and love of God. Not perhaps so full of reforming zeal or philosophic learning as the poems of the masters of Eastern Hindi-Kabir Das and Tulasi Das-they are all poems of the heart, of a sweet and gentle soul reaching out to the Divine Love that pervades all. Few of her poems have found their way into English but the following are beautiful and interesting specimens:

"I have the God Gridhara and no other. I have forfeited the world's esteem...... Feeling supreme devotion I die as I behold the world.

I have no mother, father, son or relation with me,

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HE war has been the grave of many reputations especially in Central Europe where an absurdly exaggerated importance attached to military life, thrust greatness upon fell a few adventurers who in the end prey to their own delusions. But it has also discovered many true and worthy men who have risen like beacons amidst the din and confusion of war. Nowhere has this opportunity for the exercise of wise leadership been more marked than in the British Empire where a new spirit of comradeship made itself manifest. This is no doubt due to the genius of British statesmanship, and one has only to compare the stiff autocracy of the Prussian administration with the freedom of relation between Great Britain and the Dominions across the seas. The rigidity of the German rule left her Colonies sullen and resentful and eager to take advantage of the woes of the mother country to throw off their yoke, while "the slender yet trustful and tenacious" kinship of Great Britain with the SelfGoverning Dominions cemented their growing attachment and made imperial unity a thing of practical realisation. Empire, indeed, in the old sense is usually connected with ideas of conquest and the consequent enslavement of peoples by a supreme military autocracy. But that idea like every other has undergone a complete change in these days. Says Mr. W. L. Courtney in his monograph on "Pillars of the Empire

A nation founds its colonies and broadens the basis of its own authority in the world history. And then arises the serious and important question how these colonies are to be dealt with, in what spirit we are to

* By W. L. and J. E. Courtney, Jarrolds, London.

enter into relations with them, how they are to be made into helpful elements, valuable factors in a wideflung realm of Empire. For, in Great Britain the interesting point is that far-seeing statesmen, confronted with new problems, have gradually transformed the old idea of Empire, metamorphosed the principles of government, and on the ruins of a despotic authority have founded a confederacy of free and independent peoples.

Such a conception was beyond the range of the early empire builders. Neither the Roman for the Greek idea quite approximated to the breadth and scope of modern imperialism (a word that still has a sinister import). Spain and Holland built their empires on the antique model. And the modern German Empire is no better than its mediæval predecessors. But British statesman like Sir George Grey and Lord Durham have adopted a thoroughly constructive idea-with a wholesome faith in the virtue of Self-Government.-For they realised that in the new imperialism

great fertilizing principles were involved. Here is one: A community can only grow if it is made responsible for its own development. Here is another: The difficulty with colonies is not that they have too much freedom, but that they have not enough. They must be given a free field. They must be allowed to make their mistakes in order to learn in the hard school of experience. And not to mention any other effects of this liberal attitude, we attain to a discovery which may almost be called startling. The most effective tie between Great Britain and her Dominions and Commonwealths in distant seas is not government in the ordinary sense of the word, but participation in kindred institutions. In one sense the link is of the slenderest; in another, it is far stronger than iron. It is a moral and spiritual union, subtle, intangible, pervasive. It is the common possession of similar ideals. We can mark the date when these pregnant principles first took shape. Lord Durham's Report on Canada was followed by the Canada Act of 1840. Twelve years later, in 1852, Australia obtained the same concessions. We have to wait many years

before South Africa-thanks very largely to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman-was admitted into the circle of self-governing peoples. India's turn has yet to come, because in her case the amalgam of races and creeds and the existence of caste renders the problem peculiarly difficult. But it will come-who can doubt it? And then the British Empire will mean that most wonderful thing in the world-a voluntary partnership of independent communities, possessing kindred institutions and united by a common faith.

