behaviour of the French and Germans. In consequence of this difference of treatment Indian students are proceeding now to the United States, to France, and to Germany for their higher education; to countries where they will not be shouted after by the street boys, as in London, Cambridge, Oxford, Birmingham or Manchester; where the landladies of their apartments will be more obliging, and their white fellow-students less insolent.

There would seem to be some truth at the bottom of these bitter criticisms of English (not Scottish or Irish) manners. I could not myself, on a recent journey, fail to notice the number of Indian students at the educational institutions of the United States, or the reasons they gave for their preference; while the partiality for Germany or France over England (Edinburgh is still in favour) among not only Indian students, but also Brazilians, Haitians, Egyptians, and Syrians, makes one question whether we behave quite as Imperially towards the coloured races of the world as the more selfsatisfied among us assert. Unfortunately one of the few public men who had taken this matter to heart, and had sought to give social help and countenance to the Indian student, was himself shot by a crazy Indian.

As a philosopher surveys the different sections of the British Empire with his eyes and ears, or, by the help of the books of shrewd observers, British and foreign, he might conceivably arrive at these conclusions. That no white race known to history has dealt so well or so wisely with savages and with toiling millions of peasants as Britain; nor has any Imperial Power ever so completely won and retained the confidence of its feudatories, of the nobles, the warriors, the wealthy, among its subject peoples. With both extremes we do well, and have no change to make in our manners. Where at present we break down is in our treatment of the new middle classthe educated, uneasy, touchy, suspicious people whom our rule has called into existence, yet whose political rights are ill-defined or non-existent. They are not usually very good-looking, nor have they the enthralling interest of the unreclaimed savage. No Court could give a better or more ennobling reception to its Indian princes, kings, nobles, or wealthy philanthropists, than that of St James's; in no other country would an African chief,

an Egyptian pasha, or a Chinese mandarin meet with such sympathetic and gracious hospitality. But we are not at home with the middle class, the educated, European-clothed, students, lawyers, clerks, doctors, and engineers, growing up fast in the West and East Indies, in West and South Africa, in the Levant, and the Far East-growing up and asking for political recognition Frankly we don't like them. We rescued their forefathers from slavery or serfdom, from the home or foreign money-lender, the bloody-minded oppressor or false prophet; chid some of them (half-amused) for cannibalism, and others for polygamy ; appreciated their naked fidelity; or were ready sans mauvaise grâce or patronage to shoot big game with their rulers and aristocrats. But we now look askance at the-if civilly entreated, effusive; if scornfully ignored, abusive-middle product of our intermeddling; at the mission-educated son of the slave, the journalist sprung from the loins of a Parsi grocer, or the minor celebrity whose parent was a popular donkey-boy, a dragoman, or a fetish doctor. Yet it is men of this class who have made the Turkish Revolution, and led the Nationalist movement in Persia to, at any rate, a temporary success; these alone are the people who agitate for representative government in India and South Africa.

It must be our business now to meet halfway this middle-class of our own creation; to sympathise with their difficulties and aspirations, on the borderland between the old and the new; to trust them gradually with sobering responsibilities. It is due to us from them, however, that they gain our confidence by abandoning noisy declamation and useless violence. There are two ways of gaining the whole-hearted esteem of the Englishman. One is to contend valiantly with him in battle. But that accomplishment still leaves you poor in knowledge and in worldly goods. The other plan, and the surest, is to work hard (as he generally does) and make lots of money. The possession of money is a guarantee of good behaviour and almost invariably leads to the enlargement of political abilities, and to prudence in the use of the franchise.

Art. 7.-WHAT THE POOR WANT.

1. The Condition of England. By C. F. G. Masterman. London: Methuen, 1909.

2. The Queen's Poor: Life as they find it in Town and Country. The Next Street But One. From Their Point of View. An Englishman's Castle. Four vols. By M. Loane. London: Arnold, 1905–9. 3. At the Works: a Study of a Manufacturing Town. By Lady Bell (Mrs Hugh Bell). London: Arnold, 1907. 4. The Bettesworth Book: Talks with a Surrey Peasant. By George Bourne. London: Lamley, 1900. Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer: a Record of the Last Days of Frederick Bettesworth. By the same author. (First published, 1907.) London: Duckworth, 1909.

5. The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp. By W. H. Davies. With a Preface by Bernard Shaw. London: Fifield, 1908.

