may or may not be for the purpose of saving their faces-of making the transition from the tyranny of the "bloc" easier to them than it would otherwise be.

He has raised the religious question by speaking of the necessity of placing those schools which are still independent of the State under State inspection. We should be the last people in the world to object to the adoption of any steps that would make the free schools thoroughly efficient; but in France one must ask oneself some very important questions. Who will be the inspectors and what steps will they take to fulfil their duty? Will they approach their task in a spirit of real impartiality, or will they exert their powers in a vexatious and tyrannical spirit? The whole question lies in a nutshell, and past experience makes one hesitate to approve of anything that will in any shape or form increase the powers of the authorities in this direction. M. Briand has also used words which, if they are not another sop thrown to the wobbling Radicals, make one wonder whether he grasps the principles that underlie denominational teaching. He dwells upon the fact that little boys and little girls of from seven to ten years of age have to appear before their masters and mistresses, and he asks himself whether their brains are capable of absorbing instruction which is polemic in its character or of taking part in high philosophical speculation. Robbed of all verbiage, this implies a doubt whether it is right to instruct children in the fundamental principles of Christianity, of which they hear absolutely nothing in the majority of those schools which are now under State management and State control. These words may, as we have said, be meant merely as a sop to those who hesitate to shake off all at once the shackles of their early political training; but they certainly excuse Conservatives who hesi

tate to follow M. Briand into the division lobby.

The fight which the Republic has carried on relentlessly and without mercy against the Church, against the principles of Christianity, has had a deplorable effect upon the rising generation, many of whom have grown up to manhood without any religious teaching. In any other country the disaster would have been irreparable; but France may be saved by that spirit of contradiction and of insubordination which has always been one of the chief characteristics of her youth. If the children brought up in the religious schools established under the "loi Falloux" have been the architects of the late anti-religious campaign, it is fair to remember that the children who were educated in the schools of the Great Revolution produced the religious movement of the 'thirties. The curé may have been unpopular in the past, but his past unpopularity is as nothing compared with the dislike shown on every side for the school teacher whose infiuence is now supreme in the villages and hamlets of agricultural France. He may terrorize the people as the "délégué" of the préfet and of the sous-préfet, and he may be able to secure a certain following as the dispenser of Ministerial favors; but once this power goes his misdeeds will be remembered against him and the Nemesis will be great. It is therefore quite possible that the children of yesterday may prove the instruments of a powerful reaction against the anti-clericalism of the last ten years. M. Briand is probably not strong enough to lead the movement. His part is an awkward one, and he must emancipate himself from memories which in this country would have irretrievably destroyed any political reputation. He has not yet given evidence of will power strong enough to control or guide the destinies of France in a new direction op

posed to that which it has followed with such disastrous consistency for ten years. He may, however, become a powerful instrument in the hands of forces which declared themselves conspicuously at the last General Election. He is an Opportunist stronger than most of his predecessors, with a mind that can appeal to men of goodwill on all sides to work for the State. He will not initiate a policy of his own; but he can guide and shape a policy in whose favor the country has pronounced or is ready to pronounce. The Saturday Review.

In

modern France this means a great deal, especially when the country is going through an unconscious and silent revolution. M. Briand's social ambitions, too, are slowly bringing him into contact with elements that have long been excluded from political power, and he is realizing that much capacity exists in circles for many years divorced from politics. It is impossible to forecast the future of France. We are at any rate at the close of the Combes era. This is something.

There is a very sound rule that no man, high or low, should ever answer, or even deny, a general accusation brought against his character,-a rule which ought to apply not only to himself, but quite as much to his friends or to those who know him from a distance, no matter how indignant they may be at the folly, the cruelty, or the utter absurdity of the accusation in question. Not only is no man obliged to deal with general accusations that he is a murderer, an evil liver, a drunkard, or a bigamist, but he owes it as a duty not only to his own self-respect but to the good of society as a whole not to notice any such general slanders. By his silence, even though it may be galling to him to keep silent, he helps to form the necessary rampart against the wickedness, or perhaps we should say rather the ridiculousness and futility, of lying tongues. But for the observance of the rule we have laid down the world would be literally overwhelmed with torrents of squalid slander, and prominent men would spend their lives in denying that they were assassins, profligates, perjurers, or thieves. The wise man and the man of honor and his friends should never

