But he never neglected the secondary theatres. In 1805 and again in 1809, when engaged with Austria in central Europe, he left in the north of Italy a force sufficient to "contain" the Austrian armies that were operating on the Po or Tagliamento-a force strong enough to avert any catastrophe in that quarter. The British Admiralty has thus neglected the teaching of history and the principles of war in denuding the Mediterranean.

This step has been taken at a time when a war is actually in progress in that sea between Italy and Turkey. Italy is now in possession of Rhodes and the main bases in the Egea. She is establishing a naval base at Tobruk on the confines of Tripoli, and hence. forward a strong military Power will be planted to the west of Egypt. Though the Italian Government is on excellent terms with the British Government, the fact remains that Italy is the ally of Germany. On the eastern frontier of Egypt, is another military Power of growing strength, Turkey, and the progress of her Hedjaz railway is a distinct menace to the British position in that country. More. over, from the days of Bismarck, Germany has always aimed at using Turkey against the British Empire in Egypt, and the Taba demonstration, to which reference has already been made, was the first indication of the peril to us of such a policy. It would not be easy to combine Italy and Turkey in a common movement against ourselves, but Napoleon achieved feats as difficult. A Power which is weak and which has widely scattered maritime possessions always invites attack, for such possessions whet the appetite of ambitious nations and provide all the members of a vast coalition with loot. The only guarantee of those possessions is control of the sea, and control of the sea can only be exercised by a naval force superior to any

thing that may assail it. That the British Admiralty has not given us, and the present position in the Mediterranean is a melancholy comment on Mr. Churchill's assurance of March 18, 1912: "The Admiralty are prepared to guarantee absolutely the main security of the country and of the Empire day by day for the next few years." It cannot guarantee the security of the Mediterranean without which, as Admiral Mahan has shown, the British Empire falls to pieces, the interior line to India is lost, Malta and Egypt are exposed, and attacks on the British trade-routes in the Atlantic facilitated.

Unless Malta and Egypt with their garrisons are to be cut off and overwhelmed, with the withdrawal of our fleet we must either (1) withdraw altogether our Mediterranean garrisons, or (2) double them and construct modern defences armed with the heaviest modern guns. What effect the loss of these two positions in war would exert upon the situation in India may be left to the imagination. Kaye and Malleson have shown that British military weakness in the Crimea was one of the causes of the Indian Mutiny. And the loss of our Mediterranean possessions would not merely stimulate revolt but would also prevent us from promptly dealing with it; it might even bring the cruisers of the Triple Alliance into the Indian Ocean by the Suez Canal and interfere with any attempt to move reinforcements from Australia and Canada. It would, in fact, bring down the Empire with a crash.

The peril is then immense. To conceal it, the Malta Conference, or the members of the Government who took part in it, are believed to have devised one of these half-measures which appeal to politicians. No alliance is to be concluded with France, but she is to be invited to make an agreement, under which she will do for us what we are not prepared to do for ourselves,

and meet the Mediterranean fleets of the Triple Alliance. To aid her in this task, the British fleet at Gibraltar is, we are told vaguely, to be strengthened. It is therefore of paramount importance to consider two points: (1) What naval assistance France can give, and (2) what reinforcements, without special measures, which, if taken at all, must be taken immediately, we can afford to despatch to the south of Europe.

In war the French Navy will have to face serious liabilities in the protection of French interests, which must come first. It will have to cover the communications between France, Corsica, and the French dominions in northern Africa, including Tunis, which may be exposed to Italian attack. It may have to guard the transfer of the nineteenth French army corps from Algeria to Marseilles, in order to give France the maximum of force to meet the vast armies which Germany will deploy in Lorraine. Its chiefs would have their hands full, even if the French navy were overwhelmingly strong. But unfortunately that navy is still suffering from the disastrous results of M. Pelletan's administration ten years ago. He has gone, but his evil works live after him. Not all M. Delcassé's efforts have been able to make good the accumulated defects. An abundant supply of trustworthy powder is lacking. The investigation which followed the fearful disaster in the Liberté proved that none of the powder in existence in 1911 could be regarded as safe; and the manufacture of the French explosive is a slow and difficult operation. For the time being, then, the French fleet is greatly handicapped. In the immediate future, it will compare as follows with the Italian and Austrian Navies in "Dreadnoughts":

France Italy Austria 1

Complete in December 1912 0 1

At no point, then, in the next three years will France be in a position to meet, without very substantial aid from England or Russia, the navies of the Triple Alliance in the south. In pre-"Dreadnoughts" France has a force of eleven effective ships launched not more than twelve years. Italy possesses six such ships and Austria nine; but, making allowance for the inferior quality of the older Austrian and Italian ships, France is superior to Italy and Austria combined in the older types of ships. Still there is nothing whatever to encourage hope in French victory at sea against these two Mediterranean Powers in the near future, even if we throw in the four old British battleships at Gibraltar. French programme, moreover, cannot be accelerated, and for two reasons; the French slips are now fully occupied, and the French armor-plate making resources are fully tasked; while in view of the danger on land which France has to face in Lorraine, any diversion of her resources from her army to her fleet is unwise, so long at least as the British people refuse to adopt compulsory service. Money is needed for the French Army, and in the interests of the Triple Entente it can be best spent in that direction. Russia will have no "Dreadnoughts" complete in either the south or north of Europe before 1915, if then.

