pital and everybody in it. This spirit seems to be natural in the sense that it is inevitable. It was not only our unit, but members of other units I have talked to, agree that one acquires a callous indifference, not only to the sight of suffering (and one could not get through the work if one sympathized in the sense that people at home understand it), but to one's fellowworkers. Every action is a potential rock of offence, tempers run dangerously high, the temptation to scandal and backbiting is enormous, and any slight disagreement between the doctors and surgeons, for instance, harmless as it may be, is gloated over by the whole staff and discussed interminThe New Witness. ably. One does it and hates it at the same time, and those solitary walks abroad were prized as a relief, not only from the work and from one's fellows, but, in a sense, from the meaner and pettier aspects of oneself. The contradictions of human nature! A man will spend twelve to fifteen hours a day working amongst typhus patients in the most intolerable conditions, utterly self-forgetful, running loathsome risks, and then brood darkly, with real venom and hatred, because another man who has been working in the same way used that colleague's wash-basin instead of his Own to wash his hands in. John W. N. Sullivan. READERS AND SPECIALISTS. General reading, much abused, is, after all, at the root of most of the ideas and beliefs of educated people. It is, of course, better to be a specialist-read in all the original sources of information. It is, indeed, almost essential to know at least one thing well; for to have followed out one line of thought to its origins gives one clearness and confidence in the pursuit of others. It gives one a sense for the truth, and judgment in assessing evidence. But to despise general reading on principles, to refuse some excellent historian because one cannot read the Statutes and the Court Rolls, is absurd. It is not difficult to understand, or a little to sympathize with, the zeal for original authorities which possesses certain professors; but this zeal must be kept severely within limits. It is true that there is more to be known upon any subject than any one book contains; and it is also true that, when a man writes general books of philosophy or history, he writes from the point of view of his own time and character. All summaries must be intelligently checked; but this does not imply that they should be despised. It is commonplace that deep study of a subject is likely to be more instructive, and a better discipline for the mind, than a mere general acquaintance; that a man would discipline his mind more effectually by studying the whole range of Greek literature than by reading, say, Grote's "History of Greece." But this does not imply that the person who reads and forms his opinions from Grote has no right to speak at all. The theory that to obtain any knowledge worth having it is necessary to go back to original sources of information leads, if closely followed, to feebleness and timidity of thought. It condemns a person to specialism or to silence. No one must talk about the law who has simply read, and read carefully and with intelligence, such a book as Blackstone's or Stephen's "Commentaries." He will be told by the lawyers that his labor has been thrown away; and that, unless he gives up his whole time to studying the subject, he must never say anything at all about it. We at last arrive at a state of things in which the claim to any other sort of knowledge than a microscopic acquaintance with some particular department, of some one branch of some special subject, is regarded as an absurd presumption. The accumulation of knowledge of this kind would not be educative at all. The great subjects which appeal to men and women are those which concern them generally. It is, happily, impossible to treat these subjects in a purely professional manner. Most useful knowledge is second-hand knowledge, accepted and arranged by general readers and observers. The statesman, for example, must be an intelligent "dabbler" in a variety of subjects-law, history, political economy, finance, business, diplomacy, the management of men. Second-hand knowledge of all sorts is indispensable to him. Probably this would not be disputed in practical things, but only in things speculative. There are many persons who think that a man is not entitled to be heard upon any speculative subject unless he has collected by original inquiries all the materials of his speculation. They will say, for example, that no one can be allowed to give an opinion upon a metaphysical theory unless he has qualified himself by reading all the principal metaphysical books which have been written from the days of Plato. You have no right, it is said, to have an opinion as to the doctrines of M. Bergson unless you have read all the books on which opinions are founded or which they are meant to controvert. Such talk must discourage all thinking whatsoever. Scarcely any subject can be investi. gated with any useful result unless its The Saturday Review. premisses are drawn from several different sources or summaries which no one mind can investigate from the bottom. Summaries are indispensable. It is true that no summary, however exact and correct, can put the reader upon a level with the author; but it is equally true that no cultivated and intelligent man can read a really good summary without deriving from it a very fair idea of the truth-truth solid enough to use as basis of further thought. A man of judgment who had read with care Gibbon and Milman and other works of the same kind is fully entitled to draw his own conclusions as to the way in which Christianity spread itself over the world, even