feeling when obliged to notice a body gradually overshadowing you whose growth you have formerly observed with the tolerant equanimity of a paternal patron. So long as the juvenile giant Uncle Sam walked in baby shoes, even during his period of rough boyhood when he scoffed at old Auntie Europe, but still could not do without her, we were not really angered, because the larger he grew the more goods he required of us. And we must admit he wasn't a bad chap, for he paid cash for all he got from us. But, sorry to say, that boy with the insatiable gizzard has in the mean time become a man who uses his own limbs. Like the fellow who wouldn't marry because he didn't want to support another man's daughter, Uncle Sam now can't see why he should maintain other countries' industries. . . . "An ingeniousness unexampled in the world's history has, in less than a quarter of a century, developed an industry in the United States which, tho lacking tradition, has in many respects become worthy of imitation. What is wanting in tradition is doubly and threefold made up by means of machinery, by a talent for invention and organization, aided by more favorable natural resources and cheap raw materials.

"It is difficult to cope with all this. We can not prohibit the United States to develop their industries and gain a dizzy height by their gigantic capitalistic combines, nor can we inhibit their shameless tariff imposts on foreign goods which might compete in American markets, by which method foreign competition is simply barred. But what we positively should oppose is to be crowded out of our own markets through being undersold by the American industries. American exports to Europe are constantly getting more threatening. Even in articles of fashion, in which Europe dictates the style for all the world, the American manufacturers are beginning to compete with the European manufacturers in the latter's own markets."

The Vienna journals also are evidently deeply impressed by American commercial progress, particularly by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan's vast enterprises. The Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the conservative newspapers of the Austrian capital, in commenting on a recent meeting of Bohemian manufacturers, "met in Prague to consider how to save Europe from America," declares that the United States has already begun her war of conquest on the Old World. The North American Union, it says, “aims at the subjugation of Europe and its conversion into an economic and commercial dependency of the United States. . . . The Americans are no longer content with the first version of the Monroe doctrine: 'America for the Americans.' The modern version, which derives its strength from the trust system, is 'America and Europe for the Americans.' The Allgemeine Zeitung concludes by suggesting that "Pan-Europe, in the inevitable war with America, must imitate Napoleon I. and adopt a continental system of exclusion against the United States." The Times (London) regards this scheme as "preposterous and impracticable on its face." If it failed in the iron grasp of Napoleon, says The Times, it would hardly have much prospect of success in the hands of our old friend the Concert of Europe. It concludes:

"But if there is one thing more certain than another about this fantastic notion, it is that the Concert of Europe could not possibly be got to adopt it. If by any conceivable infatuation any of the continental Powers were to combine for such an end, the British empire would leave them to their fate and continue, as before, to trade with its American kinsfolk. Our interests, our traditions, and our inclination all dictate that course to us. With the markets of Great Britain and of her colonies remaining open, the suggested Weltboycott against America does not wear a very hopeful aspect."

Another Viennese journal, the Neues Tageblatt, strongly ad

vocates a European customs league against American competition, a danger, it declares, grave enough to unite the Dual and Triple Alliances and even France and Germany. America, says the Tageblatt, is the common enemy, "an enemy so formidable that each European country must succumb unless leagued with the rest of Europe." Even united Europe, it believes, will have a hard fight.

The French press also show signs of alarm. In an editorial under the title, "The Yankee Peril," the Presse (Paris), which is, however, somewhat given to sensationalism, says that the Japanese war and the recent Chinese expedition have shown that the "yellow peril" has passed; but the Yankee peril "threatens all Europe, particularly the commerce of England and France." France, declares the Presse, should raise the duty on all Amer

and do plead that the jeering of their acquaintance and rivals because they have shown the white feather is to them intolerable."

The Daily Mail (London) thinks that the Briton had better give it up. Why, says this journal, the grumbling Englishman sits in an office which, if it is up to date, is fitted, from desk to door-mat, with American-made furniture. "One sits on a Nebraskan swivel chair before a Michigan roll-top desk, writing one's letters on a Syracuse typewriter, signing them with a New York fountain pen, and drying with a blotting-sheet from New England. The letter copies are put away in files manufactured in Grand Rapids."-Translations made for THE LITERARY DI

GEST.

