gered not because it objected to socialistic measures, but because the socialists cannot be persuaded to leave their devising and execution to the Government as at present constituted. Politics that is to say and not economics has been at the bottom of the whole history since Bismarck persecuted, and the Emperor William patronized, and subsequently lost patience with the party. It is in this latter phase that the socialist question stands in Germany; and in proportion as the socialists gain ground, they are at present the largest single Parliamentary group, the more does the political divergence cause irritation to the Government. In economics the Government has no objection to pose as the ally of the party; but the fact that the socialists are not thereby to be persuaded into acquiescence in the present political system accounts for its hatred of them. As a theory socialism is accepted more deliberately in Germany than it is in any other country, and the Government has responded more readily to the pressure put upon it than have the Governments of other countries. Yet Germany is the most autocratic and aristocratic of all the European Christian nations with the exception of Russia. None of the nations who claim the distinction of possessing representative institutions in the most complete form, England, France, the United States, has done so much towards carrying out many of the ideas of socialism as Germany has done. The men who are returned to their Parliaments belong to classes who are more opposed in principle to the economic control of the State than those classes in Germany whose influence in the Government is not derived from their representative but from their aristocritic, character-using this word politically as the antithesis of democracy. The German socialists however have believed that it is this very aristocracy that they must fight in the in

terests of democracy as the preliminary necessary to the complete socializing of the state. It is a proposition not capable of being maintained that socialism would proceed pari passu with the democratizing of the Government, but the German socialists seem to act on the assumption that it would. That is part of the original book theory of socialism as it may be called which experience has not confirmed. Socialists have found, as many have in England for example, that the political movement is an embarrassment to the socialistic. At first they were the allies of Radicalism but this subsequently proved to be not only a superfluous but a positively damaging alliance. socialist propaganda they decided ought to be economic for the simple reason that the amount of socialism to be got out of a Government has to be measured not in proportion to its democratic or aristocratic elements but by the degree to which economic socialism has permeated public opinion. In America and in France the form of government per se did not advance socialism one extra step: and they saw that the question of what was to be the ultimate form assumed by the state under a régime of complete socialism might be deferred until that epoch had arrived.

The

Socialism in Germany has not yet reached this point: and in this respect it is less purely socialistic than the corresponding movements in England and France, where the more intellectual socialists have detached themselves from the revolutionary and Radical or Liberal parties. Their plan is now to develop socialism within the ambits of the Governments under which they happen to find themselves: and to adopt in politics an opportunist in place of an irreconcilable attitude. In Germany however it has happened that, while Liberalism and Radicalism in the narrow political sense have been

declining, the socialist party has been growing. The two movements have gone on together proportionately; until now the most embarrassing party to the Government is that of the socialists who have taken over the political principles of Liberalism and Radicalism. What we are hearing now in the Reichstag from Count von Bülow and General von Einem recalls the bitter speeches of Bismarck against the leaders of Liberalism in which he charged them with want of patriotism for very similar reasons to those now alleged against the socialists. It is very natural and implies nothing more deadly against socialism than against Liberalism. There is not the slightest additional point given to the sarcasms of the German Ministers because their antagonists are socialists instead of Liberals. One side may accuse the other of want of patriotism and nickname it the peace-at-any-price party and assert that its principles lead to the destruction of the fatherland. The other retorts with "Jingo" and the rest of it and neither means exactly what it says. In England we have accused our Radicals of loving all countries but their own; and the monstrousness of cosmopolitanism has been demonstrated and the virtues of nationalism exalted as fiercely as is now being done in Germany by Count von Bülow and General von Einem a propos of the socialists. In France it is just the same; and the Nationalists have made fierce attacks upon the "Intellectuals"-the Cosmopolites-as the betrayers of their own country. We see no mystery, though some newspapers have imagined there is, in the recent proceedings in the Reichstag. If the socialists are opposed to the Army and Navy Bills, and if they have a keen scent for abuses in the army such as have been The Saturday Review.

disclosed in a series of German novels, that is not because they are socialists but because they belong to social classes similarly to those in our own country who with no tincture of socialism have always been anti-military. Jealousy of the military element in a nation as necessarily involving the idea of aristocracy and autocracy is one of the oldest stories in party politics; and has perhaps been oftener told in England than elsewhere. Herr Bebel the socialist leader was without doubt as sincere as he was eloquent in affirming this patriotism of socialists and their loyalty of service in the army and navy; and certainly there is nothing in socialism which is synonomous with the theory of quakerism. Whether the German socialists are right or wrong in opposing the military proposals of the Government, the reproach that socialism is inconsistent with patriotism is as unjust, and as meaningless at the same time, as party accusations usually are. Socialists in all countries may be accounted unpatriotic by those who think that the replacing of individual proprietorship and industry by the dominion of the State means national destruction. But that is entirely different from the general charges that have been made against the German socialists. They are by no means danger. ous to the state in the sense which the early Christians were understood to be to the Roman State by Marcus Aure. lius. They will fight even now if need be like the ordinary German for Germany; because they want to own the fatherland in the future, and must therefore meanwhile help to defend it; otherwise there would be no use for their socialism. The charge of antipatriotism except as merely party common form has no significance.

