The Gospel of Wealth.

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We publish to-day, by the special request of Mr Gladstone (says the Pall Mall Budget, of July 18), a remarkable article by Mr Andrew Carnegie, the well-known Pittsburgh ironmaster and millionaire, which appeared in the North American Review. The article had attracted the notice of Mr Gladstone, who has spoken in the highest terms with regard to it, and strongly urged its publication in this country. Mr Gladstone writes : — I have asked Mr Lloyd Bryce (North American Review) kindly to allow the republication in this country of the extremely interesting article on " Wealth,” by Mr Andrew Carnegie, which has just appeared in America ”

 THE PROBLEM OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF WEALTH.

 The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. The conditions of human life have not only been changed, but revolutionised, within the past few hundred years. In former days there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food, and environment of the chief and those of his retainers. The Indians are to-day where civilised man then was. When visiting the Sioux; I was led to the wigwam of the chief. It was just like the others in external appearance, and even within the difference was trifling between it and those of the poorest of his braves. The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us to day measures the change which has come with civilisation. This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial. It is well, nay, essential, for the progress of the race, that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilisation, rather than that none should be so. Much better this great irregularity than universal squalor. Without wealth there can be no Mæcenas. The “good old times" were not good old times. Neither master nor servant was as well situated then as to-day. A relapse to old conditions would be disastrous to both —not the least so to him who serves and would sweep away civilisation with it. But whether the change be for good or ill it is upon us, beyond our power to alter, and therefore to be accepted and made the best of. It is a waste of time to criticise the inevitable.

 THE CHANGE, AND THE PRICE WE PAY FOR IT. 

It is easy to see how the change has come. One illustration will serve for almost every phase of the cause. In the manufacture of products we have the whole story. It applies to all combinations of human industry, as stimulated nod enlarged by the inventions of this scientific age. Formerly articles were manufactured at the domestic hearth or in small shops which formed part of the household. The master and his apprentices worked side by side, the latter living with the master, and therefore subject to the same conditions. When these apprentices rose to be masters, there was little or no change is their mode of life, and they, in turn, educated in the same routine succeeding apprentices. There was, substantially, social, equality, and even political equality for those engaged in industrial pursuits had then little or no political voice in the State.

 THE PRICE WE PAY IS VERY GREAT.

 But the inevitable result of such a mode of manufacture was crude articles at high prices. To-day the world obtains commodities of excellent quality at prices which even the generation preceding this would have deemed incredible. In the commercial world similar causes have produced similar results, and the race is benefited thereby. The poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford. What were the luxuries have become the necessaries of life. The laborer has now more comforts than the farmer had a few generations ago. The farmer has more luxuries than the landlord had, and is more richly clad and better housed. The landlord has books and pictures rarer, and appointments more artistic, than the King could then obtain. The price we pay for this salutary change is, no doubt, great. We assemble thousands of operatives in the factory, in the mine, and in the counting house, of whom the employer can know little or nothing, and to whom the employer is little better than a myth. All intercourse with them is at an end. Rigid castes are formed, and, as usual, mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust. Each caste is without sympathy for the other, and ready to credit anything disparaging in regard to it. Under the law of competition, the employer of thousands is forced into the strictest economies, among which the rates paid to labor figure prominently, and often there is friction between the employer and the employed, between capital and labor, between rich and poor. Human society loses homogeneity. 

THE MAN IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE MONEY.

 The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is also great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still, for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. But, whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it, as we say of the change in the conditions of men to which we have referred: It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race. Having accepted these, it follows that there must be great scope for the exercise of special ability in the merchant and in the manufacturer who has to conduct affairs upon a great scale. That this talent for organisation and management is rare among men is proved by the fact that it invariably secures for its possessor enormous rewards, no matter where or under what laws or conditions. The experienced in affairs always rate the man whose services can be obtained as a partner as not only the first consideration, but such as to render the question of his capital scarcely worth considering, for such men soon create capital; while, without the special talent required, capital soon takes wings. Such men become interested in firms or corporations using millions; and estimating only simple interest to be made upon the capital invested, it is inevitable that their income must exceed their expenditures, and that they must accumulate wealth. Nor is there any middle ground which such men can occupy, because the great manufacturing or commercial concern which does not earn at least interest upon its capital soon becomes bankrupt. It must either go forward or fall behind ; to stand still is impossible. It is a condition essential for its successful operation that it should be thus far profitable, and even that, in addition to interest on capital, it should make profit. It is a law, as certain as any of the others named, that men possessed of this peculiar talent for affairs, under the free play of economic forces, must, of necessity, soon be in receipt of more revenue than can be judiciously expended upon themselves and this law is as beneficial for the race as the others.

 OUR DUTY IS TO DO WHAT IS PRACTICABLE NOW.

Objections to the foundations upon which society is based are not in order, because the condition of the race is better with these than it, has been with any others which have been tried. Of the effect of any new substitutes proposed, we cannot be sure. The Socialist or Anarchist who seeks to overturn present conditions is to be regarded as attacking the foundation upon which civilisation itself rests, for civilisation took its start from the day that the capable, industrious workman said to his incompetent and lazy fellow, " If thou dost not sow, thou shalt not reap," and thus ended primitive Communism by separating the drones from the bees. One who studies this subject will soon be brought face to face with the conclusion that upon the sacredness of property civilisation itself depends—the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the right of the millionaire to his millions. To those who propose to substitute Communism for the intense Individualism the answer therefore is : The race has tried that. All progress from that barbarous day to the present time has resulted from its displacement. Not evil, but good, has come to the race from the accumulation of wealth by those who have the ability and energy that produce it. But even if we admit for a moment that it might be better for the race to discard its present foundation, Individualism—that is a nobler ideal that man should labor, not for himself alone, but in and for a brotherhood of his fellows, and share with them all in common, realising Swedenborg's idea of Heaven, where, as he says, the angels derive their happiness, not from laboring for self, but for each other—even admit all this, and a sufficient answer is, That is not evolution, but revolution. It necessitates the changing of human nature itself a work of æons, even if it were good to change it, which we cannot now. It is not practicable in our day or in our age. Even if desirable theoretically, it belongs to another and long-succeeding sociological stratum. Our duty is with what is practicable now; with the next step possible in our day and generation. It is criminal to waste our energies in endeavoring to uproot, when all we can profitably or possibly accomplish is to bend the universal tree of humanity a little in the direction most favorable to the production of good fruit under existing circumstances. We might as well urge the destruction of the highest existing type of man because he failed to reach our ideal as to favor the destruction of individualism, private property, the law of accumulation of wealth, and the law of competition; for these are the highest results of human experience, the soil in which society so far has produced the best fruit. Unequally or unjustly, perhaps, these laws sometimes operate, and perfect as they appear to the idealist, they are, nevertheless, like the highest type of man, the best and most valuable of all that humanity has yet accomplished.

 [TO BE CONTINUED ]

Tasmanian News (Hobart, Tas.), 26 August 1889 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article172872416

Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE has contributed the " Gospel of Wealth " to a London journal. He is effusively described as a " well-known Pittsburg ironmaster and millionaire." He is, in fact, an adventurous Scotsman who has made a fortune in America in one of the districts where it has been proved by tho Atlantic Monthly that the wages are paid on an extremely low scale, lower even than prevails in England. We certainly do not find fault with him for making the most of the country of his adoption, any more than we should blame him because of the land of his nativity. But Mr.ANDREW CARNEGIE, having now become an ironmaster and a millionaire, is inclined to lecture the whole world, and to tell every son of ADAM, rich or poor, exactly what he ought to do in his particular station. The wealthy are to learn their duties from him, and the poor are supposed to stand agape at the benefits he condescends to offer them. Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE is a man of wealth, and he poses before the world as if he were giving a donation to a Caledonian society and expecting the applause of the members. We have no doubt that the human race will rejoice in his patronage. But he once made a vain attempt to show Great Britain what her policy ought to be, and the effort was altogether in vain. We have some fears that the society of mankind may be equally perverse and stiff-necked.

A citizen of the United States, Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE believes in advertising, and he has contrived to get the marvellous announcement that his opinions are published " at the special " request of Mr. GLADSTONE." His views, suddenly blazoned forth upon the world under such auspices, certainly demand attention ; and we can hardly do more than state them briefly. Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE believes that there was a time in English history when the master and the workman stood together in the same social and political scale. If any students should think otherwise, if they should imagine that the master had a despotic power over his apprentices even to the extent of flogging them, then we may assume that he has missed Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE'S idea of the development of society. But we are certainly surprised to hear that this ideal condition of an equality between master and workman was utterly bad. Manufacturing, it seems, was badly done, and the prices were excessive. We forbear, of course, to refer to the splendid work that came from the British looms even before the introduction of steam, or to the silver work that was one of the glories of the older industrial London, or to many other things that might be noticed. We can only follow Mr. CARNEGIE in his breath-less progress to the unequal condition of the nineteenth century. At the present time we learn with gratitude that the best work is done at the cheapest possible rate, a statement that reminds us of a "selling-off advertisement." But unfortunately the equality between master and workman has disappeared. Society has to pay a very high price for the cheap articles that it enjoys. Men and women are grouped together into factories, and the old relationship between the employer and his work-people has disappeared. It seems, so far as we can gather, that Mr. CARNEGIE is not personally acquainted with all his workmen, and that to many of them the employer is a " mere myth," a man whom they never see, and whom they cannot know. The master makes a profit, and the men make their wages, and there is no bond between them. On the one side the successful Mr. CARNEGIE finds, what many industrial pioneers have never found, that wealth accumulates in the hands of the employer. On the other side, he wishes to give his patronage to the wage earners.