The

So, then, the solution of the problem depends on the force which England can detach to the south of Europe without risking disaster in the north. That, again, depends on what Germany does and the number of ships she completes. And that again, depends on whether Germany accelerates or does not; and that, again, depends on whether the German General Staff and the Kaiser and Admiral Tirpitz determine to strike quickly or to "wait and see" whether the, fruit will not drop into their mouths without striking. Let us dismiss from our minds the idea that

any man or any policy can change German intentions. The fatal fact is that the British Empire stands in the way of German oversea expansion, and that the very geographical position of the British Islands is now construed as an offence to German national feeling. The iceberg and the Titanic are moving, as in Mr. Hardy's strange and passionate poem, oǹ convergent courses; the forces that guide Germany are cold as ice, the momentum behind them, it seems to the writer, is as formidable as that of Nature herself; the Titanic has no captain on her bridge, and all warnings are ignored by those who are driving her. The "unsinkable ship" and the "invincible Navy"-what a strange parallel.

Because Germany has not accelerated in the past, therefore our Pacifists conclude that she will never accelerate. There could be no greater error. If her cold, calculating leaders see any chance of victory and mean to fight, they will accelerate. We must be prepared for it; if not, we are courting destruction. By pressing forward her "Dreadnoughts" of the 1911 programme, Germany can have twentyone ships of this type complete by October 1913, and perhaps a little earlier. We may, then, have to meet twenty-one "Dreadnoughts" in the North Sea in October 1913, the date when in relation to France, the navies of the Triple Alliance in the Mediterranean will be at their maximum strength; and when the Russian military reorganization will not have been completed.

Failing special measures, our force at that date will be twenty-six "Dreadnoughts," excluding the Australian ship. To get twenty-six we have been compelled to break our agreement of 1909 with the Dominions, to keep at home one "Dreadnought" cruiser, which we pledged ourselves to despatch to the East, and to divert from the Pacific the New Zealand ship. We

have, that is to say, denuded the Par cific, for our old armored cruisers in Pacific waters are not to be taken seriously, and the single Australian "Dreadnought" will hardly weigh in the scale. Of our twenty-six "Dreadnoughts," eighteen will be battleships to the German sixteen, and eight will be battle-cruisers to the German five. Our margin in battleships will be two and in battle-cruisers three, making a total of five. This is not one single ship too many; it is many ships too few, if we are to be prepared to meet at our "average moment" an attack by the German Navy at its "selected moment." The pre-"Dreadnoughts" on either side will not count materially in 1913, so vast has been the progress in ordnance, armor, and design, and so great will be our difficulty in finding officers and men. We have nothing here to spare for detachments to the Mediterranean without courting and provoking disaster at home.

But special measures are still possible, if the Government will act and not walk blindfold to doom. The hours are precious, for the measures must be instantly taken if they are to be effective; postponed till next year they will come too late. The necessary steps are these:

(1) Acceleration of our 1911 programme of five "Dreadnoughts." By working overtime, and offering the contractors special premiums for quick delivery, it might be possible to add all these five ships, or certainly four of them, by October 1913. The step will cost money, and much money; but the funds are there in the six and a half millions of surplus. The five ships could be sent south, and would do something to redress the balance and give France the support which she will need.

(2) Commencement of the 1912 programme in July 1912, instead of January 1913, which would enable us to

detach an additional ship to the Mediterranean early in 1915.

(3) A supplementary programme of at least two "Dreadnoughts" to provide for the Mediterranean in the future. With the acceleration, that would impose on our yards as much work as they could carry out without delay.

(4) A supplementary programme of twenty destroyers for the Mediterranean, to replace the five ancient craft now marooned at Malta. We cannot replace them from our ordinary programme, for, as Mr. Churchill has himself admitted, our position in modern destroyers as against Germany alone is unsatisfactory.

Germany, in actual

fact, will have ready for sea almost as many modern destroyers as ourselves (German strength in 1913, probably 120, not more than twelve years launched; British strength outside Mediterranean in 1913, 143).

(5) Provision of light gun armaments for our larger mail steamers, to be always carried on board, and to be manned by naval reservists for whom a subvention would be paid. This is an essential step, as there is now no longer time to build cruisers for the defence of the trade-routes, which are exposed to a host of German commercedestroyers.

