Foreign Ministers to London has resulted in a scheme for her active cooperation. Its military side remains to be revealed; its financial features were outlined at the special sitting of the Portuguese Chambers. They are given most fully by the Lisbon correspondent of the Temps. Portugal, towards the end of 1914, engaged to give military aid to the Allies in Africa; the engagement is now extended to Europe. Our Government promises to advance all the money needed for any expenditure directly connected with the war and judged to be necessary by both Governments. The advances, according to the Temps report, will be made in British Treasury bonds. They will be repayable two years hence out of the proceeds of an external loan to be raised by Portugal and "favored" by the British Government. Of the German ships requisitioned by Portugal, Great Britain was prepared to purchase those which Portugal can spare for £3,000,000, but Portugal has preferred that we should merely hire them (at 14s 3d per ton gross, according to a subsequent telegram to the Temps from Lisbon) taking the risks of loss and paying the crews. These explanations were given by the Finance Minister, Senhor Affonso Costa; and Senhor Soares, the Foreign Minister, stated that Great Britain cordially invited Portugal to co-operate actively in the war in Europe in whatever measure she should see fit to do so, and that the War Council has already been consulted as to the form that such co-operation can best assume. The Ministerial proposal was formally approved by the Chambers by an almost unanimous vote. Some of the Unionist party, which represents mainly the richer middle classes, and has stood aloof from the present Coalition Government, abstained from voting, their leader, M. Brito Camacho, arguing that Portugal had already offered to

Portugal had long been unpleasantly conscious, especially as regards Madeira, of the commercial "penetration" practised by Germany, and her historic pride in her colonies had been wounded before the war by the current rumor of an Anglo-German arrangement to take advantage of her financial needs by offering to buy them. Early in the war a German inroad into Angola produced the first Portuguese offer to help, in conformity with her secular British alliance; but there was then no favorable opportunity, and subsequently the attention of successive Ministries was fully occupied at home. The bitter conflict between the Democrats, who set up the Republic, and the more moderate Evolutionists, representing in the main the rural population, and supporting or supported by the great bulk of the Army, was settled by the naval rising of May, 1915, followed by the Democratic victory at the general election. But the mutual hostilities of the three parties, the abortive Monarchist insurrection last September, and the continued instability of the Democratic Cabinet, militated for the time against a vigorous foreign policy. Domestic differences, however, were sufficiently healed to permit the Evolutionists to form a joint Ministry with the Democrats last March; and the Unionists are understood to be ready to enter the Coalition whenever Portugal participates actively in the war. A National Ministry may therefore now be expected, and its formation will avert a fresh domestic dispute. The Republican Constitution of 1911 provides for its own revision after five years, and the Evolutionists demanded that the President should be given the

right to dissolve Parliament, believing that fresh elections would give them a fuller representation than they obtained at last year's general election, which followed closely on the Democratic triumph by force. The revision is only optional, and the question is now postponed for five years more, when success in war will probably have consolidated the Republic. Moreover, a German victory would almost certainly menace its existence. The Monarchists, being reactionary and ultramontane, would welcome a German-made restoration; and the Royal Family are German in origin. But the Spanish pro-German Ultramontanes support an "Iberian Union," which would either incorporate the two kingdoms, or would reduce Portugal to vassalage, probably under a more reactionary King of Spain than Alfonso XIII. These dangers may be remote, but the forces of the Republic are well employed in helping the Allies to render their realization impossible.

Military preparations began some time ago. An entire division, some 22,000 men, has been mobilized, and The Economist.

has had three months' training in camp at Tancos; another is about to take its place, and a third will follow in due course. More than one theatre of the war in which these troops may be useful will suggest itself to the reader, and we do not think that any apprehension need be felt as to the ability of Portugal to raise the loan needed two years hence. Her actual debt is relatively heavy, but the price of her stocks has not been exceptionally affected by the war; she has large undeveloped resources, and she is freed forever, let us hope, from the grotesque waste and corruption which marked her last days as a kingdom. Her politicians agree in recognizing her need of internal development, extended irrigation, more roads, and railways, better elementary, secondary and technical education, and also, it is stated, in desiring that her colonial policy shall be "as British as possible." This aspiration, coupled with her closer relation with Great Britain, will allay, we hope, any apprehension of the recurrence of the West African contract labor scandals of a few years ago.

The worst effect of a long war is probably the tendency to regard its continuance with less mental surprise than its termination. The momentum of many months' concentration on the achievement of a military decision tends to deaden our sense to the signs of any other sort of victory. It is because such a preoccupation is, under the circumstances, not wholly ignoble that it is so dangerous. Confronted with an enemy who seems to put aside almost every dictate of humanity, the common feeling of the nation is that he must be thoroughly beaten; that it is base to count the cost when the duty is so imperative. But we have no right

to forget what we are fighting for, to miss the reality of victory in looking for its conventional signs. History may imitate but does not repeat itself; and the problem before us is new, not only because it is fresh in its material aspect, but still more because the developed moral sense of today has changed the objective war in the minds of progressive peoples.