though he had never seen the original authorities. Of course, judgment is required. The general reader does not necessarily deliver himself over bound, as it were, hand and foot to the authorities he uses. He exercises a discretion as to what he will and what he will not believe. He will be careful in his inferences and allow for the bias of his instructors. It is interesting to see how successfully this has been accomplished in many of the greatest books. Such books have seldom been written by men of profound special learning, but rather by persons who, having filled their minds with knowledge taken up at secondhand, have known how to make one subject bear upon another and to draw novel and important conclusions from the spade work of the specialists. But too often the phrase general reader is used of readers who do not read at all-except cheap fiction and the newspapers. Taken in their strict meaning one could hardly desire a better title than the title of general reader. What is wrong, usually, with readers of all kinds is that their reading is not general enough. HOLLAND AND BELGIUM. We fear the Englishman and the Briton do not even yet understand the life-and-death character of the present struggle. Ordinarily they will say that we are battling to defend "the balance of power" in Europe. But that "hackneyed phrase," as John Bright described it, does not convey any welldefined idea to the British working man. He does not quite understand why hundreds of thousands of precious lives and some two thousand million pounds should be expended on the assertion of an abstract principle. It is desirable therefore to explain what is the precise and practical meaning of that term at the present moment, and why the European balance of power must be maintained at any sacrifice to England and the British Empire. To speak quite plainly, then, the balance of power, translated into its simplest present terms, means for England the defence of Holland and Belgium against German aggression. To that defence Great Britain is pledged by the most solemn treaty obligations. But behind those pledges and behind our general sympathy with small nationalities there lies the tremendous fact of vital British interest. England cannot permit any great European nation to become too powerful along the shores of the North Sea. It is intolerable, for example, that any Great Power should hold Antwerp, which is truly, as Napoleon said, a "pistol held at the head of England." It may be answered that we have managed to live with France on the other side of the Channel, at its narrowest point. That is true, but we must also remember how much danger and anxiety we have endured in former times from our proximity to France. For two years before the Battle of Trafalgar-the "years of fear," as they were called-we looked with a ceaseless strain of anxiety to Napoleon's transports and legions prepared to invade England from Boulogne. Then, again, in the middle of last century the same fear of invasion from across the silver streak disturbed the nation's sleep and dominated its policy. How much more imminent would that peril have seemed if the submarine and the airship had been available to our enemies in those days! If we no longer look over to Calais or Boulogne with a chronic or acute apprehension, it is because France is no longer an ambitious or aggressive country, and because we cannot now conceive of any circumstances arising in which she would make use of her position on the English Channel to threaten our liberties. But Germany, under Prussian hegemony, is a very different proposition. Let us look for a moment at her present situation. She holds 927 miles of coast-line on the Baltic, but the Baltic is a tideless, inland sea, whose harbors are ice-bound for the greater part of the year. Germany's real sea-front on the German Ocean or North Sea, her main outlet for her vast import and export trade, is only 293 miles long, and consists mainly of shifting sandbanks and sea-dunes intersected by intricate and dangerous channels. With the growth of her commerce and seapower, Germany has become more and more anxious to extend her sea-frontage, and there is no doubt that she looks forward to the time when she will command the whole coast of the North Sea, from the Schleswig frontier, or perhaps even the Skager Rack, down to Calais and Boulogne. Only by this extension, Germany thinks, can she secure the free passage of her commerce through the Straits of Dover and out into the world oceans beyond. Knowing a good deal by this time about Germany, about her methods and principles, her aggressive, unscrupulous, and ferocious character, how should we like to see her thus, in Wordsworth's phrase, "drawn into frightful neighborhood" to our Own shores, holding the pistol of Antwerp to our heads, and so near to us at Calais as to be able to throw her explosives right over the white walls of Albion? The fears and anxieties of 1805 and 1850 would be mild emotions compared with our feelings then. Within eye-shot and gun-shot of our shores would be planted the strongest and best-organized Power in the world, a nation of at least eighty million, nearly twice as numerous as our own, with all the superiority in man-power and munition-power which that difference in numbers must in this case ultimately involve. How long should we hold that command of the seas upon which we depend for our food-supplies and the safeguarding of our Colonies and Dependencies? But, it may be asked, cannot we always rely upon the help of our Oversea Dominions? Happily no limits can be set to the loyal self-sacrifices of our fellow-subjects over the water. But we cannot overlook the fact that the populations of the Dominions are still quite