Empire; still more to the Englishspeaking race. It was his large and liberal grasp of this idea that made the Archbishop so fully at home in the New World. He is filled with hope. He feels the sense not only of a new world but of a new era. "No other period of Christendom," he said in the memorable and typical "Salutation" at Washington, the central point of a great service on behalf of Christian unity at which, it is said, not less than thirtyfive thousand persons were present"no other period of Christendom can compare with ours in the possibilities which are set within our reach. No other part of Christendom, as I firmly believe, can do for the world what we on either side of the sea can do for it, if we only will. God give us grace to answer to that inspiring call!"

The moments in this opportunity were many. We follow the Archbishop as he lands in "fair and famous Quebec," then up the wide-flowing St. Lawrence to Montreal, on to the Great Lakes and Toronto; then to the quiet country church in North-East Harbor where he preached his first sermon on the soil of the United States; next to sunny Washington, and to Philadelphia, in its very name the City of Brotherly Love; then to busy New York, and last to Boston and the manymemoried Faneuil Hall. Everywhere the same dominating note resounds through different harmonies. "I am conscious," he said at Philadelphia, in language which was received, we read, with great and continued applause, "that the words that have been spoken to-day, and the reception given them, are meant to express what you feel about the Church of which we are members, the absolute oneness of our Church, the almost oneness of our na

The Spectator.

tions." "We are one," he went on, "in heart and soul and resolve, whether as citizens or Churchmen." "The courtesy of your act to-day," he said in Faneuil Hall, "is another instance of the strength of those links which bind our peoples, as it seems to me, absolutely, indissolubly, together .. links which nothing, so far as I can see, that can in the changes and chances of life come about, is likely to sever or impair." "We join hands," he said in concluding the last address contained in these pages, that to the Evangelical ministers and Methodist students at Boston,-"we join hands in behalf of a common cause, the setting forward of our Master's kingdom, both in the Old World and the New. . . . That our gathering may with God's grace cement more closely what is deepest and best in the bonds which unite us across the sea in matters national, religious, moral, and social is my eager wish and shall be my continuous and anxious prayer."

Straight, simple, terse, there is something soldierly, something that reminds of a very different theme and volumeCaesar's Commentaries—in these brief utterances. They are the speeches of a practical, sagacious, shrewd man, stirred to deep emotion. They move and touch the reader because the speaker was touched and moved in no common way. To all who hope for and long to help our age, to the true Christian and the true patriot on both sides of the seas, in the new home where the speaker spent so happy and fruitful a sojourn, in the old to which he has returnéd, as we hope, refreshed and encouraged, we commend these hopeful, prayerful, suggestive words as in a very real sense the best of Christmastide reading.

The incompetence of the Czar has been displayed on a larger stage than seemed likely to be open to it till this day week. No single circumstance that can make his weakness more visible has been wanting. The revolutionary movement in St. Petersburg-if that can be called revolutionary which, in the first instance, was only a strike of workmen against conditions of labor which they regard as intolerably hard -was of a kind which it rested with him, and with no one else, to control and keep harmless. The language of the petition contains, indeed, much that goes beyond the ordinary complaints of workmen against their employers. There is enough of political unrest in Russia-arising, to શ great extent, from the want of any regular means of making political wants known-to ensure the introduction of such questions into any document that expresses the feelings of a large number of men. But any one who reads the long introduction which ushers in the specific remedies demanded will see that the petition is far more an utterance of discontent with their own material condition than a demand for Constitutional changes. Some of the commonplaces familiar in all such manifestoes are to be found in this one, but others are curiously wanting. The responsibility of Ministers, the separation of Church and State, a progressive income-tax are all here; but there is no mention of universal suffrage, of vote by ballot, or of the convocation of a National Assembly. The gist of their complaint is the exploitation of the workmen by capitalists and Government officials, and the little that is known of Russia supplies no assurance that this is not a well-founded grievance. But whether it be well founded

or not, it did not lie with the Czar to refuse to take account of it. Autocracy, like every other form of government, has its special obligations. Under all other forms some channel exists in which those who think themselves oppressed can make their voice heard. There is some Chamber in which the working class have a share of representation, however small, and can, on occasion, make that share audible. In Russia alone there is nothing of the sort; in Russia alone is the Sovereign the sole source, whether of justice or of mercy. And, therefore, in Russia alone has the Sovereign no right to refuse to consider in his own person the prayers of his subjects. The Czar cannot pass on these prayers to a Ministry or a Parliament. Parliament there is none, and the Ministry is only a term of courtesy for a group of clerks who have neither position nor authority, except as the creatures of the Sovereign's will. Even a Czar cannot have things both ways. If he is an autocrat, he must behave as an autocrat, or have his incapacity for his place and function demonstrated to the world.