Politicians, and, indeed, thinking men generally, all over the world are watching the new Pope with unusually keen interest. They see that he is a thoroughly good man, devoted to his work, and with an intolerance for vice and corruption which strikes dismay into those who profit by abuses, always a numerous class in very ancient and widespread organizations. They see that he is quite fearless, that he habitually speaks out, and that he does not hesitate, as Austria saw in the remarkable case of the Archbishop of Olmütz, to use his supreme power in the Church when necessary against the very highest in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. They expect him, therefore, to be popular, the world estimating Popes very much as it estimates Judges,-that is, by character for uprightness and goodness rather than by knowledge of law. But they see also elements of danger to his Church, considered as a powerful institution, which arise from

the very

virtues of the present occupant of the Papal throne. His course through his complex world may prove too straight to be altogether safe. Pius X. is clearly no diplomatist. He considers, for example, that the French Government in prohibiting the Congregations from teaching or keeping schools is acting oppressively and in an unrighteous manner, and he says so in a voice which is audible in every house in France, and which has immensely increased the bitterness of the conflict between the French Government and the church. Thousands of influential men in France who would have gladly welcomed any reasonable compromise now declare that compromise is impossible, that the fight must go on to a finish, that diplomatic communication with the Vatican must be broken off, and that

the Concordat, which for nearly a hun. dred years has been the basis of Ultramontane authority in France, must be denounced, and the Church, without any State revenue, be left at the mercy of a Legislature more or less agnostic. Leo XIII., though not perhaps so candid as Pius X., was a great diplomatist, and would almost certainly have evaded this great and dangerous conflict. He had the power, for it is clear from successive votes in the Chamber that French politicians cannot reconcile themselves to the idea of France ceasing to be the protector of Roman Catholic Missions throughout the transmarine world. Leo XIII. would have threatened to transfer that position, with its control over an agency that covers the world, into other hands, and so have compelled M. Combes to pause, if not to retreat. So envenomed has the dispute become that it is believed that M. Loubet, while paying a visit of ceremony to the King of Italy, will pay no visit to the Pope, an omission which, as we see from a recent scene in the Chamber, will be regarded by fervent Roman Catholics as a deliberate affront to their Church, and by men of all religious opinions as a proclamation that between that Church and the French Government there is open war. If, indeed, the Pope by his impetuous denunciation had alarmed the Chamber, and so altered votes, the Vatican might have claimed a victory, however temporary; but, on the contrary, the Bill has been rushed through the Chamber in a truncated form which, according to many French lawyers, increases its severity. As in the present condition of affairs half the Governments of the world have frequently difficult "questions" to settle with Rome-questions of education in par

ticular-which keenly interest Liberal majorities, this apparent absence of diplomatic capacity or diplomatic reserve may at any moment produce, as it were by accident, most serious consequences. All history shows that the jealousy of Rome felt by the lay Powers of the world is incurable, and extends even to Princes and statesmen who on another side of their minds are honestly devoted to the Roman Church. They do not like, all the same, to be held up to those they rule as impious persons, as Pius X., if that were his conviction, would hold them up without much thought of consequences. Cardinal Rampolla as he reads of any blunder of the kind must feel inclined to say, as Ferdinand, the superseded Emperor of Austria, did when he heard of the cession of Lombardy: "Well, I could have done that!"

An equally dangerous symptom is the apparent proclivity of the Pope towards what may be best described as the "old orthodox" schools of thought. The whole record of his Holiness proves him to be an able man, but the evidence of his ability has been principally success in administration; and the history of our own Episcopate shows us how often great ability in administration has been conjoined with total incapacity to accept new ideas. Now the Roman Church is feeling, in a limited degree no doubt, but still feeling, like the Protestant Churches, the pressure of the new atmosphere produced by the discoveries of science and the investigations of Oriental antiquarians; and to see those discoveries ignored, and those investigations set aside, by the authority which on the religious aspect of those questions is considered an infallible guide must to the brightest intelligences in the Church be exquisitely painful. The proceedings taken, for instance, against the Abbé Loisy amount, in the judgment of such minds, to an attempt to silence inquiry

and suppress thought as violent as any adopted in the Middle Ages. The bodies of inquirers, no doubt, are safe to-day, but their minds are subjected to torture, arising from the conflict between their enlightened perceptions and their old convictions. The compression is not one whit more endurable because it is sanctioned by a Pope whom everybody believes to be both able and conscientious; who is, in fact, only doing what he conceives to be his duty in preventing the diffusion of opinions which, if diffused, will, he believes, weaken the faith of the flocks entrusted to his charge. The result of such a course of action, if this is what the Pope really intends and he is obviously a determined man, resolute to obey his own best lights-cannot fail to be disastrous. Such decrees as that against the Abbé Loisy will deepen the cleavage already existing between the intelligent and the ignorant; will drive out of the Church its ablest thinkers, who if let alone would be its best defence against the rising tide of materialism; and will intensify the most visible danger of the Roman Catholic faith, its tendency to become the creed of the Latin races only. Narrowness in a Pope may excite derision in France, but those who believe will go on believing. It will affect, perhaps frighten, only a limited class in Italy and Spain, and in Spanish America it will probably pass almost unnoticed. But in Germany, America, and England it will weaken the Church materially, will spread doubts as to the divine claim of the central authority, and in the end will foster disbelief in the dogmas which the Pope himself fears to subject to reasonable criticism. The case is the worse because the intellectual world of our day is not seeking, as it was in the eighteenth century, for arguments against Christianity, but is trying, honestly and zealously trying, especially in Germany, to find arguments that