Having got so far, we should naturally imagine that the " ironmaster and millionaire " of Pittsburg would seek to cultivate the acquaintance of all his workmen. This, however, is only the device, we may suppose, of aristocrats, who invite their subordinates to Christmas dinners and other festivities. At any rate, it is far from the millionaire's thoughts. He has decided to settle the whole disputes between capital and labour in one brief article. And in the pursuit of knowledge regarding human society we must follow his ideas. He has discovered that society has progressed from socialism to individualism, the meaning of which we take to be that it has advanced from the tribal to the American millionaire system. He has discovered further that even in America, the land of large fortunes and a stringent law of inheritance, too much may be made of individualism. He feels it to be his duty, therefore, in the interest of a struggling humanity, to reconcile these two things. From Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE'S point of view the solution is very easy. There ought, of course, to be the fullest scope for individual effort and for money-making on the part of every citizen. It would be a total mistake to distribute wealth among the masses in small sums in the shape of increased labour or cheaper products. The average man could not put the money to the same beneficial uses as Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE, who is helping on the development of humanity. On this point we confess that his arguments are convincing. He cites the example of Cooper's Institute, and asks triumphantly whether the donor could have done the same amount of good if he had spent his money among the poor in his lifetime. He refers with equal gusto to Tildon's Library, and asks whether the same benefit would have accrued to the community if the giver had distributed his wealth in small sums. He tells us that money used in charity is generally badly spent, and that we should only help those who help themselves. On the whole, we come to the very comfortable doctrine, which we should support on other grounds, that the man who has the faculty of accumulating money should be allowed to do so, because in order to accumulate he must know how to employ it in profitable industries. So far we might sympathise with Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE'S triumph in his own arguments. There is no necessity for distributing any man's accumulated wealth. On the contrary, it is probably employed to the better advantage of the whole community than if it were broken up.

But now Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE branches off into his theory. The man who makes money should be left undisturbed, but his family should not inherit more than a competency, whatever that may mean. The "almighty dollar " is a blessing if you live for it and accumulate it ; it is a curse if you inherit it. This is the new gospel of wealth. Increase the death duties, the probate duties, according to Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE, and society will be at peace, and the millionaire and the pauper, the economist and the socialist, will dine together. It is difficult to say what society may do, but we venture to say that Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE'S vulgar and arrogant self-complacency is no solution of any difficulty whatever.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. ), 31 August 1889 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article6275267

THE DESCENT OF MAN.

 A New Theory.

"The Mongol in Our Midst," by F. G. Crookshank. M.D., F.R.C.P., published by E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, is the third book in the "To-day and To-morrow" series of scientific monographs, from which we have come to expect some very daring and interesting speculations. The first was Professor J. B. S. Haldane's "Baealus," (says Burton Rascoe in the New York Herald Tribune"), wherein he envisaged a near-future when the population will be regulated by the manufacture of babies by ectogenesis, life will be entirely urban, all foods will be synthetic, and mankind will derive its heat, light and power from the wind. The second book "Icarus," by Bertrand Russell, the mathematician and moral philosopher, foretold cruel wars of competition and aggression until the United States of America will have controlled all the sources of economic power and laid the beginning of World State, which would be tyrannical at first and later establish international peace and liberal government.

 Very much as if he had felt called upon to go his predecessors in the series one better, Dr. Crookshank has written a book of a highly revolutionary character. True or false, it has vast anthropological, medical, biological and social significance, for the reason that Dr. Crookshank's eminence in his profession is such that his theories cannot be ignored, but must neither be accepted in part or in toto nor refused in part or in toto.

 White, Black, and Yellow Races. 

As a matter of general interest, it is probably important first to report that the book not only completely demolishes the notorious Lothrop-Stoddard-Madison theory of the superiority of the "Nordic blonds" but also turns the tables on the "Nordic" contenders with a vengeance. The smooth, dry, white, or sallow skin, straight, blond hair egg shaped cranial vaults and brachycephalic skulls which the Messrs. Stoddard and Grant would have us believe set the "Nordic" apart as superior being are really, according to Dr Crookshank, the stigmata of imbecility. Indeed, he quotes Dr. Reginald Langdon-Down and other members of the British Royal Society of Medicine in support of his contention that the only observed and recorded imbeciles have invariably revealed some of those identifying characteristics. There have been no recorded cases of Jewish imbeciles derived from unmixed Semitic stock. Atavism and degeneracy in the Semitic race, he contends, takes another form. That these men have no prepossessions or prejudices in the matter is obvious from the fact that they are themselves "Nordic."

 The hypotheses established by Dr. Crookshank and bulwarked by an impressive array of biological data are these:—There are three irreducible stocks in the human race—the white, black, and yellow. These are offshoots from three different stocks of primates, which also separately gave off the three different types of the great ape—the chimpanzee, the gorilla, and the orang-utan. The white race corresponds to and is descended from the same stock as the chimpanzee; the black race and the gorilla are from the same stock, and the yellow race is blood cousin to the orang-utan. The chimpanzee-white stock is highest in the scale of development: the gorilla-black stock is the lowest, and the orang-utan-yellow is intermediary. The chimpanzee-white stock includes the Semitic races and the so-called Indo-Aryans and so-called Caucasians. The Gorilla-black stock includes the negroes, bushmen, and Hottentots. The orang-utan-yellow stock includes the Chinese peoples, Siberians, Japanese, Eskimos, Malays, and Southern Mongols; and the North and South American Indians.

 The Mongol Type.

 The methods whereby he arrived at these conclusions are curious and intricate. In the first place, Robert Chambers, a precursor of Darwin, in 1844 had separated the human species into three divisions in a scale of development, putting the white race first, the yellow second, and the black third. Like the Fundamentalists, Chambers believed that the three races had derived from one primary human stock, but, unlike those who trace the three divisions back to the sons of Noah, he believed that the white race had developed through stages still represented by the yellow and black races. Chambers' monophyletic theory of the origins of the human race was outmoded, but in supporting it he compared the black race to the Caucasian foetus, the yellow race to the new-born infant and the white race to adult man, but, more importantly, he alleged that "parents too nearly related tend to produce offspring of the Mongolian type—that is, persons who in maturity still are a kind of children."

 The second factor in Dr. Crookshank's deductions was the discovery by Dr. Langdon-Down, a distinguished physician in London Hospital, that the majority of congenital idiots which had come under his observation possessed marked resemblances to racial Mongols. Dr. Langdon-Down's minute description of the Mongol type of imbecile gave currency to the descriptive "'Mongol imbecile" which is employed in hospitals for children and in asylums.

 The next point in Dr. Crookshank's deductions was his own observation of the high frequency among the English, French, and other peoples of Western Europe of persons who display the physical characteristics of the Mongolian races. "Adult Mongoloids are in England more numerous than might be thought," he writes, "and many sub-types may be distinguished. Roughly speaking, there is a high and a low grade. The low-grade individuals, who have almost always some simian stigmata rank among life's failures. A criminal doctor, a bankrupt parson or a more than commonly knavish solicitor is not infrequently of this class. The women are ineffectual persons, even in vice. Superficially attractive when young, after middle life they become myxoedematous, while their male homologues degenerate into paunchiness. Many such may be even in the shabby-genteel suburbs and in the country courts. Micawber was one of them and Dickens' description with Phiz's etchings serve well to illustrate one kind thereof. And again: "Mongoloids of the higher grade sometimes achieve marked success on the stage, in the professions, and even in Parliament. But they remain, in a very real sense, a race apart. For better or for worse, they are not quite as other men or women around them. They are, indeed, Mongols expatriate." A Mongoloid of the higher grade, according to Dr. Crookshank, is Clemenceau, accurately called "le vieux Tartar," who, upon his retirement from political life, appropriately devoted himself to the writing of Buddhist plays.

 Homologies Between Apes and Man.

 With these data in mind, Dr. Crookshank began to make comparative studies of the homologies between the three great apes and man. These homoiogies turned out to be not only morphologically significant, but also significant psychologically, physiologically, and functionally. Most important, perhaps, was his finding in regard to posture. The Mongolians in sitting down naturally arrange their lower limbs horizontally in the Buddha or hieractic position, one hand on a thigh and the other in the lap. The orang-utans alone amongst apes naturally place themselves in the Buddha or hieratic position and none other. The members of the black division of humanity arrange their lower limbs vertically, with knees brought together under the chin and spine curved, with the arms either resting on the knees or clasped around the knees. The only difference between the black and white divisions of humanity in the natural adoption of these postures is that with the blacks the ischial tuberosities rest on the ground, while with the others (commonly seen among the Polynesians, Egyptians, and the natives of India) the buttocks do not rest on the ground, and the individual is said to squat on his heels or on his hams. The gorilla commonly adopts the black variant of the vertical disposition of the lower limbs, while the chimpanzee commonly adopts the white variant.

 Other homologies traced minutely by Dr. Crookshank involve hand-markings and gestures as well as skeletonal and facial characteristics. They are too numerous to be taken up here: but important among them is the fact that the Mongols, the Mongolian imbeciles, and the Mongoloids usually display instead of a distinct "life line" and a distinct "head line" (in the phraseology of the palmists) one traverse line only and that among the great anthropoid apes this single transverse line is found in only one—the orang-utan. 

A Theory of Atavism. 

The next important discovery of Dr. Crookshank was that:— "Frequent among the white races generally there is a mental disorder, associated with certain marked physical characteristics, that occupies a middle place between acquired insanity and congenital imbecility and is known as dementia praecox. The persons so afflicted, if deprived of chairs or permitted to squat upon the ground, squat not as orang-utans or Mongols, but as chimpanzees. 

