to find his congenial career, but he must always have the knowledge that, if for any reason he should give up his political occupation, he can at any moment return to some pursuit in which he has already won an established fame. There are not many political leaders of our time about whom the same could fairly be said. For myself I may frankly say that I hope James Bryce will henceforward devote himself especially to that political career in which he has accomplished such great things. English public life cannot well afford to lose his services just now and for some time to come. A man who can bring to political work such resources of thought and of experience, who can look beneath the surface and above the mere phrases and catchwords of political parties, who can see that Liberalism in its true sense must mean progress, and who can at the same time see clearly for himself what progress really means, and in what direction and by what methods it is to be made such a man could ill be

spared by the Liberalism of our gener tion. The historical work he has alread done is, in its way, complete and imperis able. But the Liberal party has yet 1 recover its place and to regain the leade ship of England's political life. Ever effort which the Conservatives in offic have lately been making to hold the full mastery over the country has onl shown more and more clearly that the have not kept up with the movements c thought and are not able to understan the true requirements of the time. O the other hand, the limp and shattere condition of the existing Liberal part only shows the absolute necessity for th recognized leadership of men who under stand the difference between the work o guiding the country and the ignoble func tion of competing for power by imitation and by compromise. In the new effort now so sorely needed to create once more a true Liberal party, the country requires, above all things else, the constant service of such men as James Bryce.

E

VENTS have moved with a swift pace indeed since the writing of my article published in The The Outlook of September 20, 1902, and the last gleam of hope that feebly irradiated the murky skies of oppression hanging over Finland has now faded away, leaving the inhabitants of that unhappy land gazing in consternation at the dark horizon where national obliteration begins.

Now that the mask has been definitely dropped from the Russian designs and active persecution ushered in with the issue of the famous-and infamous ukases of October 2, the paramount care of the Finnish people is no longer to appeal, but to act; no longer to entreat, but to resist; and from the generation but recently out of its teens must the larger works of salvation come.

Hence it becomes incumbent upon us to understand something of the status of parties and the workings of public opinion

in Finland, and more particularly to familiarize ourselves, if possible, with the plan of action of the generation of young Finlanders on whom the problem of the future weighs most immediately and heavily.

From the time when the Swedish Helsings first established themselves through right of conquest on Finnish soil, and more markedly since the beginning of Muscovite domination, there has existed in Finland a dual racial problem, which, at all times difficult of solution, has not infrequently been marked by an access of bitterness on the part of the factions concerned that has invariably proved a source of weakness by which the wily Russian has seldom failed to profit when occasion invited. The language question it was that long divided Finland, to its undoubted injury, into the rival camps of the Svekomans and Fennomans.

As the names indicate, the Svekomans

comprised the inhabitants of Swedish extraction, inhabiting the western, southwestern, and part of the southern coast line to a distance of about eighteen miles inland, and speaking as their mother tongue the language of their neighbors across the Gulf of Bothnia, and imbued with the traditions of Swedish social, political, and literary supremacy; while under the banners of the Fennoman faction were gathered the people of pure Finnic stock, whose aim was the triumph of the Finnish idiom, not merely as the dominant factor in the domains of society and government, but also as the proper expression of the national spirit.

It was but natural that the majority of the governmental body and the official class as a whole should belong to the Svekoman party, and just as natural that the guns of the Fennomans should be trained upon them with most pertinacity and determination. It was also only in the order of things-according to decree of nature, let us even admit that the Fennomanic ideal, especially since the discovery of the Kalevala, of a young and vigorous people, distinctively Finnish in character and tongue, ready to take its place in the ranks of nations by the side of the recently emancipated Rumania, Servia, and Bulgaria, should have steadily continued to gain adherents among the rising generation, irrespective of party affiliations. Thanks largely to the more or less active interference of Russian diplomacy-whose peculiar forte it has always been, constantly is, and ever will be to foment discord and create disunion in the ranks of its present or prospective victims, and which saw in the weakening of the hitherto superior political power the most favorable opportunity for hastening the accomplishment of its own nefarious designs on the autonomy of Finland itself the Fennomans succeeded, as the straggle went on, in gaining material advantages over their Svekoman rivals. The Finnish language came to be recognized as on an equal footing with Swedish as the official tongue, and an ever-increasing proportion of important government posts fell to the share of the party. The present crisis, affecting as it does the very life of the Finnish nation, has, however, revolutionized the old standing of parties, and we hear little nowadays of

