has recently put it, to honor its signature as partner in the Triple Entente without breaking with its old friends and allies, the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs. In this duel between Constitutionalism and Nationalism the wonder is that the Triple Entente should have seemed to have survived even up to Potsdam.

Potsdam may turn out to have been its death-blow, unless indeed one may argue that its fate was already sealed at Buchlau. Germany would fain raise again the Moroccan question in order to solve the question of Baghdad. But there can be little doubt that since the "interview" of Potsdam the German scheme of the Baghdad railway implies the establishment of spheres of influence in Asiatic Turkey. It is, perhaps, as M. Victor Bérard plausibly argues, the beginning of the end, for the Ottoman Empire, of that integrity which both England and France have always regarded as one of their vital interests. Yet France and England are merely two members in a tripartite arrangement; and their alleged ally, Russia, has but one dream, one idea, the dismemberment of that Turkish Empire which they aim at preserving. The future of the Baghdad Railway, as well as the fate of Turkey, are now being decided in London. But it is imperative that London should not settle these questions independently Paris. There is every reason for supposing that Vienna and St. Petersburg already possess their secret pact concocted at Buchlau, for the dismemberment of Turkey, and we have already had an inkling of the programme in those remarkable preliminary realizations which began with the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The opening of the Dardanelles to Russia will perhaps be even the next move-if Russia can resist the seduction of China--and it may be a resuscitated

of

M. Witte who will shortly have the honor of offering the Tsar this beautiful compensation for the humiliations to which absolutism has been subjected during the revolutionary movement in Russia. But if England is willing to accept this eventuality, with all the attendant consequences of the application of the principle of "neighborhood rights," let her do so with her eyes open. If France is ready for it, and ready for the sake of peace in Morocco to sacrifice her secular policy in the East, she also should act, not blindly, but with a lively sense of the possible consequences. Left in the lurch by Russia, France and England must now act together, or become, in all diplomatic relations, the mere puppets of Ger

many.

At the present moment no international treaty, no diplomatic instrument or convention is worth the paper on which it is written. They might as well have been formulated on paper made of wood-pulp. Three or four decades, as every one knows, suffice to destroy most of the modern paper used for newspapers and books. But all the treaties in the world will be a dead-letter even before most of the modern productions of art and letters have turned to dust. The only treaties that stand a chance of a long life are those unwritten Agreements which are based on common interests. A new principle of international relations is now invading Real-Politik, and it has almost become a principle of international law. This principle, which seems to be tending to make diplomacy a branch of physico-chemistry, has been neatly defined by M. Victor Bérard as Le Droit de Voisinage. It is the human, the sociological, form of one of the aspects of the physical law of capillary attraction. The principle of "neighborhood rights"-the right which a Power assumes to an

nex or administer the States and Dependencies of a Neighbor that is unable to defend itself-accounts for the shiftings in international relations, for the kaleidoscopic combinations, that have taken place during the last ten years, from Morocco by way of Persia to Manchuria, and-who knows?-perhaps round the world again to Canada; and if in the Far East Mr. Knox and President Taft met last year with a comic rebuff, it was because they had not taken into adequate consideration the working of this positive and scientific basis of modern international politics. The successive treaties signed by the Powers have been merely a provisional record up to date of the stage reached in these chemico-political combinations. One of the prettiest cases under this law is, of course, that which we are all anxiously observing at the present moment, the process of "pacific penetration" of Morocco by France. But an even more elegant demonstrations was the Anglo-Russian agreement as to Persia with its corollary, that portion of the mysterious negotiations of Potsdam bearing on the Baghdad concessions.

Now, the French, in their quick, clear way, have been intelligent enough to apply this principle to the immediate future. This fact need surprise only those who still forget that France has had to evolve a national integrity in mid-Europe by slow and secular processes which consisted in constructing for herself on every side a carapace impervious to outside influences. They have had to fight their way to national unity against the corrosive inroads on their frontiers of the Anglo-Norman and the German. At no epoch of their national history have they been without an Alsace-Lorraine problem in one form or another-now in the south-west, now in the north, or now doubly, triply, in the East, where the line of the Vosges, of

the Jura, and of the Savoy Alps has al ways marked the central axis of a border region which has never been wholly theirs, nor yet ever wholly that of the "barbarians." In these conditions "national honor" is at present a name for a set of unconscious, instantly automatic, reactions of selfpreservation. It is not at all, in its essence, the hollow, but clariontongued, cocardier screech in praise of La Gloire which Englishmen and Germans fancy it to be, but which no doubt at times, for æsthetic ends, it can easily and provisionally become. From the point of view of the making of the nation the evolution of French history has been an effort to moderate the action of the natural law of "neighborhood rights" applied successfully and doggedly by England, and maladroitly, though with a show of scientific, even philosophic, method by Germany. I say "moderate the action," because the natural and justifiable limits of French European expansion have never suffered any change in the Gallic mind since they were fixed by the Romans, who had worked with the geography of Strabo under their eyes.