"But, if compelled to sit upon benches or chairs, the chimpanzee attitude becomes at once converted into what Dr. Steen has called the 'ancient Egyptian attitude.' It is interesting to note that, as a rule, in the apes, and in the dements, the arm arrangement (as sometimes in the Egyptian statues) is one of rigid symmetry. Yet, when the Egyptian artists desired to convey the idea of power or intelligence and a symmetrical disposition was featured, that is seen to say when a king is represented on a throne holding a sceptre in a semi-pronated right hand and an orb in a fully supinated right hand. Symmetry of disposition in respect to the arms, we must recognise as correlated with an arrest of mental activity. We see it in death, in idiocy, in senility and among the apes."

 From all this Dr. Crookshank proceeds to account for the frequent presence of "Mongolian imbeciles," and Mongoloids among the peoples of Western Europe on the theory that they are atavistic or reversionary offspring of debilitated or exhausted parents in whom can be traced an orang-mongol ancestry. The individuals afflicted with dementia praecox, on the other hand, are atavistic or reversionary offspring of chimpanzee white, or gorilla-black ancestry. However it may be said that there is no evidence that pure Semites ever gave birth to "Mongols, " and cases of Mongolian imbecility "are not seen among the blacks and are not known to occur among the Aryan populations of Asia, or even among the Arabs and pure Jews. They do occur, on the other hand, among those 'white' people, so generally spoken of as Nordic as Alpine, and as Mediterranean."

 By his placing this classification of white people within quotation marks it will be seen that Dr. Crookshank does not subscribe to a very general ethnic classification. Throughout his book he identifies the white race with the Semites: —"White—I am tempted to say Semitic, "what may be called the Semitic or Aryan variant," and "most profitably we may reduce the present and part racial types to three: Semite, Mongol, and negro. They are reflected for us in the chimpanzee, the orang, and the gorilla." In another place he says that if we are to reject the evidential value of the homologies between "the Semite and the chimpanzee, the Mongol and the orang, the negro and the gorilla . . . . we may as well adopt at once the hypothesis of belief of a creative origin, and a later dispersal into Semitic or 'white,' Hamitic, or black, and Japhetic, or yellow races." 

New Biological Classifications.

 Of the three great apes. Dr. Crookshank tells us that the chimpanzee is the most intelligent. The apes also have distinguishing marks of temperament, which is reflected in their faces, and also in the three faces of mankind. These three faces are described by Linnaeus as—

Homo Europaeus, Levis, argustus, inventor, regitur ritibus.

[The European man, light, clever, inventor, is governed by rituals.]

 Homo Asiaticus, Severus, fastuosus, avarus, regitur opiniouibus.

[The Asiatic man, Severus, is proud, avaricious, and governed by his opinions.]

 Homo Afer, Vafer, segnis, negligens regular arbitrio.

[A lazy, lazy man, neglectful of regular judgment.]

 "We can take our stand at Charing Cross," writes Dr. Crookshank among his interesting generalisations, "and can see these three faces of mankind born by native Londoners; we can visit our public asylums and see them in degraded form, and we can, at the Zoo and the Natural History Museum, see them caricatured by the noisy, mischievous and lascivious chimpanzee, the dignified, philosophic and self-sufficient orang, and the slow, cunning and brutal gorilla.

 "Everywhere among us do these types segregate out, seeking their appropriate milieu. Homer Afer find partners in the jazz-loving women of the night clubs; Homo Europaeus (regitur ritibus), is seen participating with his kind in social and religious ceremony at the Ritz and the Cathedral; and Homo Asiaticus, after predency among the elder statesmen, may retire to semi-monastic seclusion and write Buddhist plays.

 "The 'white' Hottentot Venus from the Midi still plies her trade in Soho; the 'ex-service man ' in the gutter exposes his frowsy cap for an obulus in the very attitude of the Hindu fakir and the asylum dement; in garrets at Chelsea clever people squat on cushions in a fashion that can be forecast from an examination of their heads, their eyes, their ears, their hands, and their ideas. . . .

 "Man because what he now is when he learned to set and really think how to act, and the ways in which men think are still indicated by the ways in which they sit when they think."

 It will be seen that Dr. Crookshank has devised not only an entirely new biological classification of the human race, but has also indicated new classifications of imbeciles, misfits, dements, and "queer" people of exceptional endowments and so has established a new scheme for classifying human ideas.

Advertiser (Adelaide, SA ),  1924, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article43247023

THE ASIATIC MENACE.

 "The Rising Tide of Color Against White-World Supremacy." By Lothrop Stoddard, A.M., Ph.D. with an introduction by Madison Grant. 

That the utmost anxiety is felt in the United States concerning the growing strength of Japan, has been very evident of recent years. The thesis of the author of this book, who is a distinguished graduate of Harvard University, and the author of several well-known books on international subjects, is that the white supremacy of the world is in danger, and that the threat of the colored races is a very real one. Under these circumstances, one would imagine that Americans, who, to a large extent, appear to share his fears, would show more practical sympathy with Great Britain in the difficulties she is encountering in respect to the government of Egypt, India, and Mesopotamia, to say nothing of the complications which have arisen in regard to former Turkish possessions nearer Constantinople. America had much to say concerning the persecutions of the Armenians, but she has done little or nothing to assist in their protection. Mr. Madison Grant, who writes the introduction to the present volume, is also a man of standing in America, and one of the books he has written is significantly entitled "The Passing of the Great Races."

 "More than a decade ago," says Mr. Stoddard, "I became convinced that the keynote of 20th century world politics would be the relations between the primary races of mankind." He refers to the fact that before the great war broke out, he wrote of the coming "conflict of color," and declared that great communities like the United States of America, the South African Confederation, and Australasia, regarded the color question as the gravest problem of the future. The frightful weakening of the white world during the war, he fears, has opened up revolutionary, even cataclysmic possibilities. He believes, however, that colored triumphs of arms subjugating white lands are even "less to be dreaded than more enduring conquests, like migrations, which would swamp whole populations and turn countries, now white, into colored men's lands irretrievably lost to the world." He considers that a candid discussion of the issues raised should be helpful at this juncture.

 Mr. Grant, in his introduction, summarises the biological and historical background of the subject. "To some," he says, "this book may seem unduly alarming, while others as the thread of logic unrolls may recoil from the logic of the deductions." If the predictions of Mr. Stoddard's book seem far-fetched, Mr. Grant reminds Americans, one has but to consider that four times since the fall of Rome has Asia conquered to the very confines of Nordic Europe. The backbone of Western civilisation, he asserts, is racially Nordic, and if this great race, with its capacity for leadership and fighting, should ultimately pass, with it would pass that which we call civilisation. As a safeguard he calls on the Nordic races to "strike off the shackles of an inveterate altruism, discard the vain phantom of internationalism, and reassert the pride of race and the right of merit to rule."

 The great hope of the future in America, continues Mr. Grant, lies in the realisation of the working class that competition of the Nordic with the alien is fatal, whether the latter be the lowly immigrant from southern or eastern Europe, or the more obviously dangerous Oriental, against whose standards of living the white man cannot compete.

 "We must look to such of our people— our farmers and artisans—as are still of American blood to recognise and meet this danger. Our present condition is the result of following the leadership of idealists and philanthropic doctrinaires, aided and abetted by the perfectly understandable demand of our captains of industry for cheap labor. Now that Asia in the guise of Bolshevism with Semitic leadership and Chinese executioners, is organising an assault upon Western Europe, the new States —Slavic-Alpine in race, with little Nordic blood —may prove to be not frontier guards of Western Europe, but vanguards of Asia in Central Europe. None of the earlier Alpine States have held firm against Asia, and it is more than doubtful whether Poland, Bohemia, Roumania, and Jugo-Slavia can face the danger successfully, now that they have been deprived of the Nordic ruling classes through democratic institutions. Democratic ideals among a homogeneous population of Nordic blood, as in England and America, are one thing, but it is quite another for the white man to share his blood with, or entrust his ideals to, brown, yellow, black, or red men. This is suicide pure and simple, and the first victim of this amazing folly will be the white man himself."

 Mr Stoddard is very much in earnest in his statement of the case for serious thought and resolute action. He divides his book into three parts—The Rising Tide of Color, the Ebbing Tide of White, and the Deluge on the Dikes—and he provides a copious index. Added interest is lent to the book by his quotation of the arguments in favor of a White Australia. He quotes Professor C. H. Pearson, well known in Australia over 30 years ago, and other trenchant writers. He also reproduces assertions by Asiatic and other colored writers. Professor Ryntaro Nagai (Japan) before the war wrote:— "The world was not made for the white races, but for the other races as well. In Australia, South Africa, Canada, and the United States there are vast tracts of unoccupied territory." Achmet Abdullah, an English-educated Afghan, shortly before the European war, inveighed against "racial prejudice, that cowardly, wretched caste-mark of the European, and the American, the world over," and predicted "a struggle between Asia, all Asia, against Europe and America. . . . An invasion of a new Attila and Tamerlane, who will use rifles and bullets, instead of lances and spears." The impassioned Afghan proceeds:—"You are deaf to the voice of reason and fairness, and so you must be taught with the whirring swish of the sword that is red."

 When the great war broke out, says Mr. Stoddard, '"through the bazaars of Asia ran the sibilant whisper, 'The East will see the West to bed.' The chorus of mingled exultation, hate, and scorn sounded from every portion of the colored world. Chinese scholars, Japanese professors, Hindu pundits. Turkish journalists, and Afro-American editors, one and all voiced drastic criticisms of white civilisation, and hailed the war as a well-merited Nemesis on white arrogance and greed." He quotes copious extracts from writings to prove his assertion. He points to the threatened anarchy in Egypt, and the unrest in India, despite "the fairness, honesty and general efficiency" of English rule, Mr. Stoddard lays stress also on the onward march of Islamism in Africa, and the growing sense of negro race "solidarity,'' but asserts that the real danger to white control of Africa lies not in brown attack or black revolt, but in possible white weakness, through chronic discord within the white world itself. The same remark is made in regard to Latin America, where with unity "white victory is sure."