inadequate for the needs of their own defence and development. How long would Canada and Australia and New Zealand be able to send us such splendid contingents of their best manhood as are now shedding their blood like water in Gallipoli and Flanders? How long could they be expected to play their part in the political conflicts of a continent half a world away? The more acute and persistent menace to the heart of the Empire must have a serious effect on the future of the British system. We might even begin to wonder whether The Outlook. a group of islands lying off the coast of Europe and persistently threatened by the dominant European Power was the best and safest centre for a far flung Oceanic Empire. Even if we managed to maintain the command of the narrow seas, we might be so absorbed by the dangers and difficulties of our new position as to have no strength or energy left for the administration of distant Dominions and Dependencies. All this would scarcely strengthen the ability and determination of seven or eight million Canadians to maintain their political independence on the American continent, or the ability and determination of five million Australians to keep five hundred million Orientals from spilling over into the empty continent to the south. It is no use deceiving ourselves. The very existence of the British Empire depends on our being able to maintain the neutrality of the Dutch and Belgian coasts. With Germany at Antwerp and Calais we might easily lose our supremacy at sea, and with that would go the security not only of our Dominions and Dependencies, but of the food-supplies of our own people. And the annexation of Belgium and Holland by Germany would, of course, carry with it the acquisition of the magnificent oversea dominions of those countries, including Congoland and the Dutch East Indies. There is no doubt that Germany counts on pocketing this vast and valuable ready-made Empire as one of the results of the present war. It would be far from pleasant to have the Prussians in possession of that chain of great and small islands which links British India with British Australasia. It is worth remembering that the extreme eastern point of these Dutch possessions is severed by a seaspace of only three hundred miles fromthe Australian coast. THE RARE FLOWER. It is the rare flower that is rich also that moves our enthusiasm. It is admirable to see grave men excited about some microscopic difference in an insignificant whitlow-grass, or searching a field of hawk-weed for one that is slightly taller or shorter or woollier than the others. The rare flower should be at least as beautiful as the dandelion, which commands our wonder, though never so common; it should belong to the rare genus of a rare and beautiful family, and be the most beautiful species of the genus. Some would postulate extraordinary medicinal properties, perhaps ask that the unique example of Regina solis when found could be distilled into the elixir of life. The ideal rare flower so tantalizes us with evanescent splendor of form and color that we readily invent such properties as a materialization of its precious character. Some have been so gross as to make it the index of a gold mine, as they have buried a bag of gold at the end of the rainbow. Others have wrought treason against the rare flower by offering gold for it when plucked, and more gold for its root, thereby bringing it still nearer to extinction. Should the rare flower be an orchid? The family's curious method of fertilization, infinitely diversified among its thousands of species, and resulting in or accompanied by strange distortions and colorings of the floral envelope, has made its collection the hobby of millionaires. It is a pathetic family, because, in spite of its elaborate contrivances for cross-fertilization, and the enormous abundance of seeds that every individual sets, it only manages to cling, often in small numbers, to isolated and hard places, where the competition of humbler herbs is not keen. Darwin counted and estimated the seeds of our commonest orchis, 0. maculata, and found them to number 186,300 on a single spike. Such a number would thickly plant an acre, and the next year would overcrowd such an area as the Island of Anglesey, while the great-grandchildren "would nearly clothe with one uniform green carpet the entire surface of the land throughout the globe." Yet, in spite of what we might call the plant's anxiety in the matter of correct parentage, each plant produces only one new one "every few years." Even so much success is enough to make the spotted orchis about as common as prunella in its own district. No one bothers to pick prunella, beautiful as it is, but we run after the orchis in its dowdy mauve and smudged white because there is a something about it that makes it a flower to be picked. Still more sought-after are the bee, the butterfly, the spider, the fly, the frog, the man, and other species of the British list familiarly called orchids. The grotesqueness of each of them seems to be equally connected with a desire for an unusually large and healthy family, but they can. not modify Nature's fiat that in our age they shall struggle almost vainly on the edge of extinction. Almost the rarest of British orchids is, as it should be, the most grotesque, and that is to say, perhaps, in the orchis style, the most beautiful. Once now and then a single blossom of the Lizard orchis appears somewhere in Kent, happily sets its seeds, then vanishes perhaps for a year or two. Whether a single one of its seeds produces a plant is doubtful, but in due time it is whispered that from the same old root or some other another spike is coming. Its growth is carefully watched, possibly guarded by a |