Mr. Courtney thus traces the development of the imperial idea and the progress of the British colonies. The romance of the British Colonies is told in a few vivid and engaging chapters which contain a judicious account of the men and their doings. The foundation and growth of Colonies like Canada and South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, the acquisition and consolidation of the Indian Empire are full of human interest; and the men with a vision who shaped their policy and history deserve to be remembered as among the benefactors of the race. Of course among the band of pioneers there were some who were only bent on exploitation. In the nature of the case it could not have been otherwise. For only a few could rise above the temptations of power and pelf and hungry adventures are not always overscrupulous of their neighbour's good. Mr. Courtney does not fail to point the errors of such false imperialists like Lord Milner and the late Earl Cromer who for the most part represent the decadent school of German imperialism. He has vindicated in this volume the genius of British statesmanship in handling difficult and complicated situations, and he commends in particular the liberal instincts of the British democracy in their dealings with their "wide-flung Empire."

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"At a certain stage in the development of the Roman Empire," says Mr. Courtney, "the prominent men who seemed to hold the destinies of the state in their keeping came from the provinces." Yes; history repeats itself and we have seen the part that Louis Botha and Gen. Smuts, Sir Robert Borden and Mr. Hughes and the Maharaja of Bikanir-men from South Africa and Canada and Australia and India-have played played in upholding the integrity of the British Commonwealth. That is a unique phenomenon in the history of Empires and a distinguished feature of the British Constitution.

Mr. Courtney's study of the Empire Builders thus offers a panoramic view of the British Empire and a connected account of the origin and growth of the British Commonwealth. To

the student of contemporary events his short vignettes on the leading personalities of the day will be specially valuable. Mr. Courtney writes with engaging frankness and impartiality and he has a sound instinct for judging character. Thus he says of Balfour:

Something of the dilettantism of the artist, something of the disdain of a thinker, appears in all his public career, while the community, who like clear definitions, are puzzled and baffled by the author of a book so significantly entitled Philosophic Doubtwho brings to bear on political problems many of those fine metaphysical distinctions, appropriate in a philosophical treatise but wholly out of place amid the broad currents of national life.

Mr. Balfour has no great hold on the democracy, yet instinctively the democracy believes him to be an honest man, absolutely exempt from all temptations which might beset the partisan, serenely disdainful of all the vulgarity of sectional ambitions. Of Mr. Asquith and his mid-Victorian intellectualism he writes:

He is a good type of the ordinary party leader, eloquent in that style of eloquence which at most procures assent but rarely provokes enthusiasm, possessed of a balanced and antithetical style which pleases the ear but does not convince the understanding.

He is a lawyer who likes clarity of judgment and plainness of statement. He has the faults of a lawyer. He is an apt exponent of professionalism, who, when once he seems to have his finger on the pulse of the nation, ultimately disappoints his very admirers, because of a certain narrowness of vision combined with a hard and dry intellectual force. In a serious crisis he is wanting in driving power. He takes some time to make up his mind, and when at last his mind is made up, the opportunity for its exercise is wellnigh past. He has admirable virtues -of serenity, of self-possession, of self-control-he does not act in a hurry, even when circumstances seem to demand a certain precipitateness. He is an excellent representative of the higher type of the bourgeois intelligence, a leader of the great middle class which, as we have been so often assured, has made England what it is, and which is in a sense responsible for its want of imagination, its poverty of

vision.

Mr. Lloyd George has shot into the horizon like a sky rocket, brilliant, many-coloured and dazzling. He has none of that steady faith in Victorian liberalism that characterised his great predecessor: nor his classic calm and solidity which compelled attention and respect. charm of Mr. Lloyd George is the inexplicable charm of personality. Mr. Courtney sums up his character in a sentence or two:

But when all is said and done, and every explana tion offered of a singular paradox, it remains true that Mr. Lloyd George is supreme, because he has a personality of his own, because he represents energetic force and driving power, and, perhaps, because through his imagination he has exactly that in which

most Englishmen are deficient, both vision and prevision. The personality happens to be attractive, and therefore wins.

His characterisation of Mr. Winston Churchill as the Alcibiades of the age may be misunderstood, but everybody will agree with Mr. Courtney "that in a supreme position he (Winston) strikes the community at large as dangerous; in a subordinate capacity he is apt to make himself impossible."