Svekoman and Fennoman hostility. In the face of the threatened extinction of the national life, the Svekomans, guided by the wise counsels of Van Born, Wrede, Schybergson, Axel Lille, former editor of the suppressed "Nya Pressen," and V. Söderhjelm, have abandoned their uncompromising attitude on the questions of language and franchise reform, to devote all their energies to the defense of the common fatherland, while the Fennoman party has split into two irreconcilable halves, the Old Finns and the Young Finns. The last-named faction, under the leadership of ex-Consul Wolff (whose speech at St. Petersburg on behalf of Finland on the occasion of the first monster petition to the Czar in 1899 made such a profound impression in Europe), Castrèn, the writer Aho, the poet Erkko, and Professor Otto Donner, have thrown to the winds the old differences with their Swedish-speaking fellow-country men, with the result that the two have coalesced under the title of the Constitutional party, which proclaims as its one great object the retention of the autonomous government of Finland, and has come to represent the sentiment of the nation at large, with whom the Senate and the Old Finns have fallen into complete disfavor.

The policy of this latter party, sacrificing everything, from the time of the first manifesto of February, 1899, to the fetich of party aggrandizement, has been one of consistent abandonment of all opposition to the autocratic will of the Russian Government, of abject surrender at each successive attack of the cohorts of bureaucracy; and in this attitude of selfeffacement, ardently advocated in its semi-official organ "Uusi Suometar," it has had the guidance of three men of signal ability and far-reaching influence, Archbishop Johansson of Abo, and former Senators Yrjö-Koskinen and J. R. Danielson, the latter an eminent jurist and political writer, and in earlier days one of the stanchest upholders of Finnish autonomy and opponents of Russian aggression. Yrjö-Koskinen is in some respects the foremost figure in the Grand Duchy-a man of great mental alertness, abounding energy, and a personal influence that once seemed little short of hypnotic. But that this strange power of his is at last deserting him in some measure is shown by the

fact that many of his former adherents have lately left him, among them Tudéer, formerly Vice-President of the Senate, and hitherto one of the most faithful dancers to Koskinen's piping, while A. Meurman, a communal councilor and one of the most influential of the faction, shows signs of kicking over the traces and transferring his allegiance to the Constitutional party.

The specious plea of the Old Fennoman party has been that, by due and "loyal" submission to the will of their monarch, the Finnish people would retain the Czar's good will and at the same time build a bridge over the present chasm of misunderstanding upon which the autocrat and his Finnish subjects may meet at some future day of enlightenment and perfect a compact whereby an equal measure of justice to both Finland and Russia shall be insured. Surely it is small matter for wonder, in view of the latest manifestations of the Russian Government's hatred of Finnish institutions, its indifference to past promises and pledges, and its contemptuous flouting of its servile instrument, the "reorganized" Finnish Senate, and the reduction of that body to an innocuous "advisory" capacity, that the more self-respecting among Yrjö Koskinen's followers should have commenced to blush for their weakness, and that the Old Fennoman faction should now show, in spite of frantic efforts to disguise its real condition, unmistakable signs of approaching disintegration.

Among a people so imbued with the spirit of liberty as the Finns, the doctrine of blind obedience to the behests of a despot can find acceptance no more readily than it did among the English under Charles I. and James II., or the Dutch under Philip of Spain. Against the granite-bound steadfastness of the elemental Finn it is in vain that the storm breaks and rages.

