in domestic politics, rather than diplomacy. By an illjudged effort to aid President Cleveland's chances of reelection in 1888, he drew upon himself the wrath of that uncompromising Democrat, invoked anew the perennial enemy of all successful diplomacy, international suspicion, and gave a new pretext for the then popular national sport called 'twisting the lion's tail.' Lord Salisbury did not consider the offence grave enough to justify the recall which the Washington government requested, and, therefore, in October 1888, the very month in which he became Lord Sackville, the latter was given his passports by Secretary Bayard, and during the remainder of the first Cleveland administration there was no British minister in Washington.

Lord Sackville's successor, Sir Julian Pauncefote, appointed after the inauguration of President Harrison, soon regained the trail that was lost, and in the fifth year of his thirteen years of service became the first British ambassador to Washington, Bayard, now ExSecretary of State, being sent to London with a corresponding title. Together they weathered the storm called 'The Venezuelan incident.' Together they faced the rise of the Cuban crisis which led to in the Spanish-American War of 1898, which gave America overseas possessions and with them a new concern with world problems which before had concerned her little.

In 1897, Bayard was succeeded in London by an ambassador with a diplomatic experience. John Hay had served as one of Abraham Lincoln's private secretaries during the Civil War. Later he had been Secretary of Legation at Paris, and Chargé d'Affaires at Vienna, succeeding, in June 1867, the historian Motley, who shortly thereafter became minister to Great Britain. In 1869 he had been transferred to the post of Secretary of Legation at Madrid. From 1870 to 1897 he had lived the life of a literary man in New York where he wrote, in cooperation with John G. Nicolay, a monumental Life of Abraham Lincoln. As ambassador in London from 1897 to 1898, when he became Secretary of State, Hay eagerly studied the problem of British-American unities, being firmly convinced that here lay the key to a successful American foreign policy. And during his single year of service, he won from a most discerning

critic, the historian Henry Adams, the verdict: In the long list of famous American ministers in London, none could have given the work quite the completeness, the harmony, and perfect ease of Hay.' Adams also declared that Sir Julian Pauncefote made John Hay Secretary of State, an achievement unique among diplomats. And the unity of method of the two continued after Hay took up his new post. Together Hay as Secretary of State and Pauncefote, a peer after 1899, worked out the important treaty which bears both names, the HayPauncefote treaty of 1901, which brushed aside the restrictions of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850, and enabled the United States to construct, regulate, and manage the Panama Canal, and to exercise such rights of policing as should be necessary to protect it against lawlessness and disorder. Together, working in the same liberal spirit, the very spirit of unity, they reached an agreement embodying substantial justice with reference to the Alaskan boundary which was signed by Lord Pauncefote's successor, Sir Michael Herbert, the year after Lord Pauncefote's death at his Washington post.

With the arrival of Mr James Bryce, who became ambassador in Washington in 1907, after Sir Mortimer Durand's three years of service, the search for new unities entered upon a fresh phase. A scholar by training and achievement, the new ambassador was recognised as the leading authority upon American government, his 'American Commonwealth' standing unrivalled as an interpretation of the great experiment. His clear, discerning, and friendly interpretations had given him a position unequalled by any of his predecessors, and during his six years of service in Washington he wielded an influence which became continental in its extent. His keen analyses of the delicate questions which had followed the Spanish-American War greatly assisted the government to which he was accredited; his interpretations of the problems of the South American republics added that continent to his throng of admirers, and he won in addition the title, unofficial American ambassador to Canada.' And all the while, by lectures, ad1 dresses, and keen, and friendly articles to the press, he interpreted to the two continents the ideals of the Liberal or Whig school of British politics to which he Vol. 247.-No. 490.

belonged. His work, with that of John Hay's immediate successors, Ambassadors Joseph H. Choate and Whitelaw Reid, brought the two nations to a clearer understanding of their unities, an understanding which Ambassador Page summed up in the phrase: British-American friendship is the greatest asset left to civilisation.'

But British-American friendship, resting upon discovered unities, even if carried to the nth power, alone can never give the peace upon which progress in civilisation depends. The ultimate test of every nation's diplomacy is not whether it enables that nation to live in harmony with one other nation, but with all other nations. Wars may come from the will of one nation to war; but peace can come only from the will to peace of all nations. And an asset of civilisation, greater even than BritishAmerican unity, will ultimately emerge out of chaos, the unity all-pervading' of which Confucius wrote twentyfive centuries ago. The idea of world unity does not mean that all nations must become alike in all things. Such unity would be highly undesirable, reducing life to a level of deadly monotony. It means only that the people of all nations must come at last to see that there is an all-pervading unity in essentials, and must come to accept the fact that the all-pervading differences in incidentals need never be altered.

