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Time brings its revenges, and perhaps brings them to the assistance of the heads of political autocracies sooner than to that of other people. It is impossible not to compare the visit of Prince Bülow to Kiel last week with his visit to Potsdam last November. Both visits were to see the Emperor on the most urgent affairs of State. At Potsdam the Chancellor was armed with the indignation of the whole people aroused by the Emperor's embarrassing "interview" in the Daily Telegraph, and he went there with no less a purpose than to deliver a plain lecture to his master, and to require as a condition of his own continuance in public service that the Emperor should not be so indiscreet in future. At Kiel last week Prince Bülow went rather as a suppliant, not, indeed, to beg to be kept in office (for it is possible that he is not disinclined to retire, and he actually travelled to Kiel to offer his resignation), but to explan his defeat at the hands of the Conservative and Centre combination, and to solicit instructions for the future. Within eight months the situation has thus been inverted; the Emperor, so far from accepting conditions for enjoying Prince Bülow's continued

services, agrees with him that his resignation is necessary, and indeed inevitable. Prince Bülow is to remain Chancellor only until certain reforms have been introduced into the Imperial finances. His resignation is none the less "irrevocable"; it is only antedated. The Neue Freie Presse sagaciously remarks that the Royal disfavor is soon reflected in the affairs of the Reichstag. It is quite true. Ever since Prince Bülow "stood up" to the Emperor last November the talisman which turned so many of his political undertakings into successes seems to have left his keeping. The Bloc crumbled away under his hand, and the unexpected combination of Conservatives and the Clerical Centre came into being to resist the Government proposals for financial reform. Our sympathies in the financial question are largely with Prince Bülow. Germany cannot spend money on a great Navy and run up a vast and continually increasing National Debt without having recourse to an Inheritance-tax. The Junkers have a native horror of such a tax-to their minds it is like laying hands on the Ark of the Covenant-and they and their allies have flouted Prince Bülow ever since

the proposal was made, although in its latest form it is the most gently applied tax conceivable. Will Prince Bülow, in his temporary tenure of the Chancellorship, be able to draw some sort of order out of the chaos, and carry a scheme of Imperial taxation which is free from such preposterous burdens on commerce and industry as are recommended by the triumphant majority in the Reichstag? We think it is probable that he will do so. We must not forget that a defeat of the Government in the Reichstag is quite unlike a Ministerial defeat in the British House of Commons. The Chancellor, after a consultation with the Emperor, comes back with powers of compromise, and the dispute is generally settled. His return with a new mandate from the Emperor is like the return of a new party to power in Britain. He is not dependent on a party which lives by votes alone; if he cannot get help from one quarter of the Reichstag, he will joyfully accept it from another.

But the prospect-as we see it-that Prince Bülow will probably succeed in his temporary mission makes the ending of his power the more notable. It will be said that there is a sign of democratic development in the fact that Prince Bülow is the first German Chancellor who has expressly retired in the face of an adverse Parliamentary vote. We read the signs differently. We fancy that the Emperor is willing to have Prince Bülow's career brought to an end in spite of the handle that is being given to the democratic politicians of whom he disapproves. The handle can easily be taken away later. The Emperor, we may say without offence, is at once human enough and Imperial enough to remember Prince Bülow's words of last November:-"The knowledge that the publication of his conversations has not produced the effect which the

Emperor intended in England, and has provoked deep excitement and painful regret in our own country, will-and this is a firm conviction which I have gained during these days of stress-induce the Emperor in future to observe that reserve, even in private conversations, which is equally indispensable in the interest of a uniform policy and for the authority of the Crown. Were that not so, neither I nor any successor of mine could assume the responsi bility." In Germany Radicals and Socialists spoke of November 10th, when that announcement was made, as a sort of "Day of the Bastille,"-the beginning of a new Constitutional epoch. We could not feel so sanguine. "Depend upon it," we wrote, "the personat régime has not said its last word.” The personal régime at this very moment is uppermost. And it has a great opportunity. The Conservatives and Clericals will not be at all anxious to "rub in" the lesson that Prince Bülow has been forced to retire by a Parliamentary vote, and therefore this powerful majority may be expected to smooth matters over with him, as we have already guessed, and having done that to let him go. The Emperor will then have got the new taxes he requires, and, with a Conservative temper entirely favorable to the personal régime ruling the Reichstag, he will be free to look about for a new Chancellor after his own heart. Thus the Emperor will score all along the line, and the inverted situation of to-day will be confirmed. We are not so foolish as to suppose that the democratic advance will be checked permanently, but for the moment we cannot help perceiving a very distinct swing back in the other direction. The political autocracy, or autocratic bureaucracy, remains, and a change will have to be a very much slower growth than German enthusiasts supposed last November.