 Mr. Stoddand draws from Professor Pearson many arguments concerning the adaptability of the Chinese and their capacity to work hard and live frugally. He quotes Professor Ross as saying that under good conditions the white man can beat the yellow man in turning out work, but under bad conditions the Chinese can beat the white man, because he can better endure spoiled food, poor clothing, foul air, noise, heat, dirt, discomfort, and microbes. Reilly can '"out-do"' Ah San, but Ah San can "under-live" Reilly. Mr. Stoddard tells of the startling growth of the Japanese in California and declares "the fruitfulness of the Japanese brides is almost uncanny." First come the men, then the picture brides, then the families. Two children of Japanese parentage are born in some districts of California for every white child! "And let not Europe, the white brood land, the heart of the white world, think itself immune," he cries. Mr. Stoddard repeats with enthusiasm the "White Australia" slogan, which "is not a political theory, but a gospel" He urges that some sort of provisional understanding should be arrived at between the white world and the renascent Asia. "Unless some such understanding is reached," he fears, "the world will drift into a gigantic race war." He also desires to limit the migration of lower human types (whites) into the United States, as "such migrations upset standards, sterilise better stocks, increase low types, and compromise national fitness more than war, revolutions, or native deterioration. "Such are the things which simply must be done if we are to get through the next few decades without convulsions which may render impossible the white world's recovery."

Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1931), Saturday 16 April 1921,

CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM "HAVE BOTH FAILED''

 NOTED AMERICAN STATES HIS VIEWS

 Both Christianity and Communism had failed to solve modern man's problems, said Professor Clyde Kluckhohn at Armidale.

 Professor Kluchhohn, who is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Russian Research Centre at Harvard University, is visiting Australia to give the Dyason lectures for 1952.

He spoke on "Ways of Life in Conflict" to a meeting arranged at the Teachers' College by the Armidale branch of the Institute of International Affairs.

Professor Kluckhohn said that the Communist and Jewish-Christian conceptions of human nature had been incomplete and inaccurate. They had under- and over-estimated their materials and so their theories had not been workable. Each had failed in its highest aspirations.

 Professor Kluckhohn said he thought, however, there were good reasons for believing that the ideas which could build a new and better way of life for all humanity would come primarily from the West.

 "I do not think for a minute that the resources of Western thought are exhausted,'' he said. "They are merely, at present, too split and diversified.

"But our diversity is our strength as well as our weakness of the moment. Out of its many strands can come a more true and more powerful conception of that human nature upon which all ways of life must be erected."

 Communism or other forms of totalitarianism would unquestionably possess this earth unless we could quickly make our thinking right, eliminating some of the more glaring inconsistencies between scientific knowledge and popular thought, Professor Kluckhohn added. There was a  good chance a new ideological order could be built before it was too late.

 The beliefs that bound the West should not, however, be allowed to remain so implicit and unformulated and so backward-looking. We would lose the cold war and a possible hot war if we continued to fight with the technology of 1952, but with the ideas of 1852.

The fact that Communist ideology was itself terribly dated and scientifically unacceptable did not make it less threatening to the Democracies as a secular religion unless and until we could oppose to it a formulation that was equally impressive, equally coherent internally, but more soundly founded upon the facts of external and human nature.

 Professor Kluckhohn said he believed the dream of an eventual world order was not just a phantasy.

 "As a matter of fact," he said, "if one looks below the surface of current controversies , one can detect many agreements.

 "I have examined carefully certain utterances by Senator Robert Taft and Comrade Joseph Stalin in which each stated what he wanted for his people. There was amazing similarity, point by point. The disagreements were over the means by which these ends were to be attained. 

"Don't misunderstand me— I know that millions have perished in human history in quarrels over means. Nevertheless it remains important that men and women over the surface of this earth want pretty much the same, simple things — and their leaders know it.

 "Looking at it in anthropological perspective, the broad similarities are far more distinctive and striking than the differences.

 "Even in theory, the convergences between Marxism and Western social science are far greater than either side is willing to admit publicly these days."

 Dissatisfaction In Russia.

 Professor Kluckhohn spoke of the possibility of an uprising in Russia. Dissatisfaction created by the gap between expectation and reality was general throughout Soviet society, he said.

 The Russian people were dissatisfied with their low standard of living, with the power of the police, with the official intolerance of religion and with the lack of popular participation in Government.

 The instabilities of the govemmental system were, however, the only ones that could set off a major crisis under anything like the present conditions.

 The dissatisfactions could play an important part once there was an open struggle for power at the top. Then each conflicting group would bid for popular support to defeat its rivals.

 Only under these circumstances would the disaffection, which was undoubtedly already widespread, really count.

 "When, however, history offers to the Russian citizen the possibility of an alternative course which better suits his aspirations, it is altogether likely that he will seize it," Professor Kluckhohn declared.

 "Millions did even under the unpromising circumstances of German invasion."

 The Soviet way of life; Professor Kluckhohn added, was inherently unstable because it denied in practice the deepest human aspirations, because it was based on a false conception of human nature, because it throttled free scientific inquiry, and because the unity it purported to offer had disintegrated intellectually and had always been distorted in application.

 Communist philosophy, being the culmination of a long stream of thought leading from Plato to Hegel and other continental thinkers, placed a higher value on equality than on liberty. 

 It allowed restraints on personal liberty, provided these restraints were applicable to all equally. The central concept was what was good for society, not a concept of individual fulfilment or individual morality.

 The Anglo-American line on the other hand placed liberty higher than equality. It had traditionally restrained the legislature and the institutions rather than the individual. It had surrounded the individual with safeguards such as appeared, for example, in the Bill of Rights. These conceptions traced from the Stoic philosophers and from the notion proclaimed by 17th and 18th century English-speaking theologians that man's conscience required him to accept personal responsibility for his acts as a citizen.

 Bogus Promises

"From this situation arises the challenge of the Communist way of life to ours," said Professor Kluckhohn. "All the peoples of the world outside the Soviet orbit are to a greater or lesser degree confused as to what is a right way of thinking and a desirable way of living.

 "Despite the fact that the Heroic Age of Soviet Communism is over in its homeland, the slogans still have some pull among those who have not experienced the doubtful benefits of living under a police state regime. 

"The promises, however bogus, of orderly life and unity of thought have an unhealthy appeal for the disadvantaged, the frightened, the bewildered the worn out with struggle and disillusionment.

 "And not solely for these. Many Communists in France Italy, India, Africa and other parts of the world are genuine idealists in a way which we of the Anglo-Saxon tradition were once the real revolutionary idealists of the world.

 "The idealism of Communists outside Russia is misplaced and naive; naive because of what has actually gone on in all countries where Communism has been put into practice. Misplaced because Marxism as a system of thought has disintegrated.

 "Nevertheless the humanitarian aspirations of the old Marxism still exert a powerful appeal. And intellectual idealists continue to believe that they have in the worldly religion of Communism an answer to the meaningless chaos and confusion that they have seen. They are stirred by the comprehensiveness and explicitness of the scheme.

 "Hence men and women are both pushed towards Communism by fright and bewilderment and pulled to it by motives that can only be described honestly as idealistic."

 "Something Wrong Somewhere."

 In the discussion that followed Professor Kluckhohn's lecture, Dean M. K. Jones said he felt it was man, not Christianity, that had failed. Man had misinterpreted Christianity.

 Professor Kluckhohn replied: "I grant you that true Christianity has not been applied yet. You say it is man, not Christianity, that has failed. Yes, that may be so, but it seems that if after 2000 years Christianity has been applied only by a very, very few select souls, then there must be a huge gap between the human material and the lofty ethic. There is something: wrong somewhere.

 "It seems perfectly clear that Christianity is not going to save us in our present crisis. If it does, it will do so only after the worst holocaust the world has ever seen. As an anthropologist, I can't get around that one. 

"It is my unhappy conclusion that the present Christian Churches are not going to bring order to the diverse cultures of the world.

 ''The Churches not only want to teach heathens the gospel, but they want to destroy the heathen's way of life root and branch. I cannot see that this will work.

 "I am forced by historical fact to the conclusion that, despite the nobility of the four gospels, no peoples known to history have been as murderous and destructive as Christian peoples have been."

 Chairman of the meeting was Mr. E. W. Dunlop, president of the Armidale branch of the Institute for International Affairs. A vote of thanks to Dr. Kluckhohn was moved by Dr. R. B. Austin and Mr. E. J. Tapp.

Uralla Times (NSW ), 11 September 1952  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article175993992

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM.

 [By Rev. A.C. SUTHERLAND, M.M., B.D.]

The dullest eye among us cannot but discern the existence everywhere of a social disunion of the same kind as that which alarmed St. Paul at Corinth, and against which he so powerfully expostulated and argued, The schism in the Corinthian Church was something quite distinct from party spirit, in which men range themselves under special leaders to give effect to special views, without in any way endangering organic unity. In such a conflict the " base and the honorable," to quote Isaiah, the noble and the peasant, the rich man and the poor, may serve under the same banner. But matters assume a very different complexion when the cause of disunion is found to be, not differences between man and man in the exercise of their reason, but differences between orders, ranks, classes as such. Obviously the struggle in this case will be more terrible, more war to the death, than in the other. St. Paul felt this, and put forth his full strength to avert the calamity.

 At Corinth this disunion, this war of classes arose, because on the one hand the great in gifts, in money, in authority, were contemptuous to those who had no genius, no place or office ; and on the other these last felt that as matters stood they did not belong to the body, had none of its privileges ; that, in short, for them there was no body.

