marched up to the neutral zone of Chanak (opposite to Gallipoli), which was held by British, French, and Italian troops. The French and Italian troops were withdrawn, and the Chanak Zone was held alone by the few British forces under General Harington.

Mr. Lloyd George and his Cabinet were determined to oppose the passage of the Dardanelles, by the Turks, by force of arms. Reinforcements to the number of 20,000 men were dispatched to Chanak and Ismid. Mustafa Kemal, however, decided not to enter the Neutral Zones nor to attempt to cross into Europe. On October 10 the Armistice of Mudania was signed by General Harington and Allied representatives on the one hand and General Ismet Pasha on the other. This paved the way to the long drawn-out negotiations at Lausanne. Finally the Treaty of Lausanne between the Allies and Turkey was signed on July 24, 1923. In accordance with its terms Constantinople was evacuated by the Allies.

FROM The Times, SEPTEMBER 19, 1922.

He that goeth to war counteth the cost. Can, then, this country afford to go to war? No.

Such immense taxes have been imposed on men once wealthy, but now impoverished; such local rates have been unnecessarily inflicted on householders; such high prices are deterring purchases; such a diminution of capital is impeding trade; such high wages are exacted by trade unionists and other servants; such lavish doles have made people so insolent and so indolent that the recipients will not work except as, when, where, and with whom they please; so many unpayable debts have been incurred by this country, not only to its own creditors but also to America, while so many irrecoverable loans have been advanced by this country to various European States; and, finally, such an unnecessary system of bureaucracy has caused the tyrannical and extravagant interference of the Government with the freedom of trade and of action, that, in consequence, now to declare war against the Turks would be the insane act of the madmen who have for years been bringing bewildered Britain to this pass.

A moment has been chosen for this folly when, within and without, the Government of this country

on the one hand no longer represents its own constituents at home and, on the other hand, is partly hated, partly despised, and wholly distrusted abroad, by Europe, by Egypt, by the Arabs, by the Indians, by the whole Mohammedan world, and by the East in general, which, if we attack the Turks, will redouble its desire to rid itself of Western domination, and especially of the weakened British Empire.

Moreover, in your article of the 18th instant, you, Sir, rightly point to the ineptitude, the ignorance, the vanity, and the perversity of the British Government. How, then, can it meet the conclusion that it is unfit to govern and, a fortiori, to make war? Whatever it meditates, it muddles. In the present crisis, what could be a greater muddle than first to join in the establishment of a League of Nations to make perpetual peace by the self-determination' of each nation, and then to make England, France, and perhaps Italy arbiters of war and peace with the Turks?

The attitude of England to Turkey has gone through many vicissitudes. Under Lord Palmerston England joined France and Sardinia in protecting Turkey against the ambition of Russia. Gladstone reversed this policy, and went so far as to give vent to the questionable design of expelling the Turks, bag and baggage', from Europe. Ever since there has been anarchy in the Balkan Peninsula and suspicion throughout Islam.

Lately the present Prime Minister has been encouraging the advance of the feeble Greeks in Europe and in Asia Minor against the Turks, and partly against the policy of France; and although there is a promise in two years to restore Constantinople to the Turks, he positively contemplates war against them by land and sea with the help of the remote confederation of the scattered British Empire. Nobody could in that event predict the

extent, or the limits, or the end of such a war. It is, however, certain that, when the nations are sighing for peace, a repetition of war would make this country and its remote confederates more and more deservedly hated, not only in the East, but also in the whole civilized world. It is therefore the interest of this country to make peace with Turkey.

Finally, in an ambitious Napoleonic spirit, which has been growing on him more and more, Mr. Lloyd George designs that this madness and wickedness should be decided by himself as dictator, aided by his feeble colleagues, when it is obvious that, if there is a risk of war, he ought at once to summon Parliament. Parliament, if wise, would immediately restore to Turkey its ancient city of Constantinople, on the sole condition of the neutrality of the Straits. Only so could England begin to recover its reputation in the East.

Anyhow, whatever may happen, the Prime Minister has to be reminded that there is now (alas!) a power more powerful than Parliament-namely, the national and international union of trade unions, which has become a perpetual danger to this country, mainly through the many culpable compromises and concessions of the Prime Minister himself. From his first day of office he has frequently descended to first consulting the Labour leaders. If war is declared, he will have to consult them again. But by the instrument of the strike and their new council the trade unionists can prevent or stop the war. If they do not do either, but consent, they will demand a price, and so help to hasten this illstarred country sooner and more surely to its ruin. Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Sept. 18.

VII. LETTERS ON PHILOSOPHICAL AND

SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS

GIORDANO BRUNO

Giordano Bruno was born in 1548. He was a Dominican friar and philosopher, and was burned for heresy at Rome in 1600.

FROM The Times, JUNE 13, 1889.

Your article of to-day on the unveiling of the statue of Bruno suggests the curious reflection that the paradoxical philosophy for which he died was probably the last thought of the 30,000 persons who assembled on Sunday to do him honour. Yet amid all the wild hypotheses of monadistic pantheism there shines forth one great discovery, which of itself would suffice to give him a lofty and lasting place in the temple of fame. Bruno discovered that the fixed stars are worlds scattered at all sorts of distances in a space to which we can assign no limits. In order nowadays to form some idea of the intellectual effort and the moral courage needed to enunciate so unexpected a truth for the first time, we must return in imagination to the sixteenth century and remember that, on the one hand, Copernicus, as Bruno pointed out in the De Immenso, had retained the ancient figment of a sphere as a single receptacle in which all the fixed stars were supposed to be placed so as to be equidistant from one centre; while, on the other hand, Bruno's discovery made even the bold Kepler exclaim that' The bare thought filled him with the dread of finding himself wandering in an immensity, whose limits, whose centre, and therefore, also, fixed places are denied' (Kepler, De Stella Nova in Pede Serpentarii, cap. xxi).

Oxford, June 11.

224

THE INCONSISTENCY OF MR. SPENCER'S

AGNOSTICISM

Mr. William Bramwell Booth is the son of the Rev. William Booth, general of the Salvation Army. Since 1912 he has himself held this position.

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) published 'Principles of Psychology' in 1855. First Principles' appeared in 1862: it was volume I of his great exposition of his system, called Synthetic Philosophy'.

FROM The Times, DECEMBER II, 1896.

It is natural that Mr. Bramwell Booth should point out Mr. Herbert Spencer's inconsistency on the subject of property. It is also natural that Mr. Spencer's disciples should object to Mr. Booth's conclusion that their master is therefore likely to be unsound on graver questions. But the fact is that Mr. Spencer is inconsistent in the whole basis of his philosophy.

On the one hand, he asserts that 'what we are conscious of as properties of matter, down to its weight and resistance, are but subjective affections produced by agencies unknown and unknowable. All the sensations produced in us by environing things are but symbols of actions out of ourselves, the natures of which we cannot even conceive.' On the other hand, he asserts that there is an undefinable consciousness which stands for a mode of being beyond sensation . . . of something which resists'; and that the force of which we assert persistence is that absolute force of which we are indefinitely conscious as the necessary correlate of

the force we know '.

According to these extracts from the most fundamental doctrines of First Principles and Principles of Psychology, Mr. Spencer, after asserting that all the properties of matter of which we are conscious, including resistance, are but subjective affections, nevertheless inconsistently admits that two of these properties, resistance and persistence, belong to