The changed tone of the German press gives point to these reflections. The German newspapers show a new and unfamiliar modesty in their statement of their country's aims. Thus, the great Socialist paper, "Vorwärts," publishes a long extract from the “Mili

tärwochenblatt" that makes a strong appeal for unity and restraint of criticism. Germany is passing through a "most difficult and stormy" period, and the goal is, “as quickly as possible, to secure as favorable a peace as possible." In themselves, the words are an echo of a saying of Frederick the Great, but we cannot imagine a German soldiers' paper so stating the purpose of war two years ago. They are nearer the mind of the statesman than of the soldier, and their appearance in the "Militärwochenblatt" is therefore a sign which we cannot neglect. A more definite conclusion seems to flow from the suggestions in an article in the "Cologne Gazette," that the Germans will go on fighting until they win from us an admission of their equal and full rights, and the abandonment of the desire to destroy them. Does not this suggest that, in the view of the writer, the German people have no further mind for war than the justification of their right to exist? The formula is of the simplest character, and the appeal is to the basic instinct in all vigorous peoples. When a nation varies its theme from "woe to those who withstand my will" to a demand that we admit their equality of rights, and abandon what no one seriously contends for, it seems to approach a change of temper so fundamental that other readjustments appear to be almost a matter of detail.

But the most arresting of these milestones on the road of German disillusionment about the war is a leading article of the Jewish editor, Herr Theodor Wolff, in the "Berliner Tageblatt." The paper has been suspended for publishing it; but the wonder is that it should have been written and issued at all. The article suggests, with slight ambiguity, that the German "rulers" could have prevented war, and that the idea of a German annexation of the Flanders coast "horrifies" The Nation.

the writer. Its evident intent is to indicate a radical divergence from the war philosophy of Bernhardi. "After the horror of the events," wrote Herr Wolff, "has done away forever with the poetry of the fresh merriness of war, it will be necessary, above all else, to put an end to the comfortable theory of the inevitability of war." This is, perhaps, a nearer return to the Germany that the world recognized as a humane and civilized power than any utterance of her journalism since the war began. Has Germany then begun to suspect her monstrous philosophy of war as a biological necessity, an inevitable means of development for the national organism; her theory of the decadence of nations which disliked war and were not prepared to cast their entire mould of civilization in expectation of it? At least there are signs that this German heresy is moribund, and we take that to be the most hopeful reflection of the present phase of the war. For what is it we set out to do and still propose to ourselves? We do not think that it is merely the vision of driving broken troops across the Rhine which inspires our soldiers. When all this had been done we should still have to ask ourourselves, What then? What we are really looking for is the breaking of one kind of German will and the emergence of another. Whatever the formulæ in which we express victory, it would be illusory without this conversion of spirit. With it the ruins of European civilization may yet be repaired, and a new international polity arise from the dust. The seed of this and all past wars lies in the predatory elemental instincts of man. But while we can claim without Pharisaism that they have been cultivated with reluctance here, they were fostered with gladness in Imperial Germany as the sign of a new moral order. If Germany can exorcise that spirit in herself, no one will grudge her that victory.

The holding-up of the Irish capital in the Easter week of this year by a congerie of men armed with rifles and bombs against immensely superior military forces equipped with artillery is one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of rebellion in any country, and finds but an insufficient parallel in the Paris of the Commune, where the Communards formed a much greater percentage of the population, and where the troops directed against them had a lesser homogeneity. Estimates of the number of Sinn Feiners who raised the flag of an Irish Republic vary, some recorders saying 4,000 and others 2,000. I am inclined to think that the number of actual fighting men at no time exceeded 1,600. The history of the rising is too clearly within recollection to need any close recapitulation, but it may be of interest to briefly touch on leading points. An Irish Republic was proclaimed in Dublin on Easter Monday, April 24, at 12 noon. The General Post Office was seized at that hour precisely, and the Four Courts occupied. At the same time, attacks were made on Dublin Castle and the Bank of Ireland (the old Parliament House). P. H. Pearse, who was at the head of the military operations, was proclaimed Commanderin-Chief and President of the Provisional Government, while James Connolly was declared Commander-General commanding the Dublin district. The attempt on the Castle was unsuccessful but the revolutionaries got command of the City Hall, from the windows and roof of which they were able to command the Castle Yard. They were able to seize two main railway-stations, and for a time had possession of Broadstones, the terminus of the Midland

*The Irish Rebellion of 1916." By John F. Boyle. Messrs. Constable & Co., Ltd. 4s 6d net.

LIVING AGE, VOL. III, No. 156.

Great Western; but they failed to capture the important railway termini at Kingsbridge and Amiens Street. They cut off all telegraphic communication with the provinces and with England, but did not destroy the telephone service. Had they silenced the latter, the revolt would have attained much greater dimensions, as Downing Street and the War Office would have had

for a space no real knowledge of what was happening. Mr. Boyle points out that it was the plan of the insurgents to seize buildings, as nearly as they could, in the form of a circle, so as to have their movements as free as possible in the center of the city. Important buildings taken by them on the line of the circle, starting from Stephen's Green via Leeson Street and Portobello Bridge, were the South Dublin Union and a large distillery adjoining. The troops had desperate difficulty in recapturing these positions. By a strange irony, the officer who led the attack on the South Dublin Union, Major Sir Francis Vane, was a great grandson of one of the patriots of '98, and a lineal descendant of the famous Lord Clare who led the Irish Brigade in France against the soldiers of Marlborough. It may be mentioned in passing that Sir Francis Vane has lost his military rank since through urging on Sir John Maxwell that an impartial investigation should be made into the murder of Mr. Sheehy-Skeffington. Very fittingly the Sinn Feiners barricaded the windows of the Four Courts with "law-books of heavy size and with records in parchment." It is not often that case-law is so infused with red blood. On Easter Monday night, the revolutionaries held dominating positions, in the strategic sense, in Dublin, their sharp-shooters overlooking the Castle; and the police and military