United States. Few persons realize how numerous are the men of education in Cuba who have in the past pursued professional and higher studies in the United States; nor is it commonly understood how influential that element of American-trained Cubans has been in the cause of independence. General Garcia appreciated the fact that it will now be more important than ever for Cuba to have many young men and women brought to this country and trained for subsequent careers of usefulness at home. He had gone to Washington as head of a commission representing the civil and military organization. of the Cuban patriots.

on

The English at home have been much The Liberal taken up with the discussion of the Leadership. leadership of the Liberal party. Sir William Vernon Harcourt has for some time past been the party's recognized chief, but he has now resigned from that position. The strain between Sir William and Lord Rosebery has been serious for a long time, and these two rivals for Mr. Gladstone's position are not even speaking terms. Mr. John Morley is regarded as the chief intellectual light of the party, but he has been a stanch adherent of Sir William Harcourt. Mr. Henry Asquith is one of the most efficient parliamentarians, but he is objected to on the ground of his devotion to Lord Rosebery. So far as leadership on the floor of the House of Commons at the approaching session is concerned, a compromise has now been effected by the selection of Mr. Henry Campbell- Bannerman. This gentleman has had a parliamentary career of perhaps thirty years, and he has gradually taken the position of a steady party wheel-horse, reliable, esteemed, calm in temperament, and untouched by the rivalries of the more brilliant men. Sir William Harcourt is the greatest political debater in England, but he has too long practiced the art of making enemies ever to attain his great ambition to become prime minister of England. The next general parliamentary election, unless something wholly unexpected should happen to precipitate an appeal to the country, will not occur until the year 1901. Neither one of the two great English parties has for many years been at as low an ebb as is Liberalism to-day, so far as numbers, unity, and immediate prospects are concerned. None the less, Liberalism will revive to reform the House of Lords.

MR. CAMPBELL-BANNER

MAN.

Militarism Unabated.

The celebration of the Austrian Emperor's fiftieth year on the throne passed safely and quietly, his sub. jects paying him many tributes of honor. The Emperor's most noteworthy utterance on that occasion was his address to the army, to the loyalty of which he looks for the future security of his dominions. At the opening of the Reichstag last month the German Emperor declared his warm adherence to the Czar's plan of a peace conference, and avowed the maintenance of peace to be the great object of his own policy. Nev. ertheless, he has spared no pains to push the passage by the Reichstag of the new army proposals, the net result of which will be the addition of from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand more men to the regular standing army and the increase of the war budget by perhaps seven or eight million marks. Next year, moreover, it is the plan to make another similar addition to the number of men and the cost of army maintenance. In England, where there is also much pious talk about peace, the naval expenditures have been enormously increased. The Formid. able, the largest battleship ever launched, is rapidly approaching completion, and the programmes of army improvement, as well as of naval ex. pansion, go on apace. Even the business men of Spain, who are eager for what they call the regeneration of the country and its delivery from militarism and politicians, have advocated in their recent conference of chambers of commerce at Saragossa the establishment of compulsory military service on the plan of all the great continental powers.

Russia and the Peace

Russia, according to reports, has succeeded in selling to the Chinese emConference. pire half a million rifles of a pattern that the Russian army is discarding as obsolete; and every effort is being made in the shortest possible time to provide the whole Russian army with new rifles of long range, small caliber, and high power. All the continental powers-and the Russians foremost of all-have been disposed to utilize such lessons as might be learned from recent campaigns. The Czar shows no disposition to stop Russian military preparations while preparing for his international peace conference for devising ways to check the growth of militarism. Mr. W. T. Stead, who contributes to this number a very interesting character sketch of the young Czar, with whom he has lately had personal interviews, is not only convinced of the absolute sincerity of the Czar's desire to promote the cause of peace, but is also persuaded of the great practical utility of the Russian ideas which have led to the call for the conference. It is not

expected that the conference will do anything more radical than to devise a way to limit the further growth of military budgets for a fixed term. In the past ten years there has been a large regular increase in the aggregate amount of money spent each year by Europe for the support of armies and navies. It is argued that if nothing is done to check the tendency this increase will go on. The Czar would secure an agreement among the nations that for five years they would not add anything to the burdens of militarism that their peoples are already carrying. This might prove a beginning which would, as a result of future agreements, lead to steps toward gradual disarmament.