And every step of progress toward the world-wide consciousness of such unity must rest upon the same processes as those by which we judge of the successes or failures of our British-American diplomats. Each new discovery of essential unities between the nations of the world marks progress, because it represents a new area within which treaties can operate, and International Law can command obedience, without sacrifice of what we call the personalities of nations. We are not alike; we shall never be alike; but our common interests are more important than our incidental differences.

ROBERT MCELROY.

Art. 2.-CRICKET AND ITS CHRONICLERS.

1. A History of Cricket. By H. S. Altham. Allen & Unwin, 1926.

2. The Hambledon Men. Ed. by E. V. Lucas. Frowde, 1907. 3. A Cricketer's By Neville Cardus. Grant

Richards, 1922.

Book.

4. My Cricketing Life. By P. F. Warner. Hodder & Stoughton, 1921.

5. Between the Wickets. By Eric Parker. P. Allan, 1926. 6. The Cricket Match. By H. de Selincourt. Jonathan Cape, 1924.

7. The Perfect Batsman. By A. C. MacLaren. Cassell, 1926.

8. W. G. Grace, Cricketer. By F. S. Ashley Cooper. Wisden, 1916.

IT is to be doubted whether our cricketers know their classics as they should. In all the immense controversy which we have heard and read during the past cricket season about means for shortening the innings, it seems to have been taken for granted that this is a need which the game is feeling for the first time in its story, and, especially, that such an addition as a fourth stump has never been suggested before. Do they not read their Nyren? If they do not, they have themselves to blame for it. It is only the other day that his ancient wisdom has been set out in a new garb for us, edited by that universal editor, Mr E. V. Lucas, and published under title of The Hambledon Men.' It includes, besides Nyren's own words, the Rev. J. Mitford's review of him, some of Cowden Clarke's comments-a very pleasant book! And on its pages 40 and 41 may be read a discussion by old Nyren of a difficulty not at all unlike that in which the great game finds itself to-day, and a proposed solution by way of a fourth stump.

The trouble then, as now, was that the game took too long, and the remedy in use was what Nyren writes of as 'a new style of playing the game of Cricket which has been adopted only within these few years, the modern innovation of throwing, instead of bowling the balls.' Of course what he calls 'throwing' is not an action which we should indicate by the word.

He refers to what we should call 'round-arm bowling.' Up to that time all the bowling had been under-hand, and even this 'modern innovation' so condemned by Nyren did not contemplate delivering the ball from above the height of the elbow. Many years still were to pass before over-hand bowling was permitted.

Nyren objected that all the fine style of hitting must in a very material degree cease. It reduces the strikers too much to an equality . . because it is impossible for the fine batsman to have time for that finesse and delicate management which so peculiarly distinguished the elegant manoeuvring of the chief players who occupied the field about eight, ten, and more years ago.' He admits the force of the contention that it helps to shorten the game so that now a match is commonly decided in one day which heretofore occupied three times the space in its completion,' but, he says, 'why not multiply the difficulties in another direction? Why not give more room for the display of skill in the batter? Why not have four stumps instead of three?' And so forth. The assumption in his last sentence but one above is curious. He does not offer it as a debatable point, but as sure beyond the need of argument, that the fourth stump would give the batter more occasion to show skill. Nyren prophesied that if the round-arm bowling was allowed, 'the elegant and scientific game of Cricket will decline into a mere exhibition of rough, coarse horseplay.' He was not always right; but we have to remember that his mental picture of the game was much affected by the circumstance that 'in those days it was the custom for the party going from home to pitch their own wickets,' and that Stevens (not G. T. S., but he who was nick-named 'Lumpy') 'would invariably choose the ground where his balls would shoot.'

We shall agree with Nyren that, in so choosing, Lumpy (was he so named because he loved a lump in the ground over which to bowl?) always committed an error,' and should have selected 'a rising spot to bowl against, which would have materially increased the difficulty to the hitter, seeing that so many more would be caught out by the mounting of the ball. As nothing, however, delighted the old man like bowling a wicket down with a shooting ball, he would sacrifice the other