certain of the destruction of Christianity and prompted by their natural bent for organisation, they united revolutionism with socialism and joined in the fight with a plan not only of destruction but of the future socialistic state in which religion would be a private enterprise or, as Marx explained, opium for the use of idiots and sluggards.'

It is clear that Heine does not occupy the same position towards socialism as Hercen does towards anarchism; but the spiritual affinity of the poet with Marx and Lassalle is evident. The foundation of their socialism is the same as that of the teaching of Heine, namely, hatred towards Christianity. Heine was more closely connected with Lassalle, for Marx's rejection of patriotism brushed aside the Jewish question. Lassalle, like Heine, was a Jewish patriot. He tells in his letters that, when he was a child, he dreamed that he would stand at the head of his race in a fight for freedom. When he became a man his hatred towards Chritianity was not that of a doctrinaire like Marx, but of a bitter foe. Indignant at the accusations made against the Jews for ritualistic murders, he wrote that the time might come when they would really spill Christian blood in order to avenge their wrongs.

The singularity of these tendencies naturally drew the destructive elements together. Heine sympathised with Russia, but not with Russian rebellions against the Tsars; for he understood how excellent a tool was absolutism in preparing a revolution. He was aware that revolutionary nihilism, hurling itself against culture, was less dangerous than the nihilism of autocracy, which reaches deeper, fettering and killing freedom of thought and initiation. Heine rejoiced that the Tsars were trampling on the nobility-the only element capable of moderate and intelligent opposition-and that they usurped the right of decision in religious matters; for he understood that this would be followed by the atrophy of religious and moral sentiments, by making society materialistic, and that over the soil from which were removed the roots of religion and the tradition of freedom the revolutionary wind would blow freely. How characteristic are his impressions of the battlefield at Marengo, which he visited with a German from

Livonia, a Russian subject! Their meeting suggested the thought of the mutability of fortune. The work of revolution was then in Napoleon's hands; now, after his downfall, every zealous revolutionary was obliged to wish that Russia should win, for the salvation of the world was involved in her victory.

"The trumpeting of the alarmists about the peril to which the might and the size of Russia expose us is all nonsense,' he wrote. 'We do not mind a little slavery more or less, for through Russia we shall be liberated from the remains of feudalism and clericalism! They threaten us with the rule of the knout; but for my part I am willing to receive a few blows provided I am certain that our foes will be knouted also. But when a Russian-German, like my friend from Livonia, speaks boastfully and patriotically of Russia, I seem to listen to a herring talking of the ocean as his country and of a whale as his countryman.'

Heine had a prophetic vision of the present storm in Russia, during which waves of destruction would rush threateningly towards the West, on the furious billows of which would swim the poet's compatriots, not as paltry herrings but as the companions of whales, carrying with them the watchwords of annihilation and death against the old order. His presentiment was realised, for it is now clear what an active part Jews have taken in the revolutions in Russia and elsewhere, and how dangerous to our civilisation and to Christianity are such unscrupulous and bloodthirsty monsters as the leaders of Russian upheaval. The works of Marx have become a false gospel for men whose aim is the insensate destruction of everything that pertains to art, to literature, to ethics, in a word to civilisation. Yes, Heine's wish is fulfilled; for in Russia Christian blood is being spilt in abundance, and the followers of Trotsky are carrying to unforeseen but not illogical conclusions the principles of the Jewish revolutionary writersSpinoza, Heine, Hercen, Marx, and Lassalle.

SOISSONS.

Art. 11.-LORD FISHER AND HIS WORK.

1. Memories. By Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher. Hodder and Stoughton, 1919.

2. Records. By Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher. Hodder and Stoughton, 1919.

THE late war has produced a number of books of reminiscences by officers of the British Navy, conspicuous among which are those by Admirals of the Fleet Lord Fisher and Lord Jellicoe, and Admirals Sir Reginald Bacon and Sir Percy Scott. It is an error to conclude that it is unusual for admirals and captains to record their recollections of events in which they have taken a leading part. There are few outstanding figures among the officers of the modern British Navy who have not left, as a valuable legacy to the historian, correspondence recounting contemporary impressions of events in which they took part, or personal recollections written in retirement. It is not, therefore, an innovation, to be regarded with suppressed impatience, that admirals and others who took a leading part in preparing the British Fleet for its ordeal during the early years of this century or served at sea during the late struggle with the Central Powers, should have recorded their recollections of the events with which they were concerned. Books of this description, written while memories are fresh and vivid, have a peculiar virtue, because, though seamen make no profession to being creators of literature, they are accustomed to deal with hard facts. A naval officer is engaged in warfare without intermission from his boyhood upwards; for, even when not fighting against the fleet of another State, he is warring with the uncertain elements of Nature-high seas, contrary winds, treacherous shoals, varying currents, bewildering fogs, and blinding snowstorms. His experiences react on his character; and it is small wonder that the books which come from naval pens are marked by directness of statement, absence of reserve, and transparent honesty of purpose.

Of all the books dealing with the Navy, which have recently been published, the two which have come from Lord Fisher are, apart from the character of the author,

an

the most remarkable. They do not constitute autobiography in the ordinary sense of the word; and, if they are read in that anticipation, disappointment must ensue. Events are not treated in chronological order. Comments bearing upon the same subject recur throughout the books. They may be more accurately described as scrap-books dealing with practically every aspect of the author's life. Though there is no sequence in time or subject, and Lord Fisher wanders as his fancy suggests from one topic to another, they are not the books of an old man in his anecdotage, garrulously recalling incidents of the past, and, above all, anxious to gloss over his failures and throw into prominence his successes. Lord Fisher, on the contrary, writes as a veteran seaman who is proud to have acted a great part in the history of his country, has worked and played with zest, and now, while still in possession of all his faculties, enjoys life to the utmost. If he recognises that he has sometimes failed, he says nothing about it; 'never argue; never explain; never apologise,' is one of his mottoes. On the contrary, he shouts at the reader from every page, with an immodesty which in any one else might be condemned. But, as one reads these recollections of the crowded life of a man who was the friend of kings and yet remains a democrat, realisation comes that he is no ordinary being. One recalls not the familiar autobiography of naval officers of the past, but rather the childlike exuberance and pride in achievement revealed in so many of Nelson's letters. The victor of Trafalgar can never have anticipated that those outpourings of his inmost thoughts would be collected and published. Lord Fisher, on the contrary, has himself selected the passages from his letters and diaries which should be given to the world, and has chosen the particular events on which light should be shed.

Writing vigorously, much as he talks, Lord Fisher has produced two volumes in which he reveals himself with an absence of reserve which is almost startling. Undoubtedly both volumes would have gained in effectiveness by judicious editing; for, as his life-work has shown, Lord Fisher, with all the defects of his qualities, is a greater man than these books suggest. He has been described as the outstanding naval genius of modern

times; and at a time when memories of the Sudan campaigns and the South African War were still fresh, Lord Rosebery called him the Kitchener of the Navy.' He was that, and he was more. For he possessed in his prime, as Lord Kitchener did not, the power of exposition; and, owing to that facility, he was able to win over Cabinets to his opinions and to enlist the assistance of some of the most brilliant brains of the Navy in carrying out the series of naval reforms which shaped the Fleet in readiness to take up its war-stations in the summer of 1914. It has been said that St Vincent created the Navy with which Nelson achieved victory. It would be much truer to declare that Lord Fisher was the father of the British Fleet which eventually broke down the resistance of the Central Powers.

The work achieved by this seaman can only be appreciated at its correct value if his early environment is recalled; and it is because the reader has to turn over several hundred pages before he can piece together the bare details of his early life that these books fail in their historical purpose. It is essential to an understanding of the man and his work to recall that he was born within four years of the death of King William IV, and that the last of Nelson's captains, Admiral of the Fleet Sir William Parker, gave him the nomination which enabled him to enter the Navy in the year of the outbreak of the Crimean War. He was surrounded by senior officers to whom the admirals of the Napoleonic War were not mere phantoms of the past, but men of blood and muscle, under, whom they had served. These seamen of the early Victorian era had inherited great traditions, and they were the protectors of those traditions and every expression of them, in strategy and tactics, in ship-construction as well as in ship-equipment. They wanted no changes, and regarded the marine steam-engine and every manifestation of physical science with suspicion. Ships of war were still dependent upon the wind for motion. Their guns were not much more powerful than those which had been used at the Battle of Trafalgar; and the gun-mountings were in no way different from those used at the time of the Spanish Armada. During the years which had intervened since the close of the Napoleonic War naval science had made