In the second place, the financial liability actually placed on the public purse by the official calculations is exceedingly heavy, and there is room for an indefinite increase. A general impression prevails that the share of the State in the threefold contributory system explained above is the addition of 2d. a week to the contributions of employers and employed for each insured person, so that the respective shares are, employed 4d. (women 3d.); employer 3d.; State 2d. The impression was created by Mr Lloyd George's own statement in the House of Commons. If it were correct, the liability of the State would be limited to just as many twopences a week as there might be insured persons. But the actual provision is quite different. The State pays no contributions into the fund, but assumes liability for a fixed proportion of the expenditure, including administration as well as benefits, namely, two-ninths in the case of men, and one-fourth in the case of women. This is calculated by the actuaries to amount to something under 2,000,000l. in the first year (1912-13), with a subsequent annual increase which brings the charge up to nearly five and a half millions in 1927-28. The State contribution to sanatorium benefit, which is at the rate of 1d. per annum for each insured person, is included, as are also the optional or additional benefits, which will not be payable in the early years.

On the other hand, no allowance has been made for expenditure directly borne by the State or for payments on account of deposit contributors. In fact, the whole Post Office section has been left out of the calculations, as well as the special Army and Navy fund, which is separate from the ordinary insurance. The charge incurred on account of the latter would be comparatively small, but the Post Office contributors are an unknown quantity. The actuaries say in their report that the State grant on their account 'could only be a small fraction of the total expenditure.' They do not give any reasons for this confident statement; but, if it is correct, it means that those insured persons who are most liable to sickness will enjoy only a small fraction of the benefit derived from the State contribution. It does not mean that they will form a numerically small fraction of the total number of insured persons. No one can say how

numerous they will be or what their sickness will cost; but clause 14 of the Bill provides that any deficit incurred on their account is to be made good by the State.

Apart from these and other cognate liabilities which have escaped even an attempt at computation, the whole question of expenditure is highly problematical. It depends on the number of claims in proportion to the insured and on the duration of illnesses. The calculations have been made on certain limited data furnished by the experiences of friendly societies, which in the opinion of the actuaries may be 'safely adopted' as a basis for estimating expenditure. The main ground for this opinion is the inducement the societies will have to keep down sickness in order to realise the additional benefits for their members. But this inducement will be far weaker under a national scheme than at present, for obvious reasons. The societies will not have the handling of their own money; and their financial responsibility will be much less than at present. Added to that, the employers' and the State's contributions will operate as a great stimulus to malingering. If the societies cannot keep it down now, as is fully admitted, they will do so much less when more than half the burden and almost all the responsibility are taken off their shoulders. To expect that the present admitted tendency of sickness rates to rise will be checked is to cherish a fond delusion; on the contrary, the movement will certainly be stimulated. In Germany, where every effort has been made in more favourable circumstances to check it, the rise both in frequency and duration of sickness has been steady and rapid. The number of cases involving absence from work has risen from 34 6 per cent. of the insured in 1888-92 to 40.2 per cent. in 1905-9; and the duration of such cases has risen still more rapidly.

Elementary prudence demands that account should be taken of this factor, to which must be added the certainty of a heavy increase in the cost of medical treatment above the estimates. An article in the Financial Supplement of the 'Times' (June 17) shows by a careful computation of the data that, apart from these two causes of increased expenditure, the commitments of the State on account of health insurance have been greatly underestimated, and that they will rise to an annual charge of

14 millions in the course of sixteen years. Taking all these considerations together, we are bound to ask soberly -What will the State be paying altogether by that time for health insurance and old-age pensions, which, it must be remembered, are a part, though an alien part, of the scheme? Those pensions cost already more than double the estimate of three years ago and are rising all the time. The article just mentioned calculates from the vital statistics that in sixteen years they will reach 28 millions, and that the total charge will then be 42 millions a year. The estimate is so far from exaggerated in the light of past experience that the taxpayers of that not very distant day may have reason to congratulate themselves if it is not largely exceeded.

The foregoing examination of the health insurance scheme, incomplete as it is, leads to the conclusion that the Bill is far too crude to be passed into law in anything like its present shape. It may be regarded as a creditable first attempt to deal with a gigantic problem, but as no more than a rough draft, every detail of which needs systematic overhauling. The inclusion of many other points, which have been omitted, would only strengthen that conclusion; nor can a dispassionate examination lead to any other.

