Such continuity connotes a loyal understanding among politicians to exclude foreign affairs as far as possible from party warfare, and not light-heartedly to seek a personal advantage by using in opposition language which foreshadows a reversal of engines when they succeed to responsibility. We are reminded how, in 1880, for party purposes Mr Gladstone denounced Austria in such unmeasured terms in his Midlothian campaign, that he was on accession to office confronted with the humiliating obligation of offering explanations to the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador. Quite recently we have had a conspicuous example of the inopportune in violent denunciations of Turkey and the menace of the crusading sword on the eve of a conference in which the Turks were about to take part. Self-elimination in the service of his country,' as Mr Kennedy well puts it, which is one of the duties the diplomatist not less than the soldier has to learn, does not always seem to be regarded as an obligation by the politician.

For that reason it is all the more welcome to find that Mr Kennedy does justice to the eminent services of Lord Lansdowne during his tenure of the Foreign Office, to his willing acceptance of responsibility, and his readiness to subordinate any consideration of personal success to disinterested public duty. The account given of the genesis and establishment of the entente with France could not be improved as a brief and lucid exposition. Excellent, also, is the summary of events leading up to the entry of Italy into the war and the justification of Sir Edward Grey for accepting the pact of London. Much useful light is also thrown on the Bulgarian imbroglio.

Mr Mowat is less concerned with the personal appreciations which add so much to the interest of Mr Kennedy's book. A volume of 300 pages covering a whole century of European diplomacy must necessarily be rather in the nature of a handbook for those seeking political education. Carefully compiled from documentary evidence and written as he claims it to be without partisanship, it will be very useful to students of recent history. The chapters dealing with the Union of Germany, the rise of Prussia, and the foundation and expansion of the German Empire are particularly valuable. Many important matters, such as the Egyptian question, which

has on several occasions reacted strongly on Europea n diplomacy, are inevitably dealt with in a very summary manner. But the exigencies of compression do not justify the statement that the reconquest of the Soudan, which though completed in 1898 began in 1896, was undertaken when or because the political and economic conditions of Egypt, under Lord Cromer's guidance, had been rendered sufficiently stable to admit of a fresh effort at expansion.' It had not been Cromer's intention even to contemplate the recovery of the Soudan until after the Nile reservoirs had been constructed and new lands brought under irrigation, the revenue derived from which would have enabled the Egyptian army to be increased and the railway to be prolonged from Luxor to the desert frontier. But the Italian disasters in Abyssinia precipitated action, and it was in execution of categorical instructions from London that an advance was initiated which could not be arrested until Khartoum had been retaken.

The Fashoda incident which followed the reconquest is more fully dealt with by Mr Kennedy, who has evidently desired to do justice to both parties concerned. This is the proper spirit in which to approach such a delicate question, but he carries impartiality too far in laying down that the French case was logically as good as the British. To appreciate justly their respective merits the story must be carried further back even than 1895. The French Government had in 1894, when contesting the validity of the Anglo-Congolese agreement, under which certain areas including the Bahr el Ghazal region claimed for the British-Egyptian sphere were to be leased to the Congo Free State, based their chief argument on the alleged infringement by such a lease of the rights of the Sultan and the Khedive. The recognition of these rights in the terms of the lease was described as perfunctory, and the French Government insisted that the Khedivial Government had constantly affirmed its desire to re-establish its authority over the Soudan. A similar pretext had been urged in 1892, when a proposal of the Congo Government to divide the Bahr el Ghazal with France was rejected. As soon, however, as it had been definitely ascertained that Captain Marchand, whose instructions were by hoisting the flag

to give the French Congo colony an outlet to the Nile, had actually arrived at Fashoda, the stock argument which had served over a number of years to preserve the equatorial provinces from rival occupation was dropped and those very rights of Egypt were called in question. The French Ambassador in London then protested to Lord Salisbury that it was going rather far to vindicate perpetuity for the rights of Egypt over territories which had only belonged to her at most for three or four years.

Nor is it quite accurate to say that the French Government had simultaneously equipped an expedition under an Orleans Prince to start from Abyssinia and penetrate to Fashoda from the east. The expedition in question was conducted by MM. Clochette and de Bonchamps. Prince Henry of Orleans, a suggestion for whose cooperation from the east had already been made to the French Government by Colonel Monteil in 1894, went, it is true, to Abyssinia in the spring of 1897, apparently with the intention of joining Clochette. But whether because the French Government did not desire his cooperation or for other unexplained reasons, he did not accompany the expedition,'and returned to Jibouti. The hostility of the Southern Abyssinians, to which the failure of the design is attributed, was perhaps not altogether spontaneous. There is still something to be written to complete the story of Fashoda.

