MR. BONAR LAW has won the contest for the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University, polling over three hundred votes more than Mr. Bertrand Russell, who has made the fighting of University elections almost a hobby. The result of the contest might be regarded as almost a foregone conclusion, but it cannot be said to redound to the credit of our seats of learning that they should prefer a front-rank politician like Mr. Bonar Law to one of the more distinctly original intellects of our time.

EVERY great event in England is almost certain to have a literary echo. The recent railroad strike began a discussion on railways in literature. The following letter was written to the editor of the Observer. Its comment on Frank Norris is of interest.

Sir: Writing on the above subject in your issue of the 5th instant 'Penguin' refers most interestingly to various novels for which the railway has provided either the main theme or several more or less important incidents. There are two comments of his, however, which I should like to traverse. The first is that the greatest of all 'railway novels' is Zola's La Bête Humaine, and the second is that the nearest counterpart to La Bête is Dombey and Son. I think that in making these statements 'Penguin' has overlooked in each case the late Frank Norris's Octopus. That powerful novel is not concerned with

In England, some have urged the formation of a league of youth whose purpose would be the expression of the will and ideals of the younger generation. The following letter apropos of the league recently appeared in the British Nation.

Sir: Mr. Siegfried Sassoon and yourself may be interested to learn that a British League of Youth is already in existence. Mr. Lloyd George is the president, and the official letter paper of the League is headed with the following quotation from Mr. Benjamin Kidd:

'Give us the young. Give us the young, and we will create a new earth.'

This Lloyd Georgian League was introduced into the world by Lord Bryce, the Bishop of London, and Dr. Clifford. Its principal objects, according to an interview with its secretary, Mr. J. Aubrey Rees, are to 'suggest and advocate the claims of Youth in the filling of public offices.' (With this goal in view the selection of Mr. Lloyd George as president may be regarded as an inspiration.) "To promote and secure the adoption of schemes aiming at an increase in production.'

'We believe,' explains Mr. Rees, 'that Youth hitherto has been "misdirected." It will be the object of the League, under the presidency of Mr. Lloyd George and with the assistance of the Bishop of London, etc., 'to encourage and organize among the youth of both sexes the study of contemporary history and present-day

political problems and movements.' Toward which object is to be invited the coöperation of the universities, the public schools, and educational leaders generally.

Is it too late for a real League of Youth to be established? Of men and women, say, under forty, who would be allowed to think and act for themselves. Yours, etc., Jerome K. Jerome. Wood End House, Marlow September 24, 1919.

FOUR plays of Shakespeare are included in the programmes of Berlin theatres for the present winter. The Grosses Schauspielhaus, under the direction of Max Reinhardt, will give in its opening week Julius Cæsar (along with two works of Goethe, and one each of Eschylus, Aristophanes, and Hauptmann); the Volksbühne (Bülowplatz), Merry Wives of Windsor, and Cymbeline; the Schiller Theatre (Charlottenburg), As You Like It.

A SERIOUS conflict between peasants and armed troops has taken place at Riesi, in Sicily, in which four soldiers and four peasants were killed and a number of persons were wounded. For some time past the peasant population of the province of Caltanisetta, in which Riesi is situated, have been kept in a state of unrest verging on sedition over the unoccupied land question. Agitators have been at work stirring up the inhabitants, and inciting them not only to imitate what the peasants had done in some districts of Roman Campagna that is, to occupy the uncultivated lands but to take a step further in a revolutionary direction, and to expropriate all the landed proprietors. The region is an important mineral centre, furnishing chemical products for fertilizers, cream of tartar, and potter's clay, and is at the same time also a very fertile soil for agriculture.

The peasants were instigated by the astute agitators to make a general rising and to claim all the land. The ferment reached a point causing serious alarm to the local authorities. Recently some four thousand peasants gathered at Riesi, and decided to carry out their revolutionary theories. They were harangued by the

Since last we met I was unchanged. The maid she lent to give me aid Was not the abashing kind of maid; No carbon balls with winter store Were lurking in the bottom drawer; The linen breathed of lavender, The midnight biscuit-box was there; Her choice of bed-time books was mine, She sent my breakfast up at nine; The bath was boiling hot, and fit For kings the things to cast in it. She did not hunt me out to view The Ruin, or a cairn or two Nor seem to entertain, yet still I had no gaping hours to fill. Her dinner frock was quite as bad As mine, the only one I had; Her food was NOT the homely food That's best described as Plain but Good; And when she said Good-bye, I thought She really meant it all; in short, She made me feel, though Home is best, It's good to be a pampered guest.

'Oisin.'