For of what is compounded the elemental Finn? That we may comprehend the might of his bloodless resistance, we ask: "Who and what is this stern son of the North, to the full stature of whom the Russian autocrat, by the very nature of a tyrant's limitations, must ever fail to grow?" Verily, he is the child of the rock ribbed land that gave him birthtenacious of purpose as the rock-clasping

roots of his native pine; slow in the forming of opinion as the growth of his primeval forests, but unendingly stubborn in the maintenance of it when formed; slow to wrath, but, if once aroused, silent and implacable in the nursing of his resentment. From his childhood at war with nature to wring from her a scant livelihood, he feels that when he has learned to conquer her she is, verily, his mother; that, motherlike, she is tender with him, eager out of her penury to lavish upon him of her best. She sets on his brow the triple crown of fortitude, patience, and resignation, whis pering to him that, rooted in her, flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone, he must be both tender and indomitable, unyieldingly true to her and her ideals, and ready to defend them to his last gasp.

Out of this close daily communion with the soul of Nature, and the contemplation of her orderly processes, the Finn has drawn a fundamental faith in God and a belief in ultimate divine justice that is nowhere excelled, if anywhere equaled, on the face of the earth; and, concomitantly with this spiritual conviction, he is imbued with a regard for law and order that amounts almost to veneration. When, therefore, he sees these overturned with complacency, if not positive derision, by a hand that he had for a century been accustomed to look upon as that of, in the main, a guardian and well-wisher, what wonder that he undergoes a gradual revul sion of feeling, culminating in silent wrath and hatred of the alien tyrant who, robbing him of one cherished birthright after another, would reduce him to the debased level of the ignorant, spiritless Russian mujik!

In view of the fact that the last faint hope of ultimate justice has been dispelled by the retention of Bobrikoff as GovernorGeneral, followed by the placing of su preme power in his hands, at the cost of the independence, not only of the Senate (which, considering the present "reorganization" of that body, is of little consequence), but even of the judiciary, hitherto the final bulwark of Finnish liberties, the present generation of Finland finds itself compelled to adopt a definite plan of action to avert the destruction, not merely of its autonomous form of government, but of the national existence itself.

And what is this plan of action? As

far as it has been definitely evolved, it consists, first and foremost, of a silent movement, practically universal in Finland, to carry out to the limit the doctrine of passive resistance to each and every step of Russian aggression. In the mat ter of the problem most pressingly confronting the Finnish people, the enlistment in Russian regiments of the youth of the country, who, after much pressure, were induced or frightened last summer into finally responding to the illegal ukase (which the clergy throughout the country refused to read from their pulpits), and presenting themselves for military inspection and enrollment (to the number of only 14,642 out of a total of 25,080 summoned), this resistance takes the form of a refusal to appear at the impending mustering-in. This action has been deliberately determined on, despite a printed appeal issued by certain of the Old Fennoman faction as the result of a meeting called by its leaders and held in Helsingfors last October, under the presidency of Professor Danielson, to consider the best means of meeting the threatened widespread "rebellion against authority"-which meeting disclosed a pitiful attendance of some fifty-odd members, and furnished indubitable proof of the general disrepute into which the Senate and the Russophile faction have fallen.

This, however, represents but a phase of the activity of young Finland. A work of incalculable importance has also been for some time in operation—that of instill ing in the minds of Finnish children of all classes an adequate sense of the sacredness of Finnish constitutional liberties and law; an intimate knowledge of the traditions and history of the race; an abiding love for its literature, as enshrined in Kalevala and the poems of Runeberg, Topelius, and others; and a vital conception of Finland's standing and mission among the nations. In this labor of love no hamlet is too remote for the step of the teacher to penetrate or the voice of the Finnish patriot to reach. Officials who, trembling for their means of livelihood, give way to Russian pressure, are, cruel though it may seem, at once made to feel the public resentment and scorn, while a widespread movement has been set afoot, in which the women of the stricken land play an important

part, to practice a rigid economy in household matters, especially by abandoning luxuries of every description and limiting the scope of family and social festivities, so as to provide a gigantic national fund for the assistance of conscientious and fearless officials who have been arbitrarily deposed by the Governor-General to make way for Russian interlopers.