give the impression that they have even heard of general slanders,-slanders which can only be met by a general, and therefore empty, assertion of abstract virtue. Specific charges made by specific individuals are of course different. If A B will undertake to say that C D murdered a particular man on a particular day in the year, ran away with a specified man's wife, committed bigamy with a named person on a certain date, or was drunk on a particular occasion or set of occasions, then no doubt the wise man and his friends should deal with the accusation. They have something to answer, something to disprove, and will not be confined to mere general, and therefore, as we have said, futile, asseverations of morality and good conduct, asseverations which, however true they may be in fact, are always open to the retort: "Oh, of course you say so because you are his friend," or, "You think it fair to support him right or wrong," or what not. Only answer what is answerable. Let mere wild second-hand hearsay and gossip perish, as they certainly will, from their own want of substance. The purveyors of such hearsay no doubt deserve the con

temptuous condemnation that should descend on all tale-bearers and purveyors of tittle-tattle, but they are never worth "further and better" consideration.

If these rules apply, as they most distinctly do, to private individuals, how much more so to Kings, Rulers, and Princes. Kings and Princes are the natural and predestined subjects of gossip. People are bound to talk about them, to speculate about them and tell stories about them, and therefore it is inevitable that the world should be full of stories both to their credit and discredit. A moment's reflection will show that, however great the temptation and however great the injustice done them, they must never themselves break the rule against contradicting or denying scandalous and malicious stories of a general character. If once they did so, they would be overwhelmed by an avalanche of slander. Not only would they have to open a bureau for the general contradiction of general accusations, but if their bureau relaxed its efforts for a moment, or became slack in the pursuit of obloquy, the world would resound with the gigantic whisper that this last story at any rate must be true. "In the future no one will be able to deny that the King drank six bottles of champagne at dinner last Sunday, and that the Queen threw a pair of boots and a riding-whip at her dresser and marked her for life, for these statements have never been contradicted." Speaking widely, the same rule must apply to the friends and well-wishers of Kings and Queens when they find the world full of vague and lying rumors. Even though they may have evidence that for the time such rumors are doing a certain amount of real harm, they must keep silence. The only possible exception to this rule, though for ourselves we are by no means sure that it is an exception, is the case of the accession to the Throne

of a new Sovereign, and one who has hitherto been comparatively little known to the wider public. It is perhaps arguable that on this occasion those who know the facts may for once, and for once only, give vent to their indignation, and let people understand what a cruel wrong is being done by the purveying of general accusations, or, as we should prefer to say, for we do not find it possible to take the matter en tragique, what fools and dolts are those who give entertainment to such balderdash.

We note that the Dean of Norwich, Dr. Russell Wakefield, takes the view as to the duty of good citizens at the accession of a new King described in the last sentence. In addressing a congregation of Friendly Society members near Norwich last Sunday, he thought it his duty to deal with certain preposterous rumors which had been circulated in regard to the present King. The Daily Chronicle of Monday contains an account of his sermon, which runs as follows:

We have now upon the Throne a King who, to my personal knowledge, is a man of intense self-sacrifice and high character. Against him one has heard brought two accusations, brought, as I think, by that part of society which is no society at all; but these things percolate down, and it is just as well that when speaking before a mass of people one should give the lie to those two accusations. In the first place, the King is sometimes accused of insobriety. You may take it from me, on undoubted authority. that that is a libel. As far as his close friends have noticed him, he has never been intemperate throughout his life, but, on the contrary, is a man who, even from the point of view of health, has to be abstemious, and who has no desire to be anything else. I want you generous-hearted men, when you hear some light, stupid talk with regard to this irreverence to our King, to say with absolute confidence that there is not a more sober, temperate, quiet-living man

in this country than King George. The other accusation is still more unworthy. It is that before his marriage he had what is called a secret morganatic marriage. That is absolutely, root and branch, an untruth. King George is a man who, with a wife of like disposition to himself, has been wont, during his leisure, to sit in his garden with his young children round him, just as any one of us might do in our own patch of garden. He has now undertaken the greatest responsibilities which any man can undertake, and I ask for him justice, fair dealing, confidence, loyalty, and love in his task.