An

But my point is inerely this: it has become, as it were, a second nature for France to possess a European sense; and this European sense has never suffered her to become the dupe of even her most civilized aspirations, the dream of one day inhabiting a Europe based on Justice and Right. almost singular respect for the written word in treaties is no doubt part of the Frenchman's noble Latin heritage, but his eyes have never been dimmed, for instance, to the presence, just over his buffer-State border, of a Holland which, whatever the terms of the Treaty of London of 1839, guaranteeing Belgian independence and neutrality, and of the clauses of the

Treaty of Vienna proclaiming the free navigation of the Escaut, is destined one day to fall into the hands of Germany, unless its integrity be at all costs maintained by the common action of the French Government and of that of England. The proposal of the Dutch to fortify Flushing was not needed in order to justify in the eyes of French statesmen the vigilance with which they had been observing, since the advent of the Prince Consort, the extension of German influence in the Low Countries. They are well aware that the Belgian and British appeal to International Law in order to refute the parallel juridical arguments of Holland are of only academic import, save in so far as public discussion has arrested Holland in her German policy, made her think twice, given her time, in a word, to reflect on the international bearings of her proposed action. In matters of this kind the only policy that can make for peace is for England and France to don their shining armor, like the King Canute of modern Germany, and declare to Holland a resolute veto. Nothing better indicates the international authority of France than the facts that, unassisted by England, her Foreign Minister should have ventured to declare openly in the Chamber of Deputies his readiness to causer with the signatories of the Treaty of 1839, and that, although with a tit-for-tat precipitation, Germany retorted that she had no intention of entering into any conversation on the subject, the Dutch Government has after all prudently taken the French hint, and begun to tack diplomatically away from the shallows on which her heavy galleons seemed about to run aground. It will be some months before the Flushing Fortification Bill can come up again before the Dutch Chamber. And meanwhile the President of the French Republic will have been offi

cially welcomed by the Queen of the Netherlands. But the initiative of M. Pichon will be what the French call "without a morrow" unless France and England unite their forces; or rather, it will be followed by a logical and terrible morrow, if the Entente Cordiale be not converted into a close Dual Alliance, based on common interests, in order to thwart the possibility before the close of the next decade when Germany will have in the North Sea her full quota of "Dreadnoughts"-of the application of the Bérardian principle of Le Droit de Voisinage to Holland. Where are the "neighborhood rights" of Germany more prettily applicable than to the regions of the Hague and Rotterdam? No one who knows the state of Europe can overhear with anything but respectful attention the question put by the author of Le Choix de Londres (Revue de Paris, April 15): "When the Russians lay hands on, or take control of, Stamboul, when the Austrians follow suit at Salonica and the Italians at Avlona, why should not the German Customs Officer or Admiral enter Rotterdam?"

III

Such, at all events, are some of the reasons vividly held before the French intelligence, which have kept France from falling into the state of beatific apathy which has characterized England's detached attitude of late towards the problems of world-politics. But there are other reasons still why France is awake, and some of them hail from further East than Mesopotamia. One of the pressing questions of the hour, as I have already hinted, is whether Germany will once again succeed in thrusting Russia back into Asia. No doubt, as Bishop Butler said in his Sermons at the Rolls, "things will be as they will be"; but it has never yet occurred to any Frenchman

that this consoling fact is any reason for not maintaining constant vigilance,1 The National Review.

or for not making a strenuous effort to avoid becoming willingly their dupe. Wm. Morton Fullerton.

During the last sixty years in the Church of England the authorized community life under vows has become a fact. To-day there are about five thousand women living in various authorized communities, while little more than a hundred men in a small number of authorized communities are likewise living the life of prayer and work, under vows. Yet, though the numbers are still remarkably small, the work and influence of these communities is, to a degree out of all proportion, widespread, far-reaching, and significant. The new movement for the systematic training of the clergy, and for the provision of that training for the poorest youth with a vocation, owes much of its impetus to them; secondary education for women and even secondary training for teachers is being more and more extensively carried out by religious communities; social reformers are learning old lessons anew from the methods and success of such bodies as the Society of Divine Compassion at Plaistow; paro