 Now what is the position of our civilisation at this moment ? The democracy has secured after a hard struggle its political emancipation —its right to govern itself. But as usual the visions of regeneration, of peace and plenty, have not been realised. Reform Bills have not filled all our larders, have not rid the land of misery, of want, oppression, and injustice. From the hovel of the farm laborer, and from the foul lanes of our great cities is heard a cry like the cry from the clay pits of Egypt. Of old the remedy was supposed to lie in the abolition of privilege; now the remedy is sought for in making the Government do the work now done by our merchants, manufacturers, farmers, butchers, and costermongers. Not long since men thought they were serving humanity by pulling the strong teeth of the central power, but now they are to be sharpened. Now this tremendous change of feeling is not without reason. No one is quite satisfied with the existing state of society—not the wage-receiver, not the capitalist, for he is not without his anxieties in presence of the mutterings of discontent heard on every side. Listen to the indictment which the great founder of modern socialism, Karl Marx, brings against society as now constituted. " Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labor are brought about at the cost of the individual laborer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over and exploitation of the producers; they mutilate the laborer into fragments of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labor process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labor process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness ; they transform his lifetime into working-time, and drag his wife and child under the wheels of the Juggernaut of Capital. . . . . The law, finally, that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation; this law rivets the laborer to capital more firmly than did the wedges of Vulcan Prometheus to the rocks. It establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with an accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is therefore at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole."

 Now in this powerful and lurid description of the laboring classes there is enough of truth to sting and to make us uneasy; but it is a manifest exaggeration, and as applied to labor as a whole even false. Still when one calls to mind the fact that in a city like Glasgow some 40 per cent. of the population live in dwellings of one room, and tries to imagine what is implied in that fact, we shall not be surprised that the system under which it is possible should be denounced by earnest men, who seek to raise the fallen and let the sunshine in to their dark haunts. Socialism there draws its strength from thwarted aspirations, and from the seething mass of human misery, bodily and mental, whose presence chills our enjoyments at the feast of civilisation.

 I am not going to trouble you with a definition of Socialism. That would not help us much. Our working classes have secured their political rights, political equality, and power to vote, none making them afraid. They have also won at a great price the right to combine for their own protection against the power of capital, and so have razed to the ground much of its former tyranny and even cruelty. Then education, cheap literature, public discussion in the press and on the platform, have awakened in the minds of our toilers new desires, new tastes, a higher sense of comfort and refinement. But, toil as they may, they feel that the vast majority are doomed to be shut out from the sweetness, culture, and fullness of life, which the more fortunate few have within their reach. So they are in revolt, as is too manifest, against the existing social relations, political and spiritual; and the remedy is Socialism. The laborer feels that much of his labor goes to feed and clothe those who don't labor in his sense, or indeed in any sense. Thus he is not only hungry, badly clothed, badly housed, but what is more intolerable he knows or believes that his misery is due not to the nature of things, but to downright injustice. He has been taught that it is all a question of supply and demand, of the strong and energetic against the weak and listless. So the laborer looks to the strong hand of the State to help him in his need. He calls upon the State to redress social inequalities, as it has already redressed political inequalities. This is to be effected by making land and capital the property of the community, thus sweeping away profit, interest, rent, leaving to the individual only what he actually earns by hand or head. A man under this regime might possess a razor to shave, but not a plough or a spinning-wheel— these two being instruments of production.

 This view of social life is now an actual force in our modern world, and a very potent force. Even where it is not accepted it is influential and operative. It has passed beyond the stage of neglect and ridicule, and has reached the field of serious conflict. In its ranks are to be found men of profound speculative grasp, of creative genius, and of warm piety. Statesmen are advocating its claims in the Senate, poets are insinuating its doctrines in melodious verse, and it is no longer a stranger even in great universities. It has produced a literature great in quantity and brilliant in quality. It has its newspapers and periodicals in abundance. Whatever we may think of its soundness or practicability it cannot be ignored, either by the Church or the State. Many good men hold it is true that the Church as a spiritual agency should stand aloof from politics. But Presbyterianism has from the first striven to influence and mould the whole national life, and not without success. We shall be unworthy of our history if we retire to our spiritual homes and let the issue be decided without us.

  With regard to the relation of Christianity and Socialism, they have much in common. To disown Adam Smith is not of necessity to disown Christ, though by the way Adam Smith does not teach absolute competition, but competition conditioned by justice between man and man, which justice the State is to enforce Christianity then in my opinion has nothing but blessings to bestow on socialism, in so far as it is in the first place an expression of intense sympathy with the hard and cheerless lot of vast numbers of those who do the drudgery work of the world, and in no far as it is a protest against those who lie upon beds of ivory, drink wine in bowls, but are not grieved for the afflictions of Joseph. The whole Bible is one long demand for justice to the poor and the needy, especially when they are the victims of social arrangements. The young lion is roaring for his prey, and much of that roar the gospel does not condemn but welcomes, and gives due warning to those who would in their strength and self-indulgence or ambition put him off with pleasant words. Socialism does well in thundering in the ears of Dives that there is a Lazarus outside his palace gates to whom the law of supply and demand does not apply and ought not to be applied, but who has a claim of a quite different kind. The gospel is distinctly, and indeed in an awful way, upon the side of Lazarus. It tacitly enforces that a man may fall into a condition so terrible as to make the ministration of the brute creation a grateful service, through not fault of his own, neither through idleness, nor intemperance, nor want of foresight, nor thrift, but simply through the visitation of God, or through circumstances which hold him in their strong meshes. Many comfortable people imagine that all misery is in some form sin. Socialism points out with power that the sin often lies at the door, not of the famishing wretch, but at a door much more respectable and higher up the street. The gospel seeks to abolish hunger and nakedness and misery, stuntedness of soul and of body, and so far as Socialism has this end we can only wish it God speed, and take our share in the work of leading men from the arid deserts into a land flowing with milk and honey.

 But, secondly, Socialism is in the same ranks with Christianity when it loudly protests against a pessimistic and fatalistic acquiescence in wretchedness from whatever cause "Whatever is is best," is a maxim hateful to Isaiah and Karl Marx alike. In so far as Socialism preaches hope for humanity it forsakes paganism and appropriates the spirit of Christ. Every Christian should welcome the energy with which it insists on the possibility of cleansing our human styes, of clothing naked backs, and of filling empty stomachs and still more empty souls.

 Thirdly, Socialism is Christian in so far as it asserts that the weal of the individual is contingent on the weal of the society. Especially valuable is the teaching of the Old Testament in this connection, and should be carefully studied by us all. Under the ancient dispensation the salvation of the individual was scarcely possible even in thought, apart from the salvation of the nation. Christianity has of course modified and purified that doctrine, but has not destroyed it; and Carlyle taught us long ago that if we don't recognise our brother by sharing our wine and milk and oil with him he will prove his brotherhood with us by compelling us to share with him his cholera and typhus.

 Fourthly, Socialism is Christian in its attacks on the principles underlying the maxim —" May I not do what I will with my own ?" I quote tho words not in the sense in which they were used by Christ as a defence of generosity in giving another more than he had earned. Socialism demands that this "my own" give an account—how did it come? what share have others in it? have their claims been recognised? is its enjoyment the misery of others? its glory their shame? People dare not now speak on this point as they did even a quarter of a century ago. I can myself remember a respected county gentleman saying on the hustings, in response to some heckling land reformer, that when the leases of his tenants should expire he had a perfect moral as well as legal right to turn them all out and plant his fields with furze. Law has already invaded his legal right, and public opinion, in the formation of which Socialism has had no mean influence, has made the moral right a very shadowy one. The Socialist in this case wears a portion of the mantle of Moses and St. James. Both put very practical limits on this "my own" principle. Both sought to check its tendency to excessive accumulation and to irresponsible use. The law of inheritance, the law of interest, the Sabbatic year of the jubilee, the law of pledges, take great liberties with private property. There laws are not binding on us, and 'twere folly to imitate them. I may say here that the land question is a moral question, and not merely an economic or political one. Scotch crofters and the slums of Edinburgh, where I labored for some time, and where I have seen 143 people living under the same roof, some at them down in the bowels of the earth, and others familiar with the whistlings of the east wind at an elevation which would make a rook giddy, lead me to hold that speculation in land in immoral, and is the cause of immorality. The recent revelations in Melbourne has confirmed the faith of my youth. Let us have a jubilee of some kind to check this disastrous trafficking with a view to a gain which has not really been earned, and which has corrupted many not ignoble men. The Socialist has drawn attention to St James, and though Luther called his letter one of straw, the madness of the prophet has been rebuked by the Socialistic ass, in this case more familiar with the angel of God than the leader of the Reformation. The teaching of the New Testament on health has not been so thoroughly assimilated by the Christian Church as much of the rest of its teaching. Compare the feeling of men in general with respect to covetousness and intemperance. Does that feeling reflect the teaching of Christ and His apostles. I much doubt. We shall have good cause to thank Socialists if they lead us to give the same prominence as the New Testament to the horror and mischievousness of the sin which has possession of its sphere.

