EDITED BY ALBERT SHAW CONTENTS FOR JUNE, 1910 King George and Queen Mary..Frontispiece Ward, The American Sculptor.. The Progress of the World The Character of King Edward.. Crisis" Already Averted.. The Lords and the Budget. England and Germany. By Ernest Knaufft With illustrations ..... 694 The Modern Way of Being a King. 643 A 644 645 King George on Smooth Seas. 646 648 Mark Twain, Artist. Britain and America. 649 By William Lyon Phelps Mark Twain and the Subscription 656 Mark Twain as a Neighbor. With portrait and other illustrations 658 A New Playground for the Nation.. 710 By Guy Elliott Mitchell With map and other illustrations The Atlantic Fisheries Dispute...... 718 By P. T. McGrath The Farmer's Profits and the Specu By George Ade 703 705 By Dan Beard With map of Newfoundland Paulhan,-London to Manchester!. 662 lation in Land. 725 Disasters to Dirigibles.. 662 By Robert S. Lanier Weston, the Walker. Settling All Our Differences with Canada. The Earthquake in Costa Rica. 663 664 Getting Together for Missions..... 731 664 664 Peru's Dispute with Ecuador.. 665 "The Peace Maker of Europe Launching the South African Union. 668 Record of Current Events ........... 670 Leading Articles of the Month- 737 738 740 742 743 745 746 747 750 689 With illustrations Finance and Business... 754 China's First World's Fair: 691 The New Books...... 759 With illustrations With portraits and other illustrations TERMS: Issued monthly, 25 cents a number, $3.00 a year in advance in the United States, Porto Rico, Hawaii, Cuba, Mexico and Philippines. Canada, $3.50 a year; other foreign countries, $4.00. Entered as Second Class matter at the Post Office Department, Ottawa, Canada. Subscribers may remit to us by post-office or express money orders, or by bank checks, drafts, or registered letters. Money in letters is at sender's risk. Renew as early as possible, in order to avoid a break in the receipt of the numbers. Bookdealers, Postmasters, and Newsdealers receive subscriptions. (Subscriptions to the English REVIEW OF REVIEWS, which is edited and published by Mr. W. T. Stead in London, may be sent to this office, and orders for single copies can also be filled, at the price of $2.50 for the yearly subscription, including postage, or 25 cents for single copies.) THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS CO., 13 Astor Place, New York City. REVIEW OF REVIEWS VOL. XLI. NEW YORK, JUNE, 1910 No. 6 THE PROGRESS OF THE WORLD The Character of King At the moment when King Edward died, so widely expressed in England was the sense of loss with a dread of political consequences, that no one could doubt its sincerity. At first the American reader was inclined to be a little skeptical and to attribute this gloomy, almost despairing tone of English journalism and statesmanship to the British habit of rejoicing greatly or of mourning deeply over every happening, good or ill, that affects the royal family. But it was all genuine, not perfunctory. Americans generally had regarded King Edward as the embodiment of tact, kindly temper, liberality of mind, and the sense of fair play that is developed by a life of devotion to English sportsmanship. The death of the King has given us all in this country an opportunity to discover how greatly Edward had grown in the respect, as well as in the affections, of the English people. That widespread disapprobation of him as a man,-which it was always known that even his royal mother shared in entertaining, and which as late as twenty years ago led many Englishmen to say that Edward could never be permitted to ascend the throne, had been lived down. THE LATE KING EDWARD Edward that he left the institution of monarchy stronger than he found it. In the first decade of the twentieth century he reconciled a republican age to the indefinite continuance of that most illogical of all things in modern government,-an hereditary sovereign. He was a king who understood how much more powerful he could be through the tactful use of influence, and the gentle pressure of social leadership, than through the possession of absolute governing authority. And so, in this period when public opinion is the dominant force, he found more than enough work to do, and readily reconciled himself to the Copyright, 1910, by THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANT 643 a distance and with some perspective, has not been nearly so perilous as those in the midst of the controversy have supposed. For a great many years it has been obvious that the House of Lords would have to be reorganized or else abolished. It was also obvious enough that, when the time came to deal with the question, the Lords and the influences represented by them would make a plucky fight for every vested right and privilege that had come to them from earlier days. They could have postponed the period of their reformation if they had been governed by the same tact and good sense that keeps the monarchy alive and useful. The budget, or finance bill, which had passed the House of Commons by an overwhelming majority, and which the House of Lords persistently refused to accept, was a measure making some changes in taxation and providing funds to maintain a system of old-age pensions for workingmen. There were innovations in this budget, but they were neither disastrous nor unstatesmanlike. The people of the United Kingdom, by an overwhelming majority, were behind the members of Parliament who carried the budget repeatedly through the House of Commons. For generations it had been the unwritten consti ALBERT EDWARD, AS FAMILIARLY SEEN, JUST BEFORE HE ASCENDED THE THRONE tutional law of England that the House of Lords must agree to measures framed by the House of Commons for raising revenue and for expending it. The House of Lords is, naturally, made up for the most part of members representing the extreme reactionary wing of the Conservative party. When the Conservatives are in power in the House of Commons, they also control the House of Lords and their bills are promptly ratified. But when the Liberals, by mandate of the nation, as at the present time, have a majority in the House of Commons and are in control of the executive government, the Tory House of Lords always blocks and obstructs important measures of legislation, without regard to the popular demand for their passage. GEORGE V. AS HE APPEARED AT THE RECENT QUEBEC CELEBRATION the great majority of men whose rank as peers gives them the right to a seat and a vote in the House of Lords under the present system are not statesmen, have never entered the House at Westminster half a dozen times in their lives, and ought to be dispossessed of their present prerogatives. Precisely how to reconstruct the membership of the upper chamber on the one hand, and to define its powers on the other hand, must involve protracted discussion and many compromises. But it does not involve any such thing as a crisis. Already the House of Lords has, by a decisive majority, accepted the budget which it had so persistently rejected previous to the last general election. Thus the Lords will never again obstruct a budget. But further than that, the House of Lords has |