America

and the Conference.

Mr. Stead is of opinion that the people of the United States and England might exert a well-nigh decisive influence in making this proposed conference a real success. To the argument that the United States should play a prominent part in that conference it may be said that the situation to which the Czar addressed his famous peace manifesto is purely and strictly a European situation. The United States is in no sense a military power. This country holds itself responsible in a general way for the peace and good order of the western hemisphere. In its capacity as responsible guardian of affairs in this part of the world it has just accomplished successfully a piece of police work that required the use of force in the West Indies. But the United States has suc

THE PLAYTHING OF THE POWERS IS THE BURDEN OF THE PEOPLES. From the Herald (New York).

ceeded in getting almost all of the republics of the western hemisphere to give their approval to a plan for the arbitration of differences between nations on this side of the Atlantic, and it has been the cardinal point in American policy for almost a century to promote a condition of things in our part of the planet that should make it possible to avoid the military burdens which Europe has always borne. But while, on the one hand, we have singly assumed the responsibility for maintaining certain principles in the western hemisphere, it has belonged to the con. cert of Europe to deal with matters of common interest and concern in Europe and the adjacent parts of Asia and Africa. It is true that the invitation to the Czar's conference was a general one; and the United States ought to be well represented, by men instructed to express America's great desire that the European people should find it feasible to rid themselves of so oppressive a system. This country will have to increase its army, undoubtedly. but there is no prospect of our having a military establishment much more extensive than those of such minute European powers as Roumania, Servia, or Bulgaria. With our immense trade, our outlying islands, and our extensive seacoast, we shall, of course, in

M. CHARLES DUPUY,
Premier and Minister of the Interior of France.
(Drawn from life for the Graphic, London.)

creace from time to time the size and efficiency of our navy; but we shall not enter upon any policy of armament that will affect in any manner the questions of European policy that it is proposed to discuss at the Czar's conference. Something, of course, may be done in the way of fixing arbitrary limits to the extent of European military preparation, but in the long run the cause of peace is to be promoted most effectually, first by the final adjustment of those unsettled questions which threaten the peace of nationsAlsace-Lorraine, for example-and, second, by an increased use of such means as arbitration for the settlement of disputes.

It

very unpopular in France and have gone against the weight of current prejudice. Nevertheless, they may be said to have saved the republic. matters comparatively little whether as a result of a fair judicial review of the proceedings under which he had been convicted-Dreyfus should be found guilty or found innocent; but it matters profoundly whether or not any man in France, civilian or soldier, can be condemned and punished without a chance to defend himself and without even knowing the precise nature of his offense or the character or source of the evidence against him. The Dreyfus case has shaken France profoundly. But the real crisis was passed when the righteous decision of the Court of Cassation was made and acquiesced in. The present prime minister and cabinet, while holding still to the prevailing French opinion that Dreyfus is guilty, stand firmly upon the principle that civil authority is superior even to the army in France. That principle having triumphed, the further history of the Dreyfus matter may indeed be interesting: but the question of vital importance has already been settled. Thus France. enters upon the new year with the increased strength that comes from a hard won moral victory. In some points of foreign policy France. has also been much irritated and humiliated in the year now passed; but far from being the loser for having yielded to England on the Fashoda question, France has escaped a great danger. There was no practical chance to establish a post at Fashoda or anywhere in that region of the upper Nile that France could have maintained advantageously.

MAJOR MARCHAND AND THE SPHINX.

Uneasy Alliances.