 It is with feelings of regret that after having marched so far under the banner of Socialism one finds himself constrained to fall out of the ranks and become a critic with doubts in his mind rather than an unquestioning follower. I am afraid that taken as a whole, though not without earnest exceptions, popular Socialism is not in sympathy with Christianity, either in its methods or its motives. True! what goes under the name of Christian Socialism, so far from denying Christianity, affirms that it is the ripe fruit of Christianity; that only as Socialism becomes established can the redemption of Christ have free course and be glorified among men. Much of what may be said will not apply to the Christian Socialist. Significantly enough the hardest blows the Christian Socialist gets in the way of argument and ridicule come from Socialists and not from so-called individualists. It is too manifest that the great majority of Socialists are not only opposed to Christianity, but are inspired with a fanatical zeal in seeking to erase it from among men. One says "I will relate how I left the Church and became a Socialist. I discovered that my belief gave me never anything to eat. With five hungry children about me this argument was conclusive." Hear what another says;—" To suppress religion which promises an illusory happiness is to establish the claims of real happiness, for to demonstrate the non-existence of these illusions tends toward suppressing a state of things which requires illusions for maintaining its own existence."—(Benoit Malon.) The name doctrine is graphically put by George Eliot in the mouth of Felix Holt:—" They'll supply us with a religion, like everything else, and get a profit on it; they'll give us plenty of heaven —we may have land there. That is the sort of religion they like —a religion that gives a working man heaven and nothing else. But we'll offer to change with them. Well give them back some of their heaven, and take it out in something for us and our children in this world"—a social organisation of labor, resting on materialism, with no room for God or worship, and whose promised land is temporal prosperity at as little personal toil as possible, and with no care. But further, if Christianity is offensive to the intellectual conclusions of the prevailing Socialism, if it furnishes no bread for hungry stomach, it is also a stumbling-block to the moral sense of its leading advocates. They tell us that the worship of Ceres or Bacchus could not be more repugnant to the feelings of the early Christians than Christianity is in our time to those who look for salvation to the transfer of capital from the individual to the State Parodying one of our Lord's fundamental utterances they say ye cannot serve "God" and humanity. The only hopeful thing about this coarse materialism is that its acceptance by men, at least not for long, is impossible. No Socialism can rid our life of accident, of pain, of sin, of remorse, and fatalism does not speak to the heart in its captivity. Human nature, we may be sure, though it may be thrown into revolt and confusion for the moment, will ever find its hope in the cross.

 But even where Socialism is not a denial of Christianity and its spiritual postulates, but the reverse, it seems to me that in its very nature it is opposed to the spirit of Christ. Let me present a brief discussion and defence of this somewhat strong statement. 1. Socialism would seem to revive the conditions of the ancient world which were swept away, in measure at least, by His gospel. In paganism the individual had to a great extent no rights as against the State, especially no rights so far as the free expression of his inner life was concerned. Like nature it was careful of the type, but allowed the individual to wither. But it is of more importance to call to mind that Judaism, with its minute and elaborate regulation of the whole, or at any rate a great part of a man's life, became an intolerable burden to the noblest minds among its children. At every point they were met with rule this and rule that, so that spontaneity of service was impossible, making life grievous to the conscientious, and leading those who were otherwise to a perfunctory and casuistical formalism. It is of course not denied but asserted that this severe and minute discipline imposed upon men from a central source had its uses, and issued in characters of the highest order, in all spheres of human life, public and private, civil and religious, industrial and military. But it was not and could not be final. It was for the schoolboy and not for the mature man. Nor is it forgotten that it dealt largely with matters which Socialism ignores ; that it does not give the same prominence to food and clothing, shelter and amusement, that Socialism does. It sought its end by regulation from without—so does Socialism. It failed, and could not but fail, when the fulness of time came and men ceased to be children, or soldiers merely accustomed to take orders from their superiors. It is significant that Socialists see in the army a model of what life should be generally. Our soldiers are relieved from all care regarding their daily bread, their tailor's bill, and their rents. This discipline gives us men ready to dare anything or go anywhere. Heroism, in short, is the child of the drill-sergeant and a national commissariat. A similar regime applied to life generally would secure similar desirable results. But would it? I don't wait to point out that no army can, like a democracy, be a government for the army and by the army. If it were I venture to say that the first ballot would dissolve every army in Europe, and its members would prefer the risk of starvation and of a patched coat with a free life to the comfort which necessitates the subjection of the will and intellect to regulations from without. Desertion even is not uncommon, not only on the part of the forced conscript, and in the Socialistic army we should be all forced conscripts, but even on the part of the volunteer. Now, I admit that drill and the negation of spontaniety which it involves develops strength of character along certain lines, but does not do so along all the lines of our humanity. But as Christ came to make us perfect this regimentalism cannot be his method, as indeed it is not. To reach his end, personal freedom, personal responsibility, contact with risk of loss, of danger, of poverty, are essential. Not that he makes liberty an end in itself, but rather a means toward attaining the perfection of our being, and of subduing our circumstances to aid us and not to hinder us in this supreme object. Socialism is a beggarly element in what pertains to the higher things of the spirit.

 But Socialism sins in another way against the Gospel of Christ. It practically denies a difference of faculty in men, and so explains our social inequalities to be the result of arbitrary injustice. All men are brethren in Christ. True, but as in nature one star differs from another in glory, and that by the decree of the Almighty, so there is a brother of low degree and a brother of higher degree—one member of the body to honor and another comparatively speaking to dishonor. Now the Gospel teaches that this inferior member is to have more abundant honor, but never that it is to be put absolutely on the same level with the superior, nor that it is of the same value with the superior. This may seem harsh to those who have not the higher gifts, but facts are facts, whatever may be our feelings. This arrangement of high and low is God's arrangement, and it is absurd as well as sinful to resent it. Indeed, Socialism itself could not live without respecting it In theory the shoemaker may be as valuable to the State as the Prime Minister, the simple member of the church as an apostle, the hodman as the skilled physician, the clerk as the poet, but in practice the thing would be impossible. Does Socialism really think that there would be no scramble under its regime to drop the pick and shovel and secure a place among its vast array of governing officers, and that there would be no sulking among the dis appointed or among those ordered by authority to serve at the forge or the mine. On this rock Socialism would go to pieces. The Gospel, truer to nature, recognises destinations springing from higher gifts, but takes care to teach that they are to be used for the help of the lesser gifted. It knows nothing of a levelling equality, which only breeds envy, rebellion, and a sinful discontent, though there is a discontent that is not sinful, but praiseworthy, because it is the starting point towards higher things.

 Once more Socialism, not merely on the part of its wilder and more reckless advocates, but through some of its most scientific exponents, teach doctrines regarding the family which subvert the deliverances of Christianity on this grave matter. It permits the dissolution of family ties for reasons which the Christ does not recognise as valid. Further, Socialism denies not only the competency of parents to educate their children as good citizens ought to be educated, but also their right and responsibility in the matter. Their nurture as to its methods and end must be determined by the State. If religion is regarded as a necessary factor in education the form of that religion would rest with the secular power. One need not add that the New Testament contemplates a very different relation between parent and child.

 Further Socialism is at variance with Christianity in its doctrine as to the inherent degradation of laboring for wages. We have every reason to believe that our Lord gave the labor of his hands for wages, and that not to the State, but to the individual who might require it He speaks much about the right use of money, directly and in parable, but never drops a hint that there is anything sinister in the idea of hired labor, whether regarded from the point of view of the hirer or the hired. Of course this does not imply that the actual relation between the two is in practice what it ought to be.

 There is another aspect of Socialism which the followers of Jesus Christ cannot but regards with aversion—its relation to liberty of conscience. The Fabian Essays foretell that one of the changes to be effected by Socialism will be the inevitable reconstitution of the State Church on a democratic basis, so that the possibility opens up of the election of an avowed Freethinker like Mr. Bradlaugh and John Morley to the Deanery of Westminster. They are kind enough to tell us that this will not take place until the settlement of the bread-and-butter question leaves men free to use and develop our higher faculties. Now, there is nothing here of that foaming hatred to Christianity which is cherished by the great body of Socialists. Nevertheless it anticipates State control of other things than the instruments of production. The Church is not to be co-ordinate with the State, but a creation and so a creature of the State. This is pure and undiluted paganism. Christianity is not Democracy—Jesus Christ is King, absolute King of His Church, and not a President voted to His exalted position. It is very significant that Socialists see much to admire, not in the faith of the medieval Church, but in its all embracing organisation, surrounding men everywhere as closely as the atmosphere. It is equally significant that they refer to Protestantism in terms which might be borrowed from an Anglo-Catholic priest, or even Pio Nono of pious memory. Will there be room for Socrates, for St Peter, for Knox, for Cranmar, for non juring bishops under this new democratic Catholicism of politicians? My soul, come not thou into their secret. It is significant, too, that many great intellects who felt that men could not be managed without the drill-sergeant, inclined to intolerance. Plato, in his old age, forgot his " defence of Socrates." and insisted on putting to death those who should introduce new doctrines in politics or religion. T. Carlyle had, I fear, more faith in the police than in the preacher as an agent in human progress.

 Lastly, experience and the teaching of Christ are at one in condemning the excessive hopes which Socialism builds in State regulation for the amelioration of man's outward and inward life. The settlement of the bread and butter question on Socialistic lines will not issue in a Paradise of peace and plenty, of culture and energy. What do we see at this moment among ourselves? Trades unions among our working men failing to attract a majority of themselves, while their indirect result is to band employers together as one man. Trades unions are feeling that they can't attain their end on materialistic grounds; that the moral element must come into play. Promises of more bread and more butter fail to influence many laborers as the trades unions desire, because a present sacrifice of purse and will is demanded.

 The Gospel is clear—that given all possible external advantages these are not enough to make either a man or a nation what they ought to be. There is the awful fact of sin to be reckoned with. Life is developed, not by bread and butter settlements, but from within. Till the kingdom of God is in men's hearts it will never hold sway over their circumstances.

Advertiser (Adelaide, SA ), Tuesday 18 October 1892,

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/25339682

THE NEW SOCIAL ATTITUDE.