We regret the fall of Prince Bülow, because he is so far from being a Junker, or a statesman rigidly Prussian in thought, that he is the kind of man who might possibly guide successfully the beginnings of a Constitutional development. A very different man would be required later, we know, but Prince Bülow might have spent many useful years in more or less undesignedly preparing the way for that genuine Parliamentary government which is the only conceivable goal for a Teutonic people. There was a very acute analysis of his character in the Neue Freie Presse of Tuesday which will be recognized as true by all who have followed his career as Chancellor. Prince Bülow, it says, is "interesting." That word expresses all his limitations. There is nothing monumental about him such as must be symbolThe Spectator.

ized in statuary. He will never be represented with the club of Hercules. He is an extraordinarily skilful diplomatist, and a Parliamentarian without match in Germany. He is "German" and "European" rather than "Prussian," and yet he has done hardly anything for the powerless middle classes against the nobility. Were he a man of torrential democratic feeling or any vindictiveness, he might even now ride the whirlwind of the German middle classes. But we all know that Prince Bülow will not do that. When he disappears he will simply leave behind him the memory of a man who followed Bismarck in ideas, while changing the Bismarckian touch beyond recognition by his own unalterable habit of urbanity, amiability, and soothing humor.

A LITERARY LIGHT.

Annesley Bupp was born one of the Bupps of Hampshire-the Fighting Bupps, as they were called. A sudden death in the family left him destitute at the early age of thirty, and he decided to take seriously to journalism for a living. That was eight years ago. He is now a member of the Authors' Club; a popular after-dinner speaker in reply to the toast of Literature; and one of the best-paid writers in Fleet Street. Who's Who tells the world that he has a flat at Knightsbridge and a cottage on the river. you ask him to what he owes his success he will assure you, with the conscious modesty of all great men, that he has been lucky; pressed further, that Hard Work and Method have been his watchwords. But to the young aspirant he adds that of course if you have it in you it is bound to come out.

If

When Annesley started journalism he realized at once that it was necessary for him to specialize in some subject. Of such subjects two occurred to him-"George Herbert" and "Trams." For a time he hesitated, and it was only the sudden publication of a brief but authoritative life of the poet which led him finally to the study of one of the least explored of our transit systems. Meanwhile he had to support himself. For this purpose he bought a roll-top desk, a type-writer, and an almanac; he placed the almanac on top of the desk, seated himself at the type-writer, and began.

It was the month of February; the almanac told him that it wanted a week to Shrove Tuesday. In four days he had written as many articles, entitled respectively Shrovetide Customs, The Pancake, Lenten Observances, and Tuesdays Known to Fame. The

Pancake, giving as it did the context of every reference in literature to pancakes, was the most scholarly of the four; the Tuesday article, which hazarded the opinion that Rome may at least have been begun on a Tuesday, the most daring. But all of them were published.

This early success showed Annesley the possibilities of the topical article; it led him also to construct a revised calendar for his own use. In the "Bupp Almanac" the events of the day were put back a fortnight; so that, if the Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude fell upon the 17th, Annesley's attention was called to it upon the 3rd, and upon the 3rd he surveyed the Famous Partnerships of the epoch. Similarly, The Origin of Lord Mayor's Day was put in hand on October 26th.

He did not, however, only glorify the past; current events claimed their meed of copy. In the days of his dependence Annesley had travelled, so that he could well provide the local color for such sketches as Kimberley as I Knew It (1901) and Birmingham by Moonlight (1903). His Recollections of St. Peter's at Rome were hazy, yet sufficient to furnish an article with that title at the time of the Coronation. But I must confess that Dashes for the Pole came entirely from his invaluable Encyclopædia.