The events of the

year 1898 have subjected the European alliances to a good deal of strain, so that it is somewhat freely predicted that the coming year may witness some changes. There is reason to think that the French people are not altogether happy in their Russian alliance, while neither Italy nor Austria finds abiding contentment in the alliance with Germany. Italy has found it exceedingly expensive to maintain the military and naval establishments that the terms of the triple alliance require, while Austria for its part has been deeply offended by certain German domestic policies over which a bitter controversy has arisen. It has long been the general policy of Germany to assimilate all elements of population as rapidly as possible, no matter how arbitrary the methods used; and of Prussia it is particularly true that it has been the programme to Prussianize every locality coming under the national jurisdiction. Within the past year, however, the policy has been enforced in a more arbitrary manner than ever before. In pursuance of this policy the expulsion of aliens has been proceeding by wholesale. A great many Danes have resided in those Schleswig-Holstein districts of Prussia which formerly belonged to Denmark, and hundreds of these Danes have lately been driven across the line into their own country in spite of protests from Copenhagen.

Diplomacy."

Having settled the West Africa disThe "New, pute with England earlier in the year and having yielded the Fashoda. contention, French diplomacy should now face about and cultivate the best possible relations with England, with a view to some substantial help and support at other points. The French have a great sphere in their own conceded African territories. They ought to find more profit in a policy of friendliness toward England than in what Sir Edmund Monson has called the policy of

pin-pricks." Sir Edmund, who is now British ambassador at Paris, ventured several weeks ago on the occasion of a banquet given by an association of British merchants in Paris-to make a speech on the lines of what he called

the new diplomacy," which is supposed to consist in saying exactly what you mean, without any of those circumlocutions and grandiloquent paraphrases that used to pass for the correct thing in the discussion of affairs between nations. Sir Edmund gave credit to the Americans for originating this new method of diplomacy, having in mind, evidently, the presence of the American peace commissioners in Paris at that time, and the somewhat peremptory manner in which they were meeting the tedious argument of the Spanish commissioners. Sir Edmund's speech discussed without reserve the questions recently at issue between France and England, and particularly the Fashoda incident. It irritated the French press to a high degree.

By virtue of a similar policy a great number of subjects of Austria-Polish and of other raceshave been expelled from German soil as a part of the scheme of colonizing the frontier with Germans and thus strengthening the nation and preparing it for further territorial encroachments at such future times as may prove opportune. It is not strange that the Austrian Government, as well as the Austrian press, should resent these methods as unneighborly and out of keeping with the spirit of the intimate alliance that has existed for many years between Germany and Austria. The irritation on the part of Austria is not diminished by the fact of the great influence of Germany in the Turkish empire, as illustrated in many ways during the German Emperor's recent visit to the Sultan and Palestine. Germany seems to have entered upon a deliberate plan of growth toward the southeast, and this can hardly mean anything else except the intention some day to annex parts of Austria.

REV. JOHN HENRY BARROWS, D.D. (Who has accepted the presidency of Oberlin College.)

ilization, has also been marked by an unusual number of vacancies or changes in conspicuous educational posts. In November came the announcement that President Timothy Dwight is about to give up his eminently useful and successful work as president of Yale University, on the ground that a younger man should now take the helm. Earlier in the year President E. Benjamin Andrews left Brown University, for the upbuilding of which his energetic administration had accomplished such wonders, in order to assume the more arduous task of the superintendency of the school system of Chicago. Dr. Andrews, after difficulties that would have discouraged a less resolute man, seems to have secured the school board's indorsement of his policy for the maintenance of strict merit principles in the appointment of teachers. The presidency of Oberlin College, which has been for some time vacant, has now been filled by the appointment of the Rev. Dr. John Henry Barrows. Dr. Barrows, who was already well known throughout this country, gained for himself an international reputation and acquaintance through the prominent part taken by him in the world's congress of religions five years ago. Since that time he has devoted himself to travel, study, and authorship, and his writings and