of our inadequate personnel. But words are not deeds. We shall wait and see. Let us hope that Lord Charles Beresford's warnings Lave gone home, and that the weakness which he has repeatedly printed out will at last be remedied. With a sufficient number of men, we may hope that premature" scrapping" will be abandoned. Eat it is difficult to estimate the loss and injury caused by the mistakes of the past five years. The small cruisers which were thrown away will have to be replaced, and the cost of this will be very heavy indeed. The men will have to be trained, and his will demand much time.

We

The nation has now been given the most definite and explicit promise by the present First Lord of the Admiralty that the Navy l be strengthened, and that, in view of the new German programme, the British margin of superiority will be raised. may discount his swagger that the fleet is perfectly prepared te-day, in view of Lord Charles Beresford's criticisms. Every szocessive Jack-in-office makes similar flamboyant declarations, wach, however condemnatory of his predecessors, afford no guarantee of his own administration. One great peril is lest penditure should be concentrated upon objects which make a show, to the neglect of those which do not, but are of as great importance. Here the past record of the Government does not inspire any excessive confidence, and will lead wise men to spend judgment and abstain from uttering any premature ans. A Ministry which has been so gravely at fault in the past can only recover our trust by deeds. Of all reforms, second cly in importance to the creation of a satisfactory War Staff ld be the passing of a Navy Act, modelled on the German, fing the shipbuilding programme for a term of years. It would art stability to our plans, relieve the Admiralty of the nersity of annually fighting a furious battle with the Treasury ways and means, and give it leisure for its proper work of anisation and preparation for war. It would probably

ble considerable economies to be effected. In view of the pation in the Mediterranean and the need for small cruisers and stroyers, such a Navy Act should provide that in each of the fr next years, six Dreadnoughts, eight cruisers and twenty-four destroyers, besides submarines, should be laid down. Should the German programme provide only two Dreadnoughts per

annum, we might be content with five. But anything less wou mean grave danger. Concurrently with the shipbuilding pr gramme, a dock programme should be taken in hand, and financ by loan, and the development of Rosyth be pressed with a possible energy.

To finance it, it would be permissible during the period maximumstrain to make some draft on the Sinking Fund, as Conso may be trusted to recover if the City and the country are real convinced that the Government is going to do its duty by the Na and to undo the consequences of its past negligence and parsimon But the coming Navy Estimates are probably our last chance amendment. If there is procrastination in taking the necessa steps to put our naval defences in order, if Mr. Churchill's abunda promises are not fulfilled, if the leopard has not changed his spot then we may rest certain that disaster is in sight. Lord Charl Beresford and Admiral Mahan will have sounded the solen note of warning in vain. With energy and courage, however, yet may be proved that Admiral Mahan is premature in holdi that the balance of power in Europe has been destroyed and th the British nation has lost its spirit and its faith. The renascen of France, one of the most wonderful features of the twentie century, and the temper with which her people faced the Moroc crisis, have indicated the existence of new forces on the Continer which, supported by British sea power, may hold in check t disordered ambitions of the German military party, and preser peace of the world.

the

But if our alliances and friendships are to be preserved, the must be no more such incidents as Lord Haldane's intrigue Berlin. Nothing is to be gained by going "whining" to t German Government and entreating it not to increase its nav armaments. Such an errand is as humiliating to British nation pride as it is calculated to inspire our friends on the Contine with contempt for our courage and resolution. We cannot a must not entangle ourselves in any naval agreement with t Wilhelmstrasse, which would be made by Germany only to surreptitiously broken. We cannot for one moment accept th three to two standard of naval strength, which, as Ueberall h kindly explained, would prevent us from moving our army the aid of France and therefore destroy the Triple Entente; a

which, in view of the fact that Germany can command the aid of the fleets of Austria and Italy, would leave us actually inferior in force to Germany in the North Sea. Any British Ministry which accepts such proposals as these will be treated as M. Caillaux's Government has been by the French nation. We have earnt to trust the loyalty of France and Russia; while before 1904 we had bitter experience of the value of German" friendship." At this time of the day, the British people is not going th upon its past either to gratify the Cocoa Quaker or the

Laternational Jew.

NAVALIS.

YOUNG CHINA

Ir is not possible, within the limits of this article, to prese a thoroughly comprehensive idea of the present situation China, or to forecast its probable developments in all the divergent phases. I must assume that the reader is famili with the main facts of the Chinese Empire's history of rece years, and will therefore deal only with some of the particul causes and results of the present upheaval. But it must observed at the outset that in China, more perhaps than any other country, the truths of to-day are apt to become t errors of to-morrow, and that it is therefore wise to avo sweeping conclusions and dogmatic assertions. It is, moreove a melancholy truth, that, with the best intentions, we Europea cannot hope intuitively to gauge the main undercurrents Chinese life and thought, their guiding principles and impulse East remains emphatically East, and we of the West, howev deep our sympathetic interest in these our elder brothers the human race, find ever a deep gulf fixed between their outlo on life, their philosophy and conception of essentials, and our ow

For this reason, our opinions about China and the Chine must necessarily be cautious. The man who generalises, w applies his experience of one province or period to sweepi conclusions, is simply inviting "loss of face." In submitti the following results of my own study and experience of Chine affairs I claim neither full knowledge of the many compl factors of the situation nor any finality of judgment on changed and changing conditions.

In considering the present situation in China and its i mediate causes, we should be careful, imprimis, to avoid t error, very commonly accepted by the Press of this count that the collapse of the Manchus and the sudden predomina

of the so-called Republican party in China implies a revolution of the Chinese people, in the usual sense of that word. In judging the significance of this crisis, which undoubtedly threatens the Far East with anarchy, it is necessary to realise and to remember that the revolutionary movement, as such, is essentally the work of a small and comparatively unimportant class. I: cannot be too emphatically stated that if this class has now en to sudden predominance and power in the land, it is because the whole State had long since become disorganised and, politically speaking, helpless to resist any organised attack. Amongst the blind the one-eyed may be kings; but it is certain that Young China's newly fledged politicians possess either the education, the self-discipline, nor the qualities of cohesion requisite to provide the Empire with the stable and progressive administration which alone can save it from disruption. It is equally certain that, so far as the vast masses of the Chinese people are concerned, they have, and can have st present, no voice or say in the matter of their Government. In the great cities and provincial towns of the interior, a certain tion of the mercantile classes has come into contact with the opinions and plottings of the journalists, students and itary officers who constitute nine-tenths of Young China; these, in so far as they hold political opinions at all, were at irst inclined to approve of the revolutionary movement, on the general ground that any change must be for the better. But regards the people (the "stupid ones," as the mandarins them), the millions doomed to pillage, starvation and all e unspeakable horrors of Chinese rebellions, Yuan Shih-k'ai As probably understanding the case when he said that they derstood nothing of the Republican movement, and that hey would not approve it if they did.

To arrive at a clear conception of the problems which con.ct us in China, we must first define our terms-no easy atter. The words Constitution, Revolution, Republic, and provincial autonomy," are used glibly enough by the men to, like Wu Ting-fang and Sun Yat-sen, make their appeal to the sympathies of the Anglo-Saxon world with their moving pictures of a united people nobly striving to be free, of a nation patriots casting from them the rusty shackles of Manchu