This view does not imply a disbelief in the possibility of an effective and beneficial system. With patience and care defects can be removed; most of them are not inherent in the principle of insurance, as Mr and Mrs Webb suggest in the chapter on this subject in their new book on The Prevention of Destitution.' They speak somewhat bitterly of the belief in insurance as an 'obsession' which they do not share but cannot resist. They point out that it does not prevent, but rather encourages, sickness; but that is hardly a fair way of putting the case. It encourages pretended sickness, as fire insurance encourages arson; and that drawback has to be faced. But it can also do a good deal to promote public health. The German system has done more in that direction than they are willing to allow. number of sanatoria for consumption is not 71, as they state, for a population of 65,000,000, but 177, in which over 40,000 patients are treated. Only 71 are owned by

The

insurance funds, but they are all available for insurance patients and are largely supported by them. Again, when Mr and Mrs Webb extol the 700 isolation hospitals established by our local authorities, they ignore the fact that nearly all the general hospitals in Germany as well as the fever hospitals are of that character, and that the insurance funds contribute over 2,000,000l. a year to their support.

The principal object of insurance, however, is to prevent or mitigate the suffering caused by sickness. How far a national and compulsory system can do so is by no means certain. German experience goes for something, but the two cases are so different that only general inferences can be drawn. To suppose that Mr Lloyd George's scheme will do what Bismarck's has done is absurd. The latter was a connected whole, covering sickness, accident, permanent disablement, and old age; the former only deals with two of these fields. And the conditions are entirely different. We already have 6,500,000 persons voluntarily insured, whereas in Germany the total number in 1885, after the introduction of compulsory insurance, was only 4,294,000. Then all the conditions of life were vastly inferior, and the scope for improvement was correspondingly greater. Nevertheless, putting aside extravagant expectations and platform gush about myriads of ruined homes and broken hearts,' the public belief that a national system can be beneficially applied is well founded. To attain that object is not easy, but it is worth an effort. The present Bill needs re-casting. Amendments hastily scrambled through committee in a House of Commons which showed, on the second reading, an extraordinarily feeble grasp of the subject will not meet the case at all. If that course is persisted in, it will be obvious that the real motive is not public interest but Ministerial needs, and that an electioneering manoeuvre has been organised under the disguise of a non-party measure.

Art. 10.-IRISH PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS.

1. The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats. Eight vols. Stratford-on-Avon : Shakespeare Head Press, 1908.

2. The Works of J. M. Synge. Four vols. Dublin: Maunsel, 1910.

3. Seven Short Plays. By Lady Gregory.

Maunsel, 1909.

Dublin:

4. The Land, and The Fiddler's House: Thomas Muskerry. By Padraic Colum. Dublin: Maunsel, 1907–1910. 5. Poets and Dreamers. By Lady Gregory. (Containing four plays by Douglas Hyde, translated by Lady Gregory.) London: Murray, 1903.

It is curious that until the twentieth century Ireland should have had no dramatic literature, for she has a folk literature which can rank with the Scottish and Scandinavian, and a tradition which preserved its individuality through seven centuries of disorder and oppression. Her people are born actors; they have delighted from the earliest times in a form of conventional dialogue; and the best acting plays that have been written in England since the Restoration are the work of Irishmen-Sheridan, Goldsmith, Wilde, and Shaw. Probably there is something in the essential qualities of the Celtic spirit which has prevented the Irish from turning to the stage as readily as more practical races have done.

The dominant note of Irish national literature is (to attempt no closer analysis) always somewhere in the key of mysticism. It is their inhumanity that has prevented the Irish sagas attaining popularity among more pedestrian races. A whole firmament separates the myths of the Fomor, the Fianna, and the heroes of the Red Branch from the intense humanity of Homer. In them one is conscious throughout of a race struggling to get away from reality. It is not life that they celebrate, but the desire that is beyond life. And something of this spirit has always lingered in the Celtic tradition. Its writers have belonged to that class which conceives in the mind and not through the senses. One can search the poets, Callinan, Mangan, Ferguson, de Vere, Allingham, Lionel Johnson, A. E., Katherine Hinkson,