 Parallel reactions in the United States towards individualism in politics and evangelism in religion and tendencies of similar movements in Australia provoke enquiry whether they possess interest beyond the coincident. President Wilson, representing the rising tide of public opinion in the great Republic, insists on tariff reduction, not merely as a means of lowering the high cost of living but as essential to the full development of the virility of the people. To him State coddling implies privilege, monopoly, abuse, and consequent contraction of opportunity, freedom, and vigour. A paraphrase of a familiar injunction indicates his attitude:— "Seek first national character and all other things will be added." National character denotes a robust development of the individual by way of idealism and struggle, faith and works. President Wilson's political interpretation of the process consists of a larger patriotism and a wider liberty, a patriotism which is not content with the appearance of great men in this generation, but aims at the production of even greater successors, and a liberty which destroys such privilege and restriction as depress the life of the community. Caste or class privilege inflicts even greater wrong than extortion. The worst evil of tyranny, particularly the insidious kinds, is that it represses energy and forms a slavish mind. The contemporaneous religious movement in the United States contemplates the recovery of the virility of the churches, and these are presenting to men, who constitute the large outside majority, an attractive programme of evangelistic enthusiasm. Thus far the parallel reactions appear to be founded on the one principle that the true method of raising the public tone is by restoring faith and hope, for which purpose it is first necessary to free and develop the self-activity of the individual.

 One significance of the movements in question is that they point to an approaching change in the social temper and attitude of the age. The generation which experienced the full effects of Darwin's and Huxley's teachings is being succeeded by another which returns after a brief diversion upon the unfathomable intuitions of the human heart. A materialistic or negative outlook upon life cannot fail to rebound in politics in a narrow or provincial patriotism, and a doctrine of might which is the basis of privilege and enslavement. Flamboyant Imperialism is at root a selfish centralism, and classism a miserable game of "begger my neighbour." The gradual growth of the democratic spirit, to which Dickens largely contributed by displaying the humanness of the poor and despised, may be regarded as a protest of the ''hope which springs eternal in the human breast" against the pessimism and cynicism incident to a transition period, for the claims of democracy as well as its guarantees rest upon the universal perception of mystic values. Agnosticism has spent its shot; the Higher Criticism is no longer a spectre; the atom has been dissolved into electrical force, an expression of intelligence; chaos has again given place to form and beauty. With the return of idealism comes a new meaning of life, which will permeate both the political and religious expressions. The dethronement of the mechanical atom in favour of intelligence restores to man his faith, his hope, and his crowning glory. Just as he is indebted to the community for the supply of his material and social needs, he owes to it his best services, his highest sacrifice: and as he can only render these by a full development of his powers, it is to the interest as well as the duty of society to accord him a free course. Individualism and social service or efficiency are the two halves of modern democracy, whose goal is universal friendship and peace. That idealism must finally be based on a religious experience of which evangelism is the outward and visible token. The brotherhood of man will prove an empty sentiment to those who possess it except they act the big brother's part, do justice, welcome the prodigals, and help to restore the unity of the family circle. The ground of rational individualism is the truth that by the law of our being individual development can be alone perfected through the life of the community. The worth and measure of a man are denoted in his treatment of his neighbour. This new gospel is after all old, but its present value is in the special energy and method of application.

Mail (Adelaide, SA ),  1913, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article63803224

THROUGH PERSIA BY CARAVAN.*

 When the Shah of Persia visited London a few years ago, many enthusiastic people entertained high hopes that the monarch's experiences of Western civilisation might induce him, on returning home, to inaugurate a new era of progress in the history of a country which has so illustrious a past, and which calls up so many classic memories. Baron Reuter, it was said, had obtained certain conceptions which would enable him to lift Persia out of her chronic state of decay, and give her a fresh start after a modern and Western fashion. The snorting of the steam horse was to be heard in the romantic land of the Arabian Nights, and comfortable railway carriages were to supersede the rules and "yaboos" of the slow moving caravans. But Western influences failed to do their work. The Shah went back to Tehran taking with him an album peopled with actresses as a memento of European life, and after giving his mind to the publication of that great literary effort, his famous diary, he subsided into the usual state of indifference, satisfied if only supplies were forthcoming to minister to his pleasures. Persia remains a land of ruin and decay and to all appearance there is no Cyrus looming on the horizon who might raise it up from its degradation, and restore it to its ancient grandeur.

Mr Arthur Arnold has written a very pleasant and readable book, which bears, on the face of it, many marks of trustworthiness both in its facts and inferences. It is the fault of modern travellers that they ask us to accept very sweeping conclusions on the strength of very scanty data. Mr. Arnold records what he himself saw and heard, and, where his assertions require it, he supports them with the authority of more experienced men than himself. He and his wife (who in pluck and endurance seems another Lady Baker) started on their journey by way of the Russian capital Moscow, and Nijni Novgorod, sailing down the Volga to the Caspian, which they traversed from north to south, and landing at Enzelli, from which point they began their journey through Persia. Leaving the Caspian early in October they travelled southward by way of Teheran, Ispahan, and Shiraz reaching Bushire, on the Persian Gulf, in February.

After reading Mr Arnold's two volumes, only one conclusion is possible that the state of things in Persia is almost as bad as it can be. Oriental monarchs have ever been tyrants and despots. A halo of supernatural dignity surrounds them in the eyes of their subjects, even though the divinity of their claims asserts itself by force and the most reckless disregard of human life. In the official language of his country, the Shah of Persia is styled “ Zil-ullah" or " Shadow of God, a name which would seem to indicate a monarch ever ready to exercise justice and to maintain the right. But the reality is very different. The Shah's Government, to use Mr Freeman's language of Turkish rule, is “an organised system of brigandage," and the Shah himself is the chief brigand, who receives the largest share of the plunder. The people of Persia are as so many poor sheep who exist for the special benefit of their rulers. No shadow of a doubt ever seems to cross the minds of the Shah or the governors of his provinces as to their absolute liberty to dispose of the lives and persons, the property and rights, of everyone in Persia. And the marvellous thing about it all is that the people submit as a matter of course, in a hopeless, despairing way, as if redress for their grievous wrongs were not to be thought of. The government is carried on as though the country were to last for a few years only, the object of the rulers being their own momentary and immediate advantage. The governors, who generally receive their appointments from the Shah in consideration of large bribes, avail themselves of their opportunities to the fullest extent. They employ certain subordinates, whose duty it is to collect the taxes, a large proportion of which they greedily appropriate to themselves, after sending a sufficient sum to their Royal master, who is said to be very fond of presents." Taxation in Persia is not conducted on any nicely-balanced principles of economic science. The tax-gatherers methods are simple and direct ; his arguments are bullets and swords, and his operations are so effectively conducted that "conscience-money" would seem to him a very grim joke. His requirements are almost unlimited, and, in many provinces, the peasantry are literally robbed of everything they possess. Occasionally the right to collect the taxes of certain districts is sold to some khan for a fixed sum, which is paid to the Government, that is, to the Shah and the high officials around him, who undertake to require no accounts and to ask no questions. The result can readily be imagined. " Thrice the amount, " says Mr. Arnold, of the British Prime Minister's salary, or twice that of the President of the United States does not satisfy men of the first official rank in Persia. And while the Prince Governors in the provinces and all the high functionaries of state plunge their greedy hands thus deep into the miserable revenue, forced—often at the bayonet's point— from the poorest of peasants, the soldiery are not seldom marauders, with the excuse that they cannot obtain their pay from the Government. The creditors of the peasants and small traders are generally in the uniform of the Shah. In Persia the trade of small money-lenders is usually carried on by soldiers, for these only feel sure of the requisite power to recover their loans. The defaulter well knows that if he does not repay the soldier, his house or his store in the bazaar will be plundered of all that is worth taking by a gang of military money-lenders." Bribery, too, is universal in official life. The judgment of a governor is given, as a rule, in favour of the highest bidder. Minor officials bribe their superiors, who keep up the system until the foot of the throne is reached, and the demands of its occupant fairly satisfied. Even in the army it is the same. The soldiers shirk drill that they may engage in more profitable employment and the officers are appeased by small bribes. Those latter, in their turn, have to bribe the Minister who pays them, and so it goes on. It would be unfair, however, to say that this corruption is absolutely universal. There have been several Persian Ministers who have tried to check the evil, and to organise an honest system of collecting the revenue, but their efforts, in the face of those who have, as it were a vested right in robbery and pillage, have naturally been unsuccessful. Not long ago, the Shah was induced to have placed in every large town a " box of Justice," in which the people were asked to lodge any complaints which they had against the officials. The boxes were carefully watched, and consequently seldom used, the few who did use them finding out to their cost that silence was their best policy. In trying to punish the robbers, too, some vigorous governors, possessed of good intentions, have administered justice with more zeal than discretion. When a robbery takes place— especially if it be a robbery of a caravan of Europeans—the chief idea seems to be that some one must suffer, and no very nice discrimination is used in the choice of the victims. The order given on such an occasion varies but slightly from that of the Queen of Wonderland—" Off with somebody's head."