Annesley Bupp had devoted himself to literature for two years before his first article on trams was written. This was called Voltage, was highly technical, and convinced every editor to whom it was sent (and by whom it was returned) that the author knew his subject thoroughly. So when he followed it up with How to be a Tram Conductor, he had the satisfaction not only of seeing it in print within a week, but of reading an editorial reference to himself as "the noted expert on our overhead system." Two other articles in the same paper-Some

Curious Tram Accidents and Tram or Bus: Which?-established his position.

Once recognized as the authority on trams, Bupp was never at a loss for a subject. In the first place there were certain articles, such as Tramways in 1904, Progress of Tramway Construction in the Past Year, Tramway Inventions of the Last Twelvemonth, and The Tram: Its Future in 1905, which flowed annually from his pen. From time to time there would arise the occasion for the topical article on trams-Trams as Army Transports and How our Trams fared during the Recent Snow, to give two obvious examples. And always there was a market for such staple articles as Trams in Fiction.

You will understand, then, that by the end of 1906 Annesley Bupp had a reputation; to be exact, he had two reputations. In Fleet Street he was known as a writer upon whom a subeditor could depend; a furnisher of what got to be called "Buppy”-matter which is paid at a slightly higher rate than ordinary copy, because the length and quality of it never vary. Outside Fleet Street he was regarded simply as a literary light; Annesley Bupp, the fellow whose name you saw in every paper; an accepted author.

It was not surprising, therefore, that at the beginning of 1907 public opinion forced Annesley into newer fields of literature. It demanded from him, among other things, a weekly review of current fiction entitled Fireside Friends. He wrote this with extraordinary fluency; a few words of introduction, followed by a large fragment of the book before him, pasted beneath the line, "Take this, for instance." An opinion of any kind he rarely ventured; an adverse opinion, like a good friend, never.

About this time, he was commissioned to write three paragraphs each day for an evening paper. The first

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elder Pitt recalls the fact that The third always began: "It may not be generally known

Until he began to write these paragraphs Annesley Bupp had no definite political views,

Annesley Bupp is now (May 1909) at the zenith of his fame. The "Buppy" of old days he still writes occasionally, but he no longer signs it in full. A modest "A. B." in the corner, supposed by the ignorant to stand for "Arthur Balfour," is the only evidence of the author. (I say "the only evi

Punch.

dence," for he has had, like all great men, his countless imitators.) Trams also he deserted with the publication of his great work on the subjectTramiana. But as a writer on Literature and Old London he has a European reputation and his recent book, In the Track of Shakespeare: A Record of a Visit to Stratford-on-Avon, created no little stir.

He is in great request at public dinners, where his speech in reply to the toast of Literature is eagerly attended.

He contributes to every symposium in the popular magazines.

It is all the more to be regretted that his autobiography, The Last of the Bupps, is to be published posthumously.

A. A. M.

WAYSIDE FLOWERS.

It is curious to notice how certain species of British plants love to frequent the vicinity of roads. They seem to prefer the grassy wastes and mossy banks, the hedgerows and ditches that border our lanes and thoroughfares to more sequestered 10calities. Even in these days of scientific road-making, when the highways are under the control of county councils, and waysides and hedges are kept in trim and orderly condition, it is remarkable how many interesting wild flowers continue to blossom by the roadside.

There must have been still more of them before the wide stretches of greensward and rough herbage contiguous to the public roads were taken in and brought under cultivation. In Chaucer's days, when in "the moneth of May" the pious folk followed the pilgrims' way to Canterbury,

The holy blisful marter for to seeke,

what a wealth of wild flowers must have met their gaze! In later ages, we know from Pepys' Diary and other contemporary documents, the high roads often ran for many miles together through unenclosed country, and that what is now an endless succession of fields and meadows and homesteads was then rough moorland and swampy fen. We have, too, the records of several of our early botanists, and it is a fascinating task to follow in the footsteps of Gerarde and Ray, of Johnson and Goodyer and Turner, as they travelled on horseback in search of simples along the high roads and through the bye-ways of the country. A perusal of their writings, dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reveals the abundance of rare and interesting species which then flowered beside the public thoroughfares.

Old Master Gerarde, that excellent "Master in Chirurgerie" and "chief

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