THE AMERICAN

REVIEW OF REVIEWS

VOL. XLI.

NEW YORK, JANUARY, 1910

No. 1

THE PROGRESS OF THE WORLD

The Past
Year, --

wireless messages and by aerial flight has made gains during the past year, it is true that other forms of communication have also made progress, to the obvious benefit of the

In the stately procession of the phoning is of earlier date, the use of the wireyears, 1909 has won historical less at sea has recently had such memorable Discovery distinctions which must fix its life-saving demonstrations as to make the date upon many a future page. The new year very important in that field of invenyear, indeed, promises also to make a brave tion, and to justify the announcement last record; but we may well note some things month of the award to Mr. Marconi of a that stand accredited to the vanishing twelve- Nobel Prize. While communication by month. Man's knowledge of his own planet has made much increase, and his conquest over the forces of nature has advanced with strides. It is not so long ago (1822 and 1823) that Congress was seriously debating the question of appropriating money for an expedition to prove Captain Symmes' theory that the earth was hollow, was inhabited on the inside, and could be entered at the North Pole. Within half a century books have been written to prove that the Garden of Eden was at the "furthest north." For centuries brave navigators and men of science have been pushing toward that coveted and mystic point of mathematical theory where time is not and where all directions are south. Commander Peary's courage and persistence took him to the Pole last April, and the value and meaning of his achievement will but grow clearer as the years advance. It was in the beginning of this past year, also, that Lieutenant Shackleton, of the British Navy, made his discoveries in the Antarctic regions, and approached nearer than any of his predecessors to the South Pole. In many other less striking ways geographical knowledge has made advances during the past year.

Communication
by Air
and Land

Very notable has been the year's
progress in what has come to be
called "aviation." Aeroplanes

and dirigibles, dating from the year 1909,

WILLIAM MARCONI

have taken on a thoroughly practical impor- (Who with Prof. Ferdinand Braun, of Strasburg, is tance. While wireless telegraphing and tele

winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics)

Copyright, 1909, by THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY

Civilization Amer civilization the

1909 deserves a c itable chapter. W the year has done our progress in a recounted in number of the VIEW by Mr. Knau That it has beer notable year in history of musical d ture in America be attested by C cago, Boston, Ph delphia, and oth centers, as well as New York. Pre dent Butler's little ticle written for t magazine last mon under the title "Ho to Civilize Ne York," points ideals that the pa year has done sor things to realize. O portunities for

THE NEW BUILDING, APPROACHING COMPLETION AT WASHINGTON, OF THE UNITED
STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM

The istration

than from western Europe. The most amaz- cier the year 1909, has been full of interest,
ing fact in this greatest of all world-shift- although it remains for the present year and
ings of population is the assimilative power its successor to deal with the reform of our
of American life. Irish, Germans, and Scan- banking and currency system, and with those
dinavians are now almost completely assimi- changes in our laws relating to railroads and
lated. The more recent comers not only, industrial corporations that are necessary in
learn our language and our ways so that order that the Government may perform its
they speak and dress and walk the streets proper functions with respect to the nation's
like Americans, but they conform themselves economic life.
with an almost magical and quite inexplic-
able rapidity to the physical types that are
regarded as distinctively our own. These
newcomers have massed themselves very
largely in our great towns, adding, of course,
to the immediate difficulties of civic progress.
Yet in spite of tendencies toward overcrowd-
ing, we are making advances in our average
conditions of health, comfort, and order in
city life; and many things during the past
year have illustrated this fact. The recent
municipal election in New York, not less
than things that have happened in Chicago,
San Francisco, Boston, and elsewhere, point
to better things in the government of our
cities, and to more efficient application of
means to ends for education, health, and
safety in the ordering of life where popula-
tion masses gather in great towns.

During this past year an observNew Admin- ing world has once more looked upon the spectacle of a change in the American national administration. These changes, every four years, come without any shock or tremor. Even those that have been caused by the assassination of three Presidents have shown how firm is the spirit of law and order in this country, and how adaptable are our trained citizens who pass with ease from private to public positions. Nine months of official responsibility has seemed to make the members of Mr. Taft's cabinet veteran statesmen,-even those who have never held public office before. This period has witnessed the passage of a new tariff law which, though far from being a thoroughgoing revision, is accepted by business men as a fixed fact for some years to come. This period has also witnessed definite progress in the great policy of developing our internal waterways, as will be shown in articles appearing elsewhere in this number of the REVIEW. The new President has traveled much, spoken much, and familiarized himself with conditions and sentiment in all parts of the country.

Our Outward Relations

In our relations with the world turbulent little jurisdictions of Central beyond our borders the year that America that must, if faithfully pursued, has passed has some things worth lead to some such calming of those regions their record on the page of political history. as our influence has secured at Panama, in At the beginning of the year, for example, we withdrew for the second time from the republic of Cuba, justifying to the utmost a policy that has given that rich island promise of a tranquil and happy future. We have put all our outstanding differences with Canada in the way of adjustment by arbitration. We have entered upon a policy toward the

Cuba, in Porto Rico, and in the Philippines. We have taken measures to show to all the leading powers, both of Europe and of Asia, our interest in whatever concerns the commerce of the Pacific Ocean, the future of China, and the evolution of the Far East. Mr. Calhoun, our new Minister to China, is a lawyer of valuable diplomatic experience.

The

Crisis in

For Great

Britain and her ing of this new year 1910 brings a great spheres of political influence the struggle at the polls to see whether EnglishEngland year 1909 has also been mem- men at large are sufficiently emancipated to orable. For several centuries England has stand for themselves and their children, or witnessed the slow but sure crumbling of are even yet so greatly under the mental, feudal institutions, as the forces of modern moral, and social thraldom of the feudal and life and of an awakened democracy have caste system that they prefer to be governed made their successive demands. The recent House of Commons, with its great group of Labor members and its enormous Liberal and Radical majority, has been wholly unlike any previous House of Commons since Cromwellian days in its firm attitude of opposition to arbitrary discriminations in favor of the aristocratic and privileged classes. The demands of the famous Lloyd-George budget, in their proposal of a tax on lands and in other respects, would seem to an American or a Frenchman only a reasonable move in the direction of obvious justice. But England is a country whose institutions, while in many respects most admirable and generous in their attitude toward the nation at large, are in other respects monstrously unfair in the privileges they accord to the landed aristocracy as represented by the House of Lords, to the established Church, and to other favored interests. This fight of the centuries for freedom from feudalism has had many historic dates. One of them was the Reform act of 1832. Others came in Mr. Gladstone's time with suffrage extensions, the reform of the Irish Church, and so on. by the House of Lords rather than by their The Liberal budget of the past year, rejected own elected representatives in the Commons. by the House of Lords, seems destined to fix another of these important dates. The open

HON. DAVID LLOYD-GEORGE
From the Daily Chronicle (London)

Home Rule

May Come
This Year

If the Liberals come back from the appeal to the country with a working majority they will not only establish the right of the House of Commons to govern the country in essential matters without interference from the Lords, but they will also probably give Home Rule to Ireland at once. In return for this promise of Home Rule they will be able to count upon a working coalition with the Irish Nationalist party; and this ought to make it reasonably certain that the Conservative party, led by Mr. Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, will not be able to secure the strength in the new House necessary to carry on the government. Thus great things are likely to come from the budgetary crisis of 1909, not to mention such admirable social reforms as old age pensions. These problems of internal progress are the real ones for British study. The straining for naval and military predominance in the world is at the sacrifice of England's true welfare.