But the most formidable project of all the plans mooted, the most aggressive and threatening toward the Muscovite oppressor, and most pregnant with possibilities of his discomfiture, is one that has been lately put forward in all seriousness, and in the present hopelessness of the Finns has found wide acceptance where it would have been scouted even a twelvemonth ago as too radical a departure from Finnish traditions. This is nothing less than to place Finland at the head of all the dissatisfied factions and nationalities tributary to Russia and systematically ground down by her ruthless bureaucratic machinery: the Poles, Lithuanians, Esthonians, Courlanders, Little Russians, Caucasians, and Jews, and the constantly growing revolutionary party in the body of the Empire itself, thus supplying the indispensable cohesion so far lacking among these various elements.

Never has dissatisfaction with the ruling class been so widespread among all classes in Russia itself as it is now, when even those parts of the social organism that have hitherto been most devoted to the doctrine of blind submission are becoming permeated with the ideals of social and political regeneration, and when even the military arm of the State has begun to show signs of disaffection most alarming to the bureaucratic class. Therefore, having nothing more to lose, these young Finlanders argue, it becomes Finland's highest duty to proclaim herself the champion of the struggling cause of liberty and enlightenment throughout the Muscovite Empire. Then, by inculcating among all the dissatisfied factions the doctrines of constitutional law and liberty, as she has herself practiced and perfected them, she will crystallize the purpose of the hitherto disunited and ill-organized bodies, furnish them with a perfectly definite programme which they shall unitedly strive their utmost to bring to triumphant adoption, and direct their campaign with the

invaluable aid of Finnish enlightenment and practical experience in sound, progressive social and political organization. Violence will be discredited as out of keeping with the fundamental Finnish reverence for orderly development, and this very fact will, it is confidently expected, be the means of greatly strengthening the movement and securing for it the practical adhesion of the more stable and responsible elements of the social structure, which are none the less determined on a change in the principles of government because they discountenance the "propaganda of the deed." Though the present generation may not live to see it, the triumph of the great liberating movement will undoubtedly be greatly hastened by the active participation in it of the people of Finland, armed with the wisdom and knowledge garnered during centuries of gradual political development and its accompanying moral and intellectual achievement. Then will Finland once more come by her own, and the vision of Tolstoï be fulfilled, when Russia shall achieve her real unity through the peaceful process of being Fennicized, instead of through the incredibly blind and fatuous policy of the attempted Russification of Finland by the strong arm.

And what then remains for such of Finland's sons as have taken up their abode without the gates and watch their country's pain and peril from afar in sheltered peace? Have they no duty, too? Can they not take part in the battle for justice and restitution? Of a surety they did not flee from present oppression

I

and suffering in their native land with the desire to evade all responsibility in the tremendous task that confronts the Finnish youth and manhood of to-day. They may say, "We must contribute of our means to swell the patriotic funds at home." Well and good, but does their responsibility end with this immediate material aim? No; theirs is the further duty of spreading a fuller knowledge of Finland, its institutions and its people, among the nations of the earth, so that no portion of the civilized world may remain in ignorance of the part which that far northern land, humble and forgotten though it have lain these centuries past, has played and continues to play in the world drama of political, social, and intellectual progress. By the slow but unfailing force of example, by word and deed, they must show what splendid training Finland has given her sons in citizenship and culture, and thus bring to the various lands of their adoption the welldefined conviction that the whole world is concerned, in a very real and vital sense, in the final defeat, not merely of Russia's intended annihilation of Finland's national life and thought, but of each and every attempt of an inferior civilization to destroy a higher one, under whatsoever pretext or by whatsoever means such attempt be made. So shall the time assuredly be hastened-though we live not to see it when the triumph of broad, enlightened international opinion over the narrow dictates of national prejudices shall have ceased to be a mere dream of Utopia!

with Oom Paul's work because it seems to be animated by a greater regard for exactness of statement, because of the absence of archaic notions, of deep-rooted prejudices, which disfigure the pages written by the venerable exile in Holland.

General De Wet's book is one which should be read both by pro-Britons and pro-Boers, because of its reasonableness; the author seems to be aware of this quality, and dedicates the volume" To my fellow-subjects in the British Empire.' Such a striking dedication, together with