way for the more drastic legislation introduced by the Liberals in 1906 and the following years. This was Harcourt's greatest achievement, and perhaps the most notable effort in constructive policy of the short-lived Liberal administration; for the second Home Rule Bill was dropped on its rejection by the Peers. Under the Unionist administrations of 1895-1905 Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, as Colonial Secretary, and Mr. Wyndham, by his Irish Land Purchase Act, rendered conspicuous service in the domain of Imperial and Home policy. Yet at the culminating point of his popularity Mr. Chamberlain left the Government to prosecute that Fiscal Campaign which broke up the Government, broke down his strength, and ended a brilliant career in enforced retirement. Mr. Wyndham's withdrawal from the Government, owing to friction over Irish policy, closed in early middle age the career of the most gifted and attractive politician of his generation.

"IL GIOCONDO"

The enigmatic smile of this Old Master distinguishes it from that other National treasure, the "Bonar Lisa."

From 1906 onwards we are confronted by the meteoric and Protean personalities of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston Churchill, who between them have held almost all the great offices of State, and ranged over the whole spectrum of Party colours, and lastly of Lord Birkenhead. Mr. Churchill's father had once called Mr. Gladstone "an old man in a hurry." One wonders what Lord Randolph would have called his son Winston, of whom it was said "he likes things to happen, and when they don't happen he likes to make them happen." In comparison with the discreet progress of Reform in the last century the pace became fast and furious. The demands of organized Labour were conceded in the Trade Disputes Bill of 1906—the greatest landmark in industrial legislation of the last half-century—and in 1910 the People's Budget led to the revolt and surrender of the House of Lords.

Yet concurrently with the democratic drift of Liberal finance and social reform, the principle of a continuity of foreign policy, initiated by Lord Rosebery, and continued by Lord Salisbury and Lord Lansdowne, was faithfully maintained by Sir Edward Grey, whose sober and frugal expositions contrasted strangely with the vivacity and flamboyant rhetoric of his colleagues. The Anglo-French Entente and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance both came into being when Lord Lansdowne was at the Foreign Office, and the influence of the Liberal Imperialist group in Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Cabinet secured a free hand for the Foreign Minister. It is the fashion in some quarters to regard the late King Edward as "the only begetter" of the Entente; it is at any rate within the mark to credit him with having missed no opportunity of fostering it by his tact and bonhomie. It was no easy task. When he visited Paris in 1902 the official greetings were perfectly correct, but the animosity aroused over the Boer war found vent in outrageous and unseemly caricatures. England was then the most unpopular country in the world; and in allaying this general distrust and dislike, the personal relations of King Edward with foreign statesmen and rulers wrought powerfully for goodwill and a better understanding.

STUDENTS ON THE MAKE

Mr. F. E. Smith: "Master of epigram—like me!"

Mr. Winston Churchill: "Wrote a novel in his youth—like me!"

Together: "Travelled in the East—like us. How does it end?"

(Mr. W. F. Monypenny's official "Life of Disraeli" has just been published.)

Looking back, in the light of fuller knowledge, on the South African war of 1899-1902, we cannot fail to recognize how narrowly we escaped the active hostility of more than one European Power; how much we owe to the wise magnanimity of the British Government in granting full autonomy to the Transvaal in 1906—an act not only justified by the sequel but approved by those who voted against it. It converted the most formidable of those who fought against us into loyal servants of the Empire in her hour of greatest need; it allayed the misgivings of those at home who had opposed the Boer war, and it silenced the criticisms of foreigners who had denounced our aim as the extermination of a people rightly struggling to be free. Whatever views may be held as to the origin of the Boer war—that it was forced on by mining magnates, or that it was the inevitable result of a reactionary system which threatened our hold on South Africa—it remains one of the very few examples of a war which, in the long run, left things better than they had been, and satisfied the aspirations of the majority of the conquered. And if we did not learn all the lessons that we might have learned from the military point of view, the experience was not thrown away. The services of Kitchener, Plumer and Byng, to mention only three out of scores of names, proved that what was comparatively a little war was a true school of leadership for the greatest of all.

Great Britain's warlike operations throughout this period were intra-Imperial, and the scale of the South African campaign, in which from first to last we put 250,000 men into the field, dwarfed the troubles in Ashanti and on the Indian frontier into insignificance. That we kept out of all the other wars which convulsed the world between 1892 and 1914 must be put down to good management as well as good luck. It is remarkable to notice the steady if gradual convergence of the war clouds on Europe, the drawing in of the war zone from the circumference to the centre, beginning with the conflict between China and Japan. The brief and inglorious Greco-Turkish war hardly counts, and Europe was not physically engaged in the Spanish-American war, where all the fighting was done in the New World. Politically its significance was far-reaching, as revising the Monroe Doctrine and enlarging the Imperial horizons of the United States. Politically, again, the "Boxer" rising in China affected the European Powers, whose competing interests in the "integrity of China" were not reconciled by their joint expedition for the relief of the Legations in 1900. Here again the fighting was in the Far East, as it was in the Russo-Japanese war, if we except the "regrettable incident" of the Dogger Bank; and Russia has always been as much an Oriental as a Western Power. But the Russo-Japanese war shook Tsardom to its foundations, promoted Japan to the status of a Great Power, and compensated her largely for the intervention of Russia, Germany and France in robbing her of the spoils of her victory over China. The European conflagration broke out in 1912 with the war of the Balkan League on Turkey. Victory crowned the efforts of a righteous cause—the relief of oppressed nationalities from the oppressions and exactions of a corrupt and tyrannous rule—but was wasted by the internecine quarrels and irreconcilable demands of the victors. Serbia, who had lived down much of the odium excited by the barbarous murders of Alexander and Draga, and had borne more than her share of the war against Turkey, was isolated, partly by her own intransigence, mainly by the greed, the diplomatic manoeuvres