The results of such a system of Government may be easily guessed. Persia is going steadily backwards, while those who alone are influential throughout the country watch the process of retrogression with the most absolute complacency. The peasantry are utterly unable to make way against robbers and tax-gatherers, who seem to be omnipresent in bad years as well as good. Large tracts of the country are barren and rocky, but even in those districts which are admirably suited for cultivation of the most productive kind, agriculture is much neglected. The same plough which scraped the soil in the days of Constantine, and the much earlier days of Herodotus, is still used by the Persian farmer, to whom the more effective English implement would appear indeed a gift from Allah. Nor is Mr. Arnold's account of life in the villages and towns of a more cheerful description. The sanitary arrangements are thoroughly bad, and the amount of perfectly avoidable suffering and discomfort is almost incredible. A great deal of the ophthalmia which prevails during the oppressively hot summer might be avoided by a free use of water, but the Persian method of obeying the injunctions of the Koran respecting ablutions has no special bearing upon cleanliness. In the winter, too, when the cold is extreme and life a prolonged shiver, the wretched people live in the most uncomfortable houses where doors and windows are of the rudest manufacture. Both Teheran and Ispahan are poor places—cities of mud— with no grand buildings upon which to rest the eye and with absolutely none of that gorgeous splendour which is generally associated in the popular mind with the capitals of the East. "From one end of Persia to the other," says Mr Arnold, " this miserable condition of decay, dilapidation, and ruin is characteristic of all public edifices—the mosques palaces bridges—everything. It is probably correct to say that this invariable condition is a consequence of the universal corruption of the Government. The work of maintenance and repair belongs to the Executive Government, and the funds which should be thus expended pass into the rapacious pockets of the governors of the country. The gross neglect of useful public works in Persia recalled to my mind a passage in which Adam Smith refers to this as one of the worst symptoms of the worst administration. He nearly describes the state of things in Persia in the following passage, which had reference to the condition of the bye roads in France about the middle of the 18th century, with the difference that in Persia no one delights in expenditure of any sort for the public advantage. Expenditure is never made except with a view to private plunder. "The proud minister of an ostentatious court may frequently take pleasure in executing a work of splendour and magnificence, such as a great highway which is frequently seen by the principal nobility, whose applause not only flatter his vanity, but even contribute to support his interest at court. But to execute a number of little works, in which nothing that can be done can make any great appearance, or excite the smallest degree of admiration in any traveller, and which, in short, have nothing to recommend them but their extreme utility, is a business which appears in every respect too mean and paltry to merit the attention of so great a magistrate. Under such an administration, therefore, such works are almost entirely neglected.' "

But notwithstanding all these depressing indications of bad government, travel in Persia is not altogether devoid of some counterbalancing charms. The traveller, it is true, has to depend upon his servants' skill and honesty to the fullest extent. If they fail him, his chances of comfort are very small, for the wayside caravanserai are not as our wayside inns, while the Chapar-Kanah is an hotel a little less miserable than a bush shanty. But where the servants are honest and the cook a success, as seems to have been the case with Mr. and Mrs Arnold, two English people can travel through Persia with the average amount of grumbling. The social life of the country presents many features of interest, and when the traveller can forget facts and look at everything he sees from the artistic point of view, there still lingers in the towns the spirit of the Arabian Nights. Old friends out of the wonderful tales are still to be got in the busy bazaars, haggling over a bargain in that masterly fashion peculiar to the East, or wrapt in what seems to be the deepest contemplation. There is the stalwart porter, the hamal, ready to obey the summons of the mysterious lady, whenever she may appear—the " Hadji," too, in gorgeous turban, cloak and tunic, whom all salute as one who has made his pilgrimage to far-famed Mecca—and the priest or moollah, riding forth on his white donkey and conscious of the power which belongs to his caste. There are still the two great mysteries of Persian life— (we wonder why Mr Wilkie Collins has never turned them to account)— " the veiled lady and the walled up house."

"No Giaour," Mr Arnold writes, “ can see even the eyes of a Persian woman of the middle and superior classes. She moves through the streets and bazaars on her white donkey, or on foot, in complete disguise. Even her husband would not recognise her. She is covered—as I described the women of Resht—from head to foot in the loose chudder of indigo, or black dyed cotton or silk. Over her face there is the long white veil, tied across the chudder, where that envelope covers all but the visage. The legs are hidden in long trousers of cotton or silk of the same colour as the chudder, which are not worn in the house. In all her outdoor life she is a moving mystery. She may be young or old, white or black, fair or ugly on a mission of sin, or upon an errand of mercy, no one knows who she is as she shuffles along upon shoes which are difficult to keep upon her feet, as the upper leather ends far before the heel. She raises at some mud walled house an iron knocker upon a door like that of a fortification, is admitted, the door is closed, and what goes on within that house, what is the fate of the women, the children and the slaves, no one outside can know. There is no window from which they can communicate with the outer world— it is a despotism within a despotism. Each one of these walled houses is the seat of despotic sovereignty—established and confirmed by the greatest power in Persia—that of the Koran." So much for the towns. In journeying down the country from north to south, the travellers greatly enjoyed the scenery, which was as varied as it was grand and beautiful. Persia, according to Mr. Arnold, is the land of magnificent distances. In the summer they saw the mountains of the north, which are rich in metallic ores, glow with a rare and gorgeous beauty in the light of the morning and evening sun, while in winter they passed across the vast heights of the south, where the prospect was bleak and desolate as a scene in the Polar regions. They had a hurried look at the ruins of Persepolis—tombs and halls of the great kings who helped to mould the history of the world—but all that Mr Arnold says on the subject, and much more, may be found in the Five Great Monarchies of Professor Rawlinson.

There are two questions raised by Mr. Arnold in his book to which we must refer before closing this notice. The first is part of a subject which in these days has become chronic—the relation of Russia and England in the East, the reference in this case being especially to Persia. It seems to be a settled idea in the Shah's dominions that Russia and England must of necessity be rivals, and the disposition of the Persian Government is shown by the fact that while there is a preference for England, the representations of Russia on any subject are listened to with marked attention. The reason is not far to seek. Russia has quietly appropriated all the country on the eastern side of the Caspian, and to the south of her possessions in that quarter lies one of the richest and best provinces of Persia, which could be occupied very easily by a Russian army. The Shah does well, therefore, to cultivate friendly relations with that other "shadow of God," Czar Alexander, whose name in the East is associated with a great and mighty potentate. From recent rumours which have reached us, it is not impossible that we may hear something more of Russian influence in Persia and see some of its results. The army of the Shah is not a very effective one, but it would be useful as an ally. Mr. Arnold alludes particularly to the question of commerce. The English entrance to the country is by Bushire on the Persian Gulf, the Russian entrance is by way of the Caspian, to which the railway from St. Petersburg is almost complete ; but as Ispahan, the central point of trade, is much more easily got at from the north than from the south, Russia has it, for the most part, all her own way. This in itself would be no great calamity, except in the eyes of those whose national and commercial creed is summed up in a single phrase—" British interests"—a phrase which is all-powerful at the present moment. The fact is, however, that the policy of Russia, in matters of trade, is eminently short-sighted and selfish. She holds to the worn-out policy of protection, and, having the command of many markets, she forces upon her semi-barbarous neighbours hardware and cotton manufactures of a vastly inferior kind to those of England. On his way down from St Petersburg, Mr Arnold saw that strange sight—the great fair of Nijni Novgorod— and there discovered that Russia supplied the Asiatics with thousands of such articles as knives locks, tools, &c, all of a most inferior kind and all dearer than the same articles of English manufacture— such policy being dictated by the " mistaken belief that this provision of inferior articles to the many for the benefit of the few, is advantageous to the general welfare of the Russian Empire." This of course applies to Persia as well as to other Eastern countries. Mr. Arnold thinks however, that the influence of Russia might be greatly counteracted by our employing a new route. He adopts the suggestion that English goods, instead of being conveyed over a dangerous and difficult road from Bushire viâ Shiraz to Ispahan, should be sent in light steamers up the famed waters of the Tigris and Euphrates as far as Mohommerah, thence by the River Karun to Shuster, and on by mule trains to Ispahan. The gain on the land journey would be about 230 miles a very large distance in a country where railways are unknown. The suggestion, Mr Arnold thinks is a good one both for Persian and British interests. As regards railways, he is doubtful whether they would pay, and whether the Shah's Government could be depended on in the event of concessions being made.

The other point to which we referred is the relation of Mohammedanism to civilisation, —not to ironclads and telegraph wires, bonds and breechloaders but to "the extension of civil rights—the co-existence of the supremacy of law with the liberty of individuals to develop and employ their faculties for their own utmost happiness and advantage." In Persia the Koran is all powerful, as it is in Turkey, and the priests of Islam have more influence than the Government. The Christians are under many disadvantages, and it may be safely asserted that in neither Persia nor Turkey do they enjoy anything like security for life and property. Mr Arnold's statement of the case is exceedingly moderate. The Christians in Turkey more particularly are, he says, often dishonest, not seldom drunken, and of very inferior political capacity. Their priests, like the priests of the Eastern Church generally, are ignorant and bigoted, often immoral. But their vices are such as ages of oppression would produce anywhere, and such, moreover, as religious and political liberty would to a great extent remove. Their religion is a religion of toleration and freedom, when rightly understood and honestly applied. With Islam it is different. The Koran is unmistakably and essentially intolerant, while many of its motives for good conduct on the part of those who believe in it are of the most doubtful character. Mr Arnold, after saying that he has no wish to produce "an impression very favourable to the Christians of Turkey and Persia," closes his interesting book with the following passage :—"For this much I am always prepared to contend ; they do possess and their masters do not possess, a religion which admits of progressive developments and interpretations. The progress of humanity may for all time be illumined by the morals of the gospel of Christ. It is nothing to show that Mahommedanism is more successful in proselytising Eastern peoples than the harshly dogmatic, unchristian 'Christianity' of some dogmatic preachers. We may develope and interpret Christ's teaching as universal, for all sorts and conditions of men, and without distinction of sex. The purest doctrines of liberty entered the world by the mouth of Christ. Mahommedanism is a democracy for men, and not for all men, but only for such as are not slaves; and with these last and lowest the whole sex of women is indirectly placed. The religion of Islam is opposed to progress, and must decline with the irresistible advance of civilisation."

* Through Persia by Caravan. By Arthur Arnold. In two volumes. London : Tinsley Brothers. 1877.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. ),  1877http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article5929242