It might also be contested whether Mr Kennedy is justified, when enumerating the concrete results of Sir E. Grey's judicious handling of certain diplomatic issues in the early days of the war, in claiming that it prevented Sweden from joining our enemies as she seemed inclined to do in the summer of 1915.' There were many elements in Sweden which aggressively proclaimed their German sympathies, but the mass of the people was not Germanophil, nor other than friendly to the cause of the Allies. There is also reason to believe that Germany regarded the neutrality of Sweden as being to her own advantage.

Attention has been drawn to these points, because the two former, at any rate, refer to matters within the range of the present writer's experience, and they may merit revision in a work of unquestionable value, which

deserves to be carefully studied by all who wish to form a clear and sequent appreciation of the foreign relations of Great Britain during the last ten decades. They will find in it no hesitating answer to the question implicitly posed by contrasting the old and the new diplomacy.

The new era presents for diplomacy tasks of greater complication and difficulty than it has ever had to deal with. The difficulty is not lessened by the increase of groups and parties with leaders, and press combinations with spokesmen who, however small their experience, appeal to the public ear with quick and easy methods for solving problems, political, military, or diplomatic, which have taxed the highest abilities of experts in all countries at all times. A good many years have passed since the late Lord Salisbury likened the work of the Foreign Office to that of bees in a glass hive. We shall not advance matters by illuminating the hive electrically. Not altogether unassociated with publicity, because of the opportunities afforded thereby, is a new factor unknown to the old diplomacy which first revealed its influence in the late war. The insidious weapon of propaganda has been, and will probably be more and more used to create currents of opinion in certain quarters in order to promote specific aims. Constant vigilance, intelligent observation, and perception of the forces at work in other countries will be necessary to estimate real values, to detect the sources of inspiration, and, if possible, to counter them. The peace and prosperity of the world will in the future, even more than in the past, depend on the manner in which international questions are handled. In the foregoing article the endeavour has been made to indicate some of the reasons for our conviction that few careers demand a longer, a more special and indispensable training than that of those who are called upon to conduct negotiations and preserve relations of harmony with other nations. Mr Kennedy's and Mr. Mowat's books appear at a most opportune moment, and we can but hope that politicians and journalists, and all who exercise any influence on public opinion, will give full and careful study to the subject in the light of the information which they contain.

RENNELL RODD.

Art. 7.-THE TIMES'; FROM DELANE TO NORTHCLIFFE.

WHEN Lord Northcliffe died on the 13th of last August, the event was recognised everywhere, at home and abroad, as one of national importance. For the first time in history, a memorial service in honour of a 'newspaper man' was held in Westminster Abbey, and as the body was borne from the church to the cemetery, the streets on either side of the long route were lined with respectful crowds, larger than would be witnessed at the funeral of any statesman, except perhaps one, or of any of the heroes of the war. It was natural, of course, that the newspapers for days afterwards should be filled with obituaries and criticisms; all journalists had something to say, adoring, friendly, critical, or hostile, about the man who had in five-and-twenty years effected a revolution in their business. For this, undoubtedly, is what Lord Northcliffe did. Gifted with genius of a particular kind, he saw quite early in life that genius, if it was to succeed, must possess three gifts -the gift of seeing what the occasion requires, the gift of seizing the means for realising it, and the gift of practical energy for carrying it through. He came into the busy, curious, thirsty' world of London-a world into which some hundreds of thousands of girls and boys were annually turned out of the Board Schools, able to read, and anxious for 'news.' To satisfy them, he started 'Answers,' and from its success went on, till, to satisfy these children's fathers and a vast generation which longed to hear all that could be told of sport, pleasure, crime, with whatever politics might appeal to their pockets or their passions, he founded the 'Daily Mail.' Fortune lavished her smiles upon him, till the day came, in 1908, when he acquired the chief control of the 'Times.' Why not? Did he not deserve the pre-eminence? He had called a new world into existence, and had made 'the newspaper' a daily necessity for millions. It was a transformation that went very deep, and for the understanding of it we can propose no better way than by surveying, in some detail, the history of the Times during the last fifty or sixty years, from the days of the great editor Delane down to the present hour.

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