The remaining articles contain much that is interesting, and there are glimpses of the clear insight which we instinctively associate with the author's writings.

Reduced to its barest statement, and stripped of all deductions, natural or forced, the Monroe doctrine, if it were not a mere political abstraction, formulated an idea to which in the last resort effect could be given only through the instrumentality of a navy; for the gist of it, the kernel of the truth, was that the country had at that time distant interests on the land, political interests of a high order in the destiny of foreign territory, of which a distinguishing characteristic was that they could be assured only by sea.

Here we have intelligible principles set forth with precision; but more is needed. Monroe doctrine was recommended to a President of the United States by a British statesman to meet the conditions of a day long gone by. There was reason to suppose that Spain might seek to crush the nascent Republics of South America, and the wording of President Monroe's message clearly defines its political import. If in the opinion of the United States the time has arrived for a re-definition, let the new policy be avowed and let the corresponding responsibilities be frankly accepted. This would be a departure worthy of a great nation. Artificial interpretations- mere political abstractions'-framed to suit the passions or the party exigencies of the moment, are unworthy and exasperating. In the Venezuela dispute the United States lost, as Captain Mahan admits, and rightly lost the sympathy of the civilised world. Why did he not fearlessly expound to his countrymen the cause of this general revulsion of sentiment? 'It is probably safe to say,' he writes, 'that an undertaking like that of Great Britain in Egypt, if attempted in this hemisphere by a non-American State, would not be tolerated by us if able to prevent it.' This we may well believe. War is too frequently begun without a righteous cause; but the right to intervene in such a case can be purchased by the United States only by the previous acceptance of certain evident moral obligations. What is a non-American State' to do, if it is insulted and if its subjects are outraged by some temporary dictator masquerading as the President of a free Republic? The United States have shown no desire to prevent South American Republics from cutting each others' throats. How can they claim to interfere if a European Power is driven to enforce its inalienable rights? Legitimate grounds for such interference can be established only by assuming general control over the foreign relations of the Southern and Central American States. Authority cannot be divorced from responsibility. Monroe doctrine logically applied might prove a benefit to humanity; it is now a danger to the peace of the world.

6

The later essays, as a whole, show a greater breadth of view than those to which reference has been made. 'A nation,' writes Captain Mahan in March 1897, 'situated as Great Britain is in

VOL. XLIII-No. 252

X

India and Egypt scarcely can fail to appreciate our own sensitiveness regarding the Central American isthmus and the Pacific.' There

6

has been no failure on our part to appreciate this natural sensitiveness, and we have the right to expect that our sympathy with American sentiment should be recognised. It is the good fortune of the United States that their differences have been mainly with Great Britain, the great and beneficent coloniser, a State between which and ourselves a sympathy, deeper than both parties have been always ready to admit, has continued to exist, because founded upon common fundamental ideas of law and justice' Here speaks the philosophic student of history.

With many of the views on questions of national defence expressed in this volume I find it impossible to agree. 'It is not the most probable of dangers,' we learn, but the most formidable that must be selected in measuring the degree of military precautions' which a nation should adopt. It is, however, usually impracticable to make provision against the 'most formidable' of risks. Great Britain cannot, and need not, prepare to withstand the united armaments of Europe. Captain Mahan even considers, with some apparent inconsistency, that our navy cannot be made equal to that of the three 'most formidable of its possible opponents,' because the assumed conditions lie too far without the limits of probability, to affect practical action.'

The proposition that a fleet that can bombard can still more easily blockade' is opposed to all modern experience. Blockades in days of steam are excessively difficult, unless the blockading force possesses a base within a moderate distance. The difficulties were abundantly illustrated during the Civil War, notwithstanding that the Southern States possessed no sea-going navy able to impede the free action of the Northern squadrons. The fleet already possessed by the United States would amply suffice to prevent even the pretence of a blockade of their long Atlantic sea-board by any European Power. Sea-ports, in the present day, with a great nation at their back, cannot be seriously injured by naval means, and bombardments are senseless operations capable of producing no military results justifying their barbarity. Serious injury to the exposed great cities' can be effected only by landing large numbers of men. What Power could do this in face of the enormous force at the disposal of the United States? For these and other reasons, I consider that the immense array of passive defences which Captain Mahan appears to recommend to his countrymen is largely superfluous. Their true defence, like our own, lies upon the sea, and, they have the advantage-denied to us-of not being hampered by

6

6

• In Studies on Coast Defence Captain C. F. Goodrich, United States Navy, a successor of Captain Mahan in the presidentship of the War College, effectively supports this view on historical grounds.

evil traditions created by theorists in years of peace. Whatever may be the scope of action of a flotilla' of torpedo-boats, no service seems less suited to become a 'sphere for naval volunteers.' The effective handling of torpedo boats in war demands, in a special sense, a thorough professional training. Naval volunteers,' if fair gunners, might be turned to account on board a modern battle ship. In a torpedo flotilla they would be useless, if not dangerous.