"HARDHEARTED" AMERICAN BENEFACTORS.

benefactions of American millionaires in recent years

are, first of all, commercial, and we need not expect the Yankees to stop at anything. They showed their hand in this respect in China. M. Leroy-Beaulieu also sees our "big commercial destiny." When the Nicaragua canal is completed, he predicts in the Économiste Française (Paris), "China will, for economic purposes, become an American colony." The Illustration, the leading popular illustrated paper of Paris, in a recent issue, has a long biographical and descriptive article, illustrated, on Mr. J. P. Morgan, whom it calls one of the wonders of the world, and the true type of American civilization to-day. When the respective resources of the two continents are considered, the Discusion (Havana) believes that the absurdity of a European anti-American commercial combination will be evident. España Moderna (Madrid) also declares that it is a mere chimera which can never be realized. Hector Depassé, the French economist, has a twopage article in the Revue Bleue (Paris) to prove the same thing, pointing out that mutual jealousies will probably always prevent any real concerted action by Europe.

British journals generally admit that American competition is pressing England hard, but argue that John Bull can lose a good deal without suffering seriously, and, after all, as The St. James's Gazette (London) puts it, "it's all in the family, the great Anglo-Saxon household; and we had rather be beaten by the Americans than by any other people."

Whatever the American can not do, says The Saturday Review (London) in a sarcastic article, he can trade. "Get him on trade, and it is impossible not to feel, we can hardly say veneration, but certainly respect, blent with something even of awe." Says this journal further:

"Dismiss culture and tone, freedom, equality, and all such figments, and get down to a hard-cash transaction, and you see the American at his best. There in fact he becomes very great; and it is absolutely absurd to take him in any other way. The production of wealth is the one thing to which the American people has really given its mind, and, circumstances being at the same time entirely favorable, it has succeeded to its own huge admiration and the world's absolute dismay. No other nation has succeeded to the same extent in the same time, but no other nation has so entirely given itself over to the making of wealth as the whole duty of a people. Never has there been a people in which the discrepancy between their performance as traders and their achievements in every other capacity has been so great. In that respect the United States are a portent."

The British empire, says Money, the financial journal of London, is far from being on its last legs as a result of the competition of "such mushroom nations as Germany and the United States." It is quite possible, declares The Spectator (London), that the enterprising American millionaire, without exactly intending it, may become a great nuisance to the world:

"Those who come closer to their proceedings than we can pretend to do, declare that American millionaires have learned from long experience, especially in the rate-cutting wars, an incurable distrust of each other, that their feuds often outlast their battles, and that they will, when provoked, fight like the old barons, for prizes which they know from the first are not worth the expenditure and thé risks they are certain to incur. To use the old terminology, they feel dishonored if they reject a challenge, they will fight for a reputation which is to them quite real, and if they can not plead that they fight for their ladye's eyes,' they can

but what they say on the subject is not undivided praise. A representative voice of this kind is that of Emil Löbb, in Über Land und Meer (Leipzig), who under the title of "Hardhearted Benefactors" purposes to give what he calls "a contribution to the psychology of Americanism." Among other things he says: "Recently the multimillionaire Armour died in Chicago, a typical hardhearted American benefactor, who gave millions, but not

to the poor or the needy or those who could not help themselves. He had declared that he would not give his wealth to 'the old sinners who could be of no use; but would provide for the needs and the development of the coming generations and the wants of the children.' The American benefactor turns his attention not to the sick and the weak, the halt and the blind, to the real objects of charity, but he spends his money on the strong and the hopeful, by establishing universities, founding libraries, schools, museums, etc. He looks only to the possibilities of the future. "This idea of hardhearted benevolence has also been transplanted from America to Europe. When Alfred Nobel died in St. Remo, he left a fortune of fifty million francs for public purposes. Not one penny was given to hospitals, or institutions for the blind or other sufferers, or old folks' homes and establishments of this kind; but the whole sum is to be used for the advancement of scientific research, for literary work, and similar purposes. Seemingly this conduct is in accordance with the principles of the philosophy of Nietszche, altho in reality there is an inner discrepancy between them. For the demented philosopher, the multitude of the weak existed only for the fertili zing of the strong; but the American type of charity aims to raise the lowly and the weak of the coming generation to a higher plane. "Probably the best representative of this kind of neighborly love is found in Carnegie, who has also published a catechism of his faith. His magnificent offer for the founding of libraries in New York, as also his other gifts, show that he does not believe in giving except to those who are able to do something for themselves. Only in exceptional cases does he give for sweet charity's sake. This new feature of American life and faith is one that must not be blindly imitated without further investigation." -Translation made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.