If Mr. Churchill is a less brilliant Alcibiades there is a reformed Cleon in the person of Mr. Lloyd George. But there was another figure in Athens no less remarkable for his lofty character than for his respectability. Nicias would have led the Commonwealth along the path of sobriety and self-control in normal times. But he was not the man to ride the storm. Mr. Courtney compares Lord Grey to Nicias and deplores that the fates should have found this peaceloving, amiable and insular Englishman at the Foreign Office. We can not anticipate the verdict of history. We are yet too near the times to have a detached view of the great tragedy that has just closed. We cannot therefore apply the pungent epigram of Tacitus with the cocksuredness with which Mr. Courtney applies it to Grey. It would be ungracious to say of him: "By universal consent a capable ruler if only he had never ruled." But let us think of his other claims which the author depics in generous

terms:

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A perfectly honest man, to whom deceit in any form was impossible; a lover of peace in season and out of season, who accepted as an axiomatic truth that the main interest of Great Britain was the avoidance of war; an upright, reasonable diplomat who thought that every other diplomat was as upright and reasonable as himself; an open-minded politician, transparently sincere and possessed of no little personal dignity and an instinctive abhorrence of meanness and chicanery. Is not this the very portrait of an Englishman who dislikes intrigue, and breaks through diplomatic webs by the force of candour and uprightness?

There is yet another class of public servants who represent the high average of Britain. Their services are always in need and often praiseworthy and unless they are called to supreme command, they are an asset to the British Constitution. Mr. Bonar Law served alike with Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George. He has been the most over worked man in the Cabinet and this work, says Mr. Courtney,

tells on his spirits. He is an extremely good speaker, of quite remarkable lucidity and with a rare sense of form, proportion, and order. If he is not inspiring, of if he has ceased to be inspiring we must put the sad esult down to the cumulative sest af

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overwork on an intellect never first-class in its range but always highly efficient in a subordinate capacity. Of the same class of estimable second comes that son of a great father-Austen Chamberlain, that upright, earnest, public servant, who made an admirable official yet without "vision or prevision." As the official the Mesopotamian formally responsible for muddle, he took all the blame on himself (though in fact he was not more responsible than the officers immediately on the spot) and resigned his office as became an honourable man.

But of course this proof of an upright spirit does not make Mr. Chamberlain a statesman, still less a constructive statesman, such as our times require. If he had remained in office he would have had to carry out a scheme of reforms in India of a radical character, which his own conservative instincts might have disliked. Where Morley and Minto failed, was it likely that Austen Chamberlain would succeed?

Surely not; the situation called for a different man-one endowed with sympathy and imagination and constructive statesmanship. It demanded a bold and courageous handling. How well Mr. Montagu has fulfilled these conditions has been seen in the universal encomiums that have been paid to him on his successful piloting of the Reforms Bill. When Mr. Courtney was writing his book Mr. Montagu had just published the Joint Report and Parliament had not yet discussed the Scheme. The author wrote then :

Mr. E. S. Montagu is well esteemed by his friends who seem inclined to push his claims as a potential administrator mainly on the ground that his constructive scheme of reforms in India is devised on large and liberal lines. It may be so. I hope that his admirers may be right in their forecast, although we have yet to see what kind of reception will be given to the Montagu-Chelmsford enterprise in both Houses of Parliament.

Mr. Montagu has by his tact and good sense overcome the antagonism of the irreconcicables and the apathy of the average Britisher. We remember with pain how during his historic visit to this country he was jeered at as "a wandering Jew" by irresponsible prints and how nobly he bore the malicious taunts of unthinking scribes. Not a word of reproach sullied his noble heroism. "Patient, undemonstrative, enig. matically sage," be worked out his great scheme of reforms, scorning the petty ruffles of the moment. Despite suspicion and calumny he has worked for the Empire with a singleminded devotion worthy of the great cause of freedom and self-government.

And surely has Mr. Montagu won an abiding plass among the trus Pillure of #mpire