1 The "Revue de Paris" published on May 15, after this article was written, an address recently delivered to the students of AlsaceLorraine by the Academician, M. Ernest Lavisse, Professor of History at the Sorbonne. M. Lavisse is one of the foremost men of letters of our time, and one of the most distinguished educators in France. The following passage from his discourse brings me, in a simple and exceptionally authoritative form, such impressive confirmation of the general ideas that have inspired my diagnosis of the French état d'âme that I cannot refrain from citing it; and I recommend it to the attention of the French Ambassador in Washington: "Mes amis, je ne veux pas dire autre chose que ce que je dis. Je n'ai pas d'arrière-pensée. Je ne suis pas venu apporter ici des paroles de haine; il y a longtemps que j'ai écrit: 'Puisque la haine est aveugle, ne la prenons pas pour guide.' Encore moins je me donnerai le ridicule de vous annoncer une guerre libératrice. La France est pacifique; elle ne fera la guerre que si elle y est contrainte. Mais considérez l'état de la poli

chial work is being increasingly invigorated by the trained skill of missioners sent out from religious houses; while abroad, the cry for bush brotherhoods, for communities of clergy celibate at least for a term, for teaching bodies living under rule, becomes more and more urgent. Still more recently, the purely contemplative life has been organized, and a community under Benedictine rule within the Church of England is now an accomplished fact. It is not our present purpose to make an historical survey of this development, but some common features should be noticed. In nearly every case these communities have received their initiative from au individual, not from an organization. In nearly every case that initiative has been the acknowledgment of a personally realized vocation. Generally, a period of trial and error, of discouragement and slow official approbation has been experienced. Newcomers have been searchingly tested and numerical growth intentionally retarded rather tique européenne et mondiale, les ligues, les contre-ligues; la France est surveillée en tous ses mouvements par l'Allemagne; Allemagne et France sont deux armées en présence, et les trompettes et clairons des avantgardes sont tenus à la hauteur des lèvres. Pour retrouver la liberté de ses mouvements, la France n'aurait qu'a dire un tout petit mot: 'J'oublie! Ce tout petit mot, elle ne le dira pas.

1. "The Benedictines of Caldey Island." (Published at the Abbey, Caldey Island, South Wales. 1907.)

2. "A Franciscan Revival." (Published by the Society of Divine Compassion, at the Whitwell Press, Plaistow, 1908.)

3. "The Foundation of St. Theresa." Newly translated by Sister Agnes Mason, of the Holy Family. (Cambridge: at the University Press. 1909.)

4. "Life and Letters of Thomas Thellusson Carter." By the Ven. W. H. Hutchings. Fourth edition. (London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1904)

And other Works and Papers.

than unduly hastened. A surprising amount of lay co-operation has been obtained, and affiliated fraternities or associations analogous to Third Orders are numerous. It is clear therefore that discretion has been exercised both officially and within the new communities in this new growth. It is evidently and undeniably the expression of a felt need; it has come to stay.

That being so, we may ask ourselves, what is the general significance of this movement, what are its implications, what is its modern bearing? Obviously, it stands first of all for a renewal of the sense of vocation, of vocation to a particular life, and of vocation in any life. Life under religious rule and vow is in itself a particular vocation, but it also stands for vocation in any profession whatsoever. Hence this revival is peculiarly apposite to modern conditions when a general lack of responsibility is deplored on all sides. Not a "new way of life" but a renewal of vocation is our need. This, community life shows forth in practice and precept. By engaging in teaching, social, manual or other work the "religious" shows that a religious sanction, definitely recognized and accepted, works in daily life, that it has a pragmatic value. One of these communities has recently secured in the open market a printing contract under standard conditions of wage and labor. When a community can do that under a rule of poverty, then labor in general can learn a lesson in consecration, in vocation. When the drudgery and loneliness of teaching on the veldt is borne and rejoiced in by sentinels from some religious house at home, then the professions in general are established and strengthened in their drudgery. Vocation is a permanent religious sanction to a way of life, and it cannot be learnt better than from those who exemplify it in the crucial instance of the three vows

of poverty, chastity, and obedience. We look to this movement, therefore, to restore to our national life vocation in all its spheres.

Primarily, however, life in community is a vocation to the special cultivation of the interior spiritual life, and it is here that it meets modern religious needs with particular force. There is a singular lack of method in the spiritual life of the average man. It is unorganized, it is desultory, it is often indefinite, often inane. At forty-five he seems to have made no advance upon the spiritual powers, practice and progress of his childhood. His secular knowledge and worldly wisdom have grown, but his spiritual experience and wisdom are crude and immature as before. Canon Lyttelton, we believe, began a village sermon once by saying, "Man prays: that is remarkable; but he prays badly, and that is more remarkable."

Religious communities, then, by applying method to the spiritual life are to help not only themselves but those outside their rule. Every retreat, every mission conducted by a "religious" is an exposition of some one principle or practice in the soul's experience. That prayer is an art which requires time, an art in which progressive power comes from practice, a refined weapon for all ghostly combats--rare or ordinary-these are lessons which every man needs to learn, needs to profit by. The present conditions under which our parish clergy labor prevent most of them from qualifying by experience, training, and skill to teach method in the spiritual life. Meanwhile, this and most other phases of what is generally known as "direction" must come from those under rule. The good "religious" learns these lessons through his rule, he studies the underlying method or body of principles, and so becomes qualified to speak or write about them. The mul