So many of our readers were interested in the Asquith-French debate, that Mr. Asquith's final letter seems well worth the printing. It is quoted from the Morning Post:

We have received for publication the following copy of a letter addressed by Mr. Asquith to a correspondent with reference to the preface to the recently-published second edition of Viscount French's book, 1914:

Dear Sir: I have only just returned from Italy, and I am obliged to you for calling my attention to Lord French's preface (published while I was abroad) to the second edition of his book, 1914. What you call the 'controversy' between Lord French and myself was not of my seeking. I preserved complete silence; but when Lord French, apparently in the pursuit of a vendetta against the fame and memory of a great soldier and a former colleague of - Lord Kitchener my own - who can no longer speak for himself, and to whom Lord French stood under strong personal obligations, proceeded, in my judgment, to falsify history, I felt bound to intervene. Having now read his new preface, I see no reason to withdraw or qualify a word in the speech which I made on June 3 in this year. There are only two points in Lord French's attempted reply which call for any notice on my part.

(1) Lord French absolves me from any further debate as to the occasion and result of Lord Kitchener's visit to Paris by publishing at length Lord Kitchener's letter of September 1, 1914, which, as will be seen, conveyed the 'instruction' given by Lord Kitchener to Lord French on behalf of the government. Lord French cites two letters of warm appreciation of his services which I wrote to him on September 8 and November 6, 1914. It is enough to say that these letters were written after Lord French's original proposal, largely through the intervention of Lord Kitchener, had happily been discarded, and the subsequent operations had been conducted (as I was and am most glad to acknowledge) by Lord French with much sagacity and skill.

As these letters, and a later one (also cited by Lord French) dated May 13, 1915, sufficiently show, it was my practice, when head of the government, to convey with all possible emphasis to the general in supreme command in the field the expression of our confidence and encouragement. If I had

known, or suspected, what Lord French now avows, that at the date of my letter of May, 1915, he was engaged, behind the back and without the knowledge of his official chief, Lord Kitchener, and of myself, in a manoeuvre to upset the government at home, it is probable that my communication would have been couched in somewhat different terms.

(2) In regard to the question of the supply of ammunition, Lord French expresses 'surprise' that I did not 'recall' a conversation which I had with him at St. Omer in July, 1915. I recall the conversation perfectly, but I did not refer to it in my speech last June for three sufficient reasons:

1. Because the object of my citation of Lord Kitchener's letter, written in April, 1915, was to justify the statement which I made in my speech later in that month at Newcastle, a matter to which a conversation held in the following July is obviously irrelevant.

2. Because I did, and do, believe that Lord Kitchener was incapable of inventing, and palming off upon me, a deliberate falsehood.

3. Because, if it becomes a question of conflict of memories, I thought, and still think, that Lord Kitchener's written record of a conversation in April, on the day on which it took place, is better evidence than Lord French's recollection of the same conversation three months afterwards, for which his only corroboration is an extract from a diary containing (as he says) 'no reference whatever' to the subject.

I may add that I reported to Lord Kitchener what Lord French said to me at St. Omer, and that Lord Kitchener adhered entirely to his original version. To have a bad memory is a misfortune, not a crime; but people who have bad memories should not attempt to write their own or other people's lives. Yours faithfully, H. H. Asquith.

September 24, 1919.

[The London Mercury]

THE EVENING SKY IN MARCH

BY JOHN FREEMAN

Rose-bosom'd and rose-limb'd,
With eyes of dazzling bright,

Shakes Venus mid the twined boughs

of the night;

Rose-limb'd, soft-stepping

From low bough to bough,

And the boughs glittering sway
And the stars pale away,

And the enlarging heaven glows
As Venus light-foot mid the twined
branches goes.

THE FLEETS

BY M. G. MEUGENS

dimmed

Its bloom of snow

By that sole planetary glow.

Venus, avers the astronomer,
Not thus idly dancing goes
Flushing the eternal orchard with wild

rose.

She through ether burns
Outpacing planetary earth,
And ere two years triumphantly re-

turns

And again wavelike swelling flows; And again her flashing apparition comes and goes.

This we have not seen,
No heavenly courses set,

No flight unpausing through a void

serene:

But when eve clears,

Arises Venus as she first uprose Stepping the shaken boughs among, And in her bosom glows

The warm light hidden in sunny snows.

She shakes the clustered stars
Lightly, as she goes

Amid the unseen branches of the night,
Rose-limb'd, rose-bosom'd bright.
She leaps: they shake and pale; she
glows-

And who but knows

How the rejoiced heart aches When Venus all his starry vision shakes:

When through his mind

Tossing with random airs of an unearthly wind, Rose-bosom'd, rose-limb'd,

The mistress of his starry vision arises,