6. Reminiscences of a Stonemason. By a Working Man. London: Murray, 1908.

7. Speaking rather Seriously. By W. Pétt Ridge. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1908.

8. First and Last Things: a Confession of Faith and Rule of Life. By H. G. Wells. London: Constable, 1908. WHATEVER the value of socialism as a theory or an ideal or a political system, there stands this much to its credit; it has had by far the greatest share in awakening our present-day consciousness that a nation is an indivisible body, every part of which must ultimately suffer if any one part becomes or remains diseased. In that awakening it was but natural that the fully articulate classes, among whom discussion is fast and fairly free, should concentrate their attention chiefly upon the very apparent diseases of the less articulate classes, which can only speak up for themselves, at best, through the comparatively clumsy machinery of elections and trade unions. Social reform has come very largely to mean reform of those inarticulate classes. They are different in their habits and customs; therefore it seems they are probably wrong. Materially they are unsuccessful, else they would have risen in life; and therefore they must be wrong; or at least, in an age which judges success

in living by material prosperity, they are fit objects of pity. On that basis, the public interest in them has grown apace. In times past the poor, oppressed beyond endurance, have forced their grievances with violence upon those in authority; and in general their action has been ratified by history. To-day the country is exceedingly well policed. But it is safe to say that never before has so much voluntary interest been taken in the welfare and the shortcomings of the poor, and in what the articulate classes feel ought to be their grievances, whether they are or not. The country so swarms with organisations for improving the lot of the poor, or the poor themselves, that big organisations to organise little organisations have been found necessary, and so on ad infinitum. Free and compulsory education is always going to do great things. Unemployment has ceased to be regarded as a misfortune that cannot be helped, a call to charity and nothing more. By both the great political parties it is treated as an evil that must be ended, or at any rate mended, if possible. No Royal Commission has ever excited so much interest as the one which recently issued Majority and Minority Reports upon the Poor Laws and relief of distress. Books dealing with the poor increase. They need not now be lurid to find readers, though it is still an advantage if they are humorous. It is significant that in 'The Condition of England'-a peculiarly sensitive impression which its author, one of our youngest and sincerest politicians in high office, will use presumably as a starting-point for his future legislative work—Mr C. F. G. Masterman treats the poor, not as the débris of our civilisation, but as an integral part of it, as the most hopeful part indeed.

'England, for the nation or foreign observer, is the tone and temper which the ideals and determinations of the middle class have stamped upon the vision of an astonished Europe. It is the middle class which stands for England in most modern analyses..

...

'But below this large kingdom, which for more than half a century has stood for "England," stretches a huge and unexplored region which seems destined in the next halfcentury to progress towards articulate voice, and to demand an increasing power. It is the class of which Matthew

Arnold, with the agreeable insolence of his habitual attitude,

declared himself to be the discoverer, and to which he gave the name of the "Populace "

"The Multitude is the People of England.'

Mr Masterman quotes with approval a saying of Renan's, to the effect that the heart of the common people is the great reservoir of the self-devotion and resignation by which alone the world can be saved.' And there precisely, in that question of heart, lies one of the greatest obstacles to an understanding between the classes and the masses. Investigate the common people's outward conditions of life, but how investigate that heart of theirs, which they do not wear upon their sleeve for those whom they consider daws to peck at? Appeal to their heart and head, but how be sure that they will not reject the appeal with scorn because its proportion of heart to head is not the proportion they hold good? For among the poor the heart takes a very decided precedence of the head. The most open-minded interest in them is called exploration by those interested. By the poor themselves it is more often called curiosity, an impertinence-such an impertinence as would be condemned by everybody if a doctor, without being called, went to a well-to-do household and said oracularly: 'Consumption is a curse. I wish to know how many inches each member of this household keeps his or her window open at night, and what you each have for meals, and how it is cooked, and how many baths each person has a week; for the skin is an important organ. Also I wish to know, for completeness' sake, how many thousands a year the head of the household earns, and what the daughters have for pin-money. By-the-by, burn your Turkey carpets and plush curtains; they harbour microbes. It is nothing to medical science that those dust-collecting ornaments were gifts. Efficiency has no room for sentiment. I shall continue coming until each person satisfies me on all those points, and for my visits you will have to pay, if not directly in fees, then indirectly, through the rates and taxes.' Is not the income-tax-the most frequently evaded of all taxes-still denounced as inquisitorial by those fortunate enough to have taxable incomes? To read the books whose names head this article is to see how intensely the poor hate being questioned. To have much to do with them is to know it. 'I can't