This is the choice which Nicholas II. has this week had to make. He may, indeed, have persuaded himself that he has evaded responsibility by running away, and that a Czar whom his people do not know where to find is a Czar who cannot be blamed for anything that follows upon his flight. He may even hope that the massacre of Sunday will be laid at the door of the Grand Dukes, and that his other shortcomings will be excused on the score of his being an obedient nephew. Unfortunately for him and for his dynasty, these flimsy pleas will be forgotten as soon as they are set up, and

the blame of all that has happened, and of all that may still happen, will be the Czar's, and the Czar's only. It will be so all the more because it rested with him to make last Sunday pretty much what he chose. There were three things that he might have done any one of which would have given the incidents of the day a different direction from that which they actually took. His best course would have been to allow the workmen to present their petition, and to tell them that he would give their requests his full and careful consideration. There is no reason to believe that if he had done this there would have been any hostile action on the part of the crowd. What they asked was a hearing, an opportunity of making their Sovereignthe only authority to which, under an absolute autocracy, it is possible for them to turn-acquainted with the nature of their grievances, and with the means by which, in their opinion, those grievances can be removed. Their complaints could not have been put right in a moment, but the assurance that the Czar was willing to learn what they were, and anxious to do all in his power to meet them, would have been enough to send away the crowd with a new sense of hope and gratitude. This, however, may have been too great a demand on the Czar's courage. Το stand before a vast throng of people, with every eye fixed on him and every ear strained to catch his lightest word, may have been more than he could endure. In that case there was another possibility open to him. He might have announced that he was prepared to receive a small deputation of workmen, and to discuss with them the measures described in their petition. This would have been an inferior, because a far less imposing, expedient than confronting the crowd in person. It would have appealed less to the imagination, and have made less im

pression upon an excitable and, in its way, romantic people. On the other hand, it would have had some advantages over the bolder course. It would have enabled the Czar to get at the real meaning of the workmen's demands, and to have pointed out why some of them could not be granted. Indeed, even if the crowd had been confronted in the first instance, such an interview as this must in the end have taken place; and if it had been substituted for the bolder and more imposing act, it would possibly have been almost as successful. Even now the list of possible courses is not exhausted. The Czar might have put forth a reasoned statement of his reasons for refusing to see the petitioners or their representatives. He might have dwelt on the length and difficulty of the statement submitted to him, and have asked for time in which to consider it himself, and to take counsel with his advisers as to the answer to be returned to it. This would have been the least effective course of the three, because it would have been the least definite, and the least calculated to inspire confidence in the petitioners. But even this, if it had been done in good faith, would probably have averted the disasters of Sunday. As we know, the Czar, either of his own will or yielding to the stronger will of his uncles, rejected them all, and preferred to leave the people of his capital in ignorance where he was or in what light he regarded their action. only information he vouchsafed to them on this last point was such as could be conveyed by the bullets of his soldiers.

The

What is there now left for the Czar to do? He has made up his mind, seemingly, or allowed other people to make it up for him, that things must go on as they have begun. The end in view is the restraint of any expression of opinion or desire on the part of

his people.

The means by which this end is to be reached is wholesale slaughter, as often as a crowd large enough to be slaughtered can be found gathered together. How far this discipline will be effective it is too soon to say. Probably so long as the necessary orders are given, and the troops obey them, it will succeed in St. Petersburg. No revolutionary movement can hope to stand against cavalry and artillery, if they are used with sufficient decision. But St. Petersburg is not Russia, and it is possible that the spectacle of what the Czar's autocracy has come to in the capital may seriously weaken its hold on the rest of the Empire. The Grand Dukes may for the moment be delighting themThe Economist.

selves in the success of their policy, but what is possible in a single city may not be possible in many cities at once; and, after all, the real population of Russia does not live in cities. The grievances of the peasants may not indeed be identical with those of the workmen, but they have points of resemblance, and the rumors of what happened last Sunday growing, as they are likely to do, in the process of transmission, may suggest the need of making common efforts for a common end. The present policy is not fitted to deal with discontents that are spread over the whole country, and the incapacity of the Czar may yet lead to consequences that even the Grand Dukes cannot control.