(6) Addition of six thousand officers and men, the maximum that can be trained, to be followed by a similar addition next year. The conditions of payment and service in the new Immediate Reserve to be modified at once, as it is becoming evident that good men cannot be obtained on the terms proposed.

The National Review.

Were these steps taken this month, the cost would be no greater than that of a large addition to the garrisons in the Mediterranean and the reconstruction of the Mediterranean fortresses, and the peril of war in the immediate future would be decidedly diminished. No shift, no half-measure will give security. The British Empire is probably fast approaching the fatal moment when the efficiency of its national organization and of its national defences will be tested by the terrible shock of war. Our national credit, with Consols at 76, has been gravely shaken. Our naval predominance is in extreme danger. Our army has no relation to our Imperial necessities, and is weak in numbers and indifferently armed. Our national spirit is such that our statesmen's one preoccupation is with votes; their one object to divide and disintegrate the United Kingdom. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap." Do not even they sometimes tremble at the thought of the crop which they are preparing?

One final word on the Committee of Defence. If the members of that body were worthy of their trust, all the non-politicians among them would ere now have resigned en masse as a protest against the errors of our defence policy. In the Morocco crisis of 1911 they never lifted a finger, so far as the writer can discover, to remedy the aber. rations and neglect of the Admiralty. In the spring of the present year, they sat still while the fleet was being withdrawn from the Mediterranean, and left it to Lord Kitchener to play the manly part.

H. W. Wilson.

We have heard a good deal during the last few years of the "national spirit" in music, and the necessity of founding a "national English school"

upon the native folk-song. Only in this way, we are told, can English music hope to rise as a whole to the level of that of France and Germany. The

people who talk in this way have apparently never stopped to examine very closely the meanings of the terms they are using. The vaguer and more general a word is, the more cautious we should be in our use of it, for it will prove impossible to apply it with the same validity in detail as in the mass. When we find Mr. Cecil Sharp, for example, telling us that "when every English child is, as a matter of course, made acquainted with the folk-song of his own country, then, from whatever class the musician of the future may spring, he will speak in the national musical idiom" we are constrained to ask-What is the "national musical idiom"? It is a high-sounding term, and an easy one to make a certain kind of merely verbal resonance with; but can Mr. Sharp or any one else show us that it has any meaning whatever in terms of concrete fact? If "the national musical idiom" is so positive, unmistakable a thing that it will come like second nature to any one who has absorbed a sufficient number of folksongs, ought we not to be able to isolate the essence of it and express it in some simple verbal formula? Yet who will undertake to do this in connection with the music of any country? Who could ever hope, for instance, to find one common formula for the idioms of Debussy, d'Indy, Berlioz, Bizet, SaintSaëns, Bruneau, and Massenet? Is there, in fact, such a thing as a French "national musical idiom"? If so, will some ardent partisan of nationalism kindly tell us what it is?

The truth seems to be, as Mill and Huxley long ago pointed out, that of all ways of accounting for the differences between the arts and customs and constitutions of nations, that of attributing them all to "race" is the most superficial. The lax habit of mind that allows people to be satisfied with these pseudo-explanations almost invariably decoys them into a maze of self-contra

diction. Let us look at a few of Sir Hubert Parry's divagations in his excellent "Art of Music." He insists more than once upon what he regards as a fundamental distinction between "the Italian" and "the Teutonic" way of conceiving music. The former people aim at "external beauty," the latter at "internal beauty." "The bent of the Germans," he says, speaking of the eighteenth century, "was not so much towards beauty as towards expression and character. Their very

type of beauty was different from that of the Italians. The Italians looked for beauty of externals, and the Germans for beauty of thought." This distinction, he holds, is racial in its origin, being visible again in the works of the painters of the two nations. But later on, when he is speaking of the new spirit that Schubert brought into the song, Sir Hubert Parry tells us that "Mozart, and the Italians among whom he represents the highest type, usually make long meandering passages of melody with no very definite articulation. The true Teuton, aiming at concentration of expression, compresses his thought into figures which are specially definite and telling." The typical Italian, then, is a German! Mozart, in fact, though a German, is not a "true Teuton" like Schubert. It certainly looks as if Schubert's Teutonism were safe enough; but on the very next page Sir Hubert Parry rules him too out of court. Schumann, he says, "was gifted with more of the familiar Teutonic disposition to reflect and look inwards than Schubert, whose gaiety of the Viennese type generally kept him in touch with the outward aspect of things." That is to say, the true Teuton is not a true Teuton in comparison with a truer Teuton! Nay, it even appears that people who are not Teutons at all can be truer Teutons than some whose Teutonism is unquestionable. Sir Hubert Parry, in working out a