The article entitled A Twentieth-Century Outlook' is thoughtful and suggestive; but Captain Mahan's fears of the yellow peril ' seem capable of alleviation. Comparative slowness of evolution may be predicated,' he writes, but that which for so long has kept China one, amid many diversities, may be counted upon in the future to ensure a substantial unity of impulse which, combined with its mass, will give tremendous import to any movement common to the whole.' Except as a geographical expression, China has never been really one,' and, even if a national movement were conceivable, the material means necessary to give it practical effect are wholly wanting. The only danger that can be said to threaten Western civilisation is from within; but in the United States there is a colour question, which may involve serious difficulty in the future. In the masterly analysis of the Strategic Features of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea,' Captain Mahan rises to the level of his classic works.

To every one who has at heart the best interests of the American people, and who has earnestly striven to understand their sentiments and their aspirations, there have in recent years been many causes of anxiety. Our press, in its usual superior manner, is wont to lecture the United States in common with all other Powers; but of animosity or of positive dislike there were no traces during the period of tension produced by President Cleveland's message. The person who, on this side of the water, publicly expressed his hope of war between the two English-speaking peoples would be put down as a lunatic. We have unfortunately abundant evidence that in America other views too widely prevail. It is unwise to dwell upon the fact that all that was best and noblest in American sentiment shared our horror at the thought of a war whose only result would be to arrest the progress of civilisation and liberty. We have to take into account all that is not noble and--more dangerous-all that is uninstructed in transatlantic opinion. The average Englishman. knows nothing of history, but feels a sense of paternal pride in the great achievements of the United States, where he probably has prosperous relations. The average American, it is now clear, carries with him into manhood the remembrance of the travesties of history on which he was brought up. To him a democracy more advanced and more free than his own appears in the light of an oppressive monarchy-that of George the Third caricatured. Absurd as it may

seem, there were large numbers of Americans who honestly believed that they were supporting an enlightened Republic-that of Venezuela! —against a benighted despotism. It did not occur to them that Venezuela is a Republic only in name, and that they were upholding barbarism against civilisation-gross corruption against pure government. The naïve surprise and delight of the 'boy journalist' who recently paid us a visit tells a tale. Nothing was as his school-books had led him to expect. The nation which above all others has upheld the cause of human liberty remains unknown to the masses in the United States, and in this ignorance there lurks real danger. The isolation of which Captain Mahan complains is not only political but intellectual.

The best, perhaps the only, hope of attaining to that mutual understanding which he and I alike earnestly desire lies in the chance that the Anglo-Saxon race may some day find itself united in the prosecution of a great common object. The Armenian question might have brought about a national rapprochement; the question of the Far East may yet draw the two peoples together. For, although divided on minor matters the importance of which is easily exaggerated, their essential external interests are more closely intertwined than those of any two other Powers. If then the United States, as sooner or later they must, accept the obligations and the responsibilities of a great nation, I believe that the movement will be of happy augury to the progress of the world. But the new policy, the policy of 'looking outwards,' will demand radical administrative changes, the abandonment of some cherished insular ideas, and the modification of a constitution eminently unfitted to meet the requirements of expansion across the seas. It is not a question only of a navy, of coast fortifications, of preparations for war, but of leading the people of the United States to forego their habitual concentration upon their internal affairs and to seek to play a worthy part in moulding the destinies of mankind. Thus arises the vital need of statesmanlike guidance and of fearless speaking, and it is because I have failed to find such guidance so expressed in these essays that I venture to criticise the master to whose brilliant teaching Great Britain is eternally indebted.

G. S. CLARKE.

DANTE AND PAGANISM

IF

any one, acquainted with the works of Dante, in prose as well as in poetry, and with the principal commentaries on those works, should ask himself the question, How did Dante regard the men and women of pre-Christian times? how did he estimate the value of their lives and works in the history of humanity, the moral character of their actions and writings, and their destiny under the scheme of providence? and what, if any, reasons does he assign for his conclusions? he would find the reply to be embarrassed by apparent contradictions. These contradictions appear not only upon a comparison of the utterances on this subject contained in the Sacred Drama with those in such works as the Banquet, but to a certain extent also in the Sacred Drama itself. It is my object in this essay to examine briefly this tangled subject, in the hope that I may induce some more learned or more acute critic than myself to consider the matter, and to make known the results of that consideration for the benefit of English Dantofili.

Dante's view of the position in the Scheme of Salvation of those who, living before the Redemption, are presented to us by the Bible as having known the true God, that God, as he says to Virgil, 'whom thou didst not know,' as exhibited to us in the Sacred Drama, is tolerably simple, and may be dismissed in a few words. The patriarchs of Scripture, the record of whose lives presents no conspicuous civil misconduct, and no obstinate disobedience to the commands, as they understood them, of that God-such as Abraham, Abel, Noah, Isaac, Jacob, and Rachel--were, at the time of the Resurrection, in Limbo, the Border of Hell, the region where no torment is imposed except that of unsatisfied desire. They were taken out of this region by the victorious and triumphant Christ, and translated by him to Paradise. So were also other personages of Scripture, whose lives were less immaculate, such as the man who brought sin into this world and all our woe,' and even his wife who trusted to the Snake,' King David, and Jacob's sons; some of them being placed in the very highest region of the Heaven of Heavens, in company with the greatest Christian saints, and with the Mother of God. But in that same border region were, at the time of Christ's arrival, the