On the whole, we think that the Dean of Norwich would have been better advised to keep silence, in spite of the very natural indignation which mastered him; but we are sure that he spoke with the very best possible intentions, and we admit that the point is one difficult to determine. As, however, he-following in this respect a letter and editorial note in last Saturday's Nation has spoken out, and a good deal of publicity has attached to his words, we should like to make one or two brief comments. In doing so let us say, first, that we think the prevalence of these lying rumors has probably been exaggerated. To speak as if they were believed, or even repeated, by anything but a small section of the population would be absurd. Next, let us say that not the slightest hint or shade of a shadow of official intimation has been made to us that our comments would be deemed useful. On the contrary, we feel pretty sure, so strong is the instinct of Royal personages never to deny evil gossip, that what we have said and are about to say is far more likely to be disliked than to be liked by the entourage of the King. In our opinion, nevertheless, this is a matter where a newspaper must judge for itself, and, however unwilling to give any cause for annoyance to the King or his personal friends, should take its

own course. On the balance of evils, then, we have come to the conclusion that, as the matter has been discussed in public, we had better speak out.

There is, of course, not the slightest ground whatever for either of the accusations mentioned by the Dean of Norwich. They are not only utterly false, but ludicrously so, and, as we have said above, we refuse altogether to take such balderdash in a tragic spirit, or to go into heroics over the matter. Even the language of irony and contempt is too strong for such nonsense. All we want to do is to ask people who are tempted to pass on these slanders with some such fatuous remark as "Can this possibly be true?" or to indulge in a shudder at the dreadful things people will say, to consider for a moment what idiots they are making of themselves by entertaining these suggestions. A very little reflection must knock the whole fabric to pieces. They are most of them aware that King George is among the very best game shots not only in England but in the world. They must know also that this means that the hand and eye act in unison and under a nervous and muscular control which has to be almost instantaneous. Have they ever heard of a man given to insobriety who was able to do such things habitually, and to be far oftener "on his day" than the majority of shooters? If the King could shoot as he does, and yet the gossip about him to which the Dean of Norwich refers be true, he would be a veritable physical and psychological miracle. If this is not enough, we would ask the repeaters of this silly gossip to consider whether the first phenomenon in regard to an intemperate man is not that he is constantly, and for sudden and mysterious reasons, unable to keep engagements or to make promised appearances in public, and then to remember that the King as Prince of Wales, whether in this coun

try, in Australia, in Canada, or in India, kept his time-table of engagements as if he were an express train on a first-class line. The other story, though more vague, is of course equally fallacious, and must equally yield to a little reflection. It is obviously impossible to do more than deny that which has never existed. But in truth one is humiliated by even mentioning such mendacious twaddle.

We feel that by saying even as much as this we are laying ourselves open to the very criticisms which we set forth at the beginning of this article, criticisms of the absolute truth of which we are perfectly convinced. Therefore let us say once more that even if we have seemed for a moment The Spectator.

to break the rule, the rule is obligatory,

namely, that a good citizen should not, either for himself or for those whose honor he holds dear, abandon the sound principle that vague general accusations must never be denied. Denials must be kept for the only cases in which they can be of any avail,for specific accusations. Otherwise we should all, from the highest to the lowest, be forced to go about the world with placards on our backs: "Please believe that I am not a murderer, a drunkard, a profligate, a thief, a coward, and a liar." Such a reductio ad absurdum must, in truth, be the result of any attempt to give denials to general accusations.

Of all the English poets none has a fame so independent of his poetry as Sidney. Other poets-Milton, for instance, and Marvell-have played as great or a greater part in the life of their country; but their lives had not the grace, nor their deaths the glory, of the life and death of Sidney. His life was mainly, at least in appearance, the most futile and barren that a man can choose, that of a courtier; yet he managed so to tread that trivial stage that his fellow-actors in the piece discovered to their surprise that there was a part in it for the wise man, the hero, and the saint. He died in one of the most inglorious of English military exploits; but he so died that he has buried its shame in the eternity of his nobleness. No one ever lived more loved or died more lamented. Tu Marcellus eris. That was the feeling of all England and of many high hearts

"The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney." Edited with an introduction by John Drinkwater. (The Muses' Library: Routledge. 1s. net.)

outside England, when the news of Zutphen came. Manibus date lilia plenis. All the poets did that-Constable in a noble sonnet, Raleigh in a long "epitaph" fuller of thought and matter and the sorrow of admiration than of poetry; and the greatest of them, the one who had paid Sidney perhaps the finest compliment even he ever received by calling himself "the southern shepherd's boy," Spenser, who wished to be thought Sidney's scholar and pupil, poured out his grief again and again for his country's loss and his own. O noble spirit! live there ever blest, The world's late wonder, and the heaven's new joy:

Live ever there, and leave me here distrest

With mortal cares and cumbrous world's annoy;

But where thou dost that happiness enjoy

Bid me, O bid me quickly come to thee,

That happy there I may thee always

see.