Churchman, or indifferent, that has not the right to claim the services of some locally resident Minister of the Church. On this ground, if on no other, the Church can claim to be not merely a National Church but the only National Church. The parishes that will really suffer by Disendowment are the poorest and most remote parishes which are unable to provide a Nonconformist Minister, and where the Church alone is able to provide owing to her ancient Endowments, an agent of the Gospel of Christ. Under the provisions of the last Bill, introduced by Mr. Asquith in 1909, no less than 511 parishes, chiefly the poorest, would have been stripped of every single penny of Endowment. Do not let it be supposed that this ancient Endowment is all tithe. Of the total sum to be taken from the Church under the 1909 Bill, £107,456 a year was tithe, and £115,947 a year was not tithe. No matter how good a title the Church could show, if a benefaction was decided by the Commissioners to have been given before a certain date it was to be confiscated and expended upon secular objects. Readers recognising the patent injustice of the Disendowment proposals will wonder what justification, what reason, is adduced for such proposals. Let them remember that the Radical Member for Carmarthen Boroughs (Mr. J. Llewelyn Williams) once asserted that "Disestablishment without Disendowment was not worth asking for, much less worth fighting for." The answer to the riddle is not to be found in the legal casuistry of Mr. McKenna, or disputes about the origin of tithe, but in the more straightforward speeches of Mr. McKenna's new Under-Secretary at the Home Office (Mr. E. J. Griffith). The following extracts from a speech delivered by him (Mr. Griffith) at the National Liberal Club in October last, show the real reason for this drastic scheme of Disendowment and Church dismemberment: The Church of England has always been a retrograde and reactionary institution... It has always been the parasite of the aristocracy, and the agent of oppression; it has always revelled in the bondage of ignorance, always reviled the banner of the dawn in Wales. . . . It has been a very harassing institution in the history of the Welsh people.* It is clear from these words of this Welsh Member, whom it Report in South Wales Daily News, Oct. 31, 1911. delighteth the Government to honour with promotion to the very office which will be in charge of the Bill in the House of Commons, that Disendowment, at any rate, is regarded as the means of destroying a parasite and an agent of oppression. With this language before us the whole character of the Bill becomes apparent. It is a Bill of political revenge, based upon hatred and Ealice, re-introduced at a moment of Party difficulty for Party ends. Lest I am accused of shrinking from the numerical argument, let me point out that, so far from Wales being a nation of Nonconformists, considerably less than half the population of Wales are claimed even as hearers or adherents (which includes persons of all ages) by the Nonconformists themselves. All the adherents claimed by the Nonconformist bodies in the recent Royal Commission, including the claims in some parishes of a number exceeding the total population, when added up, make the proportion of Nonconformists in Wales to the total population as 10 to 24. Again, it is absurd to compare the " full members" of Nonconformist bodies with Church communicants. The former contain, in some cases, young children who are full members of their chapels from their baptism, and I am not here referring to the Baptist denomination, but to the Calvinistic Methodist, which does not practise generally the custom of adult baptism. The only numerical comparison that would carry any weight would be the result of an official religious census. Such a census was taken specifically in Ireland by the Liberal Government before they disestablished the Church of Ireland. Churchmen have asked repeatedly for the same fair treatment in Wales, and have been consistently denied this one method of obtaining reliable figures; Among the most strenuous opponents of an official census being those very Welsh Radical Members most given to the use of americal comparisons. However, at the crisis of the world's istory there was a majority in favour of Barabbas. Barabbas was a robber. There may be a majority in the House of Commons in favour of Barabbas to-day. But all those who prefer the banner of the Cross to Mr. Griffith's "banner of the dawn in Wales" are determined to oppose the meanest and most unjust Bill that has ever been proposed for weakening the work of a Christian Church in that part of a Christian kingdom where Christian work is most needed. Our only fear is lest Christian men of all denominations may fail to realise the true nature of the Government's proposals in time, or lest, though they realise it, they may fail to make their voices heard in protest. As a Welsh Member of Parliament I appeal to all readers of this Review to come-and to come now-to the help of the Church in Wales against her revilers and would-be oppressors. The new Liberal doctrine that minorities must suffer" is not the doctrine upon which the civil and religious liberties of the British people are based. A secular State, a divided and impoverished Church, are not the institutions upon which the greatness of the British people is based. The union of Church and State is our most priceless heritage and let it not be idly cast away. 66 W. ORMSBY Gore. THE VERDICT OF THE ADMIRALS LORD CHARLES BERESFORD AND ADMIRAL MAHAN ON THE NAVAL CRISIS By a curious coincidence Lord Charles Beresford's criticism of Admiralty administration during the past five years was published on the same day as Admiral Mahan's lectures on Naral Strategy.* Both works are of first-rate importance from the light they shed upon the efficiency of our naval defences and the soundness of the theories on which our war preparations are based. Admiral Mahan, to give him his retired rank, though be modestly signs himself Captain, addresses himself first and foremost to American readers. He deals mainly with principles. Bit his conclusions have an application to British present-day conditions, and he often illustrates his points from those conditions. The most striking fact is that, writing thousands of miles away, of course without knowledge of Lord Charles Beresford's views, be endorses them at most points. The greatest living authority naval history is in general agreement with the officer whom our darins deprived of his command afloat, because he protested gainst defective and dangerous dispositions. The more The Betrayal is studied, the deeper the impression ich it creates by its restraint and moderation; the stronger the feeling must be that Lord Charles was most unjustly treated en he was summarily ordered to haul down his flag a year fore the expiration of the normal period of his command the Channel. We shall not deal with the personal aspects of this supersession; they have already been sufficiently disssed in the National Review. We shall rather consider the The Betrayal. By Lord Charles Beresford. King. 2s. 6d. net. general case against the late Admiralty and the Government though it must be said that the removal of Lord Charles from the active list was an act of great mischief from the nationa standpoint. No other officer took such pains with the younge He made his fleet a veritable school of admirals. H required even lieutenants to manoeuvre the Channel Fleet fron time to time, while he faced the entire responsibility if anything had gone wrong. In battle, through the heavy losses which ar certain to be sustained, the command may pass to junior officers It is therefore all-important that they should be taught in peac to perform the duties that may fall upon them in action. Our Press, which lives largely in a land of illusions, ha generally neglected or ridiculed Lord Charles Beresford's criticisms It will be well, then, to take the most important of them poin by point, and show how they are endorsed by Admiral Mahan The first and perhaps the gravest charge brought by Lord Charle is that the Two-Power standard has been abandoned. He give the following Table of naval force in large armoured ships, as i may be expected to stand in April 1914: Where, asks Lord Charles, is the Two-Power standard? Where is the two to-one standard? Where is the half-as-much again superiority postulated i the Admiralty Memorandum, Cd. 5539 (Admiral Wilson's famous Memorandun on invasion)? And what is the policy of his Majesty's Government? If i consists in maintaining the Two-Power standard it is an utter delusion. W are sixteen ships short of the Two-Power standard. If it consists in maintainin a two-to-one standard we should in 1914 possess 78 large armoured ships instea of 55. It is, however, a question whether the force of the Triple Allianc is not slightly overstated. It is doubtful whether more tha four Italian and three Austrian Dreadnoughts will be completed for sea in April 1914. In that case, two ships must be deducted from Lord Charles's figure for the Triple Alliance. But, agains this, considerable deductions must be made from the British figures. Two of our Invincibles are building for the Dominions one of these two will not be under the British Admiralty. Bot |