There is once more grave reason to follow the course of events in Macedonia with anxious attention, and to inquire rather searchingly what steps our own Government is taking to forestall the dangers which seem imminent and to fulfil its pledges. The Times has written well upon this subject during the past week, and if public opinion in France were as alert and as wellinformed as in England one might perhaps hope for some further diplomatic move. The Austro-Russian reforms have failed, as all good judges predicted they must, and their failure has been almost surprisingly complete. The two Assessors have merely travelled about, written reports, and given good advice to Hilmi Pasha, as the humblest consuls might have done. The Turks have permitted an experiment in a few selected villages to see whether it is possible to collect the taxes directly without the intervention of the corrupt and violent publicani,

who buy the tithes of a village at auction and collect as much more as seems good to them. But that this experiment will be generally adopted we do not for a moment believe. The whole Turkish system of ascendency, by which the ruling class of Mohamedan landlords share in the profits of conquest, rests upon these methods of spoliation, and if the "garrison" (to use an Irish parallel) were deprived of its perquisites its loyalty would hardly stand the strain. Lastly, the gendarmerie scheme has broken down because the European officers possess no executive authority. If they see an abuse they must report to headquarters. With the maintenance of order they have nothing to do. In fact, it is clear that the reforms have failed to do any good.

But apart from the failure of the reforms, matters seem to be actually rather worse than they were before the late insurrection. The Turkish admin

The

istration is more hopelessly centralized than ever, and Hilmi Pasha, a clever but somewhat sinister figure, is a mere shadow of the Palace. He appears to be doing his best, as he did in the spring of 1903, to drive the Bulgarians once more into revolt. Troops are being quartered once more upon the villages-which means a daily round of robbery and oppression. A curfew ordinance has been re-enacted. whole public life of the Bulgarian communities stands suspended and suppressed. Their teachers are nearly all in exile, and practically all their schools are closed in consequence. A large number of their churches have been handed over to the Greek faction by the Turkish authorities-and that even in villages where the peasants of the Greek party are in a very small minority. Economically, save for the help that was rendered once this autumn in certain districts by the British Relief Fund, their case is still exceedingly miserable. The Turks, needless to say, have not made good their promise to rebuild the villages (12,000 houses in all) which were burned in 1903. In the Adrianople region the refugees have not yet been suffered to return, and their lands are still occupied by Turks. Finally, the Greek and Albanian bands which are making war upon the Bulgarians are tolerated, if not encouraged, by the Government, which is only too pleased to foster any feud among its Christian subjects. The general insecurity defies description, and the outlook for the immediate future is still blacker. With the coming of spring all the lawless bands are preparing to extend their activities, while the rigor of the authorities, not against the agitators but against the villagers, grows ever more stringent. It is an unbearable position, and if there comes no sign of a fresh European intervention before next spring an insurrection seems inevitable-and

insurrection spells massacre, outrage,

and devastation.

Her

It is quite futile to look for help to either of the interested Powers upon whom Europe in a moment of apathy conferred a mandate to pacify Macedonia. Russia is entirely preoccupied both at home and abroad. Austria has no policy except procrastination. Emperor is an intensely conservative force. Both the Germans and the Magyars are disposed to be Turcophil and to dread any movement of sympathy which might make them responsible for a large Slav population. And both Austria and Hungary are in the throes of Parliamentary crises. Of the other Powers, Germany stands aloof, and doubtless supports the Sultan behind the scenes. France is tied by the Russian Alliance. Italy is eager, but interested. There remains only England, at once free, disinterested, and sympathetic. We are pledged to action. In the past stands our overwhelming responsibility for the Treaty of Berlin, which flung Macedonia, rescued by Russian intervention, once more beneath the heel of the Turk. But we have also obligations of recent date. Lord Lansdowne has explicitly promised that if the Austro-Russian reforms should fail he will propose more drastic measures of amelioration. He is much too well informed, thanks to our excellent consular staff in Macedonia, to retain any illusions about the success of these reforms. That he has not forgotten his pledges is an assumption which his keen and altogether humane interest in this question warrants. The problem is how best to awaken the interest of the French Government and to bring it into line with Italy. In the autumn of 1903 Sir Edward Grey expressed the opinion that if even one other Power would support us, it was clearly our duty to intervene. There is no doubt that we could